On Twitter or Facebook, there are thousands of Burmese to display the color red, that of their “revolution”, or to pin their acts of bravery, among others under the hashtags #redcampaign or #silentstrike, since the early hours of this Tuesday. 1er February for the grim first anniversary of the coup that overthrew the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. We see sit-ins and rallies in areas under the protection of armed resistance or ethnic guerrillas. Photos of flash demonstrations of young people unfurling banners for a few minutes, often risking their lives, in the streets of large cities, before dispersing immediately. Red flags on cars. And above all, completely empty streets in Mandalay, in Rangoon, markets without products in the Sagaing region…. Blocked in Burma since the coup, but accessible through virtual private networks, Twitter, Facebook and the Internet more generally, are “a battlefield of post-coup Burma”write in a report devoted to the subject the researchers Mi-Kun and Laure Siegel on the site of Researchers’Republic.
On the early morning of Feb1, Students Unions of the whole Burma and youths from #Yangon , staged a guerrilla strik… https://t.co/GWXMFBYDJZ
This is not the only battlefield: the National Unity Government (NUG), formed in May 2021, in exile, has, through the voice of its interim president, Duwa Lashi La, commemorated the first year of the ” spring revolution” by a long speech and called on the citizens of the country, as well as the brigades of the “popular resistance forces” and the fighters of the ethnic guerrillas, to continue the resistance fight together. “If we want to build a new world-class country, with economic and social development, but also freedom, justice and equality, there is no other solution than to eradicate the military dictatorship”, did he declare.
The junta had warned, as early as January 25, that anyone who participated in a “silent strike” on January 1er February, would be continued. To set an example, fifty-eight people were reportedly arrested last week, reports the Associated Press, quoting the official press, for having announced on Facebook that they would close their business or demonstrate in the cities of Yangon, Mandalay and Myawaddy. Among them are restaurant owners, shopkeepers, a doctor, an astrologer and a “make-up artist”, the transgender activist known by the stage name of Gucci Aung.
A bad loser
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