YANGON, Myanmar (AP) – Supporters of the Myanmar junta attacked people protesting against the military government that seized power in a coup, using slingshots, iron bars and knives on Thursday to injure several of the protesters.
The violence complicates an already intractable stalemate among the military and a protest movement that has been raging daily to demand that the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi be restored to power. She and other politicians were deposed and arrested on February 1 in an acquisition that shocked the international community and reversed years of slow progress toward democracy.
In response, several Western countries have imposed or threatened sanctions against the military. On Thursday, Britain announced new measures against members of the governing board for “overseeing human rights violations since the coup”.
Amid international outrage, Facebook also announced that it would ban all accounts linked to the military as well as advertisements for military-controlled companies.
On Thursday, tensions rose in the streets between anti-coup protesters and supporters of the military. Photos and videos posted on social media showed groups attacking people in central Yangon while police waited without intervening.
The number of wounded and their condition was not immediately clear.
According to reports and photos posted on social media, hundreds of people marched on Thursday in support of the coup. They carried banners in English with the slogans “We are with our defense services” and “We support the State Board of Directors”, which is the official name of the board.
When protesters were mocked by onlookers near the city’s central train station, they responded by shooting slingshots and throwing stones at their critics. Some protesters fled to chase a man and then stabbed and kicked him.
Supporters of the military had gathered in the streets before, especially in the days immediately before and after the coup, but they did not use violence so openly.
Critics of the military accuse their people of paying to engage in violence, allegations that are difficult to verify. They were raised during earlier periods of unrest, including a failed anti-military uprising in 1988 and an ambush by Suu Kyi’s motorcade in a remote rural area in 2003 when she was trying to rally her supporters against the ruling military regime.
These clashes may make it difficult to resolve the Myanmar crisis.
Later on Thursday, the police showed up in force in the Tarmwe neighborhood of Yangon, where they tried to clear the streets of residents protesting the military appointment of a new administrator for a wing. Several arrests were made when people spread out across the lines of the riot squad, which used flash bang grenades to disperse the crowd.
So far, according to the Association of Assistance to Political Prisoners, eight people have been killed in connection with the repression of the junta and 728 people have been arrested, charged or sentenced since the coup.
As part of its efforts to crack down on opposition, the governing board has sought to limit access to the internet, including trying to block Facebook – the gateway to the web for many people in Myanmar. These efforts have proved largely ineffective.
But on Thursday, Facebook announced its own ban: on all accounts linked to the military. The social media platform had already deleted several military-linked accounts since the coup, including army-controlled Myawaddy TV and state television station MRTV. The bans also apply to Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.
The company said in a statement that it considered the situation in Myanmar an “emergency”, explaining that the ban was triggered by events since the coup, including “deadly violence”.
Facebook and other social media platforms came under heavy criticism in 2017, when right-wing groups said they did not do enough to stop hate speech against Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority.
The army launched a brutal counter-insurgency operation that year that prompted more than 700,000 Rohingya to seek security in neighboring Bangladesh, where they remain in refugee camps. Myanmar’s security forces set villages on fire, killed civilians and were involved in mass rape, and the International Court of Justice is considering whether these actions constitute genocide.
The military says they took power because last November’s election was marked by widespread voting irregularities, a claim that was refuted by the state electoral commission, whose members were replaced.
The board said it would rule for a year and then hold new elections.