YANGON (AP) – According to reports from independent local media and an organization that has been monitoring the victims since the February coup, at least 82 people were killed in one day in a security crackdown in Myanmar.
Friday’s death toll in Bago was the largest one – day total for a single city since March 14, when just over 100 people died in Yangon, the country’s largest city. Bago is about 100 kilometers northeast of Yangon. The Associated Press cannot independently confirm the number of deaths.
The death toll of 82 was a preliminary one compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which releases daily scores of victims and arrests following the repression in the wake of the February 1 coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi has.
Their rates are generally accepted as very credible because cases are not added until confirmed, with the details published on their website.
In its Saturday report, the group said they expect the death toll in Bago to increase as more cases are verified.
The online news site Myanmar Now also reported that 82 people were killed, citing an unnamed source involved in charity rescue work. Myanmar Now and other local media said the bodies were collected by the army and dumped on the site of a Buddhist pagoda.
According to the Assistance for Political Prisoners, at least 701 protesters and bystanders have been killed by security forces since the army took over.
The attack on Bago was the third in the past week in terms of the massive use of force to try to crush the ongoing opposition to the ruling junta.
Attacks were launched on Wednesday on fierce opponents of military government who had erected strongholds in the villages of Kalay and Taze in the north of the country. At least 11 people were killed in both places – possibly including bystanders – dead.
The security forces were accused of using heavy weapons in their attacks, including rockets and grenades, but such allegations could not be independently confirmed by The Associated Press. Photos of Bago appear to show fragments of mortar shells on social media.
Most protests in cities and towns in the country are carried out by non-violent protesters who see themselves as part of a civil disobedience movement.
But as police and the military increased the use of deadly force, a hard-line faction of protesters armed themselves with homemade weapons such as firebombs in the name of self-defense. In Kalay, activists called themselves a “civilian army” and some equipped themselves with rudimentary hunting rifles traditionally in the remote area.
According to a report by Myanmar Now, residents of Tamu, a city in the same region as Kalay, used hunting rifles on Saturday to lure a military convoy, claiming that they had killed three soldiers.
The junta has also taken other measures to discourage resistance. It recently published a wanted list of 140 people active in the arts and journalism charged with disseminating information that undermines the stability of the country and the rule of law. The penalty for the offense is up to three years in prison. The arrests of those on the list have been widely publicized in the state media.
State television channel MRTV reported Friday night that a military court has sentenced 19 people – 17 in absentia – to death for allegedly killing an army officer in Yangon on March 27. The attack took place in an area of the city that is under war. legislation, and the court action was apparently the first time the death sentence had been imposed under the junta’s rule.
UN special envoy for Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener arrived in the Thai capital Bangkok on Friday on a regional mission to resolve the Myanmar crisis. She plans to voice several Southeast Asian governments on their ideas, but has been denied permission to visit Myanmar.