MARCH 17, 2021
Youth-led protests against the military's coup have morphed into a resistance movement involving nearly every segment of society.
Nurses hold up signs as they march during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon on February 13, 2021. Photo: AFP/
Young people were the first in Myanmar to peacefully protest against the country’s new military regime. Then came labor unions.
In the weeks since a February 1 military coup, Mynamar’s resistance movement has expanded dramatically to include some perhaps unlikely activists: doctors, nurses, bankers, grocers, railway workers and other working professionals risking their middle-class comforts.
Myanmar was under military rule from 1988 to 2011. During the elections in 2015, the National Democratic League won by a landslide, and party leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a well-known dissident, became the country’s leader. The army overthrew her government on February 1, 2021, and imposed martial law.
Soon, thousands of Myanmar’s health care workers were refusing to go to work – an attempt to thwart the coup regime by grinding government machinery to a halt. Health care is public in Myanmar, and health workers hold 10% of all government jobs. Most hospitals and medical schools have closed their doors.