security forces in myanmar have again
used water cannon to disperse crowds
after people defied a ban and
demonstrated for a fourth day
against a military coup some reports
also suggest police have been firing
gunshots into the air
the junta is now has now imposed a
curfew on
yangon and mandalay pro-democracy
activists say
they will continue to fight
a ban on gatherings hasn't deterred them
here in the capital napier door police
fired water cannon at protesters
rallying for their freedom they're
demanding a return to democracy
and the release of elected leader ong qi
from napierdore to mandalay
to yangon a week of military rule in
myanmar has triggered a groundswell of
demonstrations
right across the nation
everywhere the same demand
i want and president mint to be released
quickly we want all the people from the
winning party
the nld to be released that's what we
all want
[Music]
in his first tv address to the nation
the country's new military leader sought
to justify the coup
repeating allegations of fraud in last
year's election
we're investigating the responsible
authorities regarding voter
he fraud fresh elections but gave no
timeline for when they might be held
the comments have done nothing to quell
the anger and defiance of these
protesters
who say it's too little too late
they want the army out and say
compromise is no longer an option
well from yangon i am now joined by i'm
in tan she's a journalist
from myanmar with her team of colleagues
from the reuters news agency
she won the 2019 pulitzer prize for
international
reporting so what is the situation like
in yangon right now
hi uh just to be clear i'm no longer
with reuters uh i'm
sort of just freelancing um but the the
situation is much more defiant than it
was yesterday i think
if you were looking at the coverage from
the protest yesterday you saw a lot more
families
a lot more people um really trying to
express
themselves um i think everyone kind of
saw
a lot of the uh the really fun sort of
protest science but today
the scenes are are much more um
prepared for violence i saw a lot of
people wearing hard hats today
uh from the sort of things that you see
at construction sites as well as a lot
more people wearing sneakers
which um i think if you're not from here
you might not quite understand that
myanmar is a country where most people
are wearing sandals uh even in
colder areas where they might be wearing
a scarf and
gloves but they will still be in sandals
and so those it's
a significant change well support
seems to be growing there are reports of
some firefighters even a policeman
joining the protests
yes uh there there were marches uh of
firefighters who've been joining um
so the civil disobedience movement is
definitely
growing you know it started out with
largely teachers and medical workers but
the myanmar states and the the amount of
people
who are civil servants in myanmar
constitutes a very large amount of the
population
and the protesters know this and because
of this
a lot of the chants that we've been
seeing the last few days
have been really focused at the police
to say you're the people's police
join us you have covered the
developments in myanmar for years do you
feel encouraged when you see so many
people out there
on the streets to fight for that taste
of democracy that they have been able to
enjoy for a couple of years now
yes i think it's really encouraging to
see that people are
now taking to the streets and do and
doing so in such a focused
um and specific way with specific
demands
and i think during the intro earlier as
well
it's not just that people are asking for
the the freedom of outsourcing and other
political prisoners uh
and the respecting of the election
results but they're also
very vocally and publicly demanding for
uh the constitution that the army wrote
in 2008 to be
um to create a new constitution
essentially and
a lot of protests for that had really
died down after the assassination of the
nld leader
uh three years ago um because he was one
of the main people pushing for it
in the report we saw one of the generals
promising elections
soon can can he be trusted
um i will say that when you
if you watch any of the facebook uh live
videos because they're not allowed to
stream uh since facebook has banned uh
military
uh outlets from their platform you will
see that almost everyone is
reacting with the the haha symbol uh
and most of the comments are accusing
him of being a liar so i think you get a
good sense of the people sentiment from
there
it doesn't sound like this situation uh
will be
can be solved with peaceful negotiations
um well
i'm not sure about that i do know that
the the leaders on the ground in terms
of the civil disobedience movement
their goals are largely to or to
completely stop
the wmr state from being able to
function
and if people are able to band together
and essentially rob
the new regime of any legitimacy as well
as any cooperation
in terms of you know enacting their rule
then i think it is something that can be
possible without violence
i'm in town pulitzer prize-winning
journalist in yangon myanmar
many thanks for your time
thank you for having me