YANGON, Myanmar (AP) – Tension in clashes between officials and protesters against last week’s coup in Myanmar boiled on Monday when police fired a water cannon at peaceful protesters in the capital Naypyitaw.
On Sunday, in the city of Myawaddy, on the eastern border between Myanmar and Thailand, police fired into the air in an evident effort to disperse a noisy crowd. There were no initial reports of injuries, but the Association of Assistance to Political Prisoners, an independent watchdog group, said a woman was shot, without providing further details.
There were no signs that protesters or the military were backing down in their clash over who the country’s legitimate government is: Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, which won an overwhelming victory in last November’s elections, or the board that formed a week ago and claims that the polls were hampered by electoral fraud.
Nonviolent protests demanding the release of detainee Suu Kyi and the restoration of her government have spread across the country, with awareness of them growing after authorities lifted a brief ban on Internet access on Sunday.
State media appear to have ignored the protests, but videos and reports about the demonstrations were being posted by social media users.
There were reports of new protests on Monday in Kachin state in the north, Mon state in the southeast, Tachileik, a border town in eastern Shan state, Naypyitaw and Mandalay, the country’s second largest city, where there were protesters and a procession of motorcycles.
The protests in Naypyitaw, which last for several days, were especially unusual, as a large part of the city’s population are civil servants and their families. The city was built under a previous military government, has a strong military presence and does not have the protest tradition of the old capital, Yangon.
A morning protest in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, quickly increased as the crowd surpassed 1,000 protesters at a large intersection in the center of the city.
They shouted slogans, saluted with three fingers and carried signs saying “Reject the military coup” and “Justice for Myanmar”. Some smaller groups broke away from the main protest and headed for the Pagoda Sule, a former meeting place for major protests against previous governing boards.
On Sunday, the golden-domed pagoda served as a meeting point for tens of thousands of protesters, as well as Protestants against the military regime during a major rebellion in 1988 and again during a 2007 uprising led by Buddhist monks.
The military used deadly force to end the two uprisings, with estimates of hundreds, if not thousands, killed in 1988. While the riot police watched the protests last week, the soldiers were absent and there were no reports of major clashes.
The growing protests are a sharp reminder of the long and bloody struggle for democracy in a country that the military ruled directly for more than five decades before loosening control in 2012. The Suu Kyi government, which also won an overwhelming election in 2015, it was the first led by civilians in decades, although its power was limited by a constitution drafted by the military.
A call for a general strike was made late Sunday by several activist groups in Yangon, but it was not clear whether it was widely publicized or adopted by the informally organized civil disobedience movement on the front lines of the protests.
The Association of Assistance for Political Prisoners in Myanmar, an independent watchdog group, said 165 people, mostly politicians, had been detained since the February 1 coup, with only 13 released.
A foreigner was confirmed as being detained by authorities, Sean Turnell, an economist at Macquarie University in Australia who was an adviser to the Suu Kyi government. He was arrested on Saturday in unclear circumstances.
A statement released Monday by Australia’s Foreign Minister Marise Payne’s office said he was receiving consular support and described him as “a highly regarded adviser, member of the academic community”.
“We certainly believe that he should be released immediately,” he said.
The military accused the Suu Kyi government of failing to act based on complaints that last November’s election was marked by fraud, although the electoral commission said it found no evidence to support the allegations.
Suu Kyi’s elected legislators have called for international recognition as the country’s government after meeting online on Friday to declare themselves the only legitimate representatives of the people. The military prohibited them from calling Parliament last week.