MYANMAR COPS, FIREMEN AMONG 400 CITIZENS WHO FLED TO INDIA

More than 400 people from Myanmar, many of them policemen and firemen, have crossed into neighboring India since late February, an Indian police officer said, as Myanmar security forces seek to crush pro-democracy demonstrators after last month’s coup.

The policemen said they had fled because they feared persecution after refusing to obey the military junta’s orders to shoot protesters.

“About 116 crossed on Friday,” the police officer in the Indian state of Mizoram told Devjyot Ghoshal of Reuters, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. Some of them carried only clothes stuffed into white plastic sacks as they crossed the border.

India’s federal government has ordered local authorities to stop the influx but the mountain terrain is porous and hard to patrol. There are also close ethnic and cultural ties between the people on the two sides of the remote border.

Around 140 people have died so far and thousands detained in Myanmar since the Feb. 1 military coup. Protesters continue to take to the streets in defiance of the authorities, who have used rubber bullets, tear gas and live ammunition to stop them.

On Monday, security forces shot dead six people taking part in pro-democracy demonstrations, media and witnesses said. Myanmar’s junta says it is exercising great restraint in handling what it describes as demonstrations by “riotous protesters” whom it accuses of attacking police and harming national security and stability.

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