February 19, 2021
Innovative grassroots resistance grows despite mounting regime intimidation.
Editor’s note: The names of the journalists who worked on this article have been withheld for safety reasons.
Since a junta ousted Myanmar’s civilian government, on February 1st, the citizens of Yangon have roared back each day by staging massive and raucous pro-democracy rallies. The largest occurred on Wednesday, when hundreds of thousands marched to reject new criminal charges lodged against the country’s democratically elected leader, Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. In the daylight, civilians mock the generals for seizing power after an election in which their proxy party was crushed at the polls. After dark, the city’s power dynamic transforms. Under the cover of an 8 p.m. curfew imposed by the military, police “snatch teams” deploy in Yangon’s eerily empty streets, breaking into homes to haul away opposition politicians, activists, and civil servants who defy the generals with stay-at-home strikes. The spate of arrests has climbed into the hundreds in recent days. Last Friday, the coup’s diminutive leader, General Min Aung Hlaing, stoked nighttime unease by freeing more than twenty-three thousand inmates from the country’s prisons. It was, the general insisted, an act of mercy to honor Union Day, a holiday celebrating the country’s unification in 1947.