The bloody repression of the Myanmar army against the nationwide resistance to its government showed no sign of easing on Sunday. A human rights group has reported that the death toll across the country has passed 700.
The security forces killed 82 people in a single city on Friday, according to the group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which has been documenting the bloodshed since the February 1 coup. Soldiers used machine guns and rockets to attack an organized group of protesters who set up barricades to defend part of the city, Bago.
The army appears to be targeting centers of resistance across the country, and they are using overwhelming force against largely untrained, poorly armed protesters. In Tamu, a city near the border with India, members of a local defense group similar to those in Bago claimed to have killed some members of the security forces on Saturday after coming under attack.
The assault on security forces in Bago, about 40 kilometers northeast of Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, was one of their deadliest yet. A featured news outlet Myanmar Nou, also set the death toll in Bago at 82.
On Friday, a junta spokesman, Major General Zaw Min Tun, suggested that the army had been exercising self-control since the coup, and told reporters that it might kill many more people if it wanted to.
“If we were to shoot the protesters with an automatic rifle, the 500 people you are talking about would have died within hours,” he said after being asked about the nationwide toll.
A leader of the Bago defense group, Ko Myo Kyaw, said the army opened fire with heavy weapons before dawn to destroy the barricades set up by the protesters and that the shooting continued throughout the day. The defenders could do little, he said.
“We do not have deadly weapons,” he said. Myo Kyaw said, whose brother was among the murdered. “We only have slingshots and air rifles.”
Survivors of the attack fled the city and regrouped, Mr. Myo Kyaw said. “We will never give up,” he said. “They have to pay for what they did to our city.”
The United Nations Office in Myanmar said on Twitter that the violence in Bago “must strike immediately“And requested the army to have medical teams treat wounded.
Members of the local defense organization in Tamu, which calls itself the Tamu Security Group, said that on Saturday, just like in Bago, the security forces fired up their defenses with machine guns and rockets.
According to two members of the defense group, members of the security forces were killed in the ensuing clashes.
Their claims could not be independently confirmed. But the killing of several members of the security forces would be a major development in the violence since the coup, which was overwhelmingly one-sided.
A small, little-known rebel group called the Kuki National Army, one of many ethnic groups fighting for years in Myanmar’s army in regional conflicts, said it helped Tamu protesters fight the security forces on Saturday, but the extent of its involvement was unclear. Some leaders of the protest movement have called on rebel leaders to join forces.
Over the weekend, rights groups accused the military of trying to intimidate protesters with a new tactic: death sentences in a military court. On Friday, state television reported that 23 people had been sentenced to death after a closed trial for the murder of a soldier on March 26 in Yangon.
The case was handled by a military court because the alleged murder – which allegedly involved a robbery – took place in a district in Yangon that was under martial law. A total of two accused are hiding and have been tried in absentia, according to the report from the state television.
It was not clear if the accused were protesters. But Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Asia for Human Rights Watch, calls the trial “another example of the junta’s attempt to force people off the streets and crush the civil disobedience movement.”
Daw Aye Aye Thwin, whose son, Ko Bo Bo Thu, 27, is one of the two accused in custody, said he was at home at the time of the murder and had nothing to do with it. She said she had not been able to see him since his arrest, and learned of the sentence on Friday, a day after it was imposed.
“Now I feel like my world is over,” she said. “I just want to appeal to the authorities not to kill my son.”