On May 24 in the Kachin state of Myanmar, 13-year-old Awng Di went to her aunt’s house at noon to feed her chickens. Thirty minutes later, heavy artillery fell on the henhouse; Awng Di died before arriving at the nearby clinic.
“Our family has never been involved in politics … We are trying to survive,” Awng Di’s mother told Al Jazeera. “Now, I want to curse [the military soldiers] every time I see them “.
There have been clashes between Momauk municipality, which originated in Awng Di, since Tatmadaw, the Myanmar army and the Kachin Independence Army, the armed wing of an armed ethnic organization, since April. According to UN estimates, the rise in violence in Momau and other parts of Kachin State has displaced more than 11,000 people.
Myanmar military adopts four cuts to stamp out coup opponen
banglanews24.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from banglanews24.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Su Thit has a table in a corner by the window in her home. She no longer sits there at night. “You never know when the bullets will fly,” she says.
She fears the Myanmar military might shoot at random. At 8 pm, when people still bang pots and pans in protest, security forces will sometimes fire at the sounds with slingshots, stones, bullets.
Su Thit, a pseudonym she is using for her safety, lives in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. She began protesting in early February, when demonstrators swarmed the streets in defiance of a military coup that toppled the country’s quasi-democratic government and detained its civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
Although the results of the emergency summit are more interventionist than ASEAN usually is regarding member-states’ politics, the summit and its declaration still have huge flaws. As
Frontier Myanmar noted, “the regional bloc ultimately reached a five-point consensus that Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said [junta leader] Min Aung Hlaing ‘considered helpful’, which sounds ominous.”
It is true that an envoy, particularly one with significant clout, could potentially have some impact on the ground in Myanmar, and try to bring forth a cessation of violence, which certainly would be positive. But the five-point statement fails to address multiple issues. First, while a special envoy and a commitment to humanitarian assistance could pave the way for greater aid, it was already possible to provide humanitarian aid, as Myanmar specialist Kim Jolliffe has noted the problem has been the challenges thrown up by the military and the chaos.
A monitoring group in Myanmar has appealed for international action, expressing concern over the torture and murder of anti-coup protesters in the Southeast Asian nation after the military broadcast images of six young detainees bearing severe signs of abuse.
In the pictures broadcast on military-owned MRTV on Sunday evening, the faces of four men and two women appeared bloodied and bruised. One of the women had a swollen jaw and what appeared to be a black eye.
“This junta uses torture as its policy,” the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) said in a tweet.
“If the international community does not act, torture and to death, will clearly continue.”
vimarsana © 2020. All Rights Reserved.