Is Hong Kong s pro-democracy movement defeated?
Myanmar joins the club
Myanmar s youth have also taken to the streets to protest against the military s seizure of power in a coup on February 1. Some of the protesters are the latest members of the cross-border network pushing for democracy. For many young protesters, joining the Milk Tea Alliance alongside other Asian youth represents a rejection of the closed and authoritarian society the military maintained for decades through violence and terror, Ronan Lee, a visiting scholar at the International State Crime Initiative at Queen Mary University of London, told DW.
More than 50 people have been killed and nearly 1,500 people have been arrested since the Myanmar army ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) monitoring group.
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March 6, 2021 Share
Myanmar’s security forces have killed scores of demonstrators protesting a coup. The new junta has jailed journalists and anyone else capable of exposing the violence. It has done away with even limited legal protections. The outside world has responded so far with tough words, a smattering of sanctions and little else.
The slide from a nascent democracy to yet another coup, as rapid as it has been brutal, opens up a grim possibility: As bad as it looks in Myanmar now, if the country’s long history of violent military rule is any guide, things could get worse.
[AFP]
Seeing the violence against civilians in Myanmar in the wake of that country’s coup, Rohingya refugees sheltering in southeastern Bangladesh say their own experience has been validated now that the general Burmese population is experiencing the brutality of its military.
Refugee leaders who spoke to BenarNews expressed solidarity with Myanmar protesters, as well as bitterness that they did not receive the same in 2017, when a brutal military crackdown on their community caused 740,000 of the stateless Muslim minority to flee to Bangladesh.
“At that time, if everyone had joined the movement to stop the atrocities against the Rohingya, then they would not have had to join this protest movement,” Muhib Ullah, chairman of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights, told BenarNews from the Kutupalong refugee camp this week.