(1.3) Protests-Turned-into-Riots
There were pro-coup rallies and demonstrations as well. Analysis reveals that the political activists
who support the military and the Ma Ba Tha branches, widely accepted as the ultranationalist network, led the demonstrations and rallies. In some cases, these rallies and demonstrations take the
form of riots as opposed to peaceful demonstrations. As a case study, the pro-military crowd beat
two journalists covering a pro-military rally next to Yangon town hall on 1 February 2021, resulting
in severe injury to one journalist.2
Pro-military protesters holding batons, swords and slingers committed violence toward the bystanders and counter-protesters. As the police demolished the barriers along the streets they marched on,
they smashed the windows of the vehicles and looted the vendors. They shot with slingshots at the
civilian bystanders when the bystanders counter-protested them by banging pots and pans or showing three-finger salutes, forcing the bystanders to stone back at them. As a result, no less than 10
civilians were injured.3 Furthermore, separate groups of participants returning by six buses from a
pro-military rally organised in Ayeyarwaddy Region’s Pathein township on 14 February 2021 beat
and hit four young people riding motorbikes somewhere on their way as the youths showed them
three-finger salutes where they met. Mizzima quoted a pedestrian who witnessed the melee saying,
“We were driving back home. About six buses carrying the participants of the pro-military rally
stopped next to our car and people from the buses ran and beat the young men with motorbikes.
As soon as we stopped, the vehicles drove off. Then a motorbike arrived and two men attacked
the boys again. Three boys fled, but one remained. So, the two guys pulled his hair and asked him,
“Why did you show three fingers up to us?”.4
(1.4) Protests over Socioeconomic Issues
Protests were held only three times between February 2021 and September 2022 regarding socioeconomic issues. These protests were organised by Food Panda riders, ADK garment factory workers
within the Zay Kabar industrial compound and PMG bottle refinery factory workers.
အာာဏာာသိိမ်းး�ထော�ာက််ခံံဆန္ဒဒပြ�ပွဲဲ� သတင်းး�ယူူသူူ သတင်းး�သမား�းနှှစ််ဦးး ရိုု�က််နှှက််ခံံရ. (2021 February 1).
VOA Burmese https://burmese.voanews.com/a/journalists-attacked-myanmar-politics/5759585.html
3
အကြ�မ်းး�ဖက်် တိုု�က််ခိုု�က််လုုယက််မှုု ကျူးး��လွွန််ခဲ့့�တဲ့့� တပ််ထော�ာက််ခံံသူတွေ�ေရဲ့့
ူ
� ဆန္ဒဒပြ�ပွဲဲ�. (2021 February 26.) The Irrawaddy. https://burma.irrawaddy.com/news/2021/02/26/238625.html
4
လက််သုံးး��ချော�ာ�င်းး�ထော�ာင််ပြ�သော�ာ ဆိုု�င််ကယ််နှစ်
ှ ်စီးး�နှှင့််� လူူငယ််လေး�းဦးးအားး� တပ််မတော်�်�ထော�ာက််ခံံပွဲ�မှ
ဲ ှ ပြ�န််လာာသော�ာကားး�ခြော��ာက််စီးး�မှှလူတ
ူ ချို့့��� ဝိုု�င်းး�ဝန်းး�ရိုု�က််နှှက််. (2021 February 14). Mizzima Burmese.
https://www.facebook.com/MizzimaDaily/posts/4096792653688942/
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