Faced with the increase in nocturnal arrests, the Burmese are getting organized
Waves of arrests continue in Burma, especially at night, in an attempt to quell the uprising.
REUTERS - STRINGER
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
The Burmese generals imposed, Tuesday February 16, an almost total cut of the Internet for a second consecutive night and continue their waves of arrests in an attempt to put an end to the popular uprising against their coup.
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With our correspondent in Yangon,
Juliette Verlin
Burma recovered the internet this Tuesday morning at 9am.
It's the second blackout in a row and it's also the second quiet night in a row since the nightly arrests have multiplied.
But the Burmese remain on their guard.
A resident of the city center, Su, helps organize the night shift for her neighborhood.
Each night, ten people guard each entrance on his street and are ready to make noise by banging on pots and pans if the police or an intruder tries to enter.
Rumors
A taxi driver, Nay, said he had made his first shift on Monday night in his neighborhood in the north of the city and that everything had gone well.
Overall, this police watch organization works well.
But there are plenty of rumors circulating about released ex-prisoners being drugged and paid by the military to start fires and wreak havoc at night.
Amplified by social networks, a few videos that run on Facebook, but so far not really verifiable, people not being identifiable.
Now that
Yangon is
used to
peaceful protests
, it is these types of nocturnal events that stress the Burmese the most.
The army has continued to toughen its tone since its February 1 putsch which ended a fragile ten-year democratic transition in the country.
Some 420 people - politicians, doctors, activists, students, strikers - have been arrested in the past two weeks, according to an NGO helping political prisoners.
The former head of the civilian government, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the President of the Republic, Win Myint, arrested in the early hours of the coup, are still kept in secrecy.
"They will not be able to last more than a month and a half like that"
Among those targeted by the arrests, there are also members of the public service who stopped working to participate in the civil disobedience movement.
This doctor, in the Mandalay region, has not worked for two weeks to protest against the military coup.
He explains that it is necessary for the international community to impose sanctions because the movement will not be able to hold out for long.
"
Most of the employees who are part of the civil disobedience movement
," he said, "
come from the poorest classes, they have no other means of earning a living except their employment in the public service.
And they won't be able to last more than a month and a half like that, he
emphasizes.
For the moment, Burmese people outside the country send us money and the richest give us money too.
They have already started supporting those who are in critical financial condition.
Our hope is that the international community will impose visa bans on family members of generals because they send their children to study in Australia, UK, US, and if they are punished that way. , in addition to economic sanctions, that will weigh heavily in the balance.
"
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