Day 4 since we woke up into a nightmare that became true witnessing our freedom being robbed overnight. It was the worst Monday of our lives. We were devastated, and felt hopeless with uncertainty and into an unknown future.
Yet, things started to change starting from Day 2 of the unlawful coup. As digital nonviolent movement across the country has gained momentum, particularly on Facebook, the military decided they banned our social media network today. The official statement to ban was issued. This did not stop us; we quickly learned to use a virtual privacy network (VPN) to access social media apps.
They are SHAKEN by us. The civil disobedience campaign draws attention from all walks of life – medics, nurses, teachers, students, writers, artists, poets, housewives, and all have joined in the movement. Candlelight prayers, banging pots and pans, Red Ribbon campaign to add a few more tactics used by the people. People are resisting and rejecting military rule.
This is the beginning of our revolution. This morning today, a group of 20 people staged a protest in Mandalay, the second largest city in Myanmar, four of them have been arrested already. As of writing this sentence, the elected members of parliament from the 2020 general elections sworn in and convened the parliament inside the municipal guesthouse compound rebelling against the military order to leave the compound yesterday and against the dissolution of the parliament. We are all breaching the military’s unjust laws which they write with guns.
Mahatma Gandhi once said,“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment”.
The blood is boiling, and revolution, raging. This is our response to the violence with nonviolence. This is how we breach the evil and unjust law. Come what may, we are ready and the fight goes on!
