Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar, hold a portrait of Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who is in military custody, during a protest against the military’s coup on April 8, 2021.
It has been 100 days since the military overthrew the democratically elected government and seized power in a coup d’état on Feb. 1, but the people have not succumbed to the military government’s bloody crackdown, and protests have spread across cities. Yesterday (11) demonstrators are still gathering in the streets of various cities to protest against the tyranny of the military government. According to foreign media analysis, it is difficult to see a turnaround in Myanmar in the near future.
The Associated Press reports that since the arrest of civilian government officials such as Ung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s civil society has begun to launch a “non-cooperation movement,” and even state-run railroad workers have joined the strike, followed by medical workers in civil disobedience, bringing the government’s medical system to a halt. Many civil servants, central bank employees and private bank employees also joined the strike. As a result, the entire society was nearly paralyzed and the livelihood of Burma was on the verge of collapse.
In recent months, the protests have spread to primary and secondary schools, where many teachers, parents and students have boycotted public schools, threatening to collapse their operations.
Demonstrators in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, march with protest signs.
According to the Associated Press, the Burmese military has killed more than 766 people, arrested nearly 4,000 and shut down several independent media outlets in the 100 days since the coup. Although the military continues to send soldiers into the streets to stop demonstrations, to ban dissenting voices seized a number of independent media, trying to create the illusion of power in the hands of the.
The Associated Press analyzed that as the civil “non-cooperation movement” continues to spread, several local armed forces have shown their support for the demonstrators and have clashed with the military several times, making it difficult to see a turnaround in the near future.
Thin Lei Win, a Burmese journalist currently based in Rome, Italy, said the military thought that because it was not killing as much as before and the number of street protests had decreased, people should feel that life had returned to normal. But in reality, he has heard from many voices, the resistance has certainly not subsided.
David Mathieson, an independent analyst who has studied Burmese affairs for 20 years, said he is seeing signs that when the protesters get the right training, resources and leadership, urban Burma could face an unimaginable level of internal armed conflict. The military is currently being challenged by a number of local armed ethnic groups, particularly in the northern Kachin and eastern Karen states, which have shown support for the demonstrations and have repeatedly engaged the military in firefights, while the military has bombed these ethnic armed groups with airstrikes.
According to Mathieson, the military’s military has formed a “government of national unity” on May 5, with a provisional constitutional platform and the formation of a “people’s defense force,” as Myanmar’s armed forces chief Min Aung Hlaing has shunned the good offices of international organizations such as the United Nations and ASEAN, leading to a growing consolidation of the resistance. A “people’s defense force” was formed to protect their supporters from attacks and violence by the military.
Recently, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachlet warned that Burma is following the same path as Syria, where peaceful demonstrations have been met with unnecessary and disproportionately bloody repression, and that this continued brutal crackdown on the people has led to armed resistance, leading to a dramatic turnaround in the situation and the spread of violence across the country.
In a statement, Bachelet urged countries to take immediate, decisive and effective measures to intervene to stop the violence, otherwise Myanmar will move towards “full-blown conflict”, which has “clear parallels” with Syria in 2011.
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