The military government in Myanmar has increasingly used nighttime arrests, legal threats, a curfew and a ban on large meetings to tame week-long anti-coup protests that have spread from cities to the countryside. Now, civil society groups fear that the military is preparing a new law that will further restrict online expression and limit citizens’ privacy rights.
A telecommunications company, Telenor, said on Friday that it was aware of the proposal and was reviewing it. A coalition of 158 civil society organizations signed a statement raising concerns that the potential new law would lead to widespread arrest of government critics.
Myanmar already has severe laws that restrict online speech, but opponents of the military say the proposed law is so broad that it would allow authorities to arrest anyone who criticizes the online government and to jail it for up to three years. Critics also said the proposed law would require telecommunications companies to cooperate with the government and provide information about their customers.
The military government declined to comment.
Concern over the proposal comes amid fears that the military may use more force if protests continue, as it has in the past. Two protesters have already been shot. But the proposal also suggests that the military may be looking for a variety of ways to contain the demonstrations.
The military, who ruled the country for most of the past 60 years, has a long history of using violence to suppress protests, including shooting pro-democracy protesters in 1988 and 2007. The Myanmar Army, or Tatmadaw, was never shy about showing the depths of their brutality, killing monks in the street and launching a wave of murders against the Rohingya, leading to the exodus of the Muslim minority in 2017.
But a violent response to the peaceful protests that swept the country after the February 1 coup may further isolate Myanmar, at a time when military leaders want to maintain normal economic relations. In addition to a televised speech Tuesday night by the coup leader, General Min Aung Hlaing, the generals behind the junta have been silent as the civil disobedience movement grows.
On Thursday, General Min Aung Hlaing posted a statement on Facebook saying that coronavirus vaccinations were taking place and repeating his call for a “disciplined multiparty democracy”.
Since taking power, the military has sometimes shut down the internet and blocked Facebook to interrupt communications between protesters.
In the past 10 days, a movement of civil disobedience against military control has infiltrated almost every aspect of society. Many bankers, railroad workers, civil servants, doctors and nurses refused to work, reducing the availability of medical care, slowing financial transactions and interrupting rail transport.
A strike by railway officials earlier this week led to the closure of the Myanmar Railway, which, under coronavirus restrictions, served only several thousand passengers near Yangon, the country’s largest city. There was no indication of when it would be reopened.
In Yangon, where hundreds of thousands of people filled the streets in protest earlier this week, actions were quieter, as minor improvised demonstrations broke out in different neighborhoods. On Friday, thousands of protesters demonstrated on foreign missions in the city, including the embassies of China and Russia.
Protesters have also become more creative since meeting restrictions were announced on Tuesday. Some paraded in horse-drawn carts or dressed in ball gowns. A group of animal lovers brought their dogs, another, their snakes and lizards. Musicians played in the streets, weightlifters showed their breasts and some young women wore bikinis while holding anti-coup posters.
“It is wonderful to see all kinds of people demonstrating in protest,” said U Wai Zin Thant, manager of a private company in Mandalay who watched them online. “I never thought I would see a fashion show, a music concert and a historic protest against the military coup at the same time.”
The protests reached the placid Lake Inle, in central Myanmar, where the inhabitants seem to live in a bygone era. They live in houses built on stilts, grow vegetables in floating gardens and travel in long, narrow wooden boats. Fishermen are known to lean on one leg while paddling with the other.
But the community is not so remote as to be circumvented by the protests. On Thursday, more than a thousand residents of Lake Inle gathered by boat in a floating protest, with anti-military slogans written on their wooden oars and posters spelling English words like “Get out dictators.”
“Perhaps people think we live a peaceful life because we grow our vegetables for food and make our own boats for transportation,” said Ko Ngwe Toe, a resident of Inle. “But we cannot neglect that the country’s democracy is being violated by the military.”
At several demonstrations earlier in the week, the police moved to the side of the protesters to great applause from the crowd. In the city of Loikaw, in the state of Kayah, at least 40 male and female officers shouted “No dictatorship” and “People’s police” after changing sides.
But in the capital, Naypyidaw, two protesters were shot by police on Tuesday, apparently with live ammunition. One victim, Mya Thwate Thwate Khing, 19, was shot in the head. She is being kept alive by a ventilator, said Dr. Wai Yan Kyaw, of the Mil Beds Naypyidaw General Hospital, where she is being treated.
“According to her wound, it shouldn’t be a rubber bullet,” said the doctor. “It must be a real bullet.”
A second patient, a man who was shot in the chest, was released, he said.
The girl’s sister, Mya Tha Toe Nwe, said the two hid in protest to avoid a police water cannon jet and were leaving when she was shot.
“There is no hope even with an operation,” she said. “I am deeply sad.” But she said she would not be deterred.
“We participated in the protest against the military coup because it is not just for one person or a party,” she said. “We need to eliminate our country’s military dictatorship and I will continue to fight.”
Many protesters applauded President Biden’s decision on Wednesday to impose sanctions on the generals behind the coup that would prevent them from gaining access to $ 1 billion in funds that his government maintains in the United States.
Biden, who demanded that the military release the civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, from house arrest, said he would announce additional actions against military leaders and their families. The United Nations Human Rights Council is due to meet at a special session on Friday to consider the action.
In the past few days, the military has surrounded prominent leaders aligned with Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, in nighttime attacks, including top ministers from 14 states, the popular mayor of Mandalay and his Australian economic adviser.
Among those detained were the president and a member of the Union’s Electoral Commission, which oversaw the November elections that the National League for Democracy won overwhelmingly. The military justified its coup by alleging electoral fraud. Authorities also raided the party’s headquarters in Yangon, seizing financial records, computers and data storage devices.
A doctor active in civil disobedience in the municipality of Ingapu, in southern Myanmar, was arrested and dragged by plainclothes police on Thursday afternoon while he was suturing a patient, his family said. He hasn’t been heard since.
The military announced on Friday that they would release more than 23,000 prisoners under amnesty in honor of Union Day, a national holiday commemorating a 1947 independence agreement. These mass amnesties are not uncommon in Myanmar; the civilian government released nearly 25,000 prisoners in April.
But democracy advocates have expressed online concern that the junta might organize some of the prisoners in mobs to attack protesters, a tactic that critics said they used in the past.
Hannah Beech contributed reporting.