As the virus crisis drags on, hard-hit French youth struggle

February 16, 2021

PARIS (AP) — On a recent evening, Leïla Ideddaim waited to receive a bag of food, along with hundreds of other French young people who are unable to make ends meet. She saw the chitchat that accompanied the handout as a welcome byproduct, given her intense isolation during the pandemic.

The 21-year-old student in hotel and restaurant management has seen her plans turned upside down by the virus crisis. With restaurants and tourist sites shuttered and France under a 6 p.m. curfew, her career prospects are uncertain. Odd jobs that were supposed to keep her going during her studies are hard to come by.

“I’m in a fog,” said Ideddaim, who moved to Paris last year and is now struggling to meet both her basic needs and her emotional ones. She is not alone. The long lines of young people waiting for food aid that stretch through Paris neighborhoods several times a week are a dramatic symbol of the toll the coronavirus has taken on France’s youth.

The pandemic has devastated economies the world over, pushing vulnerable people deeper into poverty or tipping some into it for the first time. In France, the economic fallout has weighed particularly heavily on young people — and their woes have only been compounded by disruptions to their studies and social interactions.

Nearly a quarter of French young people can’t find work — two-and-a-half times the national unemployment rate and one of the highest in the European Union's 27 nations. Many university students now rely on food aid and several organizations have rallied to meet the need.

The pandemic has led to a surge in mental health complaints that authorities say are most acute in people without work, those in financial hardship and young adults. A hotline devoted to students has seen a surge in calls, and young people have streamed into psychiatric wards.

As French President Emmanuel Macron acknowledged, “it’s hard to be 20” in coronavirus times. Other European countries have also noted a particularly heavy toll on young people. In Belgium, some areas are giving aid to students to help them pay for food, rent, transport and psychological help. In Germany, a study by the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf found about one in three children are suffering from pandemic-related anxiety, depression or are exhibiting psychosomatic symptoms like headaches or stomach aches.

For Ideddaim, who has to support herself, the pandemic means a spreadsheet that doesn't always add up. Each month, she needs over 800 euros ($970) for housing, transport and utility bills. She could not get a well-paid apprenticeship because restaurants are closed and hotels are in a precarious situation.

Instead, an internship at a campground 45 kilometers (28 miles) east of Paris brings in 300 euros a month — and alleviates her isolation. She also earns some money from occasional temp work in shopping centers. Still, she has almost spent all her savings.

“I draw up a Google sheet, and I put down my expenses and my fixed costs every month. So I look at how much comes in, and I calculate what I’m left with and where I can tighten my belt — on food for instance,” she said.

Ideddaim is just one of many needy students being served by Linkee, an organization that has long collected and distributed unused food to fight waste but only recently turned its attention to students.

Farid Khelef, 28, came from Algeria to study in France. He would not have imagined he would one day be waiting for food aid. “Before, I was working as an electrician in parallel with my studies. Because of the health crisis, it’s been almost four months that I have no job,” he said while waiting for a bag from Linkee.

The organization began offering meals and fresh food to students in October — and their twice-weekly handouts now serve about 500 people, up from 200. “We are a safety net for all these students ... who don’t have enough money to buy some food and have no other solution than coming to get some quality food and at the same time find a friendly atmosphere,” said Julien Meimon, the organization’s president.

With a smile, Ideddaim showed her bag filled with salad, cauliflower, apples, smoked salmon, yogurts and chocolate. But she comes to the food distribution site for more than just basic sustenance. “It’s a great morale boost — to know that I’m going to eat well and to come to a place with plenty of people and everyone is in a good mood,” she said.

With only three weeks of in-person classes since September and being new to the city, she has struggled to create the social connections that are essential to building an adult life. “It has not been easy to integrate, to meet with people,” she said. In the meantime, she enjoys chatting on the phone with her grandmother, who also lives alone, and is looking forward to working this summer in the Atlantic seaside resort of Biscarrosse — as long as restaurants reopen.

Many young people are similarly struggling. Nightline in Paris, a hotline for students, has seen a 40% jump in calls since the country entered its first lockdown in March. Depression among people aged 18 to 24 has jumped from 16.5% at the beginning of April to 31.5% in November, during the country’s second lockdown, according to France’s national health agency, Sante Publique France.

Authorities have noticed the problem and, starting this month, they have asked universities to allow students to go back to classes one day per week to help them regain some sense of normalcy. The institutions have also started providing 1-euro meals.

There are concerns the pandemic could have long-term effects on youth. In the U.K., the Institute for Fiscal Studies think tank estimated that young people will have missed out on more than half a year of face-to-face learning, or more than 5% of their total time in school, by the end of the country's latest national lockdown. The lost education could cut average lifetime earnings by 40,000 pounds ($55,325) per student, it estimated.

Ideddaim, who prefers to look on the bright side, said she feels privileged to get food aid at all. "That kind of aid does not exist in many countries, and we're lucky enough in France to have that," she said.

Samuel Petrequin in Brussels, Danica Kirka in London and Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this report.

Anatomy of a conspiracy: With COVID, China took leading role

February 15, 2021

BRUSSELS (AP) — The rumors began almost as soon as the disease itself. Claims that a foreign adversary had unleashed a bioweapon emerged at the fringes of Chinese social media the same day China first reported the outbreak of a mysterious virus.

“Watch out for Americans!” a Weibo user wrote on Dec. 31, 2019. Today, a year after the World Health Organization warned of an epidemic of COVID-19 misinformation, that conspiracy theory lives on, pushed by Chinese officials eager to cast doubt on the origins of a pandemic that has claimed more than 2 million lives globally.

From Beijing and Washington to Moscow and Tehran, political leaders and allied media effectively functioned as superspreaders, using their stature to amplify politically expedient conspiracies already in circulation. But it was China -- not Russia – that took the lead in spreading foreign disinformation about COVID-19’s origins, as it came under attack for its early handling of the outbreak.

A nine-month Associated Press investigation of state-sponsored disinformation conducted in collaboration with the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, shows how a rumor that the U.S. created the virus that causes COVID-19 was weaponized by the Chinese government, spreading from the dark corners of the Internet to millions across the globe. The analysis was based on a review of millions of social media postings and articles on Twitter, Facebook, VK, Weibo, WeChat, YouTube, Telegram and other platforms.

Chinese officials were reacting to a powerful narrative, nursed by QAnon groups, Fox News, former President Donald Trump and leading Republicans, that the virus was instead manufactured by China. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs says Beijing has used its expanding megaphone on Western social media to promote friendship and serve facts, while defending itself against hostile forces that seek to politicize the pandemic.

“All parties should firmly say ‘no’ to the dissemination of disinformation,” the ministry said in a statement to AP, but added, “In the face of trumped-up charges, it is justified and proper to bust lies and clarify rumors by setting out the facts.”

The battle to control the narrative about where the virus came from has had global consequences in the fight against COVID-19. By March, just three months after COVID-19 appeared in central China, belief that the virus had been created in a lab and possibly weaponized was widespread, multiple surveys showed. The Pew Research Center found, for example, that one in three Americans believed the new coronavirus had been created in a lab; one in four thought it had been engineered intentionally. In Iran, top leaders cited the bioweapon conspiracy to justify their refusal of foreign medical aid. Anti-lockdown and anti-mask groups around the world called COVID-19 a hoax and a weapon, complicating public health efforts to slow the spread.

“This is like a virus, like COVID, a media pathogen,” said Kang Liu, a professor at Duke University who studies cultural politics and media in China, comparing the spread of disinformation about the virus to the spread of the virus itself. “We have a double pandemic -- the real pathological virus and the pandemic of fear. The fear is what is really at stake.”

SPREADING RUMORS

On Jan. 26, a man from Inner Mongolia posted a video claiming that the new virus ravaging central China was a biological weapon engineered by the U.S. It was viewed 14,000 times on the Chinese app Kuaishou before being taken down. The man was arrested, detained for 10 days and fined for spreading rumors.

People’s Daily, the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece, broadcast news of his detention in early February, showing the man, face pixelated, wrists shackled, and legs caged in a chair. It was a stern reminder to the citizens of China that fake news can lead to arrest and part of a broader effort by Chinese state media to debunk COVID-19 conspiracies.

But just six weeks later the same conspiracy would be broadcast by China’s foreign ministry, picked up by at least 30 Chinese diplomats and missions and amplified through China’s vast, global network of state media outlets.

During those six weeks, China’s leadership came under intense internal criticism. On Feb. 7, Li Wenliang, a Chinese doctor punished for circulating an early warning about the outbreak, died of COVID-19. The outpouring of grief and rage sparked by Li’s death was an unusual – and for the ruling Communist Party, unsettling -- display in China’s tightly monitored civic space.

Meanwhile, powerful voices in the U.S. -- from former President Trump to congressional Republicans -- were working to rebrand COVID-19 as “the China virus,” amplifying fringe theories that it had been engineered by Chinese scientists.

Social media accounts that appeared to be pro-Trump or QAnon followers pushed the disinformation, repeatedly retweeting identical content that claimed China created the virus as a bioweapon, researchers at the Australia Institute’s Centre for Responsible Technology found.

As U.S. rhetoric intensified, China went on the offensive. On Feb. 22, People’s Daily ran a report highlighting speculation that the U.S. military brought the virus to China, pushing the story globally through inserts in newspapers such as the Helsinki Times in Finland and the New Zealand Herald.

The New Zealand Herald said it has an “ad hoc commercial relationship with People’s Daily,” labels their content as sponsored and reviews it before publication. “Upon further review of the story that you have referred to, we have removed this particular item from our website,” a spokesman said in an email.

The Helsinki Times said it has a “barter-exchange” content agreement with People’s Daily, whose content it labels but does not vet. “We believe that the western media coverage is at times extremely one-sided and biased,” said Alexis Kouros, the editor of the Helsinki Times. “Even though People’s Daily is state-owned, like the BBC, we believe it is beneficial for the global audience to have both sides of stories.”

As China embraced overt disinformation, it leaned on Russian disinformation strategy and infrastructure, turning to a long-established network of Kremlin proxies in the West to seed and spread messaging.

“One was amplifying the other…How much it was command controlled, how much it was opportunistic, it was hard to tell,” said Janis Sarts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, based in Riga, Latvia. Long-term, he added, China is “the more formidable competitor and adversary because of the technological capabilities they bring to the table.”

‘THE TRUTH AS I SEE IT’

In January, long before China began overtly spreading disinformation, Russian state media swept in to legitimize the theory that the U.S. engineered the virus as a weapon. On Jan. 20, the Russian Army’s media outlet, Zvezda, announced that the outbreak in China was linked to a bioweapons test, citing a four-time failed political candidate named Igor Nikulin.

Nikulin claims to have worked with the United Nations on disarmament in Iraq from 1998 to 2003, including as an adviser to former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. But the U.N. has no record of his service. Richard Butler, the lead U.N. weapons inspector at the time, told AP he’s never heard of him. Neither has Hans Corell, who served as Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and Legal Counsel of the United Nations from 1994-2004, where he worked closely with Annan.

Nikulin said records of his U.N. work may have been destroyed and stuck by his theory that COVID is a U.S. bioweapon – a claim that has been repeatedly debunked. “What other proof is needed?!” he said in an email to AP.

Over the next two months, more than 70 articles appeared in pro-Kremlin media making similar bioweapons claims in Russian, Spanish, Armenian, Arabic, English and German, according to AP’s analysis of a database compiled by EUvsDisinfo, which tracks disinformation for the European Union.

Online journals identified by the U.S. State Department and others as pro-Russian proxies picked up the bioweapons narrative, enhancing its reach and resonance. Russian politicians joined the chorus. Parliamentarian Natalia Poklonskaya argued that the novel coronavirus could be a biological weapon created “by those who want to rule the planet” to undermine China. Shortly after, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the nationalistic leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, suggested that the U.S. and its greedy pharmaceutical companies were to blame.

Meanwhile, Nikulin kept flogging his theory, which morphed as the pandemic spread from an attack on China to an attack on Trump. Despite his inconsistency and questionable bona fides, by April, Nikulin had appeared at least 18 times on Russian television. U.S. officials also said Russian intelligence had been covertly spreading COVID-19 disinformation, including claims that the virus was a U.S. bioweapon.

On Jan. 23, Beijing began to roll out the largest medical quarantine in modern history, sealing tens of millions of people at the epicenter of the outbreak in central China. The images were harrowing, as people desperate to slip out thronged train stations.

Shortly after 11 a.m. the next morning, Francis Boyle, a Harvard-trained law professor at the University of Illinois, emailed a “worldwide alert” to 300 contacts warning, without evidence, that China had been developing the coronavirus as a bioweapon at a biosafety lab in Wuhan.

Over the next few weeks, Boyle refined his theory, now asserting that Chinese scientists had not developed the virus themselves, but taken it from a North Carolina laboratory. “This is clearly an offensive biological warfare agent,” Boyle told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on a Feb. 19 Infowars broadcast.

The theory spread via outlets like One America News Network, a pro-Trump channel, Iran’s Press TV, Global Research and its erstwhile partner, the Strategic Culture Foundation, an online journal that masquerades as independent but is actually directed by Russia’s foreign intelligence service, according to the U.S. State Department.

Boyle told the AP his conclusions are based on research and that he can’t stop conspiracy theorists or foreign governments from using his claims for their own ends. “My job is to tell the truth as I see it,” he said.

“INFORMATION LAUNDERING”

On March 9, a public WeChat account called Happy Reading List reposted an essay claiming the U.S. military created SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, at a lab at Fort Detrick, in Maryland, and loosed it in China during the Military World Games, an international competition for military athletes, held in Wuhan in October 2019.

The account, which has been suspended, was registered in May 2019 by a woman from Henan province in central China, who did not reply to messages. It’s not clear who first wrote the article, which can still be found on other WeChat accounts.

The next day an anonymous petition appeared on the White House’s now-defunct “We the People” portal. It urged U.S. authorities to clarify whether the virus had been developed at Fort Detrick and leaked from the lab. The petition was lavishly covered by China’s state media, despite getting only 1,426 signatures, far shy of the 100,000 needed to merit a response from the White House.

On March 11, Larry Romanoff, who claims to be a former management consultant based in Shanghai, posted an article on Global Research Canada that cribbed heavily from the Happy Reading List posting, citing it as a source.

“There have been a number of stories where the origin of a story is in Russian-controlled space but it’s picked up by Global Research and then put forward as their own story. Then you get Russian media saying western analysts in Canada say that. We call that information laundering,” said Sarts, the NATO StratCom director. “They have been helpful for a long time to Russian information operations and recently to the Chinese as well.”

Neither Romanoff nor Global Research responded to requests for comment. The day of Romanoff’s article, the World Health Organization officially designated the COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. Zhao Lijian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, spent part of the next afternoon retweeting cute dog videos. Then, late that night, he sent out a series of tweets over 13 minutes that launched what may be China’s first truly global digital experiment with overt disinformation.

“When did patient zero begin in US?” Zhao wrote. “How many people are infected? What are the names of the hospitals? It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent! Make public your data! US owe (sic) us an explanation!”

The next morning, Zhao urged his hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers to read and retweet Romanoff’s piece. An hour and a half-hour later he gave Global Research another boost, referring his followers to an earlier Romanoff article that cited Chinese state media reporting to cast doubt on the origins of the virus.

Twitter later added a fact-check warning to Zhao’s tweet about the US Army – but only in English. An identical post in Mandarin carried no such alert. Twitter also put a fact-checking label on only one of Zhao’s two reposts of Global Research content.

A Twitter spokesperson said that the platform has expanded its policies to deal with misleading COVID-19 information but did not address specific posts flagged by AP. Zhao’s tweets were now global news, and they hijacked mainstream discussion of the coronavirus. On Twitter alone, Zhao’s aggressive spray of 11 tweets on March 12 and 13 was cited over 99,000 times over the next six weeks, in at least 54 languages, according to analysis conducted by DFRLab. The accounts that referenced him had nearly 275 million followers on Twitter – a number that almost certainly includes duplicate followers and does not distinguish fake accounts.

Influential conservatives on Twitter, including Donald Trump Jr., hammered Zhao, propelling his tweets to their largest audiences. China’s Global Times and at least 30 Chinese diplomatic accounts, from France to Panama, rushed in to support Zhao. Venezuela’s foreign minister and RT’s correspondent in Caracas, as well as Saudi accounts close to the kingdom’s royal family also significantly extended Zhao’s reach, helping launch his ideas into Spanish and Arabic.

His accusations got uncritical treatment in Russian and Iranian state media and shot back through QAnon discussion boards. But his biggest audience, by far, lay within China itself -- despite the fact that Twitter is banned there. Popular hashtags about his tweetstorm were viewed 314 million times on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, which does not distinguish unique views.

Late on the night of March 13, Zhao posted a message of gratitude on his personal Weibo: “Thank you for your support to me, let us work hard for the motherland 💪!” CONTAGION The same day Zhao tweeted that the virus might have come from the U.S. Army, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei also announced that COVID-19 could be the result of a biological attack.

State media outlets reinforced Khamenei’s message, drawing on foreign sources for validation. Tasnim News, for example, quoted Nikulin, the self-proclaimed Russian bioweapons expert, to suggest the U.S. engineered the virus to target China. Javan Online quoted Zhao’s tweets to claim Chinese officials had evidence the U.S. was behind the pandemic.

Military and religious leaders in Iran repeatedly referred to the virus as a U.S.-made bioweapon. Their remarks were, in turn, amplified by Russian media and picked up in China, where they fueled further speculation.

The International Union of Virtual Media (IUVM), an Iranian network that has been purged repeatedly by Facebook, Google and Twitter, activated a network of websites and covert social media accounts to accuse the U.S. of engineering the virus and praise the leadership and benevolence of China.

Khamenei again cited the conspiracy theory that the virus was made in America during his annual Persian New Year speech on March 22 -- this time as justification for refusing U.S. assistance. “I do not know how real this accusation is but when it exists, who in their right mind would trust you to bring them medication?” Khamenei told the nation. “Possibly your medicine is a way to spread the virus more.”

That same day, the first of two cargo planes loaded with doctors and supplies for a 50-bed field hospital from Doctors Without Borders landed in Iran. On March 23, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs tweeted a Global Research reprint of an article from Chinese state broadcaster CGTN that questioned the origin of the coronavirus, again suggesting it had been made in a U.S. government lab at Fort Detrick.

The next day, Iran’s Ministry of Health withdrew permission for Doctors Without Borders to deliver COVID-19 aid.

A MEDIA PATHOGEN

Ten days after Zhao’s first conspiratorial tweets, China’s global state media apparatus kicked in to push the theory that Zhao, and now Khamenei, were broadcasting.

“Did the U.S. government intentionally conceal the reality of COVID-19 with the flu?” asked a suggestive op-ed in Mandarin published by China Radio International on March 22. “Why was the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Ft. Detrick in Maryland, the largest biochemical testing base, shut down in July 2019?”

Within days, versions of the piece appeared more than 350 times in Chinese state outlets, mostly in Mandarin, but also around the world in English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Arabic, AP found.

The story flew across China, through social media accounts run by police, prosecutors, propaganda departments, anti-cult associations and Communist Youth Leagues. Seven prisons in Sichuan province, five provincial and municipal traffic radio stations, and a dozen accounts run by state media giant CCTV also pushed it out.

China’s Embassy in France promoted the story on Twitter and Facebook. It appeared on YouTube, Weibo, WeChat and a host of Chinese video platforms, including Haokan, Xigua, Baijiahao, Bilibili, iQIYI, Kuaishou and Youku. A seven-second version set to driving music appeared on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

“Clearly pushing these kinds of conspiracy theories, disinformation, does not usually result in any negative consequences for them, ”said Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow in the Asia Program of the German Marshall Fund.

AP found the story was viewed over 7 million times online, with more than 1.8 million comments, shares or reactions. Those numbers are an undercount because many platforms did not publish metrics, and they don’t account for television viewership or circulation in closed groups. Accounts promoting the content had a combined total of over 817 million followers, though many are likely to be duplicates or fakes.

Conspiracies brewing in the United States reinforced China’s messaging. In late March, George Webb, a for-profit conspiracy theorist in Washington D.C., doxed a U.S. Army reservist as Patient Zero, claiming on YouTube that she brought the virus from Fort Detrick to Wuhan during the October military games.

Webb’s video circulated widely in China and was picked up by state-run Global Times. The falsely accused woman got death threats and Webb’s video was pulled from YouTube, but it’s still live in China on Weibo, where it has accrued millions of views.

IN SEARCH OF AN ENDING

In April, Russia and Iran largely dropped the bioweapon conspiracy in their overt messaging. They had a more pressing concern: Surging numbers of dead. China carried on. Beijing was besieged by demands for accountability. In the U.S., there were calls for a “pandemic tariff” and canceling U.S. debt with China. Republicans in Congress began introducing legislation to strip China of its sovereign immunity so Americans could sue.

Australian officials called for an inquiry into the origins and spread of coronavirus. China’s ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye, issued a veiled threat. “Maybe the ordinary people will say, ‘Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?’” he said.

Within a month, China banned beef from four big Australian producers and slapped an 80% tariff on Australian barley -- moves widely seen as retribution, though China has denied that charge. Chinese officials and state media continued to promote made-in-America COVID-19 conspiracies.

State broadcaster CGTN jumped in on May 16, releasing a slick documentary about Fort Detrick set to spooky music that has been viewed on its YouTube channel more than 82,000 times. YouTube has not flagged the video as state-sponsored content, despite a 2018 policy to label government-funded videos. A YouTube spokesperson said that because the video is about COVID-19, it was labeled with an information panel about the virus instead of the publisher.

The video has been played on China’s Bilibili platform 378,000 times and broadcast in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Indonesian, Filipino -- as well as by NTV, a Houston TV station that failed to note the content was Chinese government propaganda.

NTV said it has removed the video flagged by AP. “I have warned our newsroom department for the future,” said Navroz Prasla, the CEO of NTV, which says it is the largest South Asian TV network in North America.

In July and August, Zhao, the foreign ministry spokesman, rekindled the Fort Detrick conspiracy in Tweets that have not been flagged for fact-checking: “Much remains unclear about US’ #FortDetrick and over 200 bio labs in the world,” he wrote on Aug. 11.

On Jan. 14, 2021, a team from the World Health Organization landed in China to investigate the origins of the outbreak. The next day, in one of the final acts of the Trump administration, the U.S. State Department put out a “Fact Sheet” stating that the pandemic could be the result of a leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which it claimed has collaborated on secret projects with China’s military.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned those allegations as “the ‘last-day madness’ of ‘Mr. Liar.’” “I’d like to stress that if the United States truly respects facts, it should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its 200-plus overseas bio-labs, invite WHO experts to conduct origin-tracing in the United States,” spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a Jan. 18 press conference.

Her remarks went viral in China. COVID-19 disinformation has been good for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Within China, Zhao and his colleagues have a growing fan base and their followers on Twitter have soared. Zhao now has over 879,000 Twitter followers.

Questions have been raised about how much of this audience is real and how much is from fake accounts — speculation China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said is groundless. “Spreading disinformation about the epidemic is indeed spreading a ‘political virus,’” the ministry told AP. “False information is the common enemy of mankind, and China has always opposed the creation and spread of false information.”

Associated Press reporters David Klepper, Farnoush Amiri, Beatrice Dupuy, Dake Kang, Peter Hamlin, Jeannie Ohm, Allen Breed, Francois Duckett and news researcher Si Chen contributed to this report.

Spain: Catalan vote to test pandemic's impact on separatism

February 12, 2021

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Over 5 million voters will be called to the polls on Sunday in Spain’s northeast Catalonia for an election that will measure the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the restive region’s secessionist movement.

Pro-independence lawmakers have held power in the regional government based in Barcelona for the past decade. And although pro-union Socialist Salvador Illa, Spain's former health minister, is hoping to end the separatists’ hegemony on local power, the outcome is far from clear according to the polls.

Participation in the election will likely be lowered by a worrying rate of COVID-19 infections. As of Wednesday, Catalonia was reporting an accumulated incidence rate of 391 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the past two weeks, which while below Spain’s current average is still considered dangerous by epidemiologists. More than 9,000 of Spain’s confirmed total of 63,000 virus deaths were in Catalonia.

The election comes after authorities had to tighten restrictions on social activities to stem another surge in infections. So while Catalans will be free to vote all day on Sunday, eating establishments will still only open for breakfast and lunch and a curfew will send everyone home by 10 p.m.

Interim regional president Pere Aragonès had wanted to postpone the election that he had called before a post-Christmas surge in infections, but a court ruled that it should go forward. Two other Spanish regions postponed elections in the summer until contagion rates dropped. Neighboring Portugal, which is being hammered by the virus, held a national election last month.

Catalan authorities are taking extra precautions, including using traditional food markets, sports pavilions, and an old bull ring in the city of Tarragona, which are better ventilated, as polling stations for the first time.

“We can guarantee that the polling stations will be safe,” Bernat Solé, the leading Catalan government official in charge of the vote’s preparations, said this week. While mail-in voting is up to a record 284,000 requests, voters are being encouraged to stagger their voting throughout the day.

Those particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 are encouraged to vote between 9 a.m. and noon. The general population is supposed to vote from noon until 7 p.m. That leaves the final hour until polls close at 8 p.m. for those voters who are either infected or quarantined due to recent contact with an infected person.

Poll workers will be provided with high-grade face masks, as well as a full protection suit — gloves, body covering, and face shield — for use during that final hour when the contagion risk is the highest. Authorities have also made 80,000 tests available for workers who want to be tested before election day.

This election will be the first since an incredibly divisive vote in 2017 in the aftermath of a failed attempt by a secessionist-controlled Catalan government to declare independence from the rest of Spain. Pro-secession forces maintained a slim majority, holding 70 seats in the 135-member chamber, in that December 2017 vote but on less than half of the popular vote thanks to election laws that give more weight to underpopulated areas.

With nine parties running, no single one is expected to win an outright majority. Political observers expect that the secession question will still hold sway over the electorate and only further entrench the roughly equal split in the population.

“I don’t think much will change,” said Ana Sofía Cardenal, political science professor at the Open University of Catalonia. “The separatists will still be the most mobilized part of the electorate, and they will likely win another majority of seats, but not in votes.”

The two main pro-secession parties, Aragonès’ left-wing Republic Left of Catalonia and the center-right Together for Catalonia, will be vying to see which can claim the leadership of the forces who want an independent Catalan state between Spain and France.

However, unlike in recent years, they are not promising another breakaway bid in the short term. In-fighting between the two parties, which had formed a coalition government, eventually led to Sunday’s early election.

Their immediate goal is a government amnesty for the jailed leaders of the 2017 secession attempt. Illa, who stepped down from the Health Ministry last month, is poised to greatly boost the Socialist Party of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and lead the bloc of pro-union parties. The Socialists are forecast to inflict big losses on the liberal Citizens, which failed to capitalize on its victory in the 2017 election and was left in the opposition.

The new actor in the race is the far-right Vox party, which is set to enter the regional chamber for the first time, likely at the expense of the traditional conservative Popular Party, the leading opposition to Sánchez’s left-wing government on the national level. The Popular Party has scaled down its once-harsh rhetoric against the separatists in the election campaign.

“The Popular Party has a lot at stake,” Cardenal said. “If Vox beats it, the Popular Party’s strategy not only in Catalonia but across Spain will be affected.”

Renata Brito contributed to this report.

Portugal's relief at falling COVID-19 cases tempered by fear

February 12, 2021

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Dr. Nuno Germano had a nagging fear when Portugal’s January surge of COVID-19 cases threatened to overwhelm the public health system, forcing his intensive care unit at Lisbon’s Curry Cabral Hospital to double its number of beds in a week.

“I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to care for the patients,” he says. After Portugal figured for about two weeks last month as the world’s worst-hit country by size of population, anxiety over the recent pandemic peak has eased slightly.

The number of COVID-19 patients in hospital and in intensive care fell Thursday for the third straight day. The health ministry reported the fewest hospitalizations since Jan. 20 and the fewest patients in ICUs for almost two weeks.

But Portugal’s seven-day average of daily deaths remained the world’s highest, at 2.05 per 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins University. Experts reckon the surge peaked near the end of last month. But Germano isn’t expecting any immediate relief at the intensive care unit he heads, where 25 patients are in care.

“We’re still expecting cases to rise,” he said Thursday, at the end of a 24-hour shift. “There’s a time lag of about one or two weeks between the start of a drop in the number of cases and a reduction of patients in intensive care.”

On top of that, not only has his unit been receiving more patients, but they are patients who are more severely ill than in earlier phases of the pandemic. The labored breathing of his patients, the multiple oxygen tubes and beeping machines are testimony to that.

Dr. Fernando Maltez, one of the country’s leading infectious disease experts who works at the Curry Cabral, is encouraged that Portugal appears to be on the right path. But he says the threat from COVID-19 variants hasn’t diminished.

“The drop (in numbers) doesn’t mean our problems are over,” he said. Since the pandemic erupted, the country of about 10 million has officially recorded just over 778,000 cases and close to 15,000 deaths.

Barry Hatton in Lisbon contributed to this report.

Pandemic takes a toll on exhausted UK funeral directors

February 12, 2021

LONDON (AP) — Funeral director Hasina Zaman recently helped a family say goodbye to a young man in his 30s who had died from COVID-19, on the same day she was planning a service for a husband and wife, both also lost to the virus.

Since the pandemic struck, Zaman's phone has rarely stopped ringing, with bereaved people seeking help that she is not always able to provide. “Every week I think I don’t have what it takes,” said Zaman, whose company Compassionate Funerals serves a multicultural, multi-faith community in east London. The small firm normally arranges about five funerals a week, but COVID-19 has driven the number as high as 20.

“We just do it,” Zaman said. “Literally just hands-on approach and just go for it and do it. And it’s not sustainable. It’s definitely not sustainable, because it’s not healthy.” Funeral home staff are under pressure in many places, but the burden is especially intense in Britain, where more than 115,000 people with the virus have died, one of the highest per capita death tolls in the world. Undertakers, embalmers and others who deal with death for a living often regard the pressure on them as less important than the pain felt by bereaved families. But many are exhausted by the sheer amount of mortality they have faced, and the pandemic is increasing awareness that their own mental health also deserves tending to.

Funeral directors across the country describe a heavy burden from more services, tougher hygiene measures and fewer staff because of illness and self-isolation requirements. Emma Symons, an embalmer at Heritage & Sons Funeral Directors, northwest of London, says her workload has tripled.

“Some days it is relentless and is really difficult, particularly if we have younger people who’ve died,” she said. “Sometimes it really does get a bit too much.” Heritage & Sons' parent company says its group of funeral homes across southeast England is arranging 30% to 50% more funerals than in a typical year. Ben Blunt, a senior funeral director at Heritage & Sons, says this winter’s surge — which saw Britain record more than 30,000 coronavirus deaths in January alone, though cases and deaths are now falling — has been even worse than the peak last spring.

“In the first lockdown, we kind of didn’t know what to expect,” he said. “But having had the experience first time around and now going through it for a second time, there is that sort of slight dread, that we almost know what’s on the horizon.”

Alison Crake was better prepared for the pandemic than most. Before anyone had ever heard of COVID-19, she wrote a guide about how to plan for a pandemic for Britain’s National Association of Funeral Directors. Crake anticipated some of the stresses a pandemic could bring, including staff absences, a shortage of mortuary space and the need to procure extra protective equipment.

But she says that if anyone had described the scale of death and disruption to come, “I probably would have gasped at the thought of it.” Crake, who runs her family's funeral firm in northeast England, says the profession has been shaken by shuttered places of worship, strict limits on attendance at funerals and other restrictions to slow the spread of the virus which mean funeral staff can’t always give grieving families the comfort they crave.

Speaking sensitively to a bereaved family over Zoom is a new and delicate skill that funeral directors have had to learn. Blunt says it’s painful not to be able to do something as simple as shake a client’s hand.

“We’re professionals,” he said. “But we’re human beings as well.” Still, Crake says funeral staff, who often regard their profession as a calling, can be reluctant to seek help — though some in the industry are trying to change that. The guide she wrote was updated in October with a greater emphasis on providing emotional support for employees. Those who are struggling can call Our Frontline, a service set up during the pandemic, partially funded by Prince William and his wife Catherine's Royal Foundation, that offers mental health support around the clock to key workers. Funeral staff have been included in that category, alongside medics and emergency services personnel.

“We understand that this is the profession that we’ve chosen,” Crake said. “And for many of us, we see it as vocational. We consider ourselves to be part of our community and our community is part of us. But equally, there is a need to get that balance to make sure that this prolonged exposure to trauma doesn’t result in compassion fatigue.”

Conservative lawmaker John Hayes, who heads a parliamentary group on funerals and bereavement, recently paid tribute to the “quiet dignity” of funeral workers during the pandemic, saying their essential work “often goes unnoticed by those in the corridors of power.”

Zaman is anguished at the restrictions on travel and assembly that mean families often can’t grieve together. One recent weekday, mourners stood in the rain outside her parlor, taking turns to enter for socially distanced prayers over the coffin of a young man who had died far from his homeland of Gambia. A eulogy was delivered on the sidewalk over the rumble of cars and buses.

But she is proud of how the profession has adapted since the first surge of the outbreak. Livestreaming allows friends and family to watch funerals from afar. Thanks to training and protective equipment, she can let Muslim clients wash and shroud their loved ones’ bodies before burial, in line with Islamic practice.

Zaman says when families can have that connection and catharsis, “you feel a sense of achievement” that makes the stress worthwhile. “I am exhausted,” she said. “For sure. But I look after myself. ... I recover. I’ve got 10 hours to recover after work and during the nighttime, and then I come back here and carry on.”

Kearney reported from Aylesbury and Bletchley, England.

EU lawmakers OK $815 billion recovery program

February 10, 2021

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union lawmakers on Wednesday approved a 672.5 billion euro ($815 billion) recovery package of loans and grants to help member nations recover more quickly from the coronavirus pandemic, but countries will not receive the money for several months.

The European Parliament voted 582-40, with 69 abstentions, in favor of the regulation for the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the central pillar of the the bloc’s 750 billion euro ($910 billion) recovery plan. The leaders of the EU's 27 nations adopted the RRF last year.

To receive their share of the money, which is linked to respecting the rule of law, EU members must submit their plans for the funds by the end of April. Each plan has to have at least 37% of its budget dedicated to fighting climate change and at least 20% to improving digital transformation and other actions.

“In the long-term, this money is going to bring about change and progress to meet our digital and climate goals,” Eider Gardiazabal Rubial, a lawmaker closely involved in the negotiations, said. “We will ensure that the measures will alleviate poverty and unemployment, and will take into account the gender dimension of this crisis. Our health systems will also become more resilient.”

So far, 18 nations have submitted their draft plans to the European Commission, which is in charge of assessing them. Once evaluated by the EU's executive arm, plans are to be approved on a case by case basis by the European Council, which represents the governments of the 27 individual member countries.

The funding will be available for three years and EU countries can request up to 13% pre-financing for their recovery and resilience plans. Subsequent disbursements will depend on whether targets set out in the plans are achieved.

Once a proposal allowing the European Commission to borrow on financial markets is ratified by all member nations, the commission expects the first recovery fund payments could be made from mid-2021.

Surging virus in French African outpost reveals inequalities

February 10, 2021

MAMOUDZOU, Mayotte (AP) — Mayotte’s main tourist office stands nearly empty, a lonely tropical outpost overlooking a people-less port. Its only hospital, however, is overwhelmed. The demand for intensive care beds is more than triple the supply, as medical workers fight to contain the French Indian Ocean territory’s worst coronavirus outbreak yet.

The Mayotte islands are the poorest corner of the European Union, tucked between Madagascar and the mainland coast of Mozambique in southern Africa. They have been the last spot in France to receive any coronavirus vaccines.

Local authorities feel forgotten and say their difficulties in fighting the virus reflect long-standing inequalities between France’s majority-white mainland and its far-flung multiracial former colonies.

The French army is sending in medical workers and a few ICU beds, but the temporary aid will only go so far on the islands where masks are a luxury, where nearly a third of the region's 300,000 people have no running water and where a new lockdown is suffocating livelihoods.

“We used to work at the big market to sell things, to have money to feed our families,” said Ahamada Soulaimana Soilihi, a 40-year-old father of six living in a shantytown in Mayotte’s capital city of Mamoudzou.

Then last week, authorities shut down Mayotte’s economy, ordering people to stay home to combat fast-growing cases of the virus variant dominant in South Africa. “How can we live without work, without being able to move, without anything?” Soilihi asked.

While ocean waves lap empty beaches and police patrol the quiet streets of Mamoudzou’s business district, many people in Soilihi's Bandrajou neighborhood seem unaware of lockdown rules or social distancing measures. Clusters of children play barefoot on the dusty ground, girls carry buckets on their heads to fetch water from a collective pump, an older woman at an informal street stall braids a younger woman’s hair. Almost no one wears a mask.

Health workers acknowledge there’s no easy solution. The virus is attacking Mayotte in a “brutal and rapid” way, Dominique Voynet, the head of the regional health service, told The Associated Press. “All indicators are getting darker and darker ... people are dropping like flies.”

Mayotte’s weekly infection rate is now nearly four times higher than the national French average. The territory has registered 11,447 virus cases since the pandemic began — a third of them over the past two weeks — and at least 68 deaths, double the per capita virus death rate nationwide.

That made it all the more disappointing that Mayotte was the last French overseas region to get a vaccine shipment, a month after the first doses landed in Paris, more than 8,400 kilometers (5,000 miles) away.

“We were equipped much later than other (French) regions, to my great dismay,” Voynet said. The French Foreign Legion delivered the super-freezer needed to store Mayotte's initial deliveries of 950 doses of Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines. More shipments have trickled in, and the territory has so far vaccinated 2,400 people, or less than 1% of its population.

In Paris, government spokesman Gabriel Attal initially argued that Mayotte’s young population – just 4% are over 60 – meant the region was a low priority for vaccination, noting its “demographic and geographic realities which are obviously different” from the mainland.

But now that infections are raging, France's central government is increasingly worried. Doctors are transporting several ICU patients per day to nearby Reunion island. The French military on Sunday flew in medical workers. The regional health service is organizing water deliveries to encourage the poorest to stay home.

Many Indian Ocean islands and countries on Africa's mainland are facing similar — or worse — outbreaks and vaccine delays. Madagascar, with 27 million people, does not yet have vaccines. Mozambique, with 30 million people, has imposed a curfew to battle a surge driven by the variant dominant in South Africa, and doesn’t have any vaccines either. Neither do the nearby Comoros islands for its population of 850,000.

The largest country in the region, South Africa, with 60 million people, has reported more than 1.47 million cases, including over 46,800 deaths. Its health minister announced Wednesday the government will be giving out the as-yet unapproved Johnson & Johnson vaccine to health care workers after a small test showed that the AstraZeneca vaccine offers only minimal protection against the variant dominant in the country.

Mayotte lawmaker Mansour Kamardine doesn’t understand why his homeland is in such dire straits. When the rest of the Comoros islands chain voted in the 1970s for independence from France after a century-and-a-half of colonial rule, Mayotte residents voted overwhelmingly to stay French.

Today, Mayotte has the same administrative status as any region on mainland France — one of the world’s richest countries. The territory uses the euro as currency and is represented in the European Parliament. A 2003 law promises “liberty, equality and fraternity” to all people on France’s overseas lands.

But when the virus hit, “Mayotte was forgotten,” Kamardine told the AP. “We are far from the eyes, we are far from the heart” of French power. He wrote to the government to plead for more permanent ICU beds, to no avail. The whole territory has just 16.

Mayotte is among nine territories – mostly French – with a special status in the EU as an “outermost region,” which have access to development funds aimed at reducing the economic gap with the European continent left over from colonial times.

But with Europe now facing its own vaccine woes and protracted economic crisis, Mayotte’s prospects look dim. Piles of red plastic Coca-Cola chairs collect dust in a Mamoudzou cafe, shaded by palm trees, where a sign points toward Tokyo, 11,230 kilometers (nearly 7,000 miles) away. Metal grates hide storefronts. Business travel and tourism have plunged as the pandemic wears on.

At the Caribou restaurant, bar and hotel, Chaima Nombamba manages the takeout counter — the only piece of the business still allowed to operate. The hotel shut down because of “a flood of cancellations.” Most of the restaurant staff is on temporary unemployment — a French government coronavirus program that those in the informal economy don’t enjoy.

“Yes, the health crisis is very serious, and there is a deadly impact for some of us. But is it the moment to punish small businesses, notably our sector of activity, which is really hit hard, which is being killed bit by bit by little fires?” she asked.

“We don’t know what tomorrow will bring. We can’t make plans or anticipate certain things because it’s changing every day,” she said. “So where is the solution?”

Charlton reported from Paris. Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg contributed.

Austria to restrict movement from Tyrol over variant fears

February 09, 2021

VIENNA (AP) — Austria's leader said Tuesday that people will have to produce a negative coronavirus test to leave the country's Tyrol province as authorities try to prevent the spread of a coronavirus variant first discovered in South Africa.

Some 293 cases of the more contagious variant have been confirmed in Tyrol. More than 120 of those cases are currently active, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said. Concentrated in the Schwaz district, east of Innsbruck, they represent the biggest known current outbreak of the variant in the European Union, authorities said.

Officials in Tyrol initially resisted restrictions, but on Monday drew up a list of measures that included more police checks on mask-wearing and social distancing, and a requirement for negative antigen tests before people can use cable cars and ski lifts.

The federal government in Vienna also warned Austrians on Monday against traveling to the province — even as schools, shops, hairdressing salons, museums and zoos reopened across the country after a roughly six-week lockdown.

Kurz said Tuesday that for 10 days starting Friday, people wanting to leave Tyrol -- a popular skiing region which borders Germany, Italy and Switzerland -- will have to show a negative coronavirus test produced within the previous 48 hours.

Police, with support from the military, will enforce the new rule on the roads, Kurz said. He also called for Tyrol to act to ensure the variant doesn’t spread further within the province. The measure won't apply to East Tyrol, a part of the province that is separated from Tyrol proper by a sliver of another Austrian province and Italian territory and is relatively unaffected, Kurz said. He said Friday was chosen as the start date to allow time for preparations and because a “mad rush and chaos” wouldn't be helpful.

People flouting the rules could face a fine of up to 1,450 euros ($1,745). The chancellor pointed to preliminary results from a small study that showed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, one of the three vaccines cleared for use in the EU, was only minimally effective against mild to moderate cases of COVID-19 caused by the South African variant.

“That is a big problem because nearly 50% of the vaccine we will have delivered by the summer comes from AstraZeneca,” Kurz said. “So...we must do everything to prevent the spread of this variant, and if that doesn't succeed, at least to slow its spread.”

“If a mutation like the South African one spreads quickly and strongly, that will cost a lot of people their lives and the road to normality will be delayed again by months,” the chancellor told reporters in Vienna.

Austria's initial response to the Tyrol outbreak drew criticism in neighboring Germany. Ahead of Tuesday's announcement, a senior official in Bavaria's main governing party said that “from our point of view, what Austria is doing is irresponsible.”

“To be honest, it's a farce — on one hand issuing a warning to their own population against travel to Tyrol province, and on the other hand easing (restrictions) in the whole country, including in Tyrol,” Markus Blume, the general secretary of the Christian Social Union party, told German news channel n-tv.

Tyrol is home to the ski resort of Ischgl, the location of what is considered one of Europe's earliest “super-spreader” events of the pandemic nearly a year ago. An independent commission later found that regional authorities acted too slowly to shut down ski resorts.

Geir Moulson reported from Berlin.

Skating-crazy Dutch defy pandemic by taking to outdoor ice

February 09, 2021

DOORN, Netherlands (AP) — A deep winter freeze gripping the Netherlands is reawakening the national obsession with skating on frozen canals. With subzero temperatures forecast to last more than a week, ice fever swept the nation Tuesday, offering a welcome respite from grim coronavirus news while also creating a challenge for authorities trying to uphold social distancing rules.

People around the country were rummaging through attics and dusting off long-unused skates, while businesses that sharpen skate blades reported boom times. Ice skating is a national wintertime passion in the Netherlands, with the country's spandex-clad elite athletes dominating Winter Olympic speedskating races in recent years. Amateurs of all ages eagerly await the Arctic conditions that allow them to take to the country's vast network of canals and waterways.

But with the country in a strict coronavirus lockdown, the prospect of a long-distance skating race in the northern province of Friesland being staged for the first time since 1997 remains remote at best.

The association that organizes the 11 Cities Tour over frozen canals and lakes said in January that “under the current coronavirus measures, it is not possible to organize" the near mythical event. Since then, authorities have not relaxed the measures beyond allowing elementary school students back into classrooms this week.

The chairman of the association poured more cold water on people's hopes Tuesday, noting just what a production the race normally involves. “We're talking about a tour with 1--1.5 million spectators, 25,000 participants, thousands of volunteers and half of the Netherlands on the road,” Wiebe Wieling told national broadcaster NOS. “Every right-thinking person will realize that something like that is not possible” amid the pandemic.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte weighed in on the debate Monday night, saying that skating authorities could consider allowing races on natural ice if the country's top 120 racers enter a coronavirus bubble. But he, too, said that staging an event with a huge numbers of spectators was out of the question, even if it is outdoors.

Still, Rutte said the Dutch should make the most of the conditions while they last. “Enjoy this beautiful weather and the ice,” Rutte said. “But do that within the COVID-19 rules.” Dutch media reported a few hardy souls risking a skate on thin ice in parts of the Netherlands on Tuesday, but for the time being temporary ice tracks were the safest place to lace up one's skates.

Local schoolchildren visited the skating club in Doorn, 65 kilometers (40 miles) southeast of Amsterdam, which created its rink by spraying water onto an outdoor inline skating track and built up an even ice surface by dragging a Persian rug around it.

Canals are expected to be frozen solid enough later in the week for people to skate on. Authorities in Amsterdam have closed locks and banned boats on parts of the city's World Heritage-listed ring of canals to give them a better chance of freezing over.

The municipality, however, also warned skaters to stick to social distancing and other coronavirus restrictions. “The coronavirus rules for public places also apply on the ice,” City Hall said. It was not only ice skating fans preparing for the big chill.

A zoo in the central Netherlands moved 15 penguins indoors and out of the cold Tuesday. Unlike their Antarctic cousins, the black-footed penguins hail from South Africa and Namibia and aren’t used to such icy conditions, Burgers’ Zoo said.

The freezing conditions also created natural ice sculptures in a marina in the village of Monnikendam, just north of Amsterdam on Markermeer Lake, with boats moored there swathed in swirling sheets of ice.

Lines of wind-blown icicles hung off boat railings and ropes, and ice coated a set of children's swings and trees near the edge of the snow-covered frozen waters of the lake. “We’re living in the most beautiful painting of the 17th century,” Rutte said.

Corder reported from The Hague, Netherlands.

Fleeing coup, Myanmar police refugees in India seek asylum

March 21, 2021

MIZORAM, India (AP) — Myanmar police officers who fled to India after they said they defied orders to shoot people protesting their country's military coup are urging India's government not to send them back and to grant them asylum on humanitarian grounds.

One of the officers who has sought refuge in a village in the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram along the border with Myanmar said they didn't want to return to their country until the problems there are solved.

That officer and others who spoke to The Associated Press did so on condition of anonymity out of concern for the safety of family members still in Myanmar. Another officer who fled told AP that soldiers ordered them to “arrest, beat, torture the protesters” and said police were always sent to the front whenever there was protest. She said the officers had “no choice” but to leave Myanmar.

The security crackdown following Myanmar's Feb. 1 coup has forced scores of refugees over the border into India. India’s state and federal authorities haven’t given any figures, but some state ministers have said the number could be in the hundreds. One Indian village has given shelter to 34 police personnel and one firefighter who crossed into India over the last two weeks.

The AP has not been able to independently verify their claims that they were ordered to shoot protesters, though images and accounts of the security forces’ crackdown inside Myanmar have shown intensifying violence against civilians. More than 200 people have been killed by security forces since the coup.

India's federal government and the state of Mizoram are at odds over the influx of refugees. Earlier, the Mizoram government had allowed refugees to enter and provided them with food and shelter. But last week, India’s Home Ministry told four Indian states bordering Myanmar, including Mizoram, to take measures to prevent refugees from entering India except on humanitarian grounds.

The ministry said the states were not authorized to accord refugee status to anyone entering from Myanmar, as India is not a signatory to the U.N. Refugee Convention of 1951 or its 1967 Protocol. On Thursday, Mizoram’s top elected official Zoramthanga wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said “India cannot turn a blind eye” to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in his state.

Zoramthanga, who uses one name, wrote in the letter that the people of his state, who share ethnic ties with the refugees from Chin communities in Myanmar, “can’t remain indifferent to their plight." He urged the federal government to review its order and allow refugees into India.

Earlier this month, Myanmar asked India to return the police officers who crossed the border. India shares a 1,643-kilometer (1,020-mile) border with Myanmar, and is home to thousands of refugees from Myanmar in different states.

Doctors protest in Myanmar as state violence continues

March 21, 2021

MANDALAY, Myanmar (AP) — Health care workers marched through Myanmar's second-biggest city at dawn Sunday, kicking off another day of countrywide protests against last month's coup. Elsewhere police used violence against protesters and security forces shot dead at least one person.

About 100 doctors, nurses, medical students and pharmacists, wearing the long white coats, lined up on a main road in Mandalay to chant slogans and voice their opposition to the Feb. 1 coup that toppled the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mandalay has been a major center of opposition to the takeover, and later in the day engineers there held what has been dubbed a “no-human strike,” an increasingly popular tactic that involves lining up signboards in streets or other public areas as proxies for human protesters.

The protests are part of a broader civil disobedience movement, including boycotts and strikes, that aims to restore the civilian government and return Myanmar to its slow march towards democracy that began nearly a decade ago when the military began loosening its grip after five decades of rule

In recent weeks, however, the numbers of protesters has fallen off and the death toll has climbed in the face of lethal force by police and soldiers shooting into crowds. The independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners had verified 247 deaths nationwide.

While Mandalay’s early morning march was unmolested by security forces, at least one protester was shot dead Sunday in Monywa, another central Myanmar city, according to the online news site Myanmar Now and numerous social media posts.

Myanmar Now, citing a doctor in Monywa, identified the victim as Min Min Zaw, who was shot in the head as he was helping assemble barricades for a protest. Virtually all the dead since the coup have been shooting victims, and in many cases, have been shot in the head.

Elsewhere, students, teachers and engineers marched in Dawei, a city in southeastern Myanmar that has become a hotspot for opposition and has seen at least five killings by security forces. On Sunday, protesters broke into small groups and varied the timings of their marches in an effort to avoid confrontations. In the initial period after the coup, protests there had huge turnouts. But after police stated shooting into crowds, turnouts declined.

In a more rural outlying area, protesters from several villages in Launglone Township held their protest on motorbikes. In Yangon’s Thaketa neighborhood, a funeral was held Sunday for 15-year-old high school student Aung Kaung Htet, who was killed a day earlier, Myanmar Now reported.

According to posts on social media, Thaketa was one of several areas where police fired their guns Sunday, the others including Tachileik and Taunnggyi in Shan State in eastern Myanmar, and Gangaw, a town in Magway Division in the west-central part of the country.

The protesters' cause over the weekend received support from demonstrations in several places abroad, including Tokyo, Taipei in Taiwan and on Times Square in New York City. While nearly 250 deaths have been confirmed since the coup, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners says the actual total, including cases where verification has been difficult, is probably much higher.

The group also has confirmed that 2,345 people have been arrested or charged since the coup, with 1,994 still detained or sought for arrest.

Myanmar junta chokes information flow as protests intensify

March 19, 2021

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Authorities in Myanmar arrested a spokesman for ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party as they intensify efforts to choke off the spread of information about growing protests against last month’s military takeover.

Despite a crackdown that has killed more than 200 demonstrators so far, protesters were back in the streets Friday morning in several cities and towns. Some rallies proceeded without incident, but in Aungban town in eastern Shan state, online Tachileik News Agency reported that at least seven people were injured when security forces sought to break up their march using tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition.

The independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners reported that as of Thursday, it had verified 224 killings linked to the coup’s aftermath, more than half of them in Yangon, the biggest city. It said 2,258 people have been arrested or charged, with 1,938 still detained or evading arrest.

Kyi Toe, a spokesman for the National League for Democracy, was arrested Thursday, according to a Facebook post by Phyo Zeya Thaw, an elected lawmaker from his party. The arrest was also reported Friday by Mratt Kyaw Thu, a respected local journalist.

Kyi Toe had been a major source of information in the early days following the Feb. 1 coup, after State Counsellor Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were taken into custody by the army along with other senior party members. The takeover kept NLD and other lawmakers from taking the seats they won in last November’s election.

The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy after five decades of military rule. Suu Kyi’s party was due to to take power for a second five-year term after the landslide election victory.

No privately owned newspapers were published this past week for the first time in eight years, following bans and voluntary suspensions. The military government also has banned at least five local news organizations from disseminating information on any platform, print, broadcast or online, but its orders were mostly ignored. About 40 journalists have been arrested, with roughly half still in detention, including Thein Zaw of The Associated Press.

Restrictions on the internet have been in place since shortly after the coup. They started with a largely ineffective block of social media platforms including Facebook and Twitter, and were followed by a nightly suspension of mobile internet access from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m., which escalated since last Sunday to a round-the-clock stoppage. Broadband Wi-Fi service remains available, though spotty.

The flow of information is even more restricted in six townships of Yangon, which have been under martial law since Monday. Movement in and out of those neighborhoods is difficult, and some residents have reported having their electricity cut off. Those neighborhoods were wracked by police violence on Sunday, with dozens of protesters killed.

In one of the strongest statements issued by a fellow Southeast Asian nation, Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Friday urged a halt to violence in Myanmar and asked other leaders to hold a regional summit on the crisis.

“Indonesia urges that the use of violence in Myanmar be stopped immediately to avoid more victims. The safety and welfare of the people must be a top priority,” Widodo said in a televised address, offering his condolences to the victims and their families. “Indonesia also urges dialogue and reconciliation to be carried out immediately to restore democracy, peace and stability in Myanmar."

Widodo, the leader of Southeast Asia’s largest economy, said that he will immediately speak with Brunei, the current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, to set up a meeting of leaders of its 10 member countries.

Widodo’s move came after ASEAN foreign ministers held a March 2 meeting at which they reached no consensus on the crisis.

Myanmar factory attacks put focus on Chinese influence

March 18, 2021

BANGKOK (AP) — Confusion over what exactly happened during recent attacks on factories in Myanmar has highlighted the complex and troubled nature of the country's relations with China amid a broad public backlash against a Feb. 1 coup.

Many in Myanmar suspect Beijing of supporting the military’s takeover, and there has long been a deep vein of resentment against China's growing influence, but protesters insist they were not responsible for a spate of attacks on factories last weekend. Some say they suspect the military instigated attacks on the factories to justify imposing martial law in industrial zones that have been hotspots for protests against the junta.

Adding to the uncertainties, China has said it is prepared to do more to protect its extensive business investments in Myanmar, which include factories, pipelines and other big infrastructure projects.

China's state-run Global Times asserted that protesters “incited by the West” had attacked 32 factories, causing 240 million yuan (about $30 million) in damage. Turmoil is bad for business and will deter investors, the Chinese state-owned broadcaster CGTN said in a commentary.

“But China won’t allow its interests to be exposed to further aggression. If the authorities cannot deliver and the chaos continues to spread, China might be forced into taking more drastic action to protect its interests,” CGTN said.

With limited internet and cell phone connectivity, outside observers face increasing difficulty verifying what is going on in Myanmar or getting an official response from the junta. The vast Hlaing Thayar industrial zone and several other districts of Yangon, the country’s biggest city, have been under martial law since Monday, putting them under complete military control and making it difficult for protesters to organize and communicate.

But people living in the area — home to hundreds of clothing, shoe and other factories — said only a handful of factories were affected. Local TV networks including the military-run Myawaddy TV reported that five factories were burnt in Hlaing Thayar on Sunday.

Much of the controversy over the arson attacks has centered on what happened in and around the Chinese-owned Xing Jia shoe factory in Hlaing Thayar. According to records from Panjiva and the Myanmar Investment Commission, the factory makes Western brand boots such as DeWalt and Dunlop and a wide variety of clothing.

But accounts from multiple sources, including Yangon-based labor organizer Andrew Tillett-Saks, say the fires broke out after five garment workers were shot and killed by the military when they reported to the factory to collect their February wages.

People living in the industrial zone contacted by phone by The Associated Press said that despite suspicions that the Feb. 1 coup had Chinese support, workers were not responsible for burning the factories, which are protected by high walls and guards.

“Many shouted in anger to burn down Chinese-owned factories, but none actually implemented such attacks because it's hard to access those areas and many residents work in those factories,” said San Maung, a bicycle repairman living in the area.

“If people had wanted to attack these places, they could have done so since day one. There was no looting nor fires at all until March 14, when truckloads of soldiers brutally suppressed the protests,” San Maung said.

According to the independent group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, the violence Sunday claimed at least 38 lives. The Myanmar-based group, which keeps a tally of deaths related to the crackdown, said that as of Wednesday, 217 people had been killed and 2,191 arrested or charged.

The Facebook page for the Chinese Embassy in Myanmar was flooded with tens of thousands of angry comments from local residents incensed over the lack of any mention of sympathy for those who died in the violence, after the page posted a call for better protection for the factories and Chinese personnel.

“Worryingly, there's a lot of anti-Chinese sentiments," Thiri Thant Mon of Pegu Partners, a Yangon-based consultancy, said Thursday in a web seminar hosted by Japan's Nikkei Asia. “That's worrying because there are a lot of native Myanmar Chinese businesspeople as well.

“Any kind of racial tension is worrying," she said. Apart from hundreds of factories making mostly clothing, shoes and other light industrial products, China has massive investments in Myanmar's energy and mining sectors.

One of the biggest is the twin oil and gas pipelines that run nearly 800 kilometers (500 miles) from Made island on Myanmar's west coast to Ruili, on the border of China's Yunnan province. Before the coup, Aung San Suu Kyi's government, which was due to remain in power after a landslide win in a November election, had announced a tender for another big Chinese-led project, a huge, deep-water port in Kyaukphyu, western Myanmar. A January visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi drew a pledge for both sides to work toward completing that project and pushing ahead with an “economic corridor" linking China's southwestern Yunnan province with the port and major cities in Myanmar.

The coup and its aftermath have raised risks for all doing business in and with Myanmar, analysts say. Such setbacks are nothing new for China, whose relations with its resource-rich neighbor were ruptured for a few years in the late 1960s when anti-Chinese riots broke out during Mao Zedong’s ultra-leftist Cultural Revolution.

In more recent years, Myanmar's leaders for years have relied on China, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, to help shield both military and civilian governments from harsh U.N. sanctions for human rights abuses.

Suu Kyi payments claimed as Myanmar junta raises pressure

March 18, 2021

MANDALAY, Myanmar (AP) — A Myanmar construction magnate with links to military rulers said he personally gave more than half a million dollars in cash to deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi in a broadcast on state television aimed at discrediting the ousted civilian government.

The statement by Maung Waik could pave the way for more serious charges against Suu Kyi, who has been detained since the Feb. 1 military takeover while security forces increasingly use lethal force against a popular uprising demanding the restoration of democratically elected leaders.

The military has already tried to implicate Suu Kyi in corruption, alleging she was given $600,000 plus gold bars by a political ally. She and President Win Myint have been charged so far with inciting unrest, possession of walkie-talkies and violating a pandemic order limiting public gatherings.

In the latest salvo of allegations, Maung Waik, who has previously been convicted of drug trafficking, told state TV he gave cash to government ministers to help his businesses. He said the money included $100,000 given to Suu Kyi in 2018 for a charitable foundation named after her mother, $150,000 in 2019 for which he did not specify a reason, $50,000 last February and $250,000 in April, again with no purpose specified.

The country's Anti-Corruption Commission is investigating the allegations and vowed to take action against Suu Kyi under the Anti-Corruption Law, the state-run newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar reported Thursday.

Meanwhile, a court has issued an arrest warrant for the country's U.N. ambassador, Kyaw Moe Tun, on charges of treason, the newspaper reported. The charge stems from his remarks Feb. 26 at U.N. headquarters, in which he condemned the coup and appealed for “the strongest possible action from the international community” to restore democracy in his country.

Also charged with treason was Mahn Win Khaing Than, the civilian leader of Myanmar’s government in hiding, the newspaper said. The acting vice president and member of Suu Kyi’s political party on Saturday had vowed to continue supporting a “revolution” to eject the military from power.

On Thursday, residents of a Yangon suburb set street barricades ablaze to block riot police. Video showed large palls of smoke rising over the Tha Mine area in the city’s Hlaing township, with another barricade burning fiercely in the middle of a residential area. One resident, who did not want to be named for fear of retaliation, told The Associated Press that protesters set them alight after hearing that a column of police trucks was on its way.

Building barricades – and occasionally burning them – are now established tactics by opponents of the junta all over the country to impede police and army movement. The barriers also provide some protection from the now-frequent use of live ammunition against them.

On Wednesday, at least two people were shot dead in Kalay in northwestern Myanmar, according to media and social media posts that included photos of the victims. More than 200 people have been killed by security forces since the coup, according to credible tallies.

Myanmar police fire on protesters in ancient former capital

March 07, 2021

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Police in Myanmar’s ancient former capital, Bagan, opened fire Sunday on demonstrators protesting last month’s military takeover, wounding several people, according to witness accounts and videos on social media.

At least five people were reported wounded as police sought to break up the Bagan protest, and photos showed one young man with bloody wounds on his chin and neck, believed to have been caused by a rubber bullet. Bullet casings collected at the scene indicated that live rounds were also fired.

The city, located in the central Mandalay region, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in recognition of the more than 2,000 pagodas or their remnants still situated there, dating from the ninth to 13th centuries, when it was the capital of a kingdom that later became known as Burma and is now Myanmar.

Bagan is best known for being one of the country’s top tourist attractions, but it has also been the scene of large protest marches against the military’s Feb. 1 seizure of power. Large protests have occurred daily across many cities and towns in Myanmar, and security forces have responded with greater use of lethal force and mass arrests. At least 18 protesters were shot and killed on Feb. 28 and 38 on Wednesday, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. More than 1,500 have been arrested, the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said.

Protests elsewhere Sunday, including in the two biggest cities of Yangon and Mandalay, were also met with the use of force by police firing warning shots, and variously employing tear gas, rubber bullets and stun grenades.

Multiple reports from Yangon said there were also police raids Saturday night seeking to seize organizers and supporters of the protest movement. A ward chairman from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, which was ousted from power in the coup, was found dead in a military hospital Sunday morning by fellow residents of his Pabedan neighborhood, according to a post on Facebook by NLD lawmaker Sithu Maung.

Suspicion was rampant on social media that Khin Maung Latt, 58, died due to a beating in custody after being taken from his residence, but no official cause of death was immediately announced. In Yangon and elsewhere, raids are carried out nightly after an 8 p.m. curfew by police and soldiers. The arrests are often carried out at gunpoint, without warrants.

In videos taken Saturday night and posted online, sporadic fire from heavy weapons could be heard in some neighborhoods. The escalation of violence has put pressure on the global community to act to restrain the junta. The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy in Myanmar, which for five decades had languished under strict military rule that led to international isolation and sanctions.

Suu Kyi’s party led a return to civilian rule with a landslide election victory in 2015, and with an even greater margin of votes last year. It would have been installed for a second five-year term last month, but instead Suu Kyi and President Win Myint and other members of the government were placed in military detention.

A rare light note was struck Saturday when demonstrators in the central city of Monywa poured cans of beer over their feet and those of passers-by to show their contempt for the brewery’s owners — the military. Myanmar Beer is one of a number of business concerns in the country that are linked to the generals and has seen its sales plummet in the weeks following the coup. It also has lost its Japanese partner, Kirin, which announced it was pulling out of the joint venture as a result of the power grab.

In neighboring Thailand, several thousand people, Thai as well as from Myanmar, rallied Sunday outside the regional office of the United Nations to bring attention to the crisis and their desire for international action to end the junta’s violence.

“I have a good life here, but I’m fighting for my relatives and families and friends in Myanmar. Since Day One (when) the military took our leader, we are here,” said 26-year-old Aye Nanda Soe, who works in digital marketing and lives in Bangkok with her mother and brother while her father resides in Yangon. “We want the U.N. to protect our people first, then help our leader. My people are not safe anymore.”

Protests, tear gas in Myanmar after UN envoy urges action

March 06, 2021

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Security forces in Myanmar again used force Saturday to disperse anti-coup protesters, a day after the U.N. special envoy urged the Security Council to take action to quell junta violence that this week left about 50 peaceful demonstrators dead and scores injured.

Fresh protests were reported Saturday morning in the biggest city of Yangon, where stun grenades and tear gas were used against protesters. On Wednesday, 18 people were reported killed there. Protests were also reported in Myitkyina, the capital of the northern state of Kachin, Myeik, in the country’s far south where police fired tear gas at students, and Dawei in the southeast where tear gas was also used. Other places included Kyaikto, in the eastern state of Mon, Loikaw, the capital of Kayah state in eastern Myanmar, and Myingyan, a city where one protester was killed on Wednesday.

The escalation of violence has put pressure on the world community to act to restrain the junta, which seized power on Feb. 1 by ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy in Myanmar, which for five decades had languished under strict military rule that led to international isolation and sanctions.

Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party led a return to civilian rule with a landslide election victory in 2015, and with an even greater margin of votes last year. It would have taken a second five-year term of office last month, but instead she and President Win Myint and other members of her government were placed in military detention.

Large protests have occurred daily across many cities and towns. Security forces responded with greater use of lethal force and mass arrests. At least 18 protesters were shot and killed last Sunday and 38 on Wednesday, according to the U.N. Human Rights Office. More than 1,000 have been arrested, the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said.

U.N. special envoy for Myanmar Christine Schraner Burgener said in her briefing to Friday’s closed Security Council meeting that council unity and “robust” action are critical “in pushing for a stop to the violence and the restoration of Myanmar’s democratic institutions.”

“We must denounce the actions by the military,” she said. “It is critical that this council is resolute and coherent in putting the security forces on notice and standing with the people of Myanmar firmly, in support of the clear November election results.”

She reiterated an earlier appeal to the international community not to “lend legitimacy or recognition to this regime that has been forcefully imposed and nothing but chaos has since followed.” The Security Council took no immediate action. Council diplomats said Britain circulated a draft presidential statement for consideration, a step below a legally binding resolution.

Any kind of coordinated action at the U.N. will be difficult because two permanent members of the Security Council, China and Russia, are likely to veto it. Schraner Burgener earlier this week warned Myanmar’s army that the world’s nations and the Security Council “might take huge, strong measures.”

“And the answer was, ‘We are used to sanctions, and we survived those sanctions in the past,’” she said. When she warned that Myanmar would become isolated, Schraner Burgener said “the answer was, ‘We have to learn to walk with only a few friends.’”

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies urged immediate protection for all Red Cross volunteers and health workers. The statement came after video from a surveillance camera that was circulated widely on social media showed members of an ambulance crew in Yangon being savagely beaten after they were taken into custody by police on Wednesday.

“We express profound sadness that Myanmar Red Cross volunteers have been injured while on duty providing lifesaving first aid treatment to wounded people, in line with fundamental principles of humanity, neutrality and impartiality. Red Cross volunteers should never be targeted," the federation said.

Myanmar protesters return to streets as crackdown continues

March 02, 2021

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Demonstrators in Myanmar took to the streets again on Tuesday to protest last month’s seizure of power by the military, as foreign ministers from Southeast Asian countries prepared to meet to discuss the political crisis. Police in Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city, used tear gas against the protesters.

The planned special meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations comes in the wake of worsening violence in Myanmar. The country’s new military rulers over the weekend escalated their use of deadly force and mass arrests to try to quash protests against the Feb. 1 coup that ousted the elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

The U.N. said it believed at least 18 people in several cities were killed on Sunday when security forces opened fire to disperse demonstrating crowds. Funerals were being held Tuesday for several of the victims.

The authorities also detained more than 1,000 people over the weekend, according to the independent Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Those detained included at least seven journalists, among them Thein Zaw of The Associated Press. At least two dozen journalists have been detained since the military’s takeover.

Hundreds of protesters gathered on Tuesday in the Hledan area of Yangon, where a day earlier police had fired repeated rounds of tear gas canisters. The protesters, many of whom wore construction helmets, dragged bamboo poles and debris to form barricades to impede any attempt to rush forward and make arrests, and chanted slogans and sang songs at the police lines.

Tear gas was used again Tuesday. The demonstrators — hundreds of mainly young people — fled in panic but soon returned to their barricades. Protesters also took up their flags and banners and assembled to march through the streets of Dawei, a small city in southeastern Myanmar that has seen almost daily large demonstrations against the coup.

Some of them also carried metal shields, an apparent response to the possible use of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets by police. On Sunday, Dawei was the scene of a violent crackdown, with up to five people killed when security forces shot into a large crowd of demonstrators.

The coup reversed years of slow progress toward democracy in Myanmar after five decades of military rule, coming the day a newly elected Parliament was supposed to take office. Ousted leader Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party would have been installed for a second five-year term in office, but instead she was detained along with President Win Myint and other senior officials.

The military government has charged Suu Kyi with several criminal offenses that critics say are politically motivated and are meant to keep her locked up. If convicted of any of the charges, she would probably be barred from taking part in the election promised in a year’s time by the military.

Following her detention on the day of the coup, the 75-year-old Suu Kyi was initially held at her residence in the capital, Naypyitaw, but members of her party now say they don’t know where she is. After the weekend’s crackdown, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the use of lethal force against peaceful protesters and arbitrary arrests “unacceptable,” said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.

“Words of condemnation are necessary and welcome but insufficient. The world must act. We must all act,” the U.N.’s independent expert on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said in a separate statement.

He proposed that countries could institute a global embargo on the sale of arms to Myanmar and “tough, targeted and coordinated sanctions” against those responsible for the coup, the crackdown and other rights abuses.

Any kind of coordinated action at the United Nations, however, would be difficult since two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, China and Russia, would almost certainly veto it. ASEAN’s policy of seeking a consensus among it members also makes it unlikely to take strong action.

Some countries have imposed or are considering imposing their own sanctions. In Washington, White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan issued a statement saying the U.S. is “alarmed” by the violence and stands in solidarity with Myanmar’s people.

Associated Press writers Niniek Karmini in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, contributed to this report.

Shots, tear gas as police in Myanmar intensify use of force

February 28, 2021

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Security forces in Myanmar made mass arrests and appeared to use lethal force on Sunday as they intensified their efforts to break up protests a month after the military staged a coup.

There were reports of gunfire as police in Yangon, the biggest city, fired tear gas and water cannons while trying to clear the streets of demonstrators demanding that the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi be restored to power. Photos of shell casings from live ammunition used in assault rifles were posted on social media, adding to evidence that live rounds were fired.

A violent crackdown also occurred in Dawei, a much smaller city in southeastern Myanmar, where local media reported at least three people were killed during a protest march. The fatalities could not immediately be independently confirmed. Confirming reports of protesters’ deaths has been difficult amid the chaos and general lack of official news.

The Feb. 1 army takeover reversed years of slow progress toward democracy after five decades of military rule. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party would have been installed for a second five-year term in office, but the army blocked Parliament from convening and detained her and President Win Myint, as well as other top members of her government.

Sunday’s violence erupted in early morning when medical students were marching in Yangon’s streets near the Hledan Center intersection, which has become the gathering point for protesters who then fan out to other parts of the city.

Videos and photos showed protesters running away as police charged at them, and residents setting up makeshift roadblocks to slow their advance. Nearby, residents were pleading with police to release those they picked up from the street and shoved into police trucks to be taken away. Dozens or more were believed to have been detained.

There was no immediate word on Yangon casualties. Sounds of gunfire could be heard in the streets and there were what appeared to be smoke grenades thrown into the crowds. Demonstrators later Sunday regrouped and were said to be planning to march to the local police station to demand the release of the medical students.

In Dawei, video from the online media company Dakkhina Insight showed a young man receiving urgent medical attention in the street for what appeared to be a wound in his upper chest. Medics held an oxygen mask to his face while calling out for an ambulance.

Security forces on Saturday began employing rougher tactics, taking preemptive actions to break up protests and making scores, if not hundreds of arrests. Greater numbers of soldiers have also joined police. Many of those detained were taken to Insein Prison in Yangon’s northern outskirts, historically notorious for holding political prisoners.

According to the independent Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, as of Saturday, 854 people had been arrested, charged or sentenced at one point in relation to the coup, and 771 were being detained or sought for arrest. The group said that while it had documented 75 new arrests , it understood that hundreds of other people were also picked up Saturday in Yangon and elsewhere.

MRTV, a Myanmar state-run television channel, broadcast an announcement Saturday night from the Foreign Ministry that the country’s ambassador to the United Nations has been fired because he had abused his power and misbehaved by failing to follow the instructions of the government and “betraying” it.

Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun had declared in an emotional speech Friday at the U.N. General Assembly in New York that he represented Suu Kyi’s “civilian government elected by the people” and supported the struggle against military rule.

He urged all countries to issue public statements strongly condemning the coup, and to refuse to recognize the military regime. He also called for stronger international measures to stop violence by security forces against peaceful demonstrators.

The junta said it took power because last year’s polls were marred by massive irregularities. The election commission before the military seized power coup had refuted the allegation of widespread fraud. The junta dismissed the old commission’s members and appointed new ones, who on Friday annulled the election results.

Myanmar police deploy early to crank up pressure on protests

February 27, 2021

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — Police in Myanmar escalated their crackdown on demonstrators against this month’s military takeover, deploying early and in force on Saturday as protesters sought to assemble in the country's two biggest cities and elsewhere.

Security forces in some areas appeared to become more aggressive in using force and making arrests, utilizing more plainclothes officers than had previously revealed themselves. Photos posted on social media showed that residents of at least two cities, Yangon and Monywa, resisted by erecting makeshift street barricades to try to hinder the advance of the police.

Myanmar’s crisis took a dramatic turn on the international stage at a special session of the United Nations General Assembly on Friday when the country’s U.N. ambassador declared his loyalty to the ousted civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi and called on the world to pressure the military to cede power.

There were arrests Saturday in Myanmar's two biggest cities, Yangon and Mandalay, where demonstrators have been hitting the streets daily to peacefully demand the restoration of the government of Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party won a landslide election victory in November. Police have increasingly been enforcing an order by the junta banning gatherings of five or more people.

Many other cities and towns have also hosted large protests against the Feb. 1 coup. Police in Dawei, in the southeast, and Monywa, 135 kilometers (85 miles) northwest of Mandalay, used force against protesters. Both cities, with populations of less then 200,000 each, have been seeing large demonstrations.

Social media carried unconfirmed reports of a protester shot dead in Monywa. The reports could not immediately be independently confirmed but appeared credible, with both photos and identification of the victim, though later accounts said the woman had not died. The reports from Monywa also said dozens or more people were arrested.

The military takeover reversed years of slow progress toward democracy after five decades of military rule. Suu Kyi’s party would have been installed for a second five-year term in office, but the army blocked Parliament from convening and detained her and President Win Myint, as well as other top members of her government.

At the General Assembly in New York, Myanmar’s U.N. ambassador, Kyaw Moe Tun, declared in an emotional speech to fellow delegates that he represented Suu Kyi’s “civilian government elected by the people” and supported the fight against military rule.

MRTV, a Myanmar state-run television channel, broadcast an announcement Saturday from the Foreign Ministry that Kyaw Moe Tun has been dismissed from his post because he had abused his power and misbehaved by failing to follow the instructions of the government and betraying it.

Kyaw Moe Tun had urged all countries to issue public statements strongly condemning the coup, and to refuse to recognize the military regime. He also called for stronger international measures to stop violence by security forces against peaceful demonstrators.

He drew loud applause from many diplomats in the 193-nation global body, as well as effusive praise from other Burmese on social media, who described him as a hero. The ambassador flashed a three-finger salute that has been adopted by the civil disobedience movement at the end of his speech in which he addressed people back home in Burmese.

In Yangon on Saturday morning, police began arrests early at the Hledan Center intersection, which has become the gathering point for protesters who then fan out to other parts of the city. Police took similar action in residential neighborhoods.

Security forces also tried to thwart protests in Mandalay, where roadblocks were set up at several key intersections and the regular venues for rallies were flooded with police. Buddhist monks were prominent in Saturday's march in Mandalay, as they have been regularly, lending moral authority to the civil disobedience movement that is challenging the military rulers.

Mandalay has been the scene of several violent confrontations, and at least four of eight confirmed deaths linked to the protests, according to the independent Assistance Association of Political Prisoners. On Friday, at least three people there were injured, including two who were shot in the chest by rubber bullets and another who suffered what appeared to be a bullet wound to his leg.

According to the association, as of Friday, 771 people had been arrested, charged or sentenced at one point in relation to the coup, and 689 were being detained or sought for arrest. The junta said it took power because last year’s polls were marred by massive irregularities. The election commission before the military seized power coup had refuted the allegation of widespread fraud. The junta dismissed the old commission’s members and appointed new ones, who on Friday annulled the election results.

Associated Press writer Edith Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.