Junta authorities in Myanmar’s Mandalay city have arrested a doctor and seized his clinic and home in their latest effort to silence anti-junta voices, Civil Disobedience Movement doctors and locals told RFA Thursday.
Police and soldiers arrested Dr. Mya Than, who ran the Tet Nay Lin Ophthalmology Clinic in the city, along with his wife Myint Myat Khaing, an associate professor at Mandalay University’s department of distance education and their son Yan Naung Tun,
Myint Myat Khaing was a member of the CMD, a popular strike movement that at its peak brought the administrative machinery of the military regime to a halt.
A Mandalay resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity for safety reasons, said the clinic was sealed off on Thursday morning.
Another local, who also declined to be named, said the junta is rounding up pro-democracy activists in the city.
“Teachers who opened a private school in Maha Aung Myay township were arrested the day before. The school was also sealed off,” they said.
“Arrests for allegedly supporting People Defense Forces have become frequent these days in Mandalay.”
The junta has released no statements on the arrests and their Mandalay region spokesperson Thein Htay did not answer RFA’s phone calls.
Pro-junta Telegram messaging group channels posted photographs of the three along with pictures of police and soldiers at their condominium.
Comments on the channels included death threats towards anyone supporting anti-junta People’s Defense Forces and the National Unity Government, a shadow government formed by members of the civilian administration ousted in the 2021 coup.
One CDM doctor who didn’t want to be named for fear of reprisals told RFA the regime is targeting hospitals and clinics to try to put CDM health staff out of work.
Last week, the junta ordered the closure of Mandalay's largest private hospital for three months starting this Friday. They said the Mingalar Private Hospital in Maha Aung Myay township allowed two CDM doctors to work there.
In May, authorities revoked the business licenses of three private hospitals, accused of allowing CDM health staff to work there.
And last December, CDM professor Dr. Win Khaing, from Mandalay Medical University, was arrested while working at the Palace Private Hospital in Chanayethazan township.
Some 853 doctors and other health workers have been arrested nationwide since the military seized power in Feb. 2021, according to the CDM Medical Network.
It added 557 CDM doctors have had their medical licenses revoked for one year since the start of last year.
However, it said more than 45,000 health workers continue to participate in the non-violent CDM.
Translated by RFA Burmese. Edited by Mike Firn and Taejun Kang.