DM Monitoring
NAYPYIDAW: Myanmar’s military government accused deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Thursday of accepting illegal payments, while eight people were killed when security forces opened fire on protests against the coup, witnesses said.
The violence comes after the United Nations Security Council called on the military to “exercise utmost restraint” in its response to peaceful demonstrators and rights group Amnesty International accused the military of adopting battlefield tactics against peaceful demonstrators.
Six people were killed in the central town of Myaing on Thursday when security forces fired on a protest, one man who took part in the demonstration and helped carry bodies to hospital, told media. A health worker there confirmed all six deaths.
“We protested peacefully,” the 31-year-old man said. “I couldn’t believe they did it.”
One person was killed in the North Dagon district of Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, domestic media said. Photographs posted on Facebook showed a man lying prone on the street, bleeding from a head wound.
Myanmar has been in chaos since its military toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1. The power grab, just a decade after the end of 49 years of strict military rule, triggered huge protests nationwide. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners advocacy group said security forces have killed more than 60 protesters and arrested 2,000 others in the ensuing crackdown.
The army has justified the coup by saying that the election, won by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, was marred by fraud – an assertion rejected by the electoral commission.
The military spokesman, Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun, told a news conference in the capital, Naypyitaw, on Thursday that Aung San Suu Kyi had accepted illegal payments worth $600,000 as well as gold while in government.
