to #Telenor_M1IsPartnerOfSAC in July and #AcceptNUG_RejectMilitary mid-October after
several governments had recognized the NUG as the legit representative body of Myanmar.
"Tactical hashtags act as accessible, bite-size chunks of the pro-democracy movement that fit
perfectly into tweets geared towards an international audience. Before a tactical hashtag is
meant to trend, these coordinators send out the hashtag itself, an explanation behind it, safety
instructions on using VPNs, and tips on navigating tweeting in English. The organization of this
digital campaign has constructed an accessible archive of the coup and the efforts against it,"
according to the DFRLab.
The posts of the "Twitter Team For Revolution" are then relayed on other platforms by a myriad
of “keyboards fighters” determined to counter the regime’s misinformation operations and
propaganda, such as Myanmar’s K-pop fandom. Every day, the Milk Tea Alliance Galleries
account likes dozens of tweets and comments the same reply "museumificating" on tweets
related to pro-democracy history in the Milk Tea Alliance countries and China's global
influence. Those selected tweets are then gathered on an online museum to keep a collective
memory of how the dramatic political events which are currently unfolding in the region
happened and were reported in real-time. The Milk Tea Alliance (MTA), an online movement
named after a very popular drink in the region, began in June 2020 as a pan-Asian virtual
friendship between activists fighting for democracy and against the Chinese Communist Party
influence on the governments of their respective countries, mainly Thailand, Taiwan, Hong
Kong and Myanmar. From sharing digital protest art to translating strategic manuals to deal
with tear gas and riot police, the MTA become a powerful support system for a generation who
had enough of the isolation, repression and lack of political representation imposed on them
by out-of-touch power-grabbing senior leaders.
Since the first week of the coup, people have been raising funds online as an attempt to make
up for the lost income of hundreds of thousands of civil servants and workers on strike,
refugees in IDP camps and PDF fighters. Artists Against Tyranny organized an online art auction
and other collectives have started selling paintings as Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), such as the
People’s Revolution Project, a coalition of Thai and Burmese artists who joined hands to
support the fight for democratic representative political systems in their respective countries.
While online resources in the Burmese language were severely limited before the coup, several
organizations quickly translated guidelines to document mass protests or atrocities committed
by the security forces. The aim is to use this information in the International Court of Justice.
WITNESS Asia-Pacific proposes a library including human rights crimes that are caught on film,
live-streams and documentation during Internet shutdowns. Myanmar Witness provides a safe
platform to collect evidence of human rights incidents and collaborates with the media to
publish and investigate further. The Fifth Column is a Telegram channel which invites people
to share any information on soldiers’ movements across their neighborhoods and towns. The
UN set up the Independent Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar and is asking anyone in
Myanmar with evidence of orders from top commanders relating to the use of lethal force
21