MYANMAR JUNTA MOWS DOWN 20 ANTI-COUP PROTESTERS

Myanmar security forces shot dead at least 20 people participating in anti-coup demonstrations in Yangon on Sunday, Kyodo News reported.

Video footage showed gunshots ringing out in Bago, with citizens fleeing into narrow alleys and others carrying away the injured. Since the Feb. 1 coup, more than 70 people have been shot dead by the security forces, including 11 on Saturday.

Meanwhile, a group of politicians from ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy formed a parallel civilian government in defiance of the coup.

In a video message posted online Saturday, "acting vice president" Mahn Win Khaing Than pledged to abolish the 2008 Constitution that ensures the military's role in politics and to work toward forming a federal democratic union.

The former upper house speaker said citizens' resistance is being tested and that all nations must work together to end the military dictatorship.

"It is indeed a darkest time for our country but it is also the time before the dawn for us," he said, while calling the uprising "an opportunity to strive for forming of a federal democratic union desired by all of our ethnic brothers and sisters who suffered the atrocities of the military rule for decades."

WEEKLY FEATURE : BONNER DYTOC SHOWS THE WAY IN STOCK PLAY