With their emphasis on values, Gen Z protests also connected to other movements elsewhere in the region and around the globe, staging “Milk Tea,” and “Spring Revolution” protests in Myanmar’s large cities and towns. Strike protests with their origins in the Civil Disobedience Movement proliferated as the logic for a non-violent leaderless movement: “GSC Strike”, “Five Twos Revolution” labour strike, the “Silent Strike”, the “Railway Strike”, “Night Strike”, “no-human strikes” in which proxies like hospital coats, signboards, flowers, and hard-hats stood in for living protesters. And then there was the gravest of all challenges to the military issued by the State Sangha Council Ma-ha-na threatening an impending monks strike.41 The broadening of the protest space was further amplified through social media. Messages on Facebook forecasting, for example, that the following day would be “collective car breakdown day” in Yangon, or “car slow down day”, enabled widespread participation in civil disobedience. Social media also amplified traditional resistance performances found outside the urban areas, such as the “cursing ritual ceremony” undertaken by hundreds of Bagan protesters at the location of twelfth-century Hti-lo-min-lo Temple in order to counter the rituals that Min Aung Hlaing performed in advance of the coup in the belief that his purpose and metaphysical powers would be aligned with previous rulers of Myanmar.42 A street performance of the mythical Emerald Sisters subduing a bilu or ogre, personified as Min Aung Hlaing, reveal other protest forms that drew on mytho-historical repertoires of supernatural battles between good and evil (Figure 6). The Ma-ha-na has not followed through with its threat as of 11 April 2021 after the military responded with counter-threats to imprison and disrobe members of the council. Nevertheless, individual monasteries have “turned the bowl over” or staged strikes. 41 “In Burmese, the name Htilominlo refers to the person that the spirit of the umbrella wishes to be king, at a time when the country needs a king to rule”; Zarni Mann, “Myanmar Military Chief Places ‘Hti’ at Bagan Temple Known for Divine Blessings”, The Irrawaddy, 27 February 2021, https://www.irrawaddy. com/news/burma/myanmar-military-chief-places-hti-bagan-temple-knowndivine-blessings.html (accessed 24 March 2021). 42 23 21-J07648 01 Trends_2021-7.indd 23 28/4/21 9:34 AM