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A civil disobedience movement in Myanmar is gaining momentum with teachers and students protesting against Monday’s military coup.
Demonstrators at a university in the biggest city, Yangon, chanted support for jailed leader Aung San Suu Kyi and wore red ribbons, her party’s colour.
Ms Suu Kyi and other leaders have been held since the coup on Monday.
Earlier, the military detained another senior leader from her National League for Democracy (NLD) party.
Although Ms Suu Kyi has not been seen in public since Monday, she is believed to be under house arrest, according to an NLD official.
Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, has remained mostly calm in the aftermath of the coup, which has plunged the South East Asian country into uncertainty.
On Friday afternoon, hundreds of teachers and students gathered outside Dagon University in Yangon, where they displayed the three-finger salute – a sign that has been adopted by protesters in the region to show their opposition to authoritarian rule.
They chanted their support for Ms Suu Kyi and carried red flags.
“We will not let our generation suffer under this kind of military dictatorship,” Min Sithu, a student, told the AFP news agency.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTBBC BURMESEThere have been a number of demonstrations in different parts of Myanmar – the first large-scale street protests seen in the country since the coup.
Residents in some cities, including Yangon, have conducted nightly protests from their homes, banging pots and pans and singing revolutionary songs. There have also been daytime flash mobs.
About 70 MPs are said to have held an insurgent parliament, to replicate the parliamentary session that was supposed to take place this week.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTAFPIn a pre-dawn phone call with BBC Burmese, Win Htein, a 79-year-old patron of the NLD and strong supporter of Ms Suu Kyi, said he was being taken to the capital, Nay Pyi Taw, by members of the police and the military.
He said he was being detained under sedition laws – which carry a maximum punishment of life imprisonment – although he was not told the exact charge.
“They don’t like what I’ve been talking about. They are afraid of what I’m saying,” he said.
IMAGE COPYRIGHTREUTERSMany have also turned online to protest against the coup. The military has since temporarily banned Facebook, which is widely used across the country.
Since the ban began on Thursday, many Burmese citizens appear to have flocked to other social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram.
Twitter declined to comment when asked by the BBC if it had seen a spike in new users or tweets from Myanmar.
The military overthrew Ms Suu Kyi’s government after it claimed a November election won by the NLD was fraudulent, though the country’s election commission said there was no evidence to back up these allegations.
The move has been met with global outrage.
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden called on the military to “relinquish power” and release detained officials and activists. The US had already threatened severe sanctions on Myanmar.
However, the military is seemingly undeterred, continuing down its path of consolidating power and appointing new ministers, says the BBC’s South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head.
The UN Security Council also called on the military authorities in Myanmar to release Ms Suu Kyi and other detained leaders – but stopped short of condemning the coup.
In doing so, it has brought China and Russia behind a call for her release, in what our correspondent has described as a rare show of international unity.
Myanmar at a glance
Myanmar is a country of 54 million people in South East Asia which shares borders with Bangladesh, India, China, Thailand and Laos.
It was ruled by an oppressive military government from 1962 to 2011, leading to international condemnation and sanctions.
Aung San Suu Kyi spent years campaigning for democratic reforms. A gradual liberalisation began in 2010, though the military still retained considerable influence.
A government led by Ms Suu Kyi came to power after free elections in 2015. But a deadly military crackdown two years later on Rohingya Muslims sent hundreds of thousands fleeing to Bangladesh.
It triggered a rift between Ms Suu Kyi and the international community after she refused to condemn the crackdown or describe it as ethnic cleansing.
She has remained popular at home and her party won again by a landslide in the November 2020 election. But the military have now stepped in to take control once more.
