YANGON (AP) — Authorities in Myanmar arrested the country’s best-known comedian on Tuesday as they continue to crack down on people they accuse of helping incite nationwide protests against February’s military coup.

The comedian Zarganar was taken from his home in Yangon by police and soldiers who arrived in two army vehicles, fellow comedian Ngepyawkyaw said on his own Facebook page. Zarganar, 60, is a sharp-tongued satirist who has been in and out of prison since he was active in a failed 1988 popular uprising against a previous military dictatorship. He is also well known for his social work, especially arranging assistance for victims of Cyclone Nargis in 2008.

In the past week, the junta has issued arrest warrants for about 100 people active in the fields of literature, film, theater arts, music and journalism on charges of spreading information that undermines the stability of the country and the rule of law. It was not immediately clear what Zarganar, whose real name is Maung Thura, has been charged with.

Many ordinary protesters and activists are also being arrested every day, according to numerous reports on social media.

In Mandalay, the country’s second-biggest city, security forces used stun grenades and fired guns Tuesday to break up a march by medical workers who have defiantly continued to protest almost every day against the Feb. 1 coup that ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. The army’s takeover set back Myanmar’s gradual return to democracy after five decades of military rule.

A participant who asked to remain anonymous for his own safety told The Associated Press that doctors, nurses and medical students were attacked as they gathered at about 5 a.m. by security forces who also used cars to run into protesters on motorbikes. The online news site The Irrawaddy reported that four doctors were arrested.

At least 570 protesters and bystanders, including 47 children, have been killed in the crackdown since the takeover, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors casualties and arrests. The group says 2,728 people, including Suu Kyi, are in detention.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said U.N. officials in Myanmar are “deeply concerned” about the impact of the continuing violence on the country’s health system, pointing to at least 28 attacks against hospitals and health personnel since Feb. 1. And they are also concerned at violence against the education system, pointing to 7 attacks against schools and school personnel since the coup, he said.

“Health volunteers are attacked, and attacks against ambulances are preventing life-saving help reaching civilians wounded by security forces,” Dujarric said.

Activists have begun organizing a boycott of next week’s official celebration of Thingyan, the country’s traditional New Year, usually a time for family reunions and merry-making.

In leaflets and social media posts, they are imploring people not to hold any Thingyan celebrations, saying it would be disrespectful to “fallen martyrs” to enjoy the festival.

The leaders of Brunei and Malaysia announced Monday that leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will meet to discuss the situation in Myanmar.

No date was given in the announcement, issued during a visit by Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin to Brunei. He and Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah said they “expressed serious concern on the ongoing crisis in Myanmar and the rising number of fatalities.” Indonesian President Joko Widido had proposed a summit on Myanmar last month.

There was no word on whether the ASEAN leaders would participate in person or by video, or if Myanmar, one of the group’s 10 members, would attend.

Myanmar’s junta also has been battling in some border areas where ethnic minority groups maintain their own armed forces. Several major groups, most notably the Karen and the Kachin, have expressed solidarity with the anti-coup movement and vowed to protect protesters in the territory they control.

The Kachin in the country’s north have engaged in combat with government forces, but the Karen in the east have borne the brunt of the junta’s military assaults.

The area where the Karen National Union holds sway has been subject to air attacks by the Myanmar military from March 27 through Monday, said David Eubank of the Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian organization that has for many years provided medical assistance to Karen villagers. Burma is another name for Myanmar.

Eubank said his group has verified that 14 civilians died and more than 40 were wounded in the air strikes. He said Tuesday that Myanmar’s military is mounting a ground offensive into Karen territory, driving villagers from their homes and increasing the number of displaced people in the area to more than 20,000, many of whom have to hide in caves or the jungle and are in desperate need of food and other necessities.

“The situation now seems, from our perspective, to be all-out war to the finish,” Eubank wrote Monday in an emailed message. “Unless there is a miracle, the Burma Army will not hold back in their attempt to crush the Karen and any other ethnic group that stands against them, just as they have not held back killing their own Burman people in the cities and plains of Burma.”

BANGKOK (AP) — With security forces in Myanmar having shot dead at least 570 protesters and bystanders in the past two months, many of the country’s residents see venturing out onto the street as a brave but foolhardy act.

Online, many have found a safer, more substantive way to show their defiance against February’s military takeover — virtual rummage sales whose proceeds go to the protest movement’s shadow government and other related political causes.

Everything from clothes and toys, to music lessons and outdoor adventures are on sale. Foreign friends are encouraged to donate, but fundraising inside Myanmar also serves the purpose of raising political consciousness for challenging the ousting of Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government.

Facebook users have taken to the social network to sell off their possessions, advertising that all the money raised will go to fund the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, formed by elected members of Parliament who were blocked from taking their seats by the coup.

The committee styles itself as the sole legitimate government of the country, rejecting the ruling junta as without legal standing. In turn, the junta has outlawed the committee and declared it treasonous, threatening to jail not just its members but anyone supporting it.

Formed from scratch shortly after the Feb. 1 coup, the CRPH needs money to carry on its organizing activities inside the country and diplomatic efforts abroad.

Even as the authorities keep narrowing access to the internet, lately limited to a relatively small number of households with fiber broadband connections, deals are still available.

Last week, one young woman was offering her collection of K-Pop music and memorabilia, especially of the band Exo. Anyone interested had to show her a receipt for a donation to CRPH, and the item would go to whoever gave the most.

Another put his collection of LEGO Marvel Super Heroes up for sale.

“It is not very pricey but difficult to collect. If you show me your CRPH donation slip, choose anything and I will give it to you,” his message read.

One group of friends advertised their collection of novels, poems and motivational books, with proceeds again going to the democracy fight and delivery “when everything becomes stable.”

And it isn’t just goods that are being hawked. Services are also on offer to help bankroll the struggle.

A quick check through Facebook notices turned up a seamstress offering to sew a traditional Myanmar dress for free to those who donate $25, a musician offering lifetime guitar and ukulele lessons and an outdoor expedition leader offering to take five people on an adventure holiday.

The expedition would go to the winner of a lucky draw from among receipts for donations to either the CPRH, the Civil Disobedience Movement that organizes the daily resistance activities or to help thousands of internally displaced people.

However, there’s one small caveat to that last offer — it’s advertised as being redeemable “after the revolution.”

___

Story: Jerry Harmer

JAKARTA (AP) — Before each rainy season Lu Lu Aung and other farmers living in a camp for internally displaced people in Myanmar’s far northern Kachin state would return to the village they fled and plant crops that would help keep them fed for the coming year.

But this year in the wake of February’s military coup, with the rains not far off, the farmers rarely step out of their makeshift homes and don’t dare leave their camp. They say it is simply too dangerous to risk running into soldiers from Myanmar’s army or their aligned militias.

“We can’t go anywhere and can’t do anything since the coup,” Lu Lu Aung said. “Every night, we hear the sounds of jet fighters flying so close above our camp.”

The military’s lethal crackdown on protesters in large central cities such as Yangon and Mandalay has received much of the attention since the coup that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government. But far away in Myanmar’s borderlands, Lu Lu Aung and millions of others who hail from Myanmar’s minority ethnic groups are facing increasing uncertainty and waning security as longstanding conflicts between the military and minority guerrilla armies flare anew.

It’s a situation that was thrust to the forefront over the past week as the military launched deadly airstrikes against ethnic Karen guerrillas in their homeland on the eastern border, displacing thousands and sending civilians fleeing into neighboring Thailand.

Several of the rebel armies have threatened to join forces if the killing of civilians doesn’t stop, while a group made up of members of the deposed government has floated the idea of creating a new army that includes rebel groups. The U.N. special envoy for Myanmar, meanwhile, has warned the country faces the possibility of civil war.

Ethnic minorities make up about 40% of Myanmar’s 52 million people, but the central government and the military leadership have long been dominated by the country’s Burman ethnic majority. Since independence from Britain in 1948, more than a dozen ethnic groups have been seeking greater autonomy, with some maintaining their own independent armies.

That has put them at odds with Myanmar’s ultranationalist generals, who have long seen any ceding of territory — especially those in border areas that are often rich in natural resources — as tantamount to treason and have ruthlessly fought against the rebel armies with only occasional periods of ceasefire.

The violence has led to accusations of abuses against all sides, such as arbitrary taxes on civilians and forced recruitment, and according to the United Nations has displaced some 239,000 people since 2011 alone. That doesn’t include the more than 800,000 minority Rohingya who fled to Bangladesh to escape a military campaign the U.N. has called ethnic cleansing.

Since February anti-coup protests have taken place in every border state, and security forces have responded much as they have elsewhere with tear gas, rubber bullets and live ammunition. But residents and observers say the post-coup situation in geographically isolated borderlands has been made worse by increased skirmishes between the military and armed ethnic organizations jockeying for power and territory.

Lu Lu Aung, who hails from the Kachin ethnic group, said she participated in protests, but stopped as it was now too dangerous. She said Myanmar security forces and aligned militias recently occupied their old village where they planted crops and no one left the camp because they feared they would be forced into work for the army.

“Our students can no longer continue the schooling and for the adults it’s so much difficult to find a job and make money,” she said.

Humanitarian aid for civilians in the borderlands — already strained by the pandemic as well as the inherent difficulty outside groups face operating in many areas — has been hard it since the coup as well.

Communications have been crippled, banks have closed and security has become increasingly uncertain, said the director of a Myanmar-based organization supporting displaced persons who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons.

“There is no more humanitarian help and support,” she said.

In eastern Karen State, where the airstrikes have displaced thousands, there are concerns that the arrival of rainy season could exacerbate a humanitarian situation already made difficult by reports that Thailand has sent back many of the civilians who fled. Thailand has said those who went back to Myanmar did so voluntarily.

Yet there are parts of the country’s borderlands that have hardly been impacted by the coup.

In Wa State, a region bordering China and Thailand that has its own government, army and ceasefire agreements with the Myanmar military, videos being shared online show life going on as usual, including the rollout of a coronavirus vaccination campaign.

Near Bangladesh in coastal Rakhine State, where the Rohingya were driven from and where violent clashes with the Arakan Army group have been ongoing for years, the junta last month removed the group from its list of terrorist groups, raising hopes a lowering of hostilities. The Arakan Army, unlike a number of other armed groups, had not criticized the coup.

The group, however, since released a statement that declared its right to defend its territory and civilians against military attacks, leading some to fear a fresh escalation in fighting.

Other armed groups have issued similar statements. Some such as the Karen National Union have provided protection for civilians marching in anti-coup protests.

Such actions have contributed to the calls for a “federal army” bringing together armed ethnic groups from across the country. But analysts says such a vision would be hard to achieve due to logistical challenges and political disagreements among the groups.

“These groups are not in a position where they can provide the support against the Myanmar military needed in urban centers with large populations, or really too far outside their own regions,” said Ronan Lee, a visiting scholar at Queen Mary University of London’s International State Crime Initiative.

Despite the uncertainty of what’s to come, some minority activists say they have been heartened since the coup by the increased focus on the role ethnic groups can take in Myanmar’s future. They also say there appears to be greater understanding — at least among anti-coup protesters — of the struggle minorities have faced for so long.

“If there’s any silver lining in all of this, that’s it,” said one activist, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fears for their safety.

___

Story: Victoria Milko