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Myanmar’s Military Has Killed Over 40 Children Since the Coup. Here’s One Child’s Story.

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No one quite knew why the soldiers wandered into Aye Myat Thu’s neighborhood of neat wooden houses, each painted a cheerful hue, sprays of bougainvillea adding more splashes of color.

Mr. Soe Oo took a coconut from the family palm tree and hacked at it carefully, lest the sweet water spill out. Sounds like the pop of firecrackers echoed in the hazy heat.

Aye Myat Thu grabbed her slice of coconut. The popping noises drew her down the path from her house. Past the trees, a camouflaged presence stalked, according to other neighborhood residents. No one in the family saw him.

The hole from the bullet was so small that Mr. Soe Oo said he couldn’t understand how it had extinguished the life of his daughter, another random victim of a trigger-happy military.

“She just fell down,” he said. “And she died.”

The funeral was the next day. Buddhist monks chanted, and mourners gathered around the coffin, raising their hands in the three-fingered salute from “The Hunger Games” that has become the protesters’ symbol of defiance. Garlands of jasmine framed the girl’s face, the bullet still lodged somewhere in her skull.

“I want to tear off the soldier’s skin as revenge,” said U Thein Nyunt, her uncle. “She was just an innocent child with a kind heart. She was our angel.”

Around her body, the family placed some of Aye Myat Thu’s favorite belongings: a set of crayons, a few dolls and a purple rabbit, some Fair and Lovely cream, a Monopoly board and a drawing of Hello Kitty she had sketched two days before she was killed. On the paper, next to the cartoon cat, Aye Myat Thu had written out her name in careful English letters.

“I feel empty,” said Ms. Toe Toe Lwin, her mother.

Right after the funeral, Aye Myat Thu was cremated, the flames burning her treasures with her. In other parts of the country, soldiers have stolen corpses of those they killed, perhaps to conceal the evidence of their brutality. In one case, they exhumed a child’s grave.

The family didn’t want the same for their little girl.

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‘It’s Better to Walk Through a Minefield’: Victims of Myanmar’s Army Speak

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The soldiers from Myanmar’s army knocked on U Thein Aung’s door one morning last April as he was having tea with friends, and demanded that all of them accompany the platoon to another village.

When they reached a dangerous stretch in the mountains of Rakhine State, the men were ordered to walk 100 feet ahead. One stepped on a land mine and was blown to pieces. Metal fragments struck Mr. Thein Aung in his arm and his left eye.

“They threatened to kill us if we refused to go with them,” said Mr. Thein Aung, 65, who lost the eye. “It is very clear that they used us as human land mine detectors.”

The military and its brutal practices are an omnipresent fear in Myanmar, one that has intensified since the generals seized full power in a coup last month. As security forces gun down peaceful protesters on city streets, the violence that is commonplace in the countryside serves as a grisly reminder of the military’s long legacy of atrocities.

During decades of military rule, an army dominated by the Bamar majority operated with impunity against ethnic minorities, killing civilians and torching villages. The violence continued even as the army ceded some authority to an elected government in a power-sharing arrangement that started in 2016.

The next year, the military drove more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims out of the country, an ethnic cleansing campaign that a United Nations panel has described as genocidal. Soldiers have battled rebel ethnic armies with the same ruthlessness, using men and boys as human shields on the battlefield and raping women and girls in their homes.

The generals are now fully back in charge, and the Tatmadaw, as the military is known, has turned its guns on the masses, who have mounted a nationwide civil disobedience movement.

The crackdown widened on Monday in the face of a general strike, with security forces seizing control of universities and hospitals and annulling press licenses of five media organizations. At least three protesters were shot dead.

More than 60 people have been killed since the Feb. 1 coup, an increasingly bloody crackdown reminiscent of when the military crushed pro-democracy protests in the past.

“This is an army with a heart of darkness,” said David Scott Mathieson, an independent analyst who has long studied the military’s practices. “This is an unrepentant institution.”

Brutality is ingrained in the Tatmadaw. It came to power in a 1962 coup, saying that it had to safeguard national unity. For decades, it has fought to control parts of the country, inhabited by ethnic minority groups, that are rich in jade, timber and other natural resources.

During the last three years, the Tatmadaw has waged war intermittently against ethnic rebel armies in three states, Rakhine, Shan and Kachin. The most intense fighting has been in Rakhine, where the Arakan Army, an ethnic Rakhine force, is seeking greater autonomy.

Civilians are often casualties in these long-running conflicts, as 15 victims, family members or witnesses in these three states attested in interviews with The New York Times.

Six men described how they were injured by land mines or gunfire when soldiers forced them to risk their lives. Several women recounted being raped by soldiers, while others recalled husbands and sons who never returned after soldiers took them away.

The Times was connected to the victims by local rights groups that had documented their accounts, gone to the locations, interviewed witnesses and broadly corroborated the events. Rights groups have also reported on these general practices.

A spokesman for the military declined to comment.

The people who spoke with The Times detailed a pattern of abuse, in which soldiers forced civilians to serve as porters under the threat of death. Men and boys were ordered to walk ahead of the soldiers in conflict zones, often being used as human shields.

In October, Sayedul Amin, a 28-year-old Rohingya man, was fishing in a pond near his village, Lambarbill, in Rakhine State when about 100 soldiers arrived. He said they rounded up 14 men, including him, to carry sacks of rice and other food. Several who refused were badly beaten.

“We were ordered to walk in front of the soldiers,” he said. “It seems that they wanted us to shield them if anyone attacked.”

They had been walking less than an hour when shooting began, he said. He never saw who fired at them. He was hit by two bullets. A 10-year-old and an 18-year-old were killed in front of him, shot so many times in the face and head that they were hard to recognize.

The soldiers, he said, left the bodies for villagers to bury.

The Tatmadaw has forced at least 200 men and boys in Rakhine State to serve as battlefield porters and human shields in the past three years, according to U Than Hla, a member of the board of directors of Arakan CSO Network, a human rights coalition. Of those taken, 30 are known to have died and at least 70 are missing. Half were under 18.

Such practices have long been common in Kachin and Shan states, human rights groups say. But there is no similar data there from the same period.

Women face their own horrors. While sexual violence by the Tatmadaw often goes unreported, rape was systematic and widespread during the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, Human Rights Watch found. The same fate befalls women of other ethnic groups in conflict areas.

“The Myanmar military is violating human rights in many ways,” said Zaw Zaw Min, founder of the Rakhine Human Rights Group. “Women are raped, villages are burned down, property is taken and people are taken as porters.”

In June, when soldiers arrived in U Gar village in Rakhine State, Daw Oo Htay Win, 37, said she hid in her house with her four children and newborn granddaughter. That night, the infant’s cries betrayed their presence to four soldiers, who entered the house. They gave her a choice: have sex with them or die. For the next two hours, three soldiers raped her while the fourth stood guard.

Ms. Oo Htay Win, her daughters and the baby slipped out the back door in the morning and took refuge in the city of Sittwe, where she now lives. She said her husband, who had been away, abandoned her after learning of the rape.

Though most victims of rape by soldiers stay silent, she brought criminal charges. After the soldiers confessed, they were tried, found guilty and sentenced to 20 years.

“I hate these three soldiers for destroying my life,” she said. “I have lost everything because of them.”

The convictions were a rare victory in a country where the military is seldom held accountable by civilians. And few victims receive compensation, even when they suffer permanent injuries and large financial losses. If they do, it’s minimal.

In the western part of Rakhine State, where traveling by river is common, the Tatmadaw often commandeers private boats to ferry troops and supplies. In March of 2019, U Maung Phyu Hla, 43, a boat owner from Mrauk-U Township, said soldiers forced him to take troops up the Lay Myo River to fight Arakan Army forces.

On the seventh trip upriver, they came under heavy fire. Shot in the thigh, Mr. Maung Phyu Hla said he slipped into the water and swam to a nearby village, where residents rescued him. An officer later gave him a token payment of about $350, a fraction of his losses and medical expenses.

“Who dares to complain?” he asked. “The answer is no one.”

Some villagers try to escape the conflicts, only to get caught up in violence anyway.

In March 2018, U Phoe Shan’s family and other villagers were fleeing from fighting in Kachin State in northern Myanmar. They were headed to a camp for displaced people when they encountered Tatmadaw forces on the road.

Mr. Phoe Shan, 48, said the soldiers ordered him to walk at the head of a group of about 50 troops through a forested area. Fifteen minutes into the woods, he said, he stepped on a mine. He was hospitalized for three weeks with wounds to his legs.

“If we protest, we may be shot dead,” he said. “It’s better to walk through a minefield.”

For the victims of these atrocities, life rarely returns to normal. Loved ones who have been taken never return home. Those who suffer crippling injuries find it difficult to work.

In Shan State in eastern Myanmar, U Thar Pu Ngwe, 46, who had been pressed into service, was struck in the leg by shrapnel when a soldier stepped on a mine.

He now walks with difficulty, and it takes him three times as long to go anywhere, he said. He has had to reduce the amount of land he farms, cutting his income by more than half.

“That incident changed my life,” he said. “I was a happy man but not anymore after that.”

He urged the Tatmadaw to stop using civilians in battle. “If you want to fight,” he said, “just do it on your own.”

Hannah Beech contributed reporting.

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Myanmar’s Military Deploys Digital Arsenal of Repression in Crackdown

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During a half century of military rule, Myanmar’s totalitarian tools were crude but effective. Men in sarongs shadowed democracy activists, neighbors informed on each other and thugs brandished lead pipes.

The generals, who staged a coup a month ago, are now back in charge with a far more sophisticated arsenal at their disposal: Israeli-made surveillance drones, European iPhone cracking devices and American software that can hack into computers and vacuum up their contents.

Some of this technology, including satellite and telecommunications upgrades, helped people in Myanmar go online and integrate with the world after decades of isolation. Other systems, such as spyware, were sold as integral to modernizing law enforcement agencies.

But critics say a ruthless armed forces, which maintained a dominance over the economy and powerful ministries even as it briefly shared power with a civilian government, used the facade of democracy to enable sensitive cybersecurity and defense purchases.

Some of these “dual-use” technologies, tools of both legitimate law enforcement and repression, are being deployed by the Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar military is known, to target opponents of the Feb. 1 coup — a practice that echoes actions taken against critics by China, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and other governments.

In Myanmar, they are the digital weapons for an intensifying campaign in which security forces have killed at least 25 people and detained more than 1,100, including the ousted civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. On Monday, she was hit with new criminal charges — making a statement that could alarm the public and inducing someone to act against the state — that could put her in prison for years.

“The military is now using those very tools to brutally crack down on peaceful protesters risking their lives to resist the military junta and restore democracy,” said Ma Yadanar Maung, a spokeswoman for Justice For Myanmar, a group that monitors the Tatmadaw’s abuses.

Hundreds of pages of Myanmar government budgets for the last two fiscal years viewed by The New York Times show a voracious appetite for the latest in military-grade surveillance technology.

The documents, provided by Justice For Myanmar, catalog tens of millions of dollars earmarked for technology that can mine phones and computers, as well as track people’s live locations and listen in to their conversations. Two parliamentary budget committee members, who requested anonymity given the sensitive political climate, said these proposed budgets for the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Transport and Communications reflected actual purchases.

The budgets detail companies and the functionality of their tools. In some instances, they specify the proposed uses, like combating “money laundering” or investigating “cybercrime.”

“What you see the Myanmar military putting together is a comprehensive suite of cybersecurity and forensics,” said Ian Foxley, a researcher at the Center for Applied Human Rights at the University of York. “A lot of this is electronic warfare capability stuff.”

The assembly of Myanmar’s modern surveillance state has depended partly on patrons like China and Russia that have few qualms about equipping authoritarians. It has also relied on Western companies that saw the country’s five years of hybrid civilian-military rule as an opening, legally and politically, to build a frontier market in what appeared to be a nascent democracy.

Beginning in 2016, the Tatmadaw handed some authority to a civilian government led by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which won two landslide electoral mandates. Despite inching toward democracy, the military maintained significant control over spending, particularly for defense, law enforcement and other security affairs.

The documents indicate that dual-use surveillance technology made by Israeli, American and European companies made its way to Myanmar, despite many of their home governments banning such exports after the military’s brutal expulsion of Rohingya Muslims in 2017.

Even in countries that didn’t officially block such trade, many Western purveyors had clauses in their corporate guidelines barring their technology from being used to abuse human rights.

In the most egregious cases, firms supplied surveillance tools and weaponry to the military and the ministries it controlled, evading arms embargoes and export bans. In others, they continued to sell dual-use technology without conducting due diligence about how it might be used and who might use it.

Often, they depended on military-linked brokers who thrive in the shadowy interstices, allowing the Tatmadaw to acquire the tools of oppression indirectly from foreign companies.

Hardware that was sold to the police to catch criminals is being used to track opponents of the coup online and offline.

Documentation for post-coup arrest warrants, which were reviewed by The Times, shows that Myanmar’s security forces have triangulated between their critics’ social media posts and the individual addresses of their internet hookups to find where they live. Such detective work could only have been carried out by using specialized foreign technology, according to experts with knowledge of Myanmar’s surveillance infrastructure.

“Even under a civilian government, there was little oversight of the military’s expenditure for surveillance technology,” said Ko Nay Yan Oo, a former fellow at the Pacific Forum of the Center for Strategic and International Studies who has studied the Myanmar military. “Now we are under military rule, and they can do everything they want.”

One particularly large section of the budget allocations covers the latest ware for phone-cracking and computer-hacking. Those systems are usually designed for use by militaries and police forces, and many international export bans include such technology.

The 2020-2021 Ministry of Home Affairs budget allocations include units from MSAB, a Swedish company that supplies forensic data tools for militaries around the world. These MSAB field units can download the contents of mobile devices and recover deleted items, according to notations in the budget.

Henrik Tjernberg, the chairman of MSAB, said that some of the company’s “legacy technology” had ended up in Myanmar a few years ago, but it no longer sold equipment there because of a European Union export ban on dual-use products that can be used for domestic repression. Mr. Tjernberg did not answer questions about how his products ended up in the latest budget.

U Thein Tan, another member of the parliamentary budget committee, said that fellow lawmakers felt uncomfortable with all the spyware in the budgets but that questioning anything to do with the security services was taboo for civilian politicians.

“To be honest, we did suspect that they were using the technological devices for bad purposes, like surveillance of the people,” said Mr. Thein Tan. “But the problem is we don’t know what kind of technological devices these would be because we lack knowledge of the technology.”

International scrutiny has made a difference. Last year, MSAB and Cellebrite, among other Western cyber-surveillance firms, pulled out of Hong Kong, where the police used phone hacking technology to monitor democracy activists.

In Myanmar, the latest budget also included MacQuisition forensic software designed to extract and collect data from Apple computers. The software is made by BlackBag Technologies, an American company that was bought last year by Cellebrite of Israel. Both companies also make other sophisticated tools to infiltrate locked or encrypted devices and suck out their data, including location-tracking information.

A spokeswoman for the company said that Cellebrite stopped selling to Myanmar in 2018 and that BlackBag had not sold to the country since it was acquired last year. The company, she said, does not sell to countries sanctioned by the United States, European Union, Britain or Israel.

“In the extremely rare case when our technology is used in a manner that does not meet international law or does not comply with Cellebrite’s values, we immediately flag these licenses for nonrenewal and do not provide software updates,” the spokeswoman said.

Cellebrite hardware and software have been used by the police to secure evidence in court cases, according to U Khin Maung Zaw, one of Myanmar’s top human-rights lawyers who is representing Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the ousted civilian leader.

The technology was presented as central to the 2018 trial of two Reuters reporters who uncovered evidence of a Rohingya massacre the year before. Mr. Khin Maung Zaw represented the two journalists.

In court documents, the police said they had gathered data from the detained reporters’ phones using Cellebrite forensic technology. The data helped convict the reporters, in what human rights groups have said were politically motivated cases.

Cellebrite said that after the Reuters case was publicized, “these licenses were unequivocally not renewed.” The company now has the ability to remotely suspend the licenses, essentially erasing the software from its machinery and rendering the devices useless.

Mr. Khin Maung Zaw, the human rights lawyer, said that the police again presented Cellebrite evidence in trials he worked on in 2019 and 2020. The cases related to a section in the telecommunications law on online defamation, which human rights groups say is used to criminalize dissent.

“The cybersecurity department is still using that technology,” Mr. Khin Maung Zaw said. “To my knowledge, they use Cellebrite to scan and recover data from cellphones.”

In many instances, governments do not buy military-grade technology directly from the companies that make them but instead go through middlemen. The intermediaries often cloak their intentions behind business registrations for education, construction or technology companies, even as they post photographs on social media of foreign weaponry or signing ceremonies with generals.

Middlemen can give Western companies distance from dealing face-to-face with dictators. But international embargoes and dual-use bans still hold tech firms liable for the end users of their products, even if resellers make the deals.

One of the most prominent surveillance technology middlemen in Myanmar is Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun, a Myanmar national who studied at a Russian university and Myanmar’s Defense Services Technological Academy, the military’s elite training ground. Many of the top employees at MySpace International and other firms he founded share the same educational pedigree.

His connections were extensive. At defense procurement fairs, Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun showed off Western spyware to crowds of men in uniform, and he boasted on social media about hosting an American defense manufacturer in Myanmar. MySpace International is listed on the website of a Czech defense and laboratory equipment maker as a “partner.”

Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun’s wife is the daughter of a high-ranking Tatmadaw officer who served as ambassador to Russia. She is named as the Myanmar agent for a Russian stun gun maker.

The two people with knowledge of police procurements said that Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun’s companies supply most of the imported Western surveillance technology for the Myanmar police. A list of successful recent tenders from the Ministry of Home Affairs includes MySpace International, and the company’s website had the Ministry of Defense among its clients.

The website also had a section on digital forensic technology that cited MSAB, BlackBag and Cellebrite among its “main suppliers,” with extensive descriptions of each firm’s offerings.

Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun declined to speak with The Times.

“We are not a big company,” said Ko Tet Toe Lynn, the assistant general manager for MySpace International. He would not answer questions about what products the company resells, saying there were too many to remember.

Cellebrite said that neither it nor BlackBag was “affiliated” with four of Dr. Kyaw Kyaw Htun’s companies, including MySpace International. The Israeli firm did not say who its reseller in Myanmar was.

The day after The Times posed extensive questions about the relationship between MySpace International and Cellebrite, the entire MySpace International website was taken down.

While some imported surveillance equipment is considered dual-use, other technology is clearly meant for military purposes. International arms embargoes prohibit such systems from being exported to Myanmar.

By 2018, Israel had essentially blocked military exports to Myanmar, after it emerged that Israeli weaponry was being sold to an army accused of genocidal actions against the Rohingya ethnic minority. The embargo extends to spare parts.

Two years later, Myanmar Future Science, a company that calls itself an educational and teaching aid supplier, signed paperwork reviewed by The Times agreeing to service military-grade surveillance drones made by Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms manufacturer. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the Tatmadaw chief who led the coup last month, visited Elbit’s offices during a 2015 trip to Israel.

The company’s drones have been connected to ongoing conflicts in Myanmar. Last year, an ethnic armed group fighting the Tatmadaw in far western Rakhine State said it had seized an Elbit drone that had been flying over a battle zone.

U Kyi Thar, the chief executive of Myanmar Future Science, confirmed that his company began the repair work on the drones in late 2019 and continued into 2020.

“We ordered the spare parts from the Israeli company called Elbit because they have good quality and Elbit is well-known,” Mr. Kyi Thar said.

A spokesman for Elbit said that it has had no dealings with Myanmar since 2015 or 2016.

“Myanmar’s military is very closed, and Israel is very closed,” said Siemon Wezeman, a senior researcher with the arms and military expenditure program at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. “Who knows what happens inside there?”

Despite the export ban, Israeli defense technology continues to turn up in unexpected places.

On Feb. 1, the day of the coup, military experts were surprised to see armored vehicles made by Gaia Automotive Industries, an Israeli manufacturer, rolling through Naypyidaw, the capital. The experts, including Mr. Wezeman and a person familiar with Myanmar’s defense procurements, said the vehicles used in the coup featured Gaia’s distinctive hood handles, air inlets and headlight settings.

The vehicles did not go into mass production until after the Israeli ban on military exports.

Shlomi Shraga, the head of Gaia Automotive, said that he had not seen any photos of the company’s vehicles cruising through the Myanmar capital during the coup. He stressed that all his exports had the requisite licenses from Israel’s Ministry of Defense.

“Let’s hope that the people of Myanmar live in peace and under a democratic regime,” Mr. Shraga said.

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Myanmar’s UN ambassador fired after anti-coup speech as military intensifies crackdown on protesters

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State television MRTV announced Kyaw Moe Tun’s removal on Saturday evening local time, saying he had “abused the power and responsibilities of a permanent ambassador” and that he “betrays the country.”

Speaking to Reuters following his firing, Kyaw Moe Tun said that he “decided to fight back as long as I can.” The announcement came as the military intensified its crackdown on anti-coup protesters Saturday.

Myanmar has seen 21 consecutive days of protests since the country’s military seized power in a coup on February 1, ousting the democratically-elected government of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been detained alongside other government leaders including President Win Myint.

Addressing the assembly in New York on Friday, Kyaw Moe Tun defied the military rulers now in control of the country and urged the UN Security Council and the world to use “any means necessary” to rescue the people of Myanmar and hold the military to account.

“We need further strongest possible action from the international community to immediately end the military coup, to stop oppressing the innocent people, to return the state power to the people and to restore the democracy,” he said.

Kyaw Moe Tun said he was delivering the speech on behalf of Suu Kyi’s government, which won a landslide in the November 8 elections.

In a show of defiance, the ambassador also flashed the three fingered “Hunger Games” salute used by protestors on the streets of Myanmar and adopted from recent protests in neighboring Thailand.

The diplomat received a rare round of applause from his UN colleagues at the end of the speech. The new US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, praised the envoy’s “courageous” remarks.

“The United States continues to strongly condemn the military coup in Myanmar,” she said Friday, addressing the assembly. “And we condemn the security forces’ brutal killing of unarmed people.”

Thomas-Greenfield added that the US “will continue to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance, including to Rohingya and other vulnerable populations in Chin, Kachin, Rakhine, and Shan states.”

“The world should applaud the bravery of Representative Kyaw Moe Tun for delivering such a powerful statement on behalf of the people of Myanmar, not the illegitimate military junta,” Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center, said in a statement Friday.

“The international community should support the will of the people of Myanmar by recognizing the CRPH and refusing to legitimize, normalize, or cooperate with the military government.”

The military continued its crackdown of anti-coup protesters on Saturday with hundreds reportedly arrested, including journalists.

Activist group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), said that in towns and cities across the country, security forces fired tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannon and shot their guns into the air to disperse protesters.

A woman was reportedly shot and wounded in the central town of Monywa, according to Reuters, citing local media and an emergency worker.

In the biggest city Yangon, police fired tear gas and flash bangs to break up a group of protesters representing Myanmar’s different ethnic groups. Protesters had been chanting insults at police prior to the disruption, a witness told CNN. When the group scattered, police gave chase across the neighborhood.

In a village on the outskirts of the capital Naypyidaw, riot police use tear gas grenades and fired rubber bullets into the air to disperse hundreds of protesters.

AAPP said that as of Saturday, it has documented 854 people who have been arrested, charged or sentenced since the February 1 coup. The group noted, however, that “hundreds of people” were arrested in Yangon and other places on Saturday.

CNN’s Hamdi Alkhshali, Kristina Sgueglia and Zamira Rahim contributed.

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Myanmar’s UN ambassador pleads for immediate global action to help overturn coup

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Kyaw Moe Tun, remaining loyal to the civilian government ousted on February 1, delivered a dramatic speech while addressing the assembly on Friday.

“We need further strongest possible action from the international community to immediately end the military coup, to stop oppressing the innocent people, to return the state power to the people and to restore the democracy,” he said.

The diplomat received a rare round of applause from his UN colleagues at the end of the speech.

The new US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, praised the envoy’s “courageous” remarks.

“The United States continues to strongly condemn the military coup in Myanmar,” she said Friday, addressing the assembly.

“And we condemn the security forces’ brutal killing of unarmed people.”

Thomas-Greenfield added that the US “will continue to provide life-saving humanitarian assistance, including to Rohingya and other vulnerable populations in Chin, Kachin, Rakhine, and Shan states.”

“The world should applaud the bravery of Representative Kyaw Moe Tun for delivering such a powerful statement on behalf of the people of Myanmar, not the illegitimate military junta,” Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center, said in a statement Friday.

“The international community must reward such courage by taking up his call for immediate, decisive action to hold the military accountable.”

Myanmar descended into unrest when the coup ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi has been detained in her house in the capital since the coup.

The country has since seen 21 consecutive days of anti-military protests, with demonstrations held in Mandalay and Yangon on Friday.

Earlier in the day, some protesters gathered peacefully outside Suu Kyi’s house to pray.

Military leaders have imposed an internet curfew as the unrest continues.

On Thursday police officers fired “at least 10 rounds in the air” to break up a crowd of protesters in Yangon, according to sources on the ground.

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Aung San Suu Kyi tattoos flourish among Myanmar’s resistance | Global development

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In the last three weeks, Ye, 37, has inked more images of Aung San Suu Kyi than throughout his 19 years of tattooing.

“We love and respect her because she has sacrificed so much for us,” he says, showing a photo of his latest artwork – a lifelike rendering of the deposed Myanmar leader, complete with jasmine flowers, on a woman’s back.

If fans of the Nobel laureate were on the fence about getting a tattoo in her honour before the military coup on February 1, they are no longer. Studios across the country have reported a surge in Aung San Suu Kyi ink – and some are using their profits to support the protest movement.

Aung San Suu Kyi, 75, remains in detention, facing charges of illegally importing walkie talkies and violating Myanmar’s natural disaster law. She faces up to three years in jail, with a court hearing reportedly set for 1 March.

While she remains beloved inside Myanmar, her international reputation was irrevocably tarnished when she travelled to the international court of justice in The Hague to defend the army against claims that it had committed genocide against the Rohingya Muslims. Some say she was walking a tight-rope with the generals to preserve a fledgling democracy – in that sense, this is the fall. Others have labelled her a military apologist whose idea of equality falls short for persecuted minorities.

Whatever happens to the leader, she will leave a complex legacy. But in Myanmar’s commercial capital Yangon – home to mass pro-democracy rallies in recent days – the picture is clearer.

A woman displays a tattoo of Aung San Suu Kyi on her hand as she bangs pots and pans in opposition to the military coup Photograph: Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Images

“I don’t even have tattoos of my parents,” said Hlaing, 32, who described the coup as more painful than the six hours it took to complete her tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi on 3 February. “I felt wronged and oppressed, I had to get it.”

Ye, who is working on a new Aung San Suu Kyi design, has collected donations for the country’s civil disobedience movement, which aims to deprive the military of a functioning administration through nation-wide strikes.

“The military plans to imprison her so she gets older, just like they did before,” he says. “If they didn’t lock her up for 15 years, our country would be more developed, but the military knows all about that.”

Tattooing has formed part of Myanmar culture for centuries. Shan men in the north-east used waist-to-knee designs to symbolise virility, while in western Chin state elderly women still showcase the fading tradition of facial tattoos. Some believe the right depictions could offer magical protection.

But the practice of tattooing was banned during the British counterinsurgency in the 1930s and returned to the mainstream only during the political and economic reforms of 2011.

In Mandalay, tattoo artist Za responded to the coup by inking Aung San Suu Kyi designs for free, until 15 February, when he began charging $3.50 (£2.50). So far, he has completed about 70 and all the money raised has gone to civil servants on strike and others resisting the junta, he said.

“Just yesterday I spent the entire time giving tattoos of her,” he says. “More people are getting them and that has allowed us to support the movement.”

While getting their tattoos, most clients indulge in chatter about the coup and gossip about those who aren’t joining the civil disobedience movement.

“The conversations are never ending,” he says.

A man receives a tattoo of detained Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Naypyidaw Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Tin, a professional fighter, snuck in a visit to a Yangon tattoo studio in between training sessions of lethwei, an ancient sport. He does not care so much about the leader’s party, the National League for Democracy, he said. Just for the woman who the country affectionately dubs “Mother Suu”.

“I got it to express my faith in her and my support for her,” he says. “I don’t care if it gets me into trouble with the regime one day.”

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Caught in Myanmar’s Rohingya Tragedy, a Bride Fights to Reach Her Groom

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In mid-March, Sadeka Bibi set off with a small bundle of her belongings for an unmarked spot on the side of a road in southeast Bangladesh, filled at once with hope and fear.

A truck would meet her there, drive her to a place near the shore about an hour south, and she’d get on a boat that would ferry her illegally to Malaysia, where a man she had never met was waiting to marry her.

She knew it was dangerous. The boat could capsize. She could be beaten, starved or extorted by human traffickers. She could die. Or, like the 10 previous attempts she had made to get across, her escape could be thwarted by rough seas or border authorities. Still, to Sadeka, a 21-year-old Rohingya refugee from Myanmar, making the journey seemed like the only way for a fresh start.

It was either that or languish behind barbed wire, potentially for the rest of her life, in the world’s largest refugee camp, her immediate family scattered across three countries.

Sadeka’s story is the Rohingya’s in microcosm. Driven to the brink of destruction by rampaging soldiers, human traffickers and hostile governments, a community that was once believed to have numbered well over a million in Myanmar has been sundered, not by a single action, but by a series of blows that have left a people with no place to call home.

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Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi remanded in custody following coup

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Suu Kyi, who was the country’s de facto leader under the title state counsellor, was issued with an arrest warrant for breaching the country’s import and export laws.

National League for Democracy (NLD) spokesperson Kyi Toe, posted on his Facebook account Wednesday that Suu Kyi will be detained until February 15.

“According to reliable information, a 14 day arrest warrant was issued against Daw Aung San Su Kyi under the Import and Export Law,” he said.

Deposed President Win Myint was also remanded in custody under the country’s Disaster Management Law, Kyi Toe said.

Suu Kyi and former President Win Myint were arrested in pre-dawn raids Monday hours before the military declared that power had been handed to commander in chief Min Aung Hlaing over unfounded allegations of election fraud. A state of emergency was declared for one year.

Numerous senior lawmakers and officials in the ruling National League for Democracy Party (NLD) were also detained, with some 400 kept at a guest house in the capital.

Cementing its rule, the new ruling junta removed 24 ministers and deputies from government and named 11 of its own allies as replacements who will assume their roles in a new administration.

The sudden seizure of power came as the new parliament was due to open and after months of increasing friction between the civilian government and the powerful military, known as the Tatmadaw, over alleged election irregularities.

Suu Kyi’s party, the NLD claimed an overwhelming victory in the November 2020 elections, only the second since the end of military rule, taking 83% of the vote, which granted it another five years in government.

The country’s election commission has repeatedly denied mass voter fraud took place.

Analysts have suggested the coup was more likely to do with the military attempting to reassert its power and the personal ambition of army chief Min Aung Hlaing, who was set to step down this year, rather than serious claims of voter fraud.

“Facing mandatory retirement in a few months, with no route to a civilian leadership role, and amid global calls for him to face criminal charges in The Hague, he was cornered,” Jared Genser, an international human rights lawyer who previously served as pro bono counsel to Suu Kyi, said in a CNN op-ed.
On Tuesday, United States President Joe Biden formally determined that the military takeover in Myanmar constituted a coup, a designation that requires the US to cut its foreign assistance to the country. A State Department official, speaking on a call with reporters, also said that sanctions in response to the power grab remain on the table.

Following the coup, doctors from hospitals across the country prepared to strike in protest, despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Assistant Doctors at Yangon General Hospital released a statement pledging their participation in the “civil disobedience movement,” saying they will not work under a military led government and called for Suu Kyi’s release.

Video showed medical workers in Yangon outside the hospital Wednesday dressed in their scrubs and protective gear, while wearing red ribbons.

Myanmar’s Ministry of Information warned the media and public Tuesday not to spread rumors on social media or incite unrest, urging people to cooperate with the government following Monday’s coup.

“Some media and public are spreading rumors on social media conducting gatherings to incite rowdiness and issuing statements which can cause unrest,” the statement read. “We would like to urge the public not to carry out these acts and would like to notify the public to cooperate with the government in accordance with the existing laws.”

Anxiety is growing in Myanmar as to what will come next and many in the country have urged the international community to step up government pressure.

For more than 50 years, Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, was run by successive isolationist military regimes that plunged the country into poverty and brutally stifled any dissent. Thousands of critics, activists, journalists, academics and artists were routinely jailed and tortured during that time.

Suu Kyi shot to prominence during her decades-long struggle against military rule. When her party, the NLD, won a landslide in elections in 2015 and formed the first civilian government, many pro-democracy supporters hoped it would mark a break from the military rule of the past and offer hope that Myanmar would continue to reform.

“We know that the military cannot be trusted to respect the human rights of people and the rule of law in Burma,” said Bo Kyi, co-founder of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. “When the military was last in charge, political prisoners like me were rounded up, sent to prison for decades, (put in) solitary confinement and tortured. We are concerned that if this state of emergency is not reversed, similar things will happen again,” added Kyi, who is also a former political prisoner.

“There is a fear that the military could continue persecuting officials, activists and crack down on ordinary people. But we have hope that Burma can return on its democratic path.”

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Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi detained by the military, says ruling party spokesman

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“State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and some other senior figures are being detained in (the capital city of) Naypyidaw,” spokesman Myo Nyunt said.

The spokesman said that several ministers from large states in Myanmar had been detained by the military in addition to Suu Kyi. “The military seems to take control of the capital now,” spokesman Myo Nyunt said.

The move comes after days of escalating tension between the civilian government and the powerful military, in the aftermath of an election the army says was fraudulent, Reuters reported.

The NLD claimed victory after an election in November 2020, the country’s second democratic ballot since the end of military rule in 2015.
In a January 29 statement, 16 international missions in Myanmar urged the country’s military “to adhere to democratic norms.

“We oppose any attempt to alter the outcome of the elections or impede Myanmar’s democratic transition,” said the statement, which was signed by missions from the US, the UK and the European Union.

“We support all those who work toward greater democratic freedoms, lasting peace, and inclusive prosperity for the people of Myanmar.”

Human rights non-government organization Burma Rights UK said in a post to their Twitter that the news of Suu Kyi’s detention was “devastating.”

“This needs to be met with the strongest international response. The military need to be made to understand that they have made a major miscalculation in thinking they can get away with this,” the group said.

Suu Kyi was a hero of democracy in her home country of Myanmar, for being both a former political prisoner who spent two decades under house arrest and the daughter of assassinated independence icon, Suu Kyi.

Since her party won a landslide victory in 2015, she has been Myanmar’s de facto leader and held the position of state counsellor — a title invented as a loophole to the constitution barring her from becoming president.

But her international reputation has been tarnished in recent years by allegations of genocide against the Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya population.

Myanmar denies the charges and has long claimed to have been targeting terrorists.

Additional reporting by Reuters.



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