Myanmar’s Persistent Protesters

From nearly the moment that Myanmar’s armed forces, the Tatmadaw, launched a coup and seized power on the morning of February 1, 2021, it was clear that the takeover would be strongly opposed by the Myanmar public. In the days and weeks after the coup, small, impromptu protests erupted across the length and breadth of the country. Lined up behind colorful handmade banners, protesters took to the streets with megaphones, denouncing military rule and calling for a reinstatement of the civilian National League for Democracy (NLD), which was set to take office for the second time when the military struck.

These exuberant and defiant protests, which were covered on a daily basis by the exile media, were the first signs of the fierce resistance that has emerged in the four years since the coup. According to ACLED (Armed Conflict Location & Event Data), by the end of June 2021, more than 4,700 anti-coup demonstration events were reported across Myanmar.

However, just at the moment when they threatened to coalesce into a nationwide movement with the potential to topple the military regime, the protests were brought to an end by a fierce military crackdown that scattered the crowds and killed scores of people. Forced underground, the public protest movement soon re-emerged in the form of an armed uprising that has since pushed the mighty Tatmadaw onto the back foot in nearly every state and region of Myanmar.

Four years on, however, public protests against the military continue to take place across Myanmar, in some regions on a daily basis. In a report published late last month, Data for Myanmar recorded that anti-coup protesters supporting federal democracy and the “Spring Revolution” organized 2,846 peaceful demonstrations, an average of more than seven per day, of which some 80 percent took place in Sagaing Region, a hotbed of local resistance to the military. Peaceful protests also continued in Yangon Region, Tanintharyi Region, and Magwe Region.

“Protest groups supporting federal democracy and the Spring Revolution continue to carry out peaceful protests in rural and urban areas, despite facing arrests and repression from the Myanmar military,” the report stated. The report also recorded 77 protests that were held by regime supporters across the year, including a number protesting the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, an armed rebel group that seized the major city of Lashio, in northern Shan State, in August.

The report acknowledged that the data, which was collected from domestic media outlets, strike committees, and information released by the junta’s Ministry of Information, may be incomplete, and that as a result, “some events could not be accounted for.”

The report highlighted “variations in protest activity across different regions, as well as the specific issues and demands that were raised during these demonstrations.”

In terms of the reasons for the protests, the report noted a broadening out from the straightforward anti-coup line that dominated in the first weeks after the military takeover in 2021. Last year’s 2,846 anti-regime protests included calls to reject pressure from China to halt Operation 1027, a wildly successful offensive against the military in Shan and Rakhine states, and opposition to the junta’s conscription law. Protests were also mounted to demand international pressure to prevent airstrikes targeting civilians and to express opposition to the junta’s election plans, and involved boycotts of the Myanmar military by the Buddhist monks.

In terms of timing, last year’s protests were concentrated in the early part of the year, to coincide with the third anniversary of the coup in February and the passage of the junta’s People’s Military Service Law in March. The report noted a small spike in June, due to protests marking the birthday of Aung San Suu Kyi, the jailed NLD leader, and in September, when protesters took to the streets to demand that the United Nations reappoint pro-resistance Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun as Myanmar’s permanent representative.

Perhaps the most notable fact about last year’s protests was the heavy concentration of protest actions in Sagaing Region. This is consistent with Sagaing’s status as a region where the resistance to military rule has been particularly stubborn, and where, as a result, the population has experienced the harshest retribution. In its latest humanitarian update, published in June, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) noted that more people had been displaced by conflict in Sagaing than any other region or state. Of the more than 3 million people who are internally displaced in Myanmar, around 1.6 million were in the northwest, UNOCHA reported – the majority of them in Sagaing Region.

The Data for Myanmar report does not include overall data on protests in 2022 and 2023 – the group was only established in 2023 – but it is clear that the number of public protests has declined from year to year. For instance, according to the report, silent strikes marking the anniversary of the coup in February 2022 took place in 196 cities on the first anniversary, but subsequently dropped to 152 cities in 2023 and just 66 cities last year.

This decline is not surprising, given the increasingly constrained situation inside Myanmar. As the report noted, these protests have taken place despite growing control and securitization of the public sphere in Myanmar, which “has progressively restricted the space for freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.” In Yangon, for instance, Data for Myanmar reported that “while flash mob protests and public movements persist, they have been weakened by the military’s crackdown and repression, leading to a decrease in the intensity of public movements.”

The fact that protests are taking place on any scale in this context, in the midst of conflict fatigue and the privations of daily life, and in the face of retribution from the military authorities, is notable. As Billy Ford of the United States Institute for Peace noted on X after the report’s release, “In the absence of good information about public opinion in Myanmar, protests like this are an important data point for considering where the population stands.”

The deep hostility of most of the Myanmar public toward the military junta is not an issue of much dispute among Myanmar watchers, but these findings suggests that even after four years, there remains a strong public support for efforts to remove the military from the country’s political and economic life once and for all.