I’m not even going to comment on how it is evil when the government cracks down on riots in Asia, but good when they crack down on riots in France or the Netherlands or Germany. It’s just too obvious to even mention at all.
Police in Myanmar have fired tear gas, stun grenades and sprayed live ammunition into the air in an attempt to stamp out a major anti-coup rally, their most aggressive nationwide crackdown since the military seized power.
Four people have reportedly been killed in the violence, including three men in the southern town of Dawei, where at least 20 others have been injured according to Agence France-Presse. One man was also killed in Yangon, while several others were injured. Medics who had gone on strike in protest against the military coup went back to work in Yangon general hospital emergency department to treat the wounded.
Social media footage showed protesters in Yangon carrying bloodied people to safety, with one man filmed lying motionless on the road. It is not clear if the injured had been hit with live bullets, however live rounds were reportedly fired at Hledan Junction, a gathering point for people protesting against the 1 February military coup, and in Thaketa township in the city.
Elsewhere in downtown Yangon, a group of around 10,000 protesters, one of several marches in the city, were met with tear gas.
“We were part of an engineers march,” said a protester who was among the crowd, and who had taken refuge in a resident’s house. “Police started firing [tear gas] at us at about 9am. We all ran in different directions. I don’t know what to do now. I will wait here for a while and see. It’s really bad, it was scary.”
Many of those taking to the streets wore gas masks, hats and goggles for protection, following an increasingly violent response by police on Saturday, when teargas and rubber bullets were used to disperse crowds. According to state-run MRTV television, more than 470 people were arrested at Saturday’s protests.
On Sunday, residents rushed to build makeshift road blocks, ripping up pavement slabs and assembling bins to prevent police from charging. On top of a pile of rubble used to seal off a road, protesters had laid a poster of Aung San Suu Kyi, with the words: “She is our only belief.”
A teacher in Yangon said she woke up to texts from her students saying goodbye in the event that they are killed in the protests. “One messaged me and thanked me for my support over the years, ending with ‘we love you, bye for now’ while taking cover from police fire,” she said.
Remember that the military turned the internet back on.
If they would have just left the internet off, nothing would have happened.
It does make you wonder if maybe the military wasn’t getting some bad advice from somewhere, because now, they’re not going back to status quo – now they’re going to go full anal.
This is also going to affect the situation in Thailand, where they have women rioting in the name of gay anal.
That is to say: if the military didn’t have the balls to go full on and shut off the internet, they shouldn’t have done anything at all. The West’s control of social media is absolute, and they can get large numbers of people to riot very easily.