Citizens in Myanmar’s largest city honked car horns and banged on pots and pans on Tuesday evening as a sign of public resistance to the coup led a day earlier by the country’s military.
Myanmar’s powerful military grabbed power in a coup against the civilian government and imposed a state of emergency after detaining Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of her National League for Democracy (NLD) in the early hours on Monday.
Several pro-democracy groups had asked people to make noise at 8 p.m. to show their opposition to the coup.
“The curse of the coup is rooted in our country and this is the reason why our country still remains poor. All the voters who gave their backing to us in the 2020 general election should follow Aung San Suu Kyi’s instructions to carry out civil disobedience,” said Win Htein, a leader of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party.
The military said the seizure was necessary because the government had not acted on the military’s unsubstantiated claims of fraud in November’s election, in which Suu Kyi’s party won a majority of seats. It claimed the takeover was legal under the constitution.
