Myanmar’s increasingly desperate junta arrested two youths and an English teacher in Mandalay for talking about Thursday’s silent strike on Facebook and sealed off more than 90 jade shops in the city for participating in it.
The peaceful strike was held to mark the third anniversary of the military coup.
It left public places and streets in cities across the nation, including Mandalay and Yangon, largely deserted, further embarrassing a regime that has lost large swathes of the country to resistance forces over the past few months.
It was the fifth silent strike since the coup on Feb. 1, 2021.
Junta-backed Telegram Channel Kyaw Swar said on Friday that over 90 shops in the jade market of Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city, were sealed off by regime forces for six months because their owners participated in the silent strike by shutting them.
The owners of the jade shops have been accused of supporting “terrorism.” A video clip circulating on social media shows the busiest jade market in Mandalay almost deserted during Thursday’s strike.
Another pro-junta Telegram news channel, People Media, reported that two youths and an English teacher were arrested by the junta in Mandalay for posts made about the strike on Facebook.
U Kyaw Soe Oo, a teacher at Wisdom Tree English Language Center, was arrested for a Facebook post urging people to remain in their homes after 10 a.m. on Thursday.
A young man who goes by the name “Kyaw Saw Lin” on Facebook was arrested after he shared a post showing photos of deserted streets in Mandalay during the silent strike.
A teenage girl was arrested for uploading portraits of herself wearing a white blouse to show she had participated in the white campaign, which was also held on Thursday. She also posted a photo of herself making an anti-regime hand gesture.
Photos of the three detainees were released by the junta and published by pro-junta media.
Pro-regime cheerleader Kyaw Soe Oo of People Media said many people were arrested in Yangon for participating in the silent strike.
Anti-regime campaigners called on the public to join the strike by staying inside their homes between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. People in cities across the country heeded the call.
On Wednesday, regime officials threatened owners of shops and market stalls that their businesses would be seized if they did not remain open during Thursday’s silent strike.
The junta also organized a pro-military rally in the center of Yangon in an attempt to give the impression that the country’s commercial hub was busy during the silent strike. The rally drew a few hundred people, including nationalist monks, in the city of more than 5 million.
It was led by notorious ultranationalists like military cheerleader Win Ko Ko Lat and U Hla Swe, a former lieutenant colonel and a senior member of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party.
Pro-junta Telegram channels publicized the names of shops that were closed during the strike and urged that their owners be punished. They also called for the junta to punish private school that closed on Thursday as well as students who were absent from class.
Previously, the junta has taken harsh action against people who joined silent strikes and other anti-regime campaigns.
Photographer Ko Soe Naing died in the junta’s custody after he was detained while taking pictures of a deserted Yangon during a silent strike marking International Human Rights Day in December 2021.
