Fifteen seconds of a video shot by hidden — later posted on Twitter, along with dozens of others — provide the brutal, shocking reality of a day of the war between unarmed civilians and police officers, and soldiers from the other.
The scene: Yangon, a time known as Rangoon, is the largest city of Myanmar (formerly Burma). Avenue grey and desert, nestled in the darkness of the coming hot summer of the South-East asia. A group of men in uniform stops. An armed soldier is addressed to a police officer and passes it with his rifle. “Come on, shoot”, it seems to say to him. The cop kneels, takes aim and pulls the trigger. The colleagues around him had evidently has hit the target, a young man or a young protester. We do not know who has been affected because the video stops there, with the other officers, who hasten excited to imitate the companion, also happy with their use of their weapon.
four weeks since the coup that put an end to the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, was arrested with all his co-workers and ministers in the hours and days following, the government of Myanmar yesterday was overwhelmed by a wave of violence, the most brutal since the beginning of the protests pacificheche have nearly paralyzed the Country. The forces of law and order, police in uniform and in plain clothes, the soldiers fired on the crowd helplessly wherever opportunity: bullets, rubber, tear gas and real bullets. Yangon, Mandalay, Bagu, Pakokku (where in 2007 he started the Saffron Revolution of buddhist monks): everywhere were reported injured and the victims. At least eighteen of the dead (but according to sources of the rioters would be more than thirty), and dozens of hospitalized struck by gunfire, or by the government. Hundreds of arrests.
The day of the blood has elicited reactions shocked the international community. “We are heart-broken to see the loss of so many lives in Myanmar. People should not have to deal with the violence for expressing dissent against the military coup. Take aim at civilians is abominable,” reads a press release of the embassy of the United States in the Country. Even the Un has complained, with the voice of the secretary-general Antonio Guterres: “we strongly Condemn the escalation of violence against the protesters in Myanmar, and we ask the military to immediately stop the use of force against peaceful protesters. We are shocked by the increase in the number of dead and wounded”.
For Europe, spoke of the High representative for foreign policy Josep Borrell. “Violence will not give legitimacy to the overthrow of illegal democratically elected government. The military authorities must put an end immediately to the use of force against civilians and allow the population to express their right to freedom of expression and assembly”. Borrell has also said: “The Eu will act soon.”
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Difficult, however, that the general Min Aung Hlaing, the author of the coup that brought the Myanmar in the “normality” of the military government in the ten years since the democratic transition, may be cowed by international protests. Certainly the revolt which they face in their native country is very different from the previous ones — in particular, those of 1988 and 2007 — repressed in a few weeks, without a care for the civilian victims (thousands). Today, the generation that are falling in the square, across the Country, knows exactly what’s happening in the rest of the world. Is connected, in contact with support groups in other places in East Asia and, above all, is endorsed by the population, which showed opposition to the military striking and crippling a large part of the productive sectors, factories, ministries, schools and transport.
young burmese to know they are not alone. They shout slogans against the brutality of the armed forces, by raising three fingers, a symbol that comes from the series the Hunger Games — as do their peers in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand. “Freedom, democracy”, is the common desire of millions of young people in a part of the world where we vote and have rights is still a privilege of the few. In particular in the South-East asia: where the military is still the fulcrum of power.
