Myanmar police use tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition to disperse crowds of protesters in Mandalay city on Feb. 20.
Voice of Democracy said “they are just doing their professional duty as journalists” and demanded that the military release its journalists and others arrested since the coup.
The statement said its journalist Kaung Myat Naing was taken away by security forces from his apartment in the southern city of Tan Laot last night when he went on air to call for help. In the live broadcast, Kaung Myat Naing shouted outside, “If you shoot like this, how am I going to get downstairs?” The video was posted on the Voice of Democracy’s official Facebook page.
Voice of Democracy said “they were just doing their professional job as journalists” and demanded that the military release Gong Mya Naing and other journalists arrested since the coup.
According to AFP, since the coup, authorities have not only used tear gas, rubber bullets and even live ammunition to suppress anti-military demonstrators with increasing violence, but journalists documenting the unrest on the streets have also been targeted by the military, with several journalists, including Gong Miao Naing and an Associated Press photographer based in Yangon, arrested so far.
According to a statement from the Voice of Democracy, Gon Miao Naing recently reported on the military’s crackdown in Tango last weekend, as well as yesterday’s mass demonstrations.
Given that it has been more than a month since the military coup in Burma, and it is getting bloodier by the minute. “We cannot sit back and watch people continue to be brutalized and watch their human rights destroyed,” the new U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, called on the international community, according to the Associated Press. “We must really step up the pressure, not just in New York, but internationally together, to urge the military to reverse the coup and restore a democratically elected government.”
Greenfield reiterated that the U.S. and the Burmese people “stand together” and said that the U.N. Security Council will discuss Burma in the future.
The Voice of Democracy is known to have been a media outlet in exile under the previous military government, often broadcasting reports on television or radio that were not censored by authorities. After 49 years of military power, the Voice of Democracy moved its headquarters to Burma the following year, when it was unbundled in 2011.
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