Bodies of Burmese protesters were reported to be piled high yesterday in a Buddhist pagoda compound occupied by security forces after the deadliest single incident since the February coup.
Junta forces deployed rocket-propelled grenades, machineguns and rifle grenades when they stormed a protest camp in the ancient city of Bago on Friday. Details have been slow to emerge because of an internet blackout, but locals say that at least 60 were killed in the massacre.
Soldiers have set up base at the Zeyar Muni pagoda and school, dragging bodies of the dead and wounded back there, according to witnesses. Security forces have regularly pulled away the bodies of victims during protests in an apparent effort to prevent casualty counts.
Regime gunmen conducted house-to-house searches for suspected protest organisers and shot at passersby yesterday, further hindering efforts to assess the death toll as the violence rolled into a second day in the city, 50 miles north-east of Yangon.
Ye Htut, a protest leader who is in hiding, relayed accounts that there were at least 57 bodies in the pagoda compound and more at morgues, the Myanmar Now website reported.
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According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a Thailand-based human rights group, at least 80 were killed.
As violence spiralled, three allied ethnic military groups who oppose the junta’s crackdown on protests killed at least 14 policemen after over-running their base in Shan state in northern Myanmar yesterday. The security forces responded by attacking villages.
The country, which has been marked by insurgencies since independence from Britain in 1948, appeared to be careering back towards all-out conflict, and several ethnic factions have condemned the coup.
Kachin and Karen insurgents have also attacked regime forces in recent clashes, and politicians from the ousted National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi have been negotiating with ethnic leaders to forge a united front against the junta.
Dr Sasa, spokesman for the shadow administration, told The Sunday Times that a new national unity government would be announced “in coming days”.
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The organised resistance and the latest killings belied claims by the junta’s spokesman during a press conference later on Friday that “normality” was being restored.
Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun insisted that protest numbers were dwindling and the country “wanted peace” under the military.
Indeed, crowds on the streets have decreased — but only because the security forces launched a brutal crackdown, deploying snipers with shoot-to-kill orders.
Furthermore, the civil disobedience movement (CDM) remains strong, with widespread strikes shackling government operations and bringing swathes of the economy to a standstill.
Zaw Min Tun made his remarks as explosions and gunfire echoed across Bago, a former royal capital previously known as Pegu. Hundreds of protesters had been occupying a rally encampment and many were trapped inside as the security forces launched their hours-long barrage with heavy weaponry.
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Later in the day, Buddhist monks went to the pagoda and asked to take injured people for medical treatment but were turned away by the security forces, a resident told Myanmar Now.
Before the Bago slaughter, the AAPP had reported 618 deaths since the February 1 coup, although the real number is believed to be significantly higher.
Nearly 3,000 people have been detained, the group said.
In recent days, the junta has turned its attention to celebrities who have supported the CDM, issuing arrest warrants for more than 60 actors and entertainers for allegedly inciting unrest. Most are in hiding, but three famous actors and a popular comedian were arrested last week.
Sasa, who is in hiding in a neighbouring country, delivered a blunt message to Myanmar’s neighbours and the international community as the Bago atrocity took place.
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“If you support the generals, you are supporting bloodshed and an inevitable great civil war that will end in genocide,” he said. “Now is the time for the international community to act to stop this. The door is still open, but it is narrowing.”
He said that the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, or parliament, (CRPH), which he represents as international envoy, has collected 275,000 pieces of evidence detailing and mapping hundreds of human rights abuses by the military, including killing and torture.
The CRPH’s British lawyers from the Volterra Fietta firm have discussed with United Nations investigators how to use the material to pursue international charges against the generals.
In a separate development, a junta court ended a long moratorium on capital sentences by ordering the death penalty in absentia for 19 protesters for allegedly beating and torturing an army captain and another man, who later died.
The sentences were announced on state television. However, as the junta has sought to stifle any news emerging from the country and communications between protesters, it has switched off most internet connections, banned independent media and sent in security forces to dismantle satellite dishes.
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A Bago resident told Radio Free Asia that the only source of news for many was now the radio. The reports were then relayed among friends and family by phone.
