Another day under military dictatorship. Another day with many civilians of Myanmar waking up after a sleepless night.
Remember the Purge movies… last night, it was almost like we were all living in one.
The videos of a group of unknown people raiding into a condominium compound by crossing over the fence, the police not capturing the lone strange man running on the road after curfew hours, the ambulance dropping off thugs in the neighborhood and running off… we could go on and on.
Townships across Yangon erupting with banging noises of pots and pans, alerting each other to warn of the intruders — mainly ex-convicts released by the military to cause chaos among the people. There were reports of armed and drugged ex-convicts showing up in every residential area in Yangon carrying chemicals to poison drinking water, and attempting to do arson attacks. What’s worse? There were also reports of drones sightings around Yangon to capture footage of conflicts/chaos between ex-convicts and residents as ‘fake evidence’ to show the world that the unrest is being caused by the civilians after curfew hours. Hence, justification to the coup?
On top of all these chaos, the military is upping their game by suspending several key laws last night as well. They revoke basic human rights and protection of the citizens by suspending three privacy and security law codes, and bring back the legislation that requires the people to report to authorities for an overnight stay of a guest.
Basically, what these all means is that they can now arrest anyone without a warrant at any time and place, no search warrant or the presence of a ward administrative officer is needed to search any house and they can also seize any of our assets. They can now track whoever they want, and tap into our communication channels, and also acquire any information they want from the telecom operators. Last but not least, they can now detain anyone for more than 24-hour. So yeah, we’re living in a nightmare where the military could come into our homes at any time and ‘kidnap’ us, and ‘steal’ our things away.
Honestly though, none of this is new. They are using the same old trick from the playbook to incite violence and fear among the people.
People are all mentally and physically exhausted. But they still managed to go out on the street to demonstrate peacefully to show the world what is really happening in Myanmar. Peaceful protests are becoming more organized with images of the military’s dirty tricks at nights; bold messages of boycotting military-owned/affiliated businesses, and pleading with the civil servants to continue participating in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) not just in Yangon, but across Myanmar. One of the new sights among the protests is the demonstration of around 34 express buses going around Yangon to protest against the military. More police forces are joining the CDM movement as well. Right now, the only way to stop the dictator is to stop the functioning administration. We know it’s too much to ask but we really need cooperation to the movement from our civil servants.
The military will never stop exerting their forces onto us. They have issued warrants for Ko Min Ko Naing and Ko Jimmy, prominent leaders of 88 students, and a few others, but we don’t know how many have been snatched at late night raids. We also don’t know what’s waiting for us tonight, but one thing that the military is underestimating is how united people can be, the more they try to push us further.
Again, we’re so tired. We know everyone is so tired too. But we can’t give in. We need to fight on.
This is Mohinga Matters reporting Day 14 of Myanmar military coup. Keeping everyone in our thoughts. Stay safe tonight and united, comrades.
