Burmese security forces have killed more than 80 anti-coup protesters in a town near Yangon, a watch group and local media said on Saturday. Protesters marched in clothes painted in blood-red color in several cities across the country.
The troops also used rifle grenades to disperse the protest in Bago, according to witnesses and national media. According to the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners (AAPP) and the Myanmar Now news portal, 82 people were killed.
Dead brought to a pagoda
The soldiers reportedly surrounded the residents from early Friday morning, using heavy weapons. They brought the dead to a pagoda, Myanmar Now reported, citing a leader of a protest group who spoke with eyewitnesses.
After more than two months of military rule, efforts to verify the deaths and confirm information on the crackdown were significantly curtailed by the junta’s restriction of communications within the country, which plunged the major part of the population in an information blackout.
Brutal repression
It took a full day for the details of the brutal crackdown in Bago, 65 kilometers northeast of Yangon to be known, as locals told AFP of the continued junta violence that drove them. to flee to neighboring villages.
AFP-verified footage, shot early Friday, showed protesters hiding behind sandbag barricades and wielding homemade rifles, while explosions were heard in the background.
Authorities refused to allow rescuers to approach the bodies, said a resident.
They allegedly piled up all the corpses, loaded them into their army truck and took him away. On Saturday, the state newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar blamed the crackdown on “rioters” and reported only one death.
Bago’s death toll, if confirmed, will come in addition to the 618 civilians killed since the February 1 coup, according to the AAAP.
News of the Bago massacre emerged the same day 19 people were reportedly sentenced to death for killing the associate of an army captain in a district of Yangon. Seventeen of those people were sentenced in absentia, army-owned television station Myawaddy reported on Friday. These are the first convictions of this type publicly announced since the February 1 coup.
Of the 19 people, only two are in detention, with the others on the run, according to the report.
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