Workplaces across Myanmar were closed on Monday, part of a general strike aimed at strangling the power of military rulers who overthrew an elected government last month. But when manufacturing and trade were idle, anger over the cruelty of the military flared up further, despite the increasing presence of security forces in urban centers and a tougher crackdown on the press.
At least two participants in a mass protest movement were shot dead in Myitkyina, a city in northern Myanmar, on Monday, where Roman Catholic nuns fell to their knees to demand that soldiers stop the killing. Another protester was fatally shot in the abdomen in Pyapon, a city not far from Yangon, the capital of Myanmar. The deaths were reported by medical workers and family members.
And in Yangon itself, hundreds of people were trapped in a security force cord on Monday night for fear of arrest or worse. “Help,” wrote one of the people who said he was stuck. “The military troops blocked every way out.”
More than 60 people have been killed since a coup on February 1 ousted Myanmar’s civilian leaders and restored the country to full military rule. About 1,800 others were detained, according to a local group that monitors political prisoners.
Monday night, restrictions tightened even more when state television, now controlled by the military, announced that licenses for five independent media organizations had been withdrawn, a serious blow to the country’s live free press. Dozens of reporters have been detained since the coup. Deprivation of the media licenses can now make the fact that it is reported illegal.
When a military junta fully ruled Myanmar for nearly five decades, censorship committees regularly took news from the country’s newspapers and allowed rumors to flourish amid the blackout of information.
On Sunday, security forces descended on universities, hospital connections and Buddhist pagoda complexes, where they set up implemented operations centers.
“It is completely unacceptable to allow the military to establish themselves in the hospital,” said Dr. Kyaw Swar, a medical officer at Yangon General Hospital, where soldiers set up camp, said. ‘Hospitals are not the place for them. They were daring. But they have guns. ‘
In the city of Mandalay, in central Myanmar, military trucks struck university campuses, including Mandalay Technological University, where a convoy of four vehicles arrived amid tear gas and rubber bullets, according to witnesses.
Ko Kyaw Thu, a security guard at Mandalay Technological University, sustained a rubber bullet wound under his left eye, which required surgery.
“They are terrorists,” he said of the military. “I think they are trying to prepare for a brutal war against the people.”
U Kesara Viwunsa, the abbot, said at the Mahamuni Buddha temple in Mandalay that soldiers had taken over the pagoda’s grounds for a month.
“No one comes to worship here anymore because people are afraid of them,” he said.
The Global New Light of Myanmar, a state-run newspaper that acts as a loudspeaker for the military rulers, said on Monday that such spaces are occupied because members of the public have requested that the Tatmadaw, known as the Myanmar army, be ‘the public control universities and hospitals and act effectively for the benefit of the people. ”
The publication also warns that even ‘indirectly’ with a group of legislators who have established themselves as a kind of government in exile will be considered a crime.
People in Myanmar have been discussing for days now ‘R2P’, a shorthand for the United Nations’ ‘responsibility to protect policy’, which could concern the international community “if peaceful means were not sufficient and the national authorities apparently did not their people would not be protected from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. ”
The principle was used to justify foreign military intervention in Libya in 2011 and came into being after the United Nations acknowledged that it could not stop the atrocities in the Balkans and Rwanda. In Myanmar, the hashtag # R2P has been trending on Twitter, and people have been writing giant signs on streets asking for foreign military institutions.
The international community has verbally condemned the takeover of Tatmadaw, and some countries have tightened targeted sanctions against military officers and companies. But Myanmar’s major foreign investors, such as Singapore and China, have not taken important steps to punish the military financially.
When the generals took power last month, they announced that they were forced to take action because of what they called massive voter fraud in the November election last year, which the National League for Democracy narrowly won. The generals said they would hold elections in a year. According to state media reports, the timetable for future polls has already been shifted to one to two years.
The last time the military declared the results of an election in 1990 null and void, it took a quarter of a century before a full and fair general election was held again.