Karenni villagers from Myanmar arrive on a boat with an injured person as they evacuate to Ban Mae Sam Laep Health Center in Mae Hong Son province, northern Thailand on Tuesday March 30, 2021. Thai soldiers began sending back some of the thousands of people who have fled a series of airstrikes by the military in neighboring Myanmar, people familiar with the matter said Monday. But Thai officials denied that as the insecurity on the border added a new dimension to an already volatile crisis set off by a coup in Myanmar. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)
MAE SAM LAEP, Thailand The military launched more airstrikes Tuesday in eastern Myanmar after earlier attacks forced thousands of ethnic Karen to flee into Thailand and further escalating violence two months after the junta seized power.
English
12 May, 2021A few weeks ago, a strange sight began appearing in the streets of Myanmar (Burma). Women have been hanging their traditional htamein – the pieces of cloth they wear as skirts – from ropes tied to windows or utility poles, suspending them above the streets like decoration for a parade. Some attach them to sticks and carry them as flags. These women are not simply putting out the laundry; they are protesting the coup d’état staged by the Burmese military on 1 February.
“Men think they have special powers just for being men,” Khin Ohmar, a women’s rights activist in Myanmar, tells Equal Times. “And they believe that walking underneath a piece of women’s clothing will make them lose their special powers.” The htamein are thus used as shields to protect the protest areas and prevent the military from entering.
Su Thit has a table in a corner by the window in her home. She no longer sits there at night. “You never know when the bullets will fly,” she says.
She fears the Myanmar military might shoot at random. At 8 pm, when people still bang pots and pans in protest, security forces will sometimes fire at the sounds with slingshots, stones, bullets.
Su Thit, a pseudonym she is using for her safety, lives in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. She began protesting in early February, when demonstrators swarmed the streets in defiance of a military coup that toppled the country’s quasi-democratic government and detained its civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The women’s revolution: what the coup means for gender equality in Myanmar
A group of women hang rows of traditional ‘htamein’ from ropes before demonstrating against the Burmese military junta’s coup d’état, 8 March.
(STR/AFP
)
Share this page
A group of women hang rows of traditional ‘htamein’ from ropes before demonstrating against the Burmese military junta’s coup d’état, 8 March.
(STR/AFP
)
A few weeks ago, a strange sight began appearing in the streets of Myanmar (Burma). Women have been hanging their traditional
htamein – the pieces of cloth they wear as skirts – from ropes tied to windows or utility poles, suspending them above the streets like decoration for a parade. Some attach them to sticks and carry them as flags. These women are not simply putting out the laundry; they are protesting the coup d’état staged by the Burmese military on 1 February.
May 2, 2021 Share
Amidst this development, the Myanmar government forces launched airstrikes against ethnic minority guerrillas in two areas of the country
The pro-democracy protestors in Myanmar, who are demanding the end of the military junta rule and restoration of a democratically elected government have now turned to rebels seeking their help. Many protestors are now heading to country’s remote borderlands to join a patchwork of rebel armies.
An international news agency in a report dated April 27, 2021, cites the Karen National Union (KNU) that protesters coming from the lowlands of central Myanmar have been trekking to the rebels’ hilly jungle redouts for training since late March. “We train people who want to be trained and who want to fight against the military regime,” the news agency quoted Maj. Gen. Nerdah Bo Mya, Chief of Staff of the Karen National Defense Organization, an armed wing of the KNU.