5/22/22, 5:32 PM ‘Online mob’ assists silent strike crackdown | Frontier Myanmar ISSUES SIGN UP NOW A major road in Yangon seen deserted during the last silent strike in December (AFP) ‘Online mob’ assists silent strike crackdown JANUARY 31, 2022    Pro-military social media users are helping Myanmar’s military regime hunt down business owners planning to support a silent strike on February 1, and activists say messaging app Telegram is failing to stop their campaign despite it potentially putting lives at risk. By ANDREW NACHEMSON and FRONTIER Prior to the coup, social media personality Han Nyein Oo was best known for sharing salacious celebrity gossip. Now, his channel on messaging app Telegram is dominated by pictures of dead bodies of pro-democracy activists and resistance fighters and pro-regime propaganda that claims people support the military. In recent days, he’s been posting more prosaic photos of shops, offices and businesses. But the images are no less disturbing, because they are part of a campaign to help Myanmar’s military junta take action against businesses planning to join a protest to mark the one-year anniversary of the coup. “Please take a photo of the shops that [plan to] close on February 1 and send it to me,” he wrote on January 23. The Myanmar military seized power on February 1, 2021 after the National League for Democracy won a landslide reelection victory in November 2020. To demonstrate the extent of public opposition to the regime, activists have declared a “silent strike”, calling for all people to remain inside between 10am and 4pm and for businesses, including shops, to close for the day on February 1. A similar event held in December was highly successful, producing stirring images of completely empty streets across the country, but also clearly angering the regime. Ko Soe Naing, a photojournalist, was arrested while taking pictures of Yangon’s deserted streets and later killed in custody. He was the first journalist to be killed since the coup. https://www.frontiermyanmar.net/en/online-mob-assists-silent-strike-crackdown/ 1/8