Myanmar security forces shoot dead nine anti-coup protesters despite calls for restraint

[March 03, 2021]  (Reuters) - Myanmar security forces opened fire on protests against military rule on Wednesday, killing nine people, witnesses and media reported, a day after neighbouring countries called for restraint and offered to help Myanmar resolve the crisis.

The security forces resorted to live fire with little warning in several towns and cities, witnesses said, as the junta appeared more determined than ever to stamp out protests against the Feb. 1 coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

"It's horrific, it's a massacre. No words can describe the situation and our feelings," youth activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi told Reuters via a messaging app.

A spokesman for the ruling military council did not answer telephone calls seeking comment.

In the central town of Myingyan, where one teenaged boy was killed, protest leader Si Thu Maung, told Reuters police initially fired tear gas and stun grenades but quickly opened fire.

"They didn't spray us with water cannon, no warning to disperse, they just fired their guns," he said.

The heaviest toll was in another central town, Monywa, where five people - four men and one woman - were killed, said Ko Thit Sar, editor of the Monywa Gazette.

"We've confirmed with family members and doctors, five people have been killed," he told Reuters.

"At least 30 people are wounded, some still unconscious."

Two people were killed in the country's second-biggest city Mandalay, a witness and media reports said, and one person was killed when police opened fire in the main city of Yangon, a witness there said.

At least 31 people have been killed since the coup.

The violence took place a day after foreign ministers from Southeast Asian neighbours urged restraint but failed to unite behind a call for the release Suu Kyi and the restoration of democracy.

"The country is like the Tiananmen Square in most of its major cities," the Archbishop of Yangon, Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, said on Twitter, referring to the suppression of student-led protests in Beijing in 1989.

Security forces also detained about 300 protesters as they broke up protests in Yangon, the Myanmar Now news agency reported.

Video posted on social media showed lines of young men, hands on heads, filing into army trucks as police and soldiers stood guard. Reuters was unable to verify the footage.

'CONTINUE THIS FIGHT'

Images of a 19-year-old woman, one of the two shot dead in Mandalay, showed her wearing a T-shirt that read "Everything will be OK".

Police in Yangon ordered three medics out of an ambulance, shot up the windscreen and then kicked and beat the workers with gun butts and batons, video broadcast by U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia showed. Reuters was unable to verify the video independently.

Protesters cover with makeshift shields during an anti-coup protest in Mandalay, Myanmar, March 3, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer

Democracy activist Esther Ze Naw told Reuters that the sacrifices of those who died would not be in vain.

"We will continue this fight and win. We shall overcome this and win," she said.

On Tuesday, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) failed to make a breakthrough in a virtual foreign ministers' meeting on Myanmar.

While united in a call for restraint, only four members - Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore - called for the release of Suu Kyi and other detainees.

"We expressed ASEAN's readiness to assist Myanmar in a positive, peaceful and constructive manner," the ASEAN chair, Brunei, said in a statement.

Myanmar's state media said the military-appointed foreign minister, Wunna Maung Lwin, attended the video conference and "apprised the meeting of voting irregularities" in a November election.

The military justified the coup saying its complaints of voter fraud in the Nov. 8 vote were ignored. Suu Kyi's party won by a landslide, earning a second term.

The election commission said the vote was fair.

Junta leader Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has said the intervention was to protect Myanmar's fledgling democracy and has pledged to hold new elections but given no time frame.

State television has said agitators were mobilising people on social media and forming "illegal organisations".

Suu Kyi, 75, has been held incommunicado since the coup but appeared at a court hearing via video conferencing this week and looked in good health, a lawyer said.

She is one of nearly 1,300 people who have been detained, according to activists.

Ousted President Win Myint is facing two new charges, his lawyer, Khin Maung Zaw, said, including one for a breach of the constitution that is punishable by up to three years on prison.

A former United Nations expert on Myanmar said on Wednesday foreign firms should suspend all business there to send a clear message to the military that its coup will hurt its people and ruin its economy.

(Reporting by Reuters Staff; Writing by Martin Petty, Robert Birsel; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Stephen Coates, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Angus MacSwan)

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