YouTube removed five channels run by Myanmar’s military for violating its guidelines, it announced Friday, as demonstrators defied growing violence by security forces and staged more anti-coup protests ahead of a special U.N. Security Council meeting on the country's political crisis.
YouTube said it is watching for any further content that might violate its rules. It earlier pulled dozens of channels as part of an investigation into content uploaded in a coordinated influence campaign.
Click to Gallery
YouTube removed five channels run by Myanmar’s military for violating its guidelines, it announced Friday, as demonstrators defied growing violence by security forces and staged more anti-coup protests ahead of a special U.N. Security Council meeting on the country's political crisis.
The escalation of violence by security forces has put pressure on the world community to act to restrain the junta, which seized power on Feb. 1 by ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Many cases of targeted brutality have been captured in photos and videos that have circulated widely on social media. Videos have showed security forces shooting people at point-blank range and chasing down and savagely beating demonstrators.
In Yangon, members of the army's 77th Light Infantry Division have been deployed during anti-coup protests. The 77th was also deployed in Yangon in 2007 to suppress anti-junta protests, firing upon protesters and ramming them with trucks, witnesses told Human Rights Watch.
Even if the council did take action, U.N. special envoy to Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener cautioned this week it might not make much difference. She said she warned Myanmar’s army that the world’s nations and the Security Council “might take huge strong measures.”
The 10-member regional grouping, which includes Myanmar, is constrained from enacting serious measures by a tradition of acting by consensus and reluctance to interfere in each other’s internal affairs.
But he also warned that the approach favored by some Western nations, of pressuring Myanmar’s generals with sanctions, would not be effective. The U.S., Britain and several other countries have already started to use that approach.
The decision by YouTube followed Facebook’s earlier announcement that it has removed all Myanmar military-linked pages from its site and from Instagram, which it also owns.
Protesters hold portraits of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi during an anti-coup demonstration in Mandalay, Myanmar, Friday, March 5, 2021. Footage of a brutal crackdown on protests against a coup in Myanmar has unleashed outrage and calls for a stronger international response. (AP Photo)
The escalation of violence by security forces has put pressure on the world community to act to restrain the junta, which seized power on Feb. 1 by ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Large protests against military rule have occurred daily in many cities and towns. Security forces escalated their crackdown this week with greater use of lethal force and mass arrests. At least 18 protesters were shot dead on Sunday and 38 on Wednesday, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. More than 1,000 people have been arrested, the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said.
Protests continued in the country's biggest cities, Yangon and Mandalay, and elsewhere on Friday, and were again met by force from police.
Anti-coup protesters wearing protective gear take positions as police gather in Yangon, Myanmar, Friday, March 5, 2021. Myanmar's military, fresh off a coup, has killed scores of unarmed protesters. It's jailed reporters, and anyone else capable of exposing the violence. The outside world has responded so far with tough words _ and little else. (AP Photo)
Many cases of targeted brutality have been captured in photos and videos that have circulated widely on social media. Videos have showed security forces shooting people at point-blank range and chasing down and savagely beating demonstrators.
The United States called the images appalling, the U.N. human rights chief said it was time to “end the military’s stranglehold over democracy in Myanmar,” and the world body’s independent expert on human rights in the country, Tom Andrews, urged Security Council members to watch the videos before their closed-door consultations on Friday.
While many abuses are committed by police, there is even greater concern about military forces being deployed in cities across the country that are notorious for decades of brutal counter-insurgency tactics and human rights abuses.
Armed police stand guard on a major street to preven anti-coup demonstration in Yangon, Myanmar, Friday, March 5, 2021. Footage of a brutal crackdown on protests against a coup in Myanmar has unleashed outrage and calls for a stronger international response. (AP Photo)
In Yangon, members of the army's 77th Light Infantry Division have been deployed during anti-coup protests. The 77th was also deployed in Yangon in 2007 to suppress anti-junta protests, firing upon protesters and ramming them with trucks, witnesses told Human Rights Watch.
The 99th Light Infantry Division has also been deployed, including in Mandalay. It is infamous for its counter-insurgency campaigns against ethnic minorities across the country, including spearheading the response that led to a brutal crackdown that caused more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee from Rakhine state to Bangladesh. It also has been accused of war crimes in Shan state, another ethnic minority area, in 2016 and early 2017.
Any kind of coordinated action at the U.N. will be difficult since two permanent members of the Security Council, China and Russia, are likely to veto it.
Anti-coup protesters wearing helmets and masks take positions as police gather in Yangon, Myanmar, Friday, March 5, 2021. Myanmar's military, fresh off a coup, has killed scores of unarmed protesters. It's jailed reporters, and anyone else capable of exposing the violence. The outside world has responded so far with tough words _ and little else. (AP Photo)
Even if the council did take action, U.N. special envoy to Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener cautioned this week it might not make much difference. She said she warned Myanmar’s army that the world’s nations and the Security Council “might take huge strong measures.”
“And the answer was, ‘We are used to sanctions and we survived those sanctions in the past,’” she said. When she also warned that Myanmar would become isolated, Schraner Burgener said, “the answer was, ‘We have to learn to walk with only a few friends.’”
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has urged a halt to violence and the start of talks on a peaceful solution in Myanmar.
Anti-coup protesters take positions behind a makeshift barricade as armed riot policemen gather in Yangon, Myanmar, Friday, March 5, 2021. Footage of a brutal crackdown on protests against a coup in Myanmar has unleashed outrage and calls for a stronger international response. (AP Photo)
The 10-member regional grouping, which includes Myanmar, is constrained from enacting serious measures by a tradition of acting by consensus and reluctance to interfere in each other’s internal affairs.
However, one member, Singapore, was outspoken on Friday in criticizing Myanmar’s coup.
“It is the height of national shame for the armed forces of any country to turn its arms against its own people,” its foreign minister, Vivian Balakrishnan, said in Parliament.
Anti-coup protesters take cover with makeshift shields take positions as armed riot policemen gather in Mandalay, Myanmar, Friday, March 5, 2021. Protests continue in Myanmar against the Feb. 1 military coup that ousted the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Despite daily operations by police to disperse the crowds, defiant protesters continue to return to the streets in parts of the country.(AP Photo)
But he also warned that the approach favored by some Western nations, of pressuring Myanmar’s generals with sanctions, would not be effective. The U.S., Britain and several other countries have already started to use that approach.
“Despite all our fervor and earnest hopes of reconciliation ... the keys ultimately lie within Myanmar. And there’s a limit to how far external pressure will be brought to bear,” he said.
Protesters hold the portrait of deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, during an anti-coup demonstration in Mandalay, Myanmar, Friday, March 5, 2021. Footage of a brutal crackdown on protests against a coup in Myanmar has unleashed outrage and calls for a stronger international response. (AP Photo)
BANGKOK (AP) — Myanmar’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest as a health measure due to a heat wave, the military government said as it freed more than 3,000 prisoners under an amnesty to mark this week's traditional New Year holiday.
Suu Kyi, 78, and Win Myint, the 72-year-old former president of her ousted government, were among the elderly and infirm prisoners moved to house arrest because of the severe heat, military spokesperson Maj. Gen. General Zaw Min Tun told foreign media representatives late Tuesday. The move has not yet been publicly announced in Myanmar.
Suu Kyi’s transfer comes as the army has been suffering a string of major defeats at the hands of pro-democracy resistance fighters and their allies in ethnic minority guerrilla forces. The nationwide conflict began after the army ousted the elected government in February 2021, imprisoned Suu Kyi and began suppressing nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule.
Suu Kyi has been serving a 27-year prison term on a variety of criminal convictions in a specially built annex of the main prison in the capital Naypyitaw, where Myanmar’s meteorological department said temperatures reached 39 degrees Celsius (102.2 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday afternoon. Win Myint was serving an eight-year prison sentence in Taungoo in Myanmar’s Bago region.
Suu Kyi's supporters and independent analysts say the charges were fabricated in an attempt to discredit her and legitimize the military’s seizure of power. The military had claimed that her National League for Democracy Party used widespread electoral fraud to win a landslide victory in the 2020 general election, an allegation independent observers found unconvincing.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an independent group that monitors casualties and arrests, more than 20,351 people arrested on political charges since the 2021 army takeover are still in detention, most of whom have not received criminal convictions.
Suu Kyi's health has reportedly deteriorated in prison. In September last year, reports emerged that she was suffering from symptoms of low blood pressure including dizziness and loss of appetite, but had been denied treatment at qualified facilities outside the prison system.
Those reports could not be independently confirmed, but her younger son Kim Aris said in interviews that he had heard that his mother has been extremely ill and has been suffering from gum problems and was unable to eat. Aris, who lives in the U.K., urged that Myanmar’s military government be pressured to free his mother and other political prisoners.
News about Suu Kyi is tightly controlled by the military government, and even her lawyers are banned by a gag order from talking to the media about her cases. Her legal team has faced several hurdles, including being unable to meet with her to receive her instructions since they last saw her in person in December 2022.
Whether the latest move was meant to be temporary was not announced.
Spokesperson Zaw Min Tun did not say where the released prisoners were being moved to in his remarks to U.S.-government funded Voice of America and Britain's BBC, but there was no indication it might be one of her own former homes. The lakeside house where Suu Kyi spent most of her years in house arrest is in legal limbo after a court-ordered auction in March failed to find a buyer.
Before being sent to prison, Suu Kyi was reportedly held in a military safe house inside an army base.
Other prisoners were released for the Thingyan New Year holiday, state-run MRTV television announced Wednesday, but it wasn’t immediately clear how many were pro-democracy activists and political prisoners who were detained for protesting army rule. Aung Myo Kyaw of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said the group had heard of 7-10 people released in Yangon and nine from a prison in the central regions of Magway.
MRTV said that the head of the ruling military council, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, had pardoned 3,303 prisoners, including 28 foreigners who will be deported from Myanmar. He also reduced sentences for others. Mass amnesties on the holiday are not unusual in Myanmar.
Family and friends gathered outside the gates of Insein Prison, in northern Yangon, waiting expectantly and scanning the windows of buses that brought the released detainees out of the vast complex. Some of those waiting held up signs with the names of the people they were seeking, in the same fashion as at an airport arrival hall.
Amid tearful reunions, Khin Thu Zar said she was happy, but that she would have to call her family.
“My family still doesn’t know about my release,” she said. She, like many political detainees, had been held on a charge of incitement, a catch-all offense widely used to arrest critics of the government and punishable by up to three years in prison.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar’s martyred independence hero Gen. Aung San, spent almost 15 years as a political prisoner under house arrest by previous military governments between 1989 and 2010. Her tough stand against military rule turned her into a symbol of the nonviolent struggle for democracy and won her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Nay Phone Latt, spokesperson of the shadow National Unity Government, told The Associated Press that relocating Suu Kyi and Win Myint, instead of releasing them outright, was not satisfactory. The NUG views itself as the country’s legitimate administrative body and serves as an opposition umbrella organization.
He said all political prisoners, including those two, were unjustly detained and should be freed without conditions.
He said it was unacceptable for the military government to resolve its difficulties by playing political games, such as changing prisoners' places of detention and reducing sentences. The army's recent battlefield setbacks, including last week's loss to resistance forces of Myawaddy, a major trading town on the border with Thailand, is seen by many as underlining its increasing weakness.
A bus carrying released prisoners is welcomed by family members and colleagues after leaving Insein Prison Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Yangon, Myanmar. Myanmar’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest as a health measure due to a heat wave, the military government said. On Wednesday it also granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw)
Released prisoners sit in a bus and are welcomed by family members and colleagues after they were released from Insein Prison Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Yangon, Myanmar. On Wednesday Myanmar's military government granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw)
Family members and colleagues wait for prisoners to be released from Insein Prison Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Yangon, Myanmar. On Wednesday Myanmar's military government granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday. The signs show their family name. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw)
A released prisoner is welcomed by family members and colleagues after she was released from Insein Prison Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Yangon, Myanmar. On Wednesday Myanmar's military government granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw)
A released prisoner is welcomed by family members and colleagues after she was released Insein Prison Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Yangon, Myanmar. Myanmar’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest as a health measure due to a heat wave, the military government said. On Wednesday it also granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw)
Released prisoners are welcomed by family members and colleagues after they were released from Insein Prison Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Yangon, Myanmar. On Wednesday Myanmar's military government granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw)
A released prisoner is welcomed by family members and colleagues after she was released from Insein Prison Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Yangon, Myanmar. On Wednesday Myanmar's military government granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw)
Released prisoners are welcomed by family members and colleagues after they were released from Insein Prison Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Yangon, Myanmar. On Wednesday Myanmar's military government granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw)
Released prisoners are welcomed by family members and colleagues after they were released Insein Prison Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Yangon, Myanmar. Myanmar’s jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest as a health measure due to a heat wave, the military government said. On Wednesday it also granted amnesty for over 3,000 prisoners to mark this week’s traditional New Year holiday. (AP Photo/Thein Zaw)
FILE - Myanmar's President Win Myint shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping, unseen, during their meeting at the Presidential Palace in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, on Jan. 17, 2020. Myanmar’s military’s spokesperson, Maj. Gen. General Zaw Min Tun, has told foreign media representatives late Tuesday, April 16, 2024, that 78-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi and the president of her former government, 72-year-old Win Myint, were among the elderly and infirm prisoners moved from out of prison because of the severe heat. The move has not yet been publicly announced in Myanmar. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)
FILE - Myanmar's President Win Myint shakes hands with Philippine diplomat Rosario Manalo, unseen, a member of the Independent Commission of Enquiry for Rakhine State at the Presidential Palace in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, on Jan. 20, 2020. Myanmar’s military’s spokesperson, Maj. Gen. General Zaw Min Tun, has told foreign media representatives late Tuesday, April 16, 2024, that 78-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi and the president of her former government, 72-year-old Win Myint, were among the elderly and infirm prisoners moved from out of prison because of the severe heat. The move has not yet been publicly announced in Myanmar. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)
FILE - Myanmar's lthen eader Aung San Suu Kyi waits to address judges of the International Court of Justice on the second day of three days of hearings in The Hague, Netherlands, Dec. 11, 2019. Myanmar’s military says Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest as health measure due to a heat wave. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong, File)
FILE - Myanmar's then leader Aung San Suu Kyi delivers a speech during a meeting on implementation of Myanmar Education Development in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, Jan. 28, 2020. Myanmar’s military says Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest as health measure due to a heat wave. (AP Photo/Aung Shine Oo, File)
