Myaing, a small town in central Myanmar, was best known until Thursday for its production of thanaka, a bark that can be used as a cooling cosmetic.
But late in the morning of March 11, the city, which can be driven within ten minutes, became synonymous with the brutality of the army that took power last month. Myaing’s rainforest streets were stained with blood while police officers shot at a group of unarmed civilians, according to witnesses and hospital officials, killing at least eight people and injuring more than twenty.
U Myint Zaw Win was one of the crowd that dispersed outside Myaing’s police station late in the morning under live ammunition. When he looked back, he saw a corpse waving half a head apart, in a street he had walked all his life. He did not know whose body it was, but he said a bricklayer and a bus driver were among the dead.
“They shot people like shooting birds,” he said. Myint Zaw Win said about the police officers, of whom he said he knows personally because Myaing is a small town where almost everyone knows each other.
“How can they change from violent police to monsters?” he added. “The world is upside down.”
Myint Zaw Win’s report on the massacre was confirmed by two other witnesses.
More than 70 people in Myanmar have been killed by security forces since the army carried out its coup on February 1, which displaced a civilian leadership and brought the country back to the nightmare of full military rule.
While most of the deaths occurred in major cities such as Yangon and Mandalay, security forces shot dead people in at least 17 different towns across the country: Taungdwingyi, Myingyan, Salin, Kalay, Htee Lin and Pyapon, among others.
After analyzing more than 50 videos of such killings, Amnesty International concluded in a report published Thursday that security forces were using the protesters on the battlefield. In some cases, commanders ordered extrajudicial killings, Amnesty International said, while in other cases, bullets were fired indiscriminately.
The Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar army is known, have killed and persecuted its citizens for decades. The worst attacks are reserved for ethnic minorities, such as Rohingya Muslims whose prosecution is being tried as genocide in international courts.
“It is not the actions of overwhelming individual officers who make poor decisions,” said Joanne Mariner, director of crisis response at Amnesty International, in a statement. “These are unrepentant commanders already involved in crimes against humanity, deploying their troops and killing methods in public.”
The drumming of deaths in Myanmar over the past few weeks has shocked a population accustomed to massacre by the military. On Thursday, three people were shot dead in the cities of Yangon, Mandalay and Bago. Another person who was shot dead in the city of Myinchan on March 3 also succumbed to his injuries on Thursday.
Before gunfire turned Myaing city center into a battlefield on Thursday, residents gathered daily, in hard hats and motorcycle helmets, to march against the military seizure last month. Its residents were just as determined as those in larger metropolises to speak out against the coup, during which dozens of elected politicians, including civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, were detained.
On Thursday, a military spokeswoman accused Ms Aung San Suu Kyi of receiving 25 pounds of gold and about $ 600,000 illegally. Me. Aung San Suu Kyi heads the National League for Democracy, which has unexpectedly won the past two elections. She has been charged with several other crimes that could hold her captive for years, including the obscure violation of foreign walkie-talkies without proper import licenses.
Two days after the coup, Myaing residents began marching in its half-paved streets, demanding that Ms Aung San Suu Kyi and other elected officials be returned. They have been going on every day ever since. On Thursday, at least two young people from a local convent were arrested and a crowd gathered at the police station to find out why. They sat in silent protest.
There was no warning that live ammunition would arrive, witnesses said. Police declined to comment.
Around the same time, in Yangon, the country’s largest city, security forces shot at a crowd in northern Dagon township and hit Ko Chit Min Thu, a 25-year-old collector of recycled materials. He died almost immediately, his relatives and other protesters said.
Concerned that security forces would seize the body – as happened in recent days and on Thursday in Mandalay – other protesters said. Chit Min Thu taken away from the shooting range.
Early in the afternoon, his body was back at home with mourners. A bandage disguises his fatal head wound. His widow, Ma Aye Chan Myint, listened, their two-year-old son by her side. She is pregnant, in her first trimester.
“Why didn’t they just shoot at the legs, why did they shoot at the head?” she asked. There was no answer.
Aye Chan Myint reached out her hand to touch the feet and face of her husband, who went on to protest every day in the hope that a surge of civilian power could somehow remove the army from power.
“You said I should be proud,” she said to her husband’s body. “I’m proud of you, my love.”