Yangon (AFP)

French oil group Total said on Sunday it was maintaining its controversial presence in Burma, where the crackdown on the military coup has already claimed hundreds of lives, while pledging to fund human rights organizations in the country.

More than 550 civilians, including women and children, have been killed by security forces since the February 1 coup that overthrew the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi, according to the Association for Assistance to Prisoners policies (AAPP).

The toll could be much heavier: some 2,700 people have been arrested.

Many, held incommunicado, without access to their relatives or a lawyer, are missing.

The army and the police fire live ammunition day and night, reports the AAPP, and four civilians were further shot on Saturday.

Faced with the constant deterioration of the situation, international and local NGOs, supported by certain politicians in France, called on Total, present in Burma since 1992, to leave the country.

The company will maintain its production of gas which "supplies electricity to a large population in Yangon," the economic capital, its CEO Patrick Pouyanné said on Sunday.

The group does not want to expose its employees on site to the risk of "forced labor" if he left.

Total paid around $ 230 million to the Burmese authorities in 2019 and 176 in 2020, in the form of taxes and "production rights", according to its financial documents.

Blocking our payments would expose "the managers of our subsidiary to the risk of being arrested and imprisoned," said Patrick Pouyanné in this column published in the French weekly Le Journal du dimanche.

He has pledged to fund human rights NGOs up to what he will pay to the Burmese state.

- Anti-junta Easter eggs -

Despite the bloody crackdown by the junta, pro-democracy mobilization continues, with tens of thousands of workers on strike and entire sectors of the economy paralyzed.

On this Easter Sunday, the civil disobedience movement has found a new solution: to distribute photos of eggs on social networks decorated with small messages.

"Save Burma", "We want democracy", "Let us free MAH", the powerful junta leader Min Aung Hlain, one could read.

But internet access remains cut for a large majority of the population, the army having ordered the suspension of mobile data and wireless connections.

The generals are also tightening their judicial grip on Aung San Suu Kyi, accused in particular of corruption and of having violated a law on state secrets dating from the colonial era.

If she is found guilty, the 75-year-old former leader, held incommunicado but "in good health" according to her lawyers, risks being banned from political life and faces long years in prison.

Arrest warrants have been issued for 40 Burmese celebrities - singers, models, social media influencers.

They are accused of having disseminated information likely to provoke mutinies in the armed forces.

Three family members, who spoke to a CNN correspondent who came to interview junta officials, were arrested.

"We urge the authorities to provide information on this matter and to safely release any detainee," said a spokesperson for the American group.

The bloodshed against civilians angered many rebel ethnic factions in the country.

Ten on Saturday gave their support for democratic mobilization and will "reexamine" the ceasefire signed with the military from 2015, according to the head of one of them.

Another, the powerful KNU Union, condemned army airstrikes in the southeast of the country which it said displaced more than 12,000, urging the country's multitude of ethnic minorities (over 130) to unite against the junta.

Other rebellions had already threatened to take up arms again.

The UN envoy for Burma, Christine Schraner Burgener, has warned of an "unprecedented" risk of "civil war".

© 2021 AFP