The junta demanded the ambassador’s resignation and charged him with high treason, but he refuses to stand down. 2 The most prominent example is U Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, who continues to side with his country’s pro-democracy demonstrators and has raised the famous three-finger salute-a pan-Asian demand for freedom borrowed from The Hunger Games film franchise-at the United Nations (UN) in New York. 1īut this coup nonetheless remains incomplete: Many Burmese officials-diplomats, police, and even soldiers-have pushed back against or defected from the military.
His security forces have since responded viciously to nationwide anti-coup protests, killing upwards of 800 people, including young children in their own homes. The Tatmadaw then declared a “state of emergency” in which Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the military’s commander in chief, would govern for a year. Within hours, the military-the Tatmadaw-had seized control of the government, cut off Internet networks, shut down the stock market, and placed under arrest numerous activists and politicians, including, most notably, Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian government’s de facto leader. Early on the morning of 2 February 2021, soldiers and police officers marched through the streets of Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, accompanied by an insentient but no less imposing cadre of tanks and helicopters.