Nine young activists belonging to an anti-coup protest group in Mandalay were detained on Monday evening, according to their colleagues in Mandalay’s Pyigyitagun Township.
U Aggavumsa, the leading organizer of anti-coup protests in Pyigyitagun, said: “After we lost contact with them, we issued an alert so that others involved could flee. We can now confirm that they have been detained. Two safe houses were raided and six men and three women were detained.”
Another organizer of anti-coup protests in Mandalay said the young activists were detained in Amarapura Township when safe houses were raided after one protester was arrested on a street.
“We had contact with one protester, and we noticed from his words that something was wrong. So, we assumed that he had been detained, and we issued an alert,” he said.
The whereabouts of the detained activists are still unknown, and family members still can’t contact them.
U Aggavumsa said he is concerned that the detainees might have been tortured during the raid and during interrogation. “As they [the regime] haven’t issued a press release about their detention, it appears that they are searching for other people involved.”
More than one year after the coup, more than a dozen groups of anti-coup protesters continue to stage flash mob protests against the military regime in Mandalay despite crackdowns and arrests.
The regime has also stepped up its arrest of anti-coup protesters and urban guerilla resistance fighters and is holding them incommunicado, according to anti-coup protesters.
Ko Philips, an anti-coup protester, was beaten in public and detained by junta security forces on March 27. His whereabouts is still unknown.
On March 2, two university students including the chairman of the Mandalay District Students’ Union and a striking teacher were detained during a junta raid in Amarapura Township.
At least 17 young people were detained when around 500 junta security forces combed wards and villages in Patheingyi Township on March 22-23.
In Yangon, an urban guerilla resistance fighter died and six others from resistance group Free Tiger Ranger were arrested when junta soldiers raided their apartments in Kyimyindaing Township on March 26. Junta security forces fired shots as they raided the apartments, the resistance group said.
Four men and two women aged between 18 and 35 were detained and are being held for interrogation at the Myanmar military’s Division 44 in Shwepyithar Township, according to the Free Tiger Ranger.
Junta soldiers did not return the body of the resistance fighter who was shot dead during the raid.
Free Tiger Ranger is an urban guerilla resistance group that targets military informants, military-linked businesses and the junta administrative mechanism in Yangon. In their latest attack, the group said it killed a local administrator in Hlaing Tharyar Township on March 24.
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