The deadly capturing of a safety guard in Myanmar’s largest metropolis was confirmed by members of the family Sunday, bringing the weekend dying toll from the suppression of anti-military demonstrations to 3, because the junta imposed curfews forward of main nationwide protests deliberate to start out the week.
Monday marks three weeks for the reason that military deposed civilian chief Aung San Suu Kyi and her elected authorities. It additionally falls on Feb. 22, spawning what protest leaders within the numerology-loving nation are calling the “5 Twos” mass strike and demonstration, to be staged on 2/22/2021.
Navy leaders introduced a round the clock curfew Monday for Yangon, the place protest plans evoke recollections of the “8888 Rebellion,” a defining occasion within the nation’s democracy motion that produced Aung San Suu Kyi.
On August 8, 1988, college students launched nationwide protests towards many years of entrenched navy rule that had been put down by the military weeks later, with hundreds killed.
For Monday, protest leaders are calling on companies, factories and public establishments to close to halt operations within the largest in weeks of protests calling for a reversal of the Feb. 1 navy takeover. They’re encouraging civil servants to defy regime threats to arrest those that refuse to work below the junta.
The State Administration Council, the formal identify of the junta, has ordered telecommunications and knowledge service suppliers to chop the Web from midnight to midday Monday, the Ooredoo Myanmar information web site instructed RFA, within the newest of repeated communications cutoffs geared toward dampening discontent.
The most recent capturing dying happened Saturday evening in a suburb of Yangon, the place Yin Htut Hein, a 30-year-old evening safety guard, was shot within the head by a policemen in a patrol automotive and died immediately.
“He was on evening watch obligation on the road for the neighborhood when, a police automotive got here by,” a witness mentioned.
“The person stopped the automotive and requested, ‘The place are you going? What are you going to do? However the police cursed him and shot him within the head thrice. He was useless on the spot,” mentioned the witness, who added that the police automotive went drove off the Hlawga police station.
Movies shared by witnesses on social media confirmed 5 cops and two males in plainclothes with weapons drawn in patrol police automotive, from which gunshots rang out.
Tin Htut Hein is survived by his widow and a five-year-old youngster.
“I used to be instructed that police apologized to my father-in-law and requested him to not file the case,” mentioned his widow, Skinny Skinny.
“However for me, I would like the reality. I’ve misplaced my husband — a human being, not a fowl or a hen. I would like the perpetrators out. It was the intentional bullying of a citizen with arms,” she mentioned as she wept.
“Folks initially gathered on the police station as a result of they had been very indignant, however we don’t wish to give the junta the pretext of ‘indignant folks have overtaken the police station,’ so we requested them to disperse, they usually dispersed,” mentioned Aung Zaw Htwe, the native MP from Aung San Suu Kyi’s Nationwide League for Democracy.
RFA tried to achieve the Shwepyithar police station in Yangon for response and feedback however acquired no reply.
Earlier Saturday in Mandalay, two protesters had been shot useless when riot police fired rubber and stay bullets at a crowd attempting to cease troopers and police from storming a serious river transport hub to power hanging shipyard staff and different transport civil servants again to work after they’d walked off the job to affix demonstrations.
“Myanmar safety forces’ use of deadly power towards protesters within the streets of Mandalay is outrageous and unacceptable, and should be urgently investigated,” mentioned Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch.
“These accountable for the deaths and extreme accidents of these protesters should be held accountable, and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the regulation,” he mentioned in a press release, calling for worldwide condemnation of what he mentioned was a transparent violation worldwide human rights regulation.
Hundreds of protesters and civil servants staged a sit-in strike at Zaygyo, Mandalay’s largest market advanced, on Sunday to the day before today’s crackdown and capturing deaths.
In response to killings, Fb introduced it had eliminated the junta’s official data web page, a transfer that adopted the banning of the military-owned Myawaddy TV’s web page from the platform after the Feb. 1 coup.
Sunday additionally noticed tens of hundreds of mourners and protesters flip outed for a funeral procession by the capital Naypyidaw for a 20-year-old protester who was shot within the head within the capital Naypyidaw on Feb. 9 and died Friday.
Some 30,000 civil servants, college students, and activists escorted the physique of Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing from the hospital the place she died Gwe Gyi Cemetery, the place her stays had been cremated and her ashes had been buried.
Reported by RFA’s Myanmar Service. Translated by Kyaw Min Htun. Written in English by Paul Eckert.