Myanmar activists promise protests during Buddhist Thingyan festival

Myanmar pro-democracy activists pledged on Tuesday to hold a series of protests this week to maintain pressure on military rulers during the country’s most important holiday of the year, Reuters reports.

The five-day New Year holidays, known as Thingyan, are usually celebrated with prayers, ritual cleaning of Buddha images in temples, and high-spirited water-throwing on the streets.

Activists urged people this year to stage symbolic protests from the start of the holiday on Tuesday, including by painting a three-finger salute used by demonstrators on traditional Thingyan pots filled with flowers, which are typically displayed at this time.

“The military council doesn’t own Thingyan. The power of people is in the hands of people,” Ei Thinzar Maung, a leader of the General Strike Collaboration Committee protest group, wrote on Facebook.

Ei Thinzar Maung said other planned holiday protests against the junta included the splattering of red paint on sidewalks and the blasting of car horns.

Activists also called for a day of silence to commemorate the victims of the violence and for a day of religious observance on Saturday, with Buddhists urged to wear religious attire and recite prayers together and Christian communities to wear white and read psalms. Followers of other religions in the predominantly Buddhist country were urged to follow the call of their leaders.

It will be the second consecutive disrupted new year holiday after the coronavirus pandemic all but cancelled last year’s celebrations.

The February 1 coup has plunged Myanmar into crisis after 10 years of tentative steps towards democracy as the military stepped back from politics and allowed Aung San Suu Kyi to form a government after her party swept a 2015 election.