A small group of protesters were arrested in downtown Rangoon this morning shortly after they began calling for the rest of Burma’s military leaders.
“UN and ICC — come quick and arrest Myanmar’s murderous generals,” said a poster held by one of the roughly 10 protesters who demonstrated outside Rangoon’s city hall. Several wore shirts bearing the logo of the organization Movement for Democracy Current Forces (MCDF), which has just over 2,000 likes on Facebook.
One witness told Coconuts that the protesters were arrested around 10 minutes after they began the protest began, and they were taken to the Kyauktada Township police station.
The protest comes a few days after UN investigators called for Burmese military leaders to be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court for genocide against the Rohingya and other crimes against the Kachin and Shan minority groups. They also accused civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi of contributing to the atrocities.
[related]
A spokesman for Suu Kyi’s office said on Tuesday that the government rejects the accusations but would investigate any claims of human rights abuses if evidence is presented.
More than 700,000 Rohingya were forcibly displaced under the guise of counterinsurgency operations last August, and more than 10,000 are estimated to have been killed, including 10 men and boys whose bodies were discovered in a mass grave outside the village of Inn Din last December. The following month, seven soldiers were sentenced to 10 years in prison each for murder.
This story was originally posted on Coconuts Yangon.
