Police in Myanmar held today harsher crackdown of the last three weeks of protests against the military coup in cities across the country with the media to speak of a woman who fell dead from bullets and dozens arrested.
Myanmar is rocked by a wave of pro-democracy protests following a military coup that ousted ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1st.
The violence erupted after Myanmar's envoy to the United Nations called for “all necessary means” to end the coup.
Concerns are running high over Suu Kyi's fate as the independent website Myanmar Now, citing officials from its party's National Democratic League, wrote yesterday that its leader had been transferred this week from house arrest to an unknown location.
The coup took hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets and was condemned by Western countries, some of which imposed limited sanctions.
As early as this morning, police forces were deployed in the cities to suppress the protests.
In the largest city, Yangon, police took positions in places where normally held demonstrations and arrested citizens while gathered, among them journalists, according to eyewitnesses.
Clashes broke out as more and more people gathered despite the police operation.
Three local media outlets reported that a woman had been shot and killed in the central city of Monoya. The circumstances of the incident are not clear and the police were not available to comment.
Earlier, a protester in the city said police used a water pump against a crowd.
At the UN General Assembly, Myanmar Ambassador Kyo Moe Tan said he was speaking on behalf of the Suu Kyi government and called for “all necessary measures to be taken against the Myanmar army and to ensure the safety of the people”.
“We need stronger action from the international community to put an immediate end to the military coup… and to restore justice,” he said.
Concluding his speech in his mother tongue, the career diplomat raised his hand with three fingers together as the pro-democracy protesters do and said: “Our goal will prevail.”
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