Jakarta –
Emergency barricades of burning bamboo, bricks and rubber tires have paved the streets of Yangon, the largest city of Myanmar looks like a war zone. Now, the Myanmar military forces civilians to dismantle it, piece by piece, at gunpoint.
Built using any material, the barricades that have sprung up in Yangon offer little protection against the live ammunition that security forces unleash against anti-coup protesters. The demonstrators did win in terms of numbers over the security forces, but they had no real way of fighting tear gas, rubber bullets, and rifle fire from soldiers and police.
As reported by the news agency AFP, Saturday (20/3/2021), the monitoring group for the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said, around 230 people have died in the anti-coup demonstrations which has been going on since the military coup on February 1. The actual number of victims across the country is believed to be much higher.
The barricades have become a sort of hallmark of the protesters. They blocked main roads and used everything from cement bags filled with sand and bamboo bulkheads to large trash bins and bricks.
Tun Hla, 60, was at home when armed personnel banged on her door and sent her to work cleaning up barricades set up in her neighborhood.
“I’ve been in situations like this before and it won’t happen again,” Tun Hla, not his real name, told AFP.
During the period under the military junta, it was typical of military personnel across the country to order families to provide one healthy person to do the grueling work.
“The use of forced labor is nothing new in Myanmar,” said John Quinley of the group Fortify Rights, adding that it was “a brutal tactic used to create an environment of fear and intimidation”.
Watch video ‘UN Reveals 15 Teenagers Killed During Myanmar Coup’:
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