At least 149 people have been killed in Myanmar since the 1 February coup, including five in custody, a UN human rights official has said, as mass funerals were held for dozens of those shot dead by security forces in recent days.
The revised estimate of the death toll follows the bloodiest day in the six weeks since the military’s takeover, with 74 protesters killed on Sunday followed by 20 people the next day.
Mass funerals were held across Yangon on Tuesday, with hundreds of mourners gathering in different townships to say goodbye to those killed.
A crematorium in Yangon reported 31 funerals, a mourner at one of the ceremonies said. Hundreds of people spilled out on to the street at the farewell for medical student Khant Nyar Hein who had been killed in Yangon on Sunday.
“Let them kill me right now, let them kill me instead of my son because I can’t take it any more,” the student’s mother was seen saying in a video clip posted on Facebook.
Mourners chanted: “Our revolution must prevail.”
Some families told media the security forces had seized the bodies of loved ones but they would still hold a funeral.
António Guterres, the UN secretary general, was appalled by the escalating violence and called on the international community to help end the repression, his spokesman said, while the US also denounced the bloodshed.
“The military is attempting to overturn the results of a democratic election and is brutally repressing peaceful protesters,” the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, told a news conference in Tokyo.
Ravina Shamdasani, UN human rights spokeswoman, told a briefing in Geneva where she gave the revised death toll: “We call on the military to stop killing and detaining protesters.”
At least 37 journalists have been arrested in Myanmar, including 19 who remain in detention, while five people are known to have died in custody, she said.
The army, in a broadcasted video said that it had taken power after its accusations of fraud in the 8 November election won by Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy were rejected by the electoral commission. It has promised to hold a new election but has not set a date.
The military ruled the former British colony for decades after a 1962 coup and cracked down hard on uprisings before beginning a tentative transition to democracy a decade ago