A protester was killed Friday in Burma, the latest victim to date in the junta's crackdown on the pro-democracy movement, while the UN Security Council is due to meet behind closed doors in New York to try to find a solution. response to this crisis which seems to darken day by day.
Despite fears of reprisals, protests took place in several cities across the country on Friday.
A group of several hundred engineers demonstrated in the streets of Mandalay, Burma's second city, chanting "Free our leader!"
And "do not serve the army, go!"
A 26-year-old man helping to erect barriers in the city to slow down security forces died after being shot in the neck, medical personnel told AFP.
Face to face with the police
The death comes two days after the deadliest day of the crackdown, with at least 38 people killed according to the UN as violent scenes showed security forces shooting at crowds and images of bloody bodies circulated on networks social.
In Yangon, the economic capital of the country, the district of San Chaung was, as in the previous days, the subject of a face-to-face for the moment peaceful with the police, the demonstrators protecting themselves behind barricades of fortune built with old tires, sandbags, and barbed wire.
In the middle-sized town of Bago, northeast of Yangon, a small group marched with three fingers raised in resistance, brandishing signs that read "We do not accept the military coup".
VIDEO.
Bloody
demonstrations
in Burma
: "
It's an atmosphere of war
", testifies a French woman
According to local Indian police, nine Burmese took refuge in India on Wednesday, including three police officers who told authorities in the state of Mizoram (east), bordering Burma, that they were fleeing so as not to have to take part in the repression in their country.
Several junta YouTube channels closed
The junta has sought to prevent information about its crackdown from being published, it has increased nightly Internet shutdowns and banned Facebook, by far the most popular medium in the country.
But live video streams and pictures leak on a daily basis.
On Friday, the junta even suffered its own Internet ban, YouTube having announced that it had closed several channels run by the army.
Many parts of the country were also hit by power cuts on Friday, although it was not clear that this was a deliberate move as the country has sometimes unreliable infrastructure.
Several government agencies attributed the outages to a "system failure".
But despite the increasingly strong international protests, the junta seems more determined than ever to put out the wind of rebellion blowing on Burma since the putsch that overthrew the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.
In a report released Thursday, Thomas Andrews, an independent expert commissioned by the UN, underlines that "even if the future of Burma is determined by its people, the international community must act urgently and decisively to support it" .
At least 54 civilians killed in total
The United Nations special rapporteur therefore recommends to the Security Council, which is meeting behind closed doors on Friday to discuss the situation in this country, to "impose a global arms embargo", as already doing, according to him, the Europeans and Canada, further calling for "targeted economic sanctions" against the Burmese generals.
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At least 54 civilians have been killed since the coup, according to the UN.
Among them, four minors, including a 14-year-old teenager, according to the NGO Save the Children.
There are also dozens of injured.
The army for its part reported the death of a police officer.
"The use of lethal force (...) shows how little security forces fear being held responsible for their acts," said Richard Weir, of the NGO Human Rights Watch.
"We will continue to take measures against the junta," US diplomacy spokesman Ned Price warned in a tweet after the announcement of new US sanctions on Thursday.
China and Russia, traditional allies of the Burmese army, have not officially condemned the coup, considering the crisis as "an internal affair".
