{"id":4003,"date":"2018-01-17T15:34:39","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T09:04:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/new-eng\/?p=4003"},"modified":"2026-01-28T11:05:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T04:35:35","slug":"9-people-reported-dead-after-police-crackdown-on-protest-in-mrauk-u","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/?p=4003","title":{"rendered":"9 People Reported Dead After Police Crackdown on Protest in Mrauk-U"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0MOE MYINT\u00a0<\/span>17 January 2018<\/p>\n

YANGON \u2014 A police crackdown on a protest in northern Rakhine State\u2019s ancient city of Mrauk-U on Tuesday night left at least nine people dead and 12 severely wounded by gunfire, according to a local lawmaker.<\/p>\n

U Tun Thar Sein, who represents Mrauk-U (1) in the state Parliament, spoke with The Irrawaddy over the phone at 2:45 a.m. on Wednesday after returning home from Mrauk-U\u2019s general hospital. He said some of the 12 patients had been transferred to the state capital, Sittwe, about 141 km away.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw that the victims were shot at least twice, mostly in the abdomen and legs\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

He said several thousand people were protesting on Tuesday evening against a decision by authorities to ban celebration of the 233rd anniversary of the end of the Arakan dynasty. Locals commemorate the event each year on Dec. 15 and 16 with traditional wrestling matches and talks on literature by activists and influential politicians.<\/p>\n

The protestors who gathered on the roads were few in number at first, but their ranks swelled to a few thousand within hours. The crowd then marched to the district administration office at about 9:30 p.m., approximately 2 km northeast of downtown.<\/p>\n

A high school teacher in Mrauk-U said many 11th<\/sup>\u00a0grade students preparing to sit their matriculation exams in the next few months also joined the rally.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe roads in Mrauk-U were taken over by the protesters within a few hours,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

U Tun Thar Sein, the lawmaker, said tensions between the protestors and police quickly escalated at about 10 p.m. Many of the protestors started hurling stones and bricks at the administration office. When some of them entered the office compound and started destroying police trucks, the police opened fire to quell the attack.<\/p>\n

Though local authorities said the protestors confronted the police, U Tun Thar Sein said he did not see any police as patients at the hospital, only dead and wounded civilians.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis mass killing would not have happened if they had used rubber bullets to crack down on the gathering,\u201d he said. \u201cI think the protestors only gathered bricks and stones and did not have any other weapons.\u201d<\/p>\n

The high school teacher said he did not participate in the protest but followed the rally in order to pull out his students. He said he heard a series of gunshots while heading toward the administration office and then saw thousands of people running back toward downtown.<\/p>\n

\u201cPolice used real bullets, not rubber rounds. I saw a boy\u2019s abdomen hollowed out,\u201d the teacher said.<\/p>\n

The teacher said he went to the Mrauk-U general hospital and saw nine people severely wounded. He recalled the accounts of his students, who told him they saw police firing at the crowd.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy students recounted to me that they laid down on the ground when they saw the flying burning bullets. They were very lucky,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Irrawaddy called township police chief Major Kyaw Mya Win and administration official Bo Bo Myint Thein, but they declined to comment. A junior staff member of the district administration office said that \u201ca protest group destabilized the situation\u201d but refused to answer further questions.<\/p>\n

Two military truckloads of armed soldiers arrived at the scene of the violence at about 11:30 p.m.<\/p>\n

The Irrawaddy News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0MOE MYINT\u00a017 January 2018 YANGON \u2014 A police crackdown on a protest in northern Rakhine State\u2019s ancient city of Mrauk-U on Tuesday night left at least nine people dead and 12 severely wounded by gunfire, according to a local lawmaker. U Tun Thar Sein, who represents Mrauk-U (1) in the state Parliament, spoke with The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4004,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4003"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4005,"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4003\/revisions\/4005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/equalitymyanmar.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}