Protesters show on bikes to mark the 79th birthday of the nation’s ousted chief Aung San Suu Kyi in Launglon township in Tanintharyi area, Myanmar, on June 19, 2024. | Picture credit score: AP
Authorities in Myanmar arrested 22 individuals for commemorating the birthday of jailed democratic determine Aung San Suu Kyi, native media reported Wednesday.
Police in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest metropolis, arrested 22 individuals who had posted pictures of themselves with flowers of their hair (an extended model attribute of Suu Kyi), Eleven Media reported, citing an unnamed official.
Different native media mentioned round a dozen had been arrested within the central Myanmar metropolis for carrying flowers or praying with them in public.
A outstanding pro-junta Telegram account posted a number of pictures purportedly exhibiting these arrested, together with one exhibiting 5 individuals with their legs in shares.
Suu Kyi, who turned 79 on Wednesday, has been detained by the army because it overthrew her authorities and seized energy in 2021.
The coup and subsequent crackdown on dissent have sparked a widespread armed rebellion that the army is struggling to crush.
The junta has rejected quite a few requests from international leaders and diplomats to fulfill with Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, who has reportedly suffered well being issues throughout greater than three years of detention.
Suu Kyi’s solely identified assembly with a international envoy for the reason that coup got here in July final yr, when then-Thai International Minister Don Pramudwinai mentioned he had met together with her for greater than an hour.
Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence imposed by a junta courtroom after a trial condemned by human rights teams as a sham to exclude her from politics.
Her son instructed AFP in February that she was “in good spirits” after receiving a letter from him, the primary communication since she was detained throughout the coup.