The junta’s annual one-day war on flowers saw about three dozen people arrested on Wednesday, the 79th birthday of detained civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, for wearing or holding flowers.
Most of them were women.
They were grabbed from homes, buses, the streets of Mandalay and ferries transporting them to sewing machine lines at garment factories in Yangon.
The junta’s crackdown on wearing or holding flowers followed a call by pro-democracy groups to stage a nationwide flower strike to mark the birthday of jailed State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
She was arrested on Feb. 1, 2021, the first day of the coup, and subsequently sentenced to 33 years in prison by a kangaroo court.
Last year, nearly 100 people were arrested and jailed for wearing, holding, selling or buying flowers on the democracy icon’s 78th birthday. Most of them were women too.
Regime forces arrest pedestrian wearing or carrying flowers near a shopping mall in Yangon on June 19 last year.
This year’s flower strike saw people wearing flowers or making offerings of them at Buddhist shrines. The strike drew participants inside Myanmar and in foreign countries with communities of Myanmar citizens.
Several embassies in Myanmar joined the strike by posting photos of roses on their Facebook pages on Wednesday and reiterating calls for her immediate release as well as the release of jailed President U Win Myint and all other political prisoners.
On Wednesday, several women wearing or holding flowers were arrested by junta security personnel in Mandalay, anti-regime groups in the country’s second-largest city said.
Junta footstool Eleven Media reported that 22 people were arrested for wearing or holding flowers or sharing photos of them on their Facebook pages on Wednesday. The news outlet is a member of the Singapore-headquartered Asia News Network, which says its goal is “bringing Asia closer.”
A resident of Mandalay told The Irrawaddy was “well-prepared” to arrest people wearing or holding flowers on Wednesday, suggesting this showed it had its priorities wrong. “There are too many robberies and other similar crimes in the city, but the junta is not interested in arresting criminals,” the resident explained, asking: “Is it a crime for a Burmese lady to wear a flower?”
The junta’s cheerleaders on Telegram used their channels to call for more arrests. They gathered evidence to help them, uploading screenshots of Facebook users wearing flowers or sharing portraits of people wearing flowers or merely posts of flowers.
The junta’s Telegram warriors also called for arrests of Facebook users who used the platform to wish Daw Aung San Suu Kyi a happy birthday.
Arresting girls for wearing flowers did not go over well with everyone. Some Facebook users noted that even though the military regime has lethal weapons, it “is afraid of unarmed civilians wearing flowers.”
Regime security personnel were sent to investigate commuters in Yangon on Wednesday. They stopped city buses and factory ferries in several townships to search for flowers and arrested commuters found wearing or holding them to mark yet another birthday in jail for Myanmar’s unrelenting democracy icon.
