hello and welcome to bbc world news
a dozen police officers who fled from
myanmar to india
have told the bbc they feared they would
be forced to kill or harm protesters
security forces have turned to more
violent tactics to try to stop
demonstrations against the military
which seized power in a coup last month
our south asia correspondent rajini
vaidyanathan is on the border between
the two countries and she told us more
about her exclusive interview with them
i'm standing in the northeast indian
state of mizoram but just on the other
side of the banks here
is the country of myanmar this river
which runs for some 400 kilometers
separates the two countries it's a cross
here that dozens of people fleeing the
military
crack down in myanmar have fled we met a
group of them policemen
and women all in their twenties who say
they fled the country after refusing to
use violence against protesters
the military officer in charge ordered
us to shoot at groups of more than five
people
they said they'd take responsibility for
it i had to desert the police department
as i couldn't open fire on innocent
people one
authorities in myanmar have written to
some local officials here
in mizoram asking that police officers
are sent
back to the country now the ones we have
spoken to
are living in fear at the moment but
they believe that they are far
safer here in india even though many are
separated
from their family as the violence
continues
now we're also hearing that security is
being stepped up
along this border but from what we have
seen it looks fairly easy for people to
be able to make that journey
and some locals saying that they are
expecting more and more people
to cross over into india as the military
crackdown in myanmar continues to worsen
that was rajini vaidyanathan there well
meanwhile in yangon hundreds of soldiers
have
raided a railway workers compound after
they went on strike to
protest the military coup many rail
workers have joined the nationwide civil
disobedience movement
now known as cdm which has radically
slowed transportation parts of the
country activists
have said the soldiers at the railway
station forced the workers to go back to
work at gunpoint or leave the compound
where many
live workers live now let's go straight
to jonathan head who joins us from
bangkok and jonathan you and i spoke at
the beginning of this coup
and of course you shared your experience
and understanding of how
this military operates so no real
surprises that this has gotten
so bloody so quickly
no i suppose the timing was always a
uncertain um
but the fact is that the proteus
movement is far stronger and far
more widespread and more determined than
the military expected
and they need to get control and it's
the only way they know how now they're
using a variety of methods we've seen of
course
the really dreadful use of of live
rounds of high velocity weapons with
horrible injuries and deaths inflicted
on protesters uh we've seen
neighbors neighborhoods being terrorized
at night a deliberate strategy
not just of going in firing weapons
shouting awful abuse at them and threats
but also
smashing out people's motorbikes going
in and smashing their shops
what we saw today at the state railway
housing complex i guess is just an
extension of that they
of course are very furious about this
general strike of which the railway
union
is one of the key parts uh they want to
get people back to work so they went and
said if you won't work you don't uh have
anywhere to live they've literally
driven people
out of their homes and we saw people
walking down the railway tracks
carrying elderly relatives who couldn't
walk in suitcases and
and now there's an appeal out to try and
find somewhere to put them because these
people are saying they will not go back
to work they will not cooperate with
this military regime
and jonathan it doesn't seem like either
side is going to back down
no um you know it's obviously it's
something like a war of attrition right
now
um you know it's really evolved a lot
from the
the large colorful mass rallies that we
saw at the start
into this sort of cat and mouse uh
fighting over different neighborhoods
that
and and we're seeing every night it
heats up a lot as the military goes in
is it's difficult to come up with any
other word for it than just
terrorizing neighborhoods but also
trying to capture as many people as
possible we've got around 2 000 people
now
detained since the coup now as we speak
there are running confrontations going
on in two hot spots in yangon in north
okalapa township and also in sanchong
where that siege took place a couple of
nights ago
and again it looks like the military and
police are trying to go in and arrest
people and they've been confronted
by local residents they're trying to
dismantle barriers
um it's quite extraordinary to see this
going on day after day and you you know
you're wondering which side will become
exhausted first
but the the gradual ramping up of
violence
will have to take its toll i'm sure the
military is calculating
that they will they're more violence
they inflict on people the more they
they torment them with these nightly
raids the more likely it is that some
people will just say we've had enough we
can't go on
and of course this has all been
confirmed by by the report that regini
has just done
where defectors have said police have
said they were told specifically to
to shoot at protesters
yes and i think you know what we've seen
that the language we've seen the police
use and the army the way they've treated
people they've captured
and what we've seen the police summarily
execute one man they caught in front of
account you know a camera quarter from a
distance
we've seen them beat people dreadfully
i'm in a way where they must have been
awfully injured
and we simply don't know what's going on
behind the walls where these people have
been detained but we are getting a
steadily increasing number of people who
are going into
into detention and their families are
being told to come and pick up their
bodies the next day
in that kind of environment it's
inevitable some people
will resist but of course it's very
difficult for either the police or
military to resist those who do
are punished very severely and their
families are punished too so i don't
expect we'll see
that many defections jonathan thank you
so much for that analysis and