Win Khant Maung did not move. He had bruises all over his body. You only knew he was alive from the low moans he made as he lay there in agony.
The 18-year-old was arrested at around 10am on Wednesday for taking part in an anti-junta protest near Kantharyar park in Yangon’s North Okkalapa township.
After he was apprehended, Win Khant Maung was forced to spend the entire day in the back of a prison truck. At around 5pm, he was finally transferred to Insein prison, where police and military personnel brutally assaulted him, inflicting his near-fatal injuries.
Later that night, he and a number of others ended up at the Shwe Pauk Kan police station. The police informed a volunteer group, who then contacted ward officials. This is how the families of the detainees learned what had happened to them.
“He didn’t have a weapon. There was no need for this level of abuse,” she added with anguish in her voice.
Currently, doctors involved in the Civil Disobedience Movement are tending to his injuries. Because he can’t be sent to a hospital, he is being cared for in a religious hall in his ward.
‘Kill them all!’
March 3 was a day of escalation in the ruling junta’s war on unarmed protesters opposed to its February 1 takeover. Using live ammunition, it killed dozens of people around the country and wounded many more. There were casualties reported in Mandalay, Monywa, Myingyan, Salay and Mawlamyine.
But North Okkalapa, in the northern outskirts of Yangon, is where security forces unleashed the worst violence that day.
It started early, as thousands of people approached the North Okkalapa roundabout to begin another day of protests first thing in the morning. A combined force of soldiers and police blocked their way at the roundabout and the bridge leading into the township.
The protesters slowly backed away rather than face a direct confrontation, but then the crackdown began without warning.
Original News >>> Myanmar NOW ( https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/a-yangon-township-reels-from-an-assault-on-young-lives-and-human-decency )
