Myanmar marks coup anniversary with protests and unrest

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From Reuters

 

Streets in some of Myanmar's main cities were nearly deserted on Tuesday as opponents of military rule held "silent strikes", making the first anniversary of a coup that sparked deadly chaos and snuffed out tentative steps towards democracy.

The United States, Britain and Canada imposed new sanctions on the military and joined other countries in calling for a global halt in arms sales to Myanmar, a year after Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government was overthrown.

Since its bloody suppression of protests in the weeks following the coup, the military has faced armed resistance on multiple fronts in the countryside from groups allied with the ousted government.

On Tuesday, an explosion took placed during a procession of military supporters in the eastern border town of Tachileik, two witnesses told Reuters. The blast killed two people, said one of the witnesses, and wounded more than 30 others.

The coup triggered a huge backlash, with strikes and protests that led to about 1,500 civilians being killed in crackdowns and more than 11,787 unlawfully held, according to United Nations human rights office figures on Tuesday.

The U.N. human rights expert on Myanmar, Tom Andrews, on Tuesday said the junta was functioning like a criminal enterprise, harming its people and stealing their resources.

"The international community must take strong, meaningful steps to cut the junta's access to weapons, funds and legitimacy," Andrews said.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/myanmar-activists-vow-defy-junta-with-strike-coup-anniversary-2022-02-01/

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There seems to be no limits to which the leaders of Myanmar will go in order to tighten their grip on power.

From Channel News Asia / Reuters

Fearing junta, hundreds of Myanmar parents disown dissident children

Every day for the last three months, an average of six or seven families in Myanmar have posted notices in the country's state-owned newspapers cutting ties with sons, daughters, nieces, nephews and grandchildren who have publicly opposed the ruling military junta.

The notices started to appear in such numbers in November after the army, which seized power from Myanmar's democratically elected government a year ago, announced it would take over properties of its opponents and arrest people giving shelter to protesters. Scores of raids on homes followed.

Lin Lin Bo Bo, a former car salesman who joined an armed group resisting military rule, was one of those disowned by his parents in about 570 notices reviewed by Reuters.

"We declare we have disowned Lin Lin Bo Bo because he never listened to his parents' will," said the notice posted by his parents, San Win and Tin Tin Soe, in state-owned newspaper The Mirror in November.

Speaking to Reuters from a Thai border town where he is living after fleeing Myanmar, the 26-year-old said his mother had told him she was disowning him after soldiers came to their family home searching for him. A few days later, he said he cried as he read the notice in the paper.

"My comrades tried to reassure me that it was inevitable for families to do that under pressure," he told Reuters. "But I was so heartbroken."

Targeting families of opposition activists was a tactic used by Myanmar's military during unrest in 2007 and the late 1980s but has been used far more frequently since the Feb 1, 2021 coup, according to Wai Hnin Pwint Thon, senior advocacy officer at rights group Burma Campaign UK, which uses the old name for the former British colony.

Over the past year, security forces have killed about 1,500 people, many of them demonstrators, and arrested nearly 12,000 people, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a monitoring group. The military has said those figures are exaggerated.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/fearing-junta-hundreds-myanmar-parents-disown-dissident-children-2483011