Myanmar coup: protesters flood streets for second day, condemning ‘military dictatorship’
- The surge in popular dissent over the weekend occurred as a nationwide blockade of the internet seemed to have come to an end
- Some protesters displayed the three-finger salute inspired by the Hunger Games films and used by pro-democracy protesters in Thailand last year
The fresh rally followed the largest protests to date on Saturday, when tens of thousands also came out in cities across the country to condemn the coup that brought a 10-year experiment with democracy to a crashing halt.
In Yangon, nearly 100,000 demonstrators gathered in an area of the city’s downtown known as the staging grounds for prior pro-democracy protests. The showing at Sule Pagoda, which has remained peaceful so far, marks the biggest protest there since the monk-led, anti-junta demonstrations in 2007 as part of the Saffron Revolution.
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Footage of the demonstrations flooded social media as internet access was restored in the afternoon after the military-run government previously throttled access. Earlier in the day, around 2,000 demonstrators gathered close to Yangon University chanting “Long live Mother Suu” and “Down with military dictatorship”.
“We will move forward and keep demanding until we get democracy. Down with the military dictatorship,” said protester Myo Win, 37.
Despite the large-scale deployment of riot police – backed by water cannon – there have been no major clashes reported so far.
“#Myanmar’s military and police must ensure the right to peaceful assembly is fully respected and demonstrators are not subjected to reprisals,” the United Nations Human Rights office tweeted after Saturday’s protests.
Online calls to protest the army takeover have prompted bold displays of defiance, including the nightly deafening clamour of people around the country banging pots and pans – a practice traditionally associated with driving out evil spirits. Yangon residents repeated the pot-banging at 8am on Sunday.
As protests gathered steam this week, the junta ordered telecoms networks to freeze access to Facebook, an extremely popular service in the country and arguably its main mode of communication.
The platform had hosted a rapidly growing “Civil Disobedience Movement” forum that had inspired civil servants, health care professionals, and teachers to show their dissent by boycotting their jobs.
On Sunday, a live Facebook video feed showed the Yangon protesters as they marched through the streets, as well as police in riot personnel standing by in some locations.
It was not immediately clear how the broadcast was bypassing the government block, although Norwegian telecoms provider Telenor said on Sunday that it had restored its data network, after it was ordered to shut it down a day earlier by military authorities.
The military had widened its efforts to quell organised dissent on Friday when it demanded new blocks on other social media services including Twitter.
“The generals are now attempting to paralyse the citizen movement of resistance – and keep the outside world in the dark – by cutting virtually all internet access,” said Tom Andrews, UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar.
An immensely popular figure despite a tarnished reputation in the West, Suu Kyi has not been seen in public since the coup, but a spokesman for her National League of Democracy had said on Friday that she was under house arrest and “in good health”.
Two days after she was detained, criminal charges were filed against her related to the illegal import of a set of walkie-talkies.
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Following the takeover, the junta proclaimed a one-year state of emergency after which it promised to hold fresh elections, without offering any precise time frame.
The coup has been widely condemned by the international community, with US President Joe Biden leading calls for the generals to relinquish power and release those arrested in the post-coup crackdown.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse Reuters and Bloomberg
