Thousands take to the streets in Myanmar to protest coup and internet restrictions
Thousands of people spilled into the streets of Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city, on Saturday, chanting "down with the military dictatorship." The protesters held up three-finger salutes, signs that critics of Monday's coup are growing louder.
The military announced Monday that it would take power for one year after the commander-in-chief senior general Min Aung Hlaing alleged that November's primary elections were fraudulent, a claim that the country's election commission has dismissed. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, won in a landslide victory.
President Biden and the United Nations have called on Myanmar's military leaders to relinquish power and release activists and officials.
People from all walks of life are mounting a campaign of civil resistance due to the coup. Some residents have been banging pots and pans at night, and some essential workers like teachers and doctors have refused to work.
"We [residents] don't want anyone who steals power and then forms their own government," one woman told CBS News.
Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 15 years, had struggled against previous military rule before a troubled democratic transition began in 2011.
She has turned into a symbol of peaceful resistance. Still, critics say that after she became the country's top civilian in 2015, she failed to address the army's deadly crackdown on Myanmar's minority Rohingya Muslims. In 2017, entire villages were burned and destroyed, and hundreds of thousands of people fled to neighboring Bangladesh. The U.N. called it "ethnic cleansing."
But Suu Kyi is still widely adored in Myanmar. She now faces a possible prison term over the charge of illegally importing walkie-talkies.
As the demonstration swelled, authorities restricted internet access and broadened a ban on social media. As those restrictions grow, so do the concerns that the country and its people will once again live a life in isolation.