Freelance journalist Ko Wei Min* describes thick black smoke mushrooming over his home in Hlaing Tha Yar and reflects back to Sunday, March 14, when the “soldiers came in 20 trucks armed with machine guns.”
IFEX, the global network of over 100 organisations dedicated to promoting and defending the right to freedom of expression and information, expresses its solidarity and support for its Myanmar member Mizzima, and condemns the violent crackdown against protestors, journalists, rights defenders, and civil society organisations perpetrated by the military junta which seized power in Myanmar on February 1st.
The European Union and the United States slapped sanctions Monday on top police and military commanders linked to last month's coup in Myanmar, as pro-democracy demonstrators went back to the streets in defiance of a violent crackdown on protest.
The junta is increasingly using deadly force to crush activists who have risen up against the military's ousting of civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1.
Anti-coup protesters marched against the military junta at a pre-dawn rally in Myanmar's second largest city on Monday, a day after eight demonstrators were killed.
Scores of people including teachers marched through the streets of Mandalay, some carrying placards calling for UN intervention in the crisis.
There were also early morning protests in parts of Yangon, the commercial capital.
Five people are feared dead and at least 20,000 Rohingya have fled a huge blaze engulfing shanty homes at refugee camps in southeastern Bangladesh, officials said Monday, in the third fire to hit the settlements in four days.
Nearly one million of the Muslim minority from Myanmar -- many of whom fled a military crackdown in their homeland in 2017 -- live in cramped and squalid conditions at the camps in the Cox's Bazar district.
Canada's prime minister vowed to keep up pressure on China to release two Canadians after the trial of Michael Kovrig, one of the pair detained in China on spying charges, ended Monday with no verdict.
The hearing for the former diplomat came days after the closed-door trial of Canadian businessman Michael Spavor. Both have been detained for more than two years in apparent retaliation for Canada's arrest on a US extradition warrant of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou.
Aung Thura a BBC Burmese service reporter who had been arrested by men in plain clothes on 19 March while reporting outside a court in the capital, Nay Pyi Taw has been released, BBC reported.
Last Friday, Aung Thura was taken away with another reporter, Than Htike Aung, who had worked for Mizzima.
‘Myanmar is being hit not only by bullets but by an economic disaster which is growing every day,' warned, Romain Caillaud, during a webinar hosted by Nikkei Asia last week entitled Myanmar’s Coup: How should the world react.
Caillaud, Principle at SIPA Partners and Associates was joined by Thiri Thant Mon, managing partner of Pegu Partners and Gwen Robinson, editor at large at Nikkei Asia and Alex Dmitrenko, sanctions specialist at Freshfields Bruckhaus, Deringer.
Looming sanctions may pose complex dilemmas for foreign investors in Myanmar, although these concerns will be dwarfed by prohibitive financial and operational obstacles to business if the military junta remains in power.
Alex Dmitrenko, a sanctions expert with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, cautioned last week ‘right now foreign investors have a small widow to respond’ while the fight over sovereignty continues domestically, and before further state sanctions are imposed.