15th February, 2021
Agency Report
Protesters in Myanmar kept up demands on Monday for the release of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi and an end to military rule, undaunted by the junta’s deployment of armoured vehicles in several parts of the country and more soldiers on the streets.
Suu Kyi, detained since the Feb. 1 coup against her elected government, had been expected to face a court on Monday in connection with charges of illegally importing six walkie-talkie radios.
But a judge said her remand lasted until Wednesday, her lawyer, Khin Maung Zaw, said.
The Feb. 1 coup and the arrest of Nobel peace prize winner Suu Kyi and others have sparked the biggest protests in Myanmar in more than a decade, with hundreds of thousands coming onto the streets to denounce the military’s derailment of a tentative transition to democracy.
“This is a fight for our future, the future of our country,” youth activist Esther Ze Naw said at a protest in the main city of Yangon.
“We don’t want to live under a military dictatorship. We want to establish a real federal union where all citizens, all ethnicities are treated equally.”
The unrest has revived memories of bloody outbreaks of opposition to almost half a century of direct army rule over the Southeast Asian nation, which ended in 2011, when the military began a process of withdrawing from civilian politics.
Violence this time has been limited but on Sunday, police opened fire to disperse protesters at a power plant in northern Myanmar although it was unclear if they were using rubber bullets or live rounds and there was no word on casualties.
As well as the demonstrations in numerous towns and cities, the military is facing a strike by government workers, part of a civil disobedience movement that is crippling many functions of government.
Armoured vehicles were deployed on Sunday in Yangon, the northern town of Myitkyina and Sittwe in the west, the first large-scale use of such vehicles since the coup.