YANGON, Myanmar (AP) – Supporters of the junta in Myanmar attacked people protesting against the military government that took power during a coup, using slingshots, iron bars and knives Thursday to injure several protesters.
The violence complicates an already unworkable disagreement between the military and a protest movement that holds large rallies daily to demand that the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi return to power. She and other politicians were ousted and arrested on February 1 in a takeover that shocked the international community and turned years of slow progress toward democracy.
In response, several Western countries have imposed or threatened sanctions on the military. Britain on Thursday announced further measures against members of the ruling junta due to ‘oversight of human rights violations since the coup’.
Amid the international outrage, Facebook has also announced that it will ban all accounts linked to the military as well as advertisements from military-controlled companies.
On Thursday, tensions escalated between anti-coup protesters and army supporters. Photos and videos posted on social media showed groups of people attacking downtown Yangon while police stood there without intervening.
The number of injured and their condition was not immediately clear.
According to accounts and photos posted on social media, hundreds of people marched on Thursday in support of the coup. They carried banners in English with the slogans ‘We Stand With Our Defense Services’ and ‘We Stand With State Administration Council’, which is the official name of the junta.
When the spectators in the vicinity of the city’s central train station were chased by the spectators, they responded by throwing slingshots and throwing stones at their critics. Some marchers broke away to chase down a man and then stabbed and kicked him.
Supporters of the military used to gather in the streets, especially in the days immediately before and after the coup, but did not use violence so openly.
Critics of the military are asking people to commit violence, hard to confirm. They were educated during earlier unrest, including a failed anti-military uprising in 1988 and an ambush by Suu Kyi’s motorcade in a remote rural area in 2003, when she turned her supporters against the then-ruling military regime. wanted to rally.
Such confrontations could make it more difficult to resolve Myanmar’s crisis.
Later on Thursday, police came into force in the Tarmwe area of Yangon, where they were trying to clear the streets of residents protesting that the army had appointed a new administrator for one ward. Several arrests were made when people dispersed in front of the lines of riot police, who used the grenades to disperse the crowd.
So far, according to the Independent Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, eight people have been killed in connection with the junta’s repression and 728 people have been arrested, charged or sentenced since the coup.
As part of its efforts to suppress the opposition, the ruling junta has tried to restrict access to the internet, including trying to block Facebook – the gateway to the internet for many people in Myanmar. These efforts are largely ineffective.
But on Thursday, Facebook announced its own ban: on all military-linked accounts. The social media platform has already removed several military-linked accounts since the coup, including Myawaddy TV and the state-controlled state television broadcaster MRTV. The ban also applies to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.
The company said in a statement that it considered the situation in Myanmar an ’emergency’, explaining that the ban had been caused by events since the coup, including ‘deadly violence’.
Facebook and other social media platforms came under tremendous criticism in 2017 when real groups said they were not doing enough to stop the hate speech against Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority.
The army launched a brutal counter-insurgency operation that year that drove more than 700,000 Rohingya to seek safety in neighboring Bangladesh, where they live in refugee camps. Myanmar security forces have burned down villages, killed civilians and carried out mass rape, and the International Court of Justice is considering whether these actions are genocide.
The military says it has seized power because the election in November last year was marked by widespread voting irregularities, a claim refuted by the state election commission, whose members have since been replaced.
The junta said it would rule for a year and then hold elections again.