We challenged the orders to kill protesters

MIZORAM, India (AP) – A group of police officers challenging the orders of Myanmar’s army to shoot opponents of the coup have told their experience after escaping to India. As they spoke, they raised a three-finger salute – a symbol of resistance against Myanmar’s military rulers.

“We can not hurt our people, that’s why we came to Mizoram,” said one of the men, who hails from the northern city of Tedim. The state of Mizoram in northeastern India shares a border with Bangladesh and Myanmar.

After the military coup, the police were ordered to ‘shoot people and not just the people, we were told to shoot our own family if they are not on the side of the army’, he said. The Associated Press has not been able to independently verify their allegations, although images and reports of repression by security forces in Myanmar have shown increasing violence against civilians.

Indian villagers in Mizoram have given shelter to 34 police personnel and one firefighter who has been crossing into India over the past two weeks. They spoke to an AP photojournalist on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation against family members still in Myanmar.

Back in Myanmar, the three-fingered salute, which traces its origins to the Hunger Games books and movies of Suzanne Collins, is used by youth protesters during massive anti-army demonstrations.

Meanwhile, K. Vanlalvena, a legislator from the state of Mizoram, urged the Indian government not to deport refugees from Myanmar until the normal returned there. The legislature belongs to the Mizo National Front, an ally of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party.

Those who have escaped spend their time watching television and performing tasks. Some have cell phones and try to connect families they had to leave behind. At night, everyone sleeps on mattresses on the floor of a single room.

One of them told the AP that they were under the army of Myanmar.

“We are all policemen working under the government of Myanmar. We left our family behind in Myanmar. We do not know what is happening to our family, but they will have many problems with the army. We came to Mizoram for shelter. “We will die if we go there,” he said.

“We can not reach our parents due to telecommunications problems, but what we have heard is that they are very scared to leave their homes … I hope we will meet again one day,” he added.

Earlier this month, Myanmar asked India to return the police officers crossing the border. India shares a 1,643-kilometer (1,020-mile) border with Myanmar and is home to thousands of Myanmar refugees in various states.

Last week, Ramliana, president of a village council in the state of Mizoram, a community-based body, said 116 Myanmar citizens crossed the Tiau River and reached Farkawn Village through a stretch where India’s paramilitary Assam Rifles personnel did not was not present. He uses one name.

Indian government officials and federal government officials did not give an exact number of people from Myanmar who crossed into India after the coup.

Last week, India’s Interior Ministry called on four Indian states bordering Myanmar – Mizoram, Manipur, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh – to take measures to prevent refugees from entering India, except on humanitarian grounds.

The ministry said the states were not empowered to grant refugee status to anyone entering India from Myanmar as India had not signed the 1951 UN Refugee Convention or its 1967 protocol.

Myanmar has been ruled by the military for most of its history since gaining independence from Britain in 1948. A gradual shift to democracy over the past decade has enabled Aung San Suu Kyi to start a civilian government from 2016, although the country’s generals have retained a great deal of power. under a military-drafted constitution.

Her party won the November election last year with a landslide victory, but the military stepped in before parliament convenes on February 1, detaining Suu Kyi and other government officials and declaring a state of emergency, claiming the vote was tainted by fraud. is.

Verified counts show that more than 200 people have been killed by security forces in Myanmar since the coup. They used live fire and rubber bullets against protesters and some prisoners were killed in custody.