Myanmar generals flip the bird to world with defiant parade of brutality

Myanmar state television has aired pictures of six young men and women beaten savagely in custody.

The young woman before and after her arrest In Yangon.

This is what impunity looks like.

Less than a week before Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing is to front an ASEAN crisis meeting in Jakarta to defend his coup, state television has aired pictures of six young men and women beaten savagely in custody in defiance of international calls for an end to the junta’s violence.

The pictures, broadcast on Sunday night to mass outrage, showed the bruised and swollen faces of four youths and two young women whom the junta alleged were involved in an attack on a Yangon government office on Saturday in which three soldiers were injured.

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said the six young people were among 30 “arbitrarily assaulted and detained” in Yangon’s Yankin township.

Activists reacted online by posting smiling, fresh-faced pictures of the six young detainees taken from their social media accounts alongside those of their battered mugshots, underscoring the brutality of a junta that has drawn worldwide condemnation for its lethal violence against unarmed democracy protesters.

“They want us to be scared but their mission has failed,” Myanmar youth activist Thinzar Shuneli Yi told The Australian on Monday of the pictures that had been retweeted many thousands of times by early afternoon. “Their horrific crimes just add up to more (evidence) for which they will face accountability. The world’s justice wheels must spin faster.”

At least 737 civilians have been killed and 3229 people detained by the security forces since military leaders staged their February 1 coup that toppled the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The junta released 23,184 prisoners from jails across the country on Saturday to mark the Buddhist New Year, including Australian journalist Ross Dunkley, who co-founded the Myanmar Times and had been serving time for drug offences. Few if any anti-junta activists were believed to be among them.

Thai authorities say Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has accepted an invitation to attend the emergency April 24 ASEAN summit, where he is expected to brief his nine fellow leaders on the situation in Myanmar ahead of a discussion on how to resolve the crisis.

But the leader’s invitation has sparked fury among anti-coup activists who say it will lend legitimacy to his junta, and that ASEAN must include a representative of the newly convened National Unity Government, a parallel civilian administration of elected MPs announced last Friday.

Moe Zaw Oo, deputy foreign minister of the NUG — which retains Ms Suu Kyi but includes many more ethnic minorities than her ousted Buddhist-majority government — said it was important the parallel government be included in the summit.

“If ASEAN wants to help solve the Myanmar situation, they are not going to achieve anything without consulting and negotiating with the NUG, which is supported by the people and has full legitimacy,” he told Voice of America’s Burmese service.

“It’s important that the military council is not recognised.”

Chris Sidoti, co-author of a 2019 UN fact-finding report into military crimes against Rohingya and a member of a special advisory council on Myanmar, said the ASEAN summit would be the first time a choice had to be made over whether to acknowledge the junta or the parallel administration as the rightful representatives of the state of Myanmar.

“Min Aung Hlaing is head of the military but to recognise him as the head of government is unacceptable. The NUG has far more legitimacy than the military, which cannot claim to be the lawful government of Myanmar,” Mr Sidoti said. “Even if ASEAN hears from both delegations without deciding between the two, that would be acceptable. But only having Min Aung Hlaing there would certainly lend legitimacy to the military under the present circumstances.”

The military has justified its coup by alleging widespread voter fraud in last November’s election, which delivered a second landslide win to Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy.

Despite growing condemnation of the junta, its brutal crackdown continued over the weekend with more killings and the arrests of several high-profile coup opponents.

Among those arrested on Sunday was Japanese journalist Yuki Kitazumi. He is believed to be only the second foreign national ­detained since Australian economist Sean Turnell was arrested on February 6.