Originally published 2021-03-20.
Photos: (L) AFP/Getty Images, (R) AP Images
On the morning of Friday 19 March 2021, soldiers and police opened fire on anti-coup demonstrators in Aungban, a small town in southern Shan State, Myanmar. Local rescue volunteers counted at least eight dead, all men, and some news agencies put the figure at nine. Within days the monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) recorded more than 230 people killed by security forces since the military seized power on 1 February.
Aungban was one shooting among many that week. Together they showed that the junta had moved from arrests and curfews to routine use of live fire against unarmed crowds.
What happened in Aungban
Residents told the independent outlet Myanmar Now that around 16 military trucks carrying more than 100 soldiers and police reached the protest site at about 9 a.m. One resident said drones had been watching the crowd beforehand. Then the shooting started.
Seven men died at the scene. An eighth was shot in the neck and died at Kalaw Hospital before 11 a.m. According to the Aungban Free Funeral Service Society, troops took away the bodies of those killed on the spot, a practice families across Myanmar complained of, because it made it harder to bury relatives and to document the wounds.
Witnesses quoted by international media said the clash began when troops arrived to clear the makeshift barricades protesters had put up on the streets. One person described it simply: "Security forces came to remove barriers but the people resisted and they fired shots." A worker at a local funeral service confirmed the deaths to Reuters.
At least ten more people were reportedly detained when police and soldiers forced their way into nearby homes. On the same day in Loikaw, Kayah State, a 46-year-old man was shot dead and a nurse was wounded.
How the toll climbed after the coup
AAPP, a group founded by former political prisoners, became the most widely quoted source for casualty figures. It checks names and places before adding someone to its list, so its totals are usually lower than rumours on social media and tend to rise as cases are confirmed.
By its count, at least 224 people had been killed by 18 March. Two days later the figure stood at 233. Those numbers covered only deaths the group had verified. Thousands of people had also been arrested by then, many of them held without charge.
The junta disputed these totals and said its forces used weapons only when their own lives were in danger. Protesters, rights groups and journalists on the ground rejected that account, pointing to shootings of people who were running away, sitting at home or standing at barricades made of tyres and sandbags.
Why the military seized power
In the general election of November 2020, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won 396 of the 476 contested parliamentary seats. The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won 33.
The armed forces, known as the Tatmadaw, claimed the vote was riddled with fraud. The Union Election Commission rejected that claim, saying there was no evidence for the millions of irregularities the military alleged. On 1 February 2021, the day the new parliament was due to sit, troops detained Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other NLD leaders.
Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing took control and set up a ruling body called the State Administration Council. A one-year state of emergency was declared, and later extended. Suu Kyi, who held the post of State Counsellor, had already spent around 15 years under house arrest during earlier military rule. Within weeks she faced a series of criminal charges, from importing walkie-talkies to breaching Covid-19 rules. In January 2022 she received her first prison sentence, four years, and more convictions followed.
A nationwide resistance movement
Opposition began almost at once. On 2 February, doctors and nurses launched the Civil Disobedience Movement, refusing to work for the military government. Within a day, staff at more than 110 state hospitals had joined, followed by teachers, railway workers, bank staff and civil servants.
Street protests spread from Yangon and Mandalay to small towns like Aungban. Demonstrators banged pots and pans at night, raised the three-finger salute and built barricades to slow down military trucks. The authorities answered with curfews, internet blackouts and, from late February onward, increasingly lethal force.
Journalists under pressure
The press was a target too. On 19 March, the same day as the Aungban shooting, BBC Burmese correspondent Aung Thura was seized by men in plain clothes outside a court in Naypyitaw, where he had been covering a hearing for the detained NLD figure Win Htein. Another journalist, Than Htike Aung, was taken at the same time.
Aung Thura was freed on 22 March after signing a pledge. His wife told Myanmar Now that he had been kept awake for three nights and questioned about contacts with the civil disobedience movement, and that he was badly traumatised. By then, according to the same outlet, 43 journalists had been arrested or targeted for arrest since the coup, and several independent publications had been raided and stripped of their licences.
Many people decided the cities were no longer safe. In the days after martial law was imposed on parts of Yangon, thousands of residents left for their home villages, carrying what they could.
How neighbours and the world responded
Indonesia was among the most outspoken members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Its foreign ministry called for an end to the bloodshed and for dialogue, saying: "Indonesia urges that the use of violence in Myanmar be stopped immediately so that there are no more victims."
Indonesian President Joko Widodo and Malaysia's prime minister pushed for a special meeting of ASEAN ministers. Western governments imposed sanctions on military leaders and military-owned companies. At the United Nations, however, China and Russia blocked a Security Council resolution condemning the coup, which limited what the international community could do.
What came next
The killings did not stop the protests, but they changed them. As peaceful marches were met with bullets, many young activists joined armed resistance groups, and fighting spread across large parts of the country. What began as a political crisis in early 2021 grew into a long civil war. Researchers estimated in 2024 that at least 50,000 people had died in the wider conflict, thousands of them civilians.
Seen from today, the Aungban shooting is a small but telling moment: a town far from the capital, a few barricades, and a state prepared to use deadly force to keep power. The names of those killed there are recorded in AAPP's lists, part of a record that families hope will one day be used to hold those responsible to account.
Sources: Myanmar Now: At least eight killed in junta's bloody crackdown in Aungban, Shan State (19 March 2021); Myanmar Now: BBC journalist released after being kept awake for three nights (22 March 2021); Wikipedia: 2021 Myanmar coup d'état. Casualty figures: Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP). The story was first reported here from The Guardian and Reuters coverage in March 2021. Photos: AFP/Getty Images and AP Images.
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