A policeman killed a seven-year-old after firing indiscriminately following a bomb attack on a police camp in Myitkyina on the one-year anniversary of the coup – a day when many people in Burma took part in a ‘Silent Strike’ against the dictatorship.
“The child was lying in his room and the bullet passed through the wall penetrating the child’s chest,” a source told KNG, on condition that his name not be published. The child’s house was near the camp in Leh Kong ward in the Kachin State capital where the blast occurred in the early hours of 1 February. The man said that the police and a local agent of the regime took the child’s lifeless body to the hospital in a vehicle.
People across the country refused to work or closed their shops on Tuesday in protest against the junta. Photos shared on social media showed deserted streets in all major cities, demonstrating the military’s inability to control the country since the fall of the democratic government a year ago. According to The Guardian, there were several bombings in Burma’s commercial capital Yangon yesterday.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, more than 1,500 people were killed and at least 11,838 people were arrested by the regime’s armed forces. Many prisoners have been tortured and several people have been killed during interrogations in detention centres.