Myanmar police use force to disperse marchers defying military ban on public assembly

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Myanmar police use force to disperse marchers defying military ban on public assembly

February 9, 2021 07:49:48 am

JURIST EXCLUSIVE – Law students reporting for JURIST in Myanmar said Tuesday that peaceful mass demonstrations by lawyers, students and other groups of civilians in defiance of a military ban on public assembly imposed Monday in the wake of last week’s military coup were violently broken up by police using water cannon and bullets. Force was used against marchers in Mandalay, Nay Pyi Taw and Yangon. Several people were injured, at least one critically, and some 30 people in Mandalay were arrested. Rubber bullets were certainly used and several observers say real bullets and tear gas were also used. Our correspondents are concerned that in light of the police crackdown, now much more severe since the country’s military leadership invoked Section 144 of the country’s criminal code, Internet service for the country may be cut off again, as it briefly was at the end of last week.

One of our correspondents writes:

Day by day, the military coup is getting worse and they are starting to show their true colors. Today they have started using chemical-mixed water to spray on the peaceful protesters and the military have given the police forces the order to hit, detain and even to shoot the protesters. First, they detained our true leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, our President U Win Myint and other leaders and well-known people of the country. Then, they declared themselves as leaders and took positions in every ministry.
They tried and are still trying to lie to the world that they had to do this coup because the country is not peaceful. But the country was in fact PEACEFUL until the 1st of February when the military led by Min Aung Hlaing (may he suffer a terrible fate) took reign by force. They are announcing about there being an election fraud while they are the only ones who are able of doing such frauds.
This fore-mentioned military has done such coups several times in our country and we have been under their dictatorship until 2010. Our country has endured so many injustices under the military reign and they have abused their power to sell off the nation’s resources for their own benefits. Now, they are trying to repeat their unlawful acts again. They are abusing the weapons which are supposed to be used to protect the citizens. They are threatening the citizens with these said weapons.
This is not just our country’s affairs. This is a threat to democracy all around the world. Because the armed forces are bullying the unarmed citizens and they are using weapons against the peaceful protesters. They are taking away our rights and our voices using their weapons.

For more from our law student correspondents in Myanmar, follow @JURISTnews on Twitter.

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.