RFA
With little to celebrate as they kicked off the Burmese New Year on Tuesday, people across Myanmar staged holiday-themed protests to defy the military junta in what an activist called “a funeral wake for the whole country,” while the U.N. rights chief said she feared the nation faces a fate similar to war-shattered Syria.
Opponents of the generals who overthrew the country’s elected government on Feb. 1 scrapped water-related blessings of the Buddhist Thingyan Water Festival for protest messages, strikes, and memorials to victims of the army regime that has turned rifle grenades and battlefield weapons on unarmed civilians.