Read more about Scores arrested as Myanmar police disperse anti-coup rally in Yangon on Business Standard. The violence erupted early morning when medical students were marching in Yangon s streets near the Hledan Center intersection
Security forces in Myanmar s largest city on Friday fired warning shots and beat truncheons against their shields while moving to disperse more than 1,000 anti-coup protesters. The demonstrators had gathered in front of a popular shopping mall in Yangon, holding placards and chanting slogans denouncing the Feb. 1 coup even as the security presence increased and a water-cannon truck was brought to the area. When around 50 riot police moved against the protesters, warning shots could be heard, and at least one demonstrator was held by officers. Security forces chased the protesters off the main road and continued to pursue them in the nearby lanes, as some ducked into houses to hide.
Read more about Myanmar coup: Facebook bans all Burmese military-linked accounts and ads on Business Standard. The bans are also being applied on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook
Whether taken from their homes in the middle of the night or grabbed off the streets during protests, hundreds of people have been arrested in the weeks since Myanmar s military coup, leading human rights groups and experts to fear a sizable expansion in the number of political prisoners in the country. As of Tuesday, some 696 people including monks, writers, activists, politicians and others had been arrested in relation to the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, or AAPP, a Myanmar-based organisation. Many of those arrested were charged using a legacy of laws some dating back to British colonial times and others instituted under previous military regimes that have been used against critics by every government, including the one led by Aung San Suu Kyi s National League for Democracy party, which was ousted in the Feb. 1 coup.
Read more about Myanmar coup: More protests follow general strike, foreign concerns on Business Standard. They have been on strike, as have many civil servants and state enterprise workers, as part of a nationwide civil obedience movement against the Feb. 1 military takeover