myanmar state tv has warned that quote
action will be taken against any
protesters who break the law the
announcement coming as tens of thousands
of people across the southeast asian
nation have joined a third day of
demonstrations after a military coup
police used water cannon in the capitol
to disperse protesters who are demanding
the release of their leaders including
aung suchi
one week on from the arrest of their
elected leader myanmar has grown bolder
protesters in the capital napierdore
faced police water cannons on monday
blocking their path their only weapons a
three-finger salute which has come to
represent the pro-democracy movement
in addition to the street protests a
nationwide strike began on monday
a campaign of civil disobedience has all
the while been growing louder launched
by medical personnel
we all are nurses from a government
hospital and ngo
our goal is to help the civil
disobedience movement succeed and ensure
the military system fails we health
workers are leading this campaign to
urge all the government staff to join
the cdm
our message to the public is that we aim
to completely abolish this military
regime and we have to fight for our own
destiny
protests have now spread across the
country after the army chief seized
power on february 1st
the military detained leader aung san
tsuchi and dozens of her party members
accusing them of election fraud
demonstrators are demanding her release
and the restoration of her government
the rallies have so far been peaceful
unlike bloody crackdowns during
widespread protests in previous decades
but pressure is building the protests
are growing bolder and demonstrators
continue to be met with a greater show
of force from authorities
and for more let's bring in yoon miyatwa
who is an activist joining us from
mandalay in myanmar welcome to the
program and thank you so much for
joining us what have you been seeing
transpire there
yes um they cut off all the um order for
internet lines and even so they cut off
our um
they paint our social media facebook and
twitter and
and uh um they want us not to spread the
news that we are protesting against them
and even in the news right now they
announced
in the national news that we people
accept the military they released their
release in all the fox news on the news
channel
and that is why we are now in in every
part of the country in our country right
now that is why we are peacefully
protesting and doing um civilized
opinions campaign all over the world all
over our country
okay so peaceful protest but you know in
the meantime we've heard this warning
from the military um they have promised
quote action against any protesters who
break the law
um a clear warning to demonstrators
there
does that make you nervous
um actually i might say yes
because
right now we um we all know what they
are doing and they have a group of
people that they hire
and even they they have some prisoners
from the
prison and that group of people um
they were trying to trick us um by um
choosing violence and you can see in
that group of people there are some
people from their side and
they use that people to against to do
against the law and that what happened
is that what really happened in that
part of the
country that um they had a group of
people and they started saying bad
things to the police and they do
um water bottle to the police and the
police started shooting to the innocent
people out there too
and that is why that's really scared to
me and because
i highly say that they are not the
citizens that are
peacefully protesting they're just a
group of people that they hire to do
all these bad things to do to
make us scared
okay so so you believe that the military
is behind that um
you know we're we're seeing masses we've
seen images there masses of people
taking to the streets even despite you
know potentially facing consequences
we've heard the threats from the
military
what do people in myanmar want for their
future
um we want our
elected government because we voted
and we we voted because we trust them
and
um
and they right now they um we really
want them to release her and our
president
and also our elected of the government
leaders too right you know they even
from their own government um with all
the people that we didn't vote for and
that is why we are asking for our rights
back and we want our democracy back and
we want them to respect our vote and
give us back our country future back
you and maya tua joining us from myanmar
as we mentioned you're one of the
activists who's who's bravely taking to
the streets uh to protest against this
coup by the military in your country and
we thank you so much for joining us to
share that perspective
and thank you so much for letting me in
this program and um spreading
our news to other parts of the country
it does a lot to us thank you so much
for this story i'm now joined by lorna a
filmmaker and activist in the economic
economic capital yangon he's obscuring
his face uh for safety uh reasons how
are security forces they're handling uh
the protests is there a palpable uh
escalation
um yes at this point everything is a bit
uh unpredictable because there are more
people than
uh the days before they at least double
or triple the amount right now
so but uh we heard the news from nepal
as well but in yangon huli has not used
any violence so far they are basically
moving around congested areas rather
than
heavily stationed somewhere else and
then we have seen some people
trying to cooperate with police
so
all in all uh here it's um so far this
peacefully people just walking on the
streets including
nurses medical workers lawyers even the
staff from um
ministries
uh trying to support the civil
disobedience movement
um the internet and social media access
have been disrupted uh yesterday and how
are people getting their information how
are they contacting each other to
organize this protest
right right now um we have a brief uh
we're hoping we'll have the internet for
longer but we are not sure at this point
because it's been on and off um so
uh for example if we don't have the
internet we have to rely solely on like
uh phone calls and sms that we don't
have any uh phone network at all which
happened on the first day of the coup um
then uh what happens is uh we have to
use some offline apps like uh bluetooth
messaging and so all these things so
uh in the uh so our concern right now is
that there are a lot of supports that we
need to provide for civil disobedience
movement but right now we're hoping the
information flows stay the same because
there are a lot of fake news and rumors
running around so we hope to reduce
that and then
get the correct information across other
people
tell me how do protesters feel about
aung san tsuchi does she still enjoy a
widespread support
um
well uh in a sense yes but for example
you might see there are a lot of um uh
yesterday there were a lot of people
wearing red and supporting nld but for
today for example there are a lot of uh
especially younger people wearing black
and blue shirts or just to uh show that
you know uh it's not just about one
party and this is about uh uh everyone
in the for the whole population
including minorities and different
religions people of different age this
concerns uh everyone in the uh country
and that they want to show that this is
uh civilians against uh authoritarian
military regime our government
thank you very much lorna an activist
and filmmaker in myanmar thank you
thank you very much