Massive demonstrations on Saturday February 13, constitution of citizens’ committees, UN call to release Aung San Suu Kyi: pressure is increasing on the military in power since the coup of 1is February in Burma, which increased the arrests of opponents. For the eighth day in a row, tens of thousands of people took to the streets on Saturday.
In Yangon, protesters gathered, three fingers raised in resistance, and traffic stopped in a concert of horns to celebrate the birthday of Burmese independence hero General Aung San, who allegedly had 106 years Saturday. He was also the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, the former de facto head of government, overthrown by the coup and now held incommunicado for 13 days in a residence in Naypyidaw, the administrative capital of the country, where she is “in good health,” according to a message posted by her party on Facebook on Saturday.
Protesters defy curfew
Demonstrations were held in other cities. Naung Po Aung, a remote village of 7,500 inhabitants in the north of the country, even hosted a parade of several hundred people, underlining the scale of opposition to the coup d’état across all of Burma. Friday evening, citizen vigilance committees spontaneously sprang up across Burma, responsible for monitoring their neighborhood in the event of operations carried out by the authorities to arrest opponents.
A video filmed in a district of Yangon, the economic capital, showed many residents invading the street, defying the curfew imposed at 8 p.m., after rumors of a raid by the police who had come to arrest dissidents. The protests brought together different sections of society, from monks in saffron robes to players from the national football team.
Hundreds of people arrested
The protests were mostly peaceful, but this week law enforcement officials used tear gas and water cannons. Two demonstrators were seriously injured by live ammunition, including a young woman of 20, Mya, still in critical condition, who has become an icon of the anti-junta movement.
The situation in Burma has been at the heart of the international agenda for twelve days. Since the putsch, “more than 350 political leaders, state representatives, activists and members of civil society, including journalists, monks and students have been detained”, noted the UN during the an extraordinary session of its Human Rights Council on Friday, deeming the use of violence against demonstrators “unacceptable”.
Sanctions against the Burmese military
At this meeting, the regime of the generals came under pressure with the adoption of a resolution demanding the immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi. Washington on Thursday announced new sanctions against the military, including their leader Min Aung Hlain. The Internet giants, for their part, denounced a bill on cybersecurity that will allow the junta to force them to transmit user metadata.
Facebook, the main medium of communication for millions of Burmese, said it would reduce the visibility of content managed by the military, claiming that the army was spreading “false information”. The generals contest the regularity of the November elections, won overwhelmingly by the NLD. Burma has already lived under the yoke of the military for almost 50 years since its independence in 1948 with bloody repressions in 1988 and 2007.
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