Myanmar coup: Teachers join growing protests against military

3 min readFeb 5, 2021

A civil disobedience movement in Myanmar is gaining momentum with teachers and students protesting against Monday’s military coup.

Demonstrators at a university in the biggest city, Yangon, chanted support for jailed leader Aung San Suu Kyi and wore red ribbons, her party’s colour.

Ms Suu Kyi and other leaders have been held since the military’s coup.

Earlier, the military detained another senior leader from her National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

Although Ms Suu Kyi has not been seen in public since Monday she is believed to be under house arrest, according to an NLD official.

Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, has remained mostly calm in the aftermath of the coup, which has plunged the South East Asian country into uncertainty.

On Friday afternoon, hundreds of teachers and students gathered outside Dagon University, where they displayed the three-finger salute — a sign that has been adopted by protesters in the region to show their opposition to authoritarian rule.

“We will not let our generation suffer under this kind of military dictatorship,” Min Sithu, a student, told the AFP news agency.

Students at Dagon University chanted “Long live Mother Suu” and carried red flags, the colour of the NLD party, AFP reports.

There have been a number of demonstrations in different parts of Myanmar — the first large-scale street protests seen in the country since the coup.

Residents in some cities including Yangon have conducted nightly protests from their homes, where they have been banging pots and pans and singing revolutionary songs, and there have also been daytime flash mobs.

Some healthcare workers, teachers and civil servants have either organised small protests or gone on strike, while others have continued to work wearing symbols of defiance such as a red ribbon.

About 70 MPs are said to have held an insurgent parliament, to replicate the parliamentary session that was supposed to take place this week.

In a pre-dawn phone call with BBC Burmese, Win Htein said he was being taken to the capital, Naypyidaw, by members of the police and the military.

He said he was being detained under sedition laws — which carry a maximum punishment of life imprisonment — although he was not told the exact charge.

“They don’t like what I’ve been talking about. They are afraid of what I’m saying,” he said.

The 79-year-old patron of the NLD and strong supporter of Ms Suu Kyi has given several interviews since the coup criticising the military and its leader Min Aung Hlaing.

Myanmar coup: Teachers join growing protests against military

Written by Josh Brown

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