YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar’s junta confirmed off its army power with a parade within the capital Naypyitaw on Saturday, with its chief Min Aung Hlaing defending final 12 months’s coup as essential to guard the nation from enemies, each home and overseas.
Celebrating Myanmar’s Union Day, which marks independence from British colonial rule in 1947, the federal government additionally introduced that 814 prisoners can be pardoned. Pardons are sometimes granted on major holidays.
It was not instantly clear if Australian Sean Turnell, an financial adviser to deposed Myanmar chief Aung San Suu Kyi and who has been detained for greater than a 12 months, was amongst these pardoned.
The day started with cell web blackouts from 4.00 a.m. native time, with the parade of military items and civil servants happening later within the morning. Also participating had been delegations from Myanmar’s Karen, Chin, and Kayah states, the place ethnic and anti-military armed conflicts rage.
Min Aung Hlaing denounced resistance to the brand new regime.
“The violence in Myanmar is inflicting chaos and persons are struggling,” he stated on the televised ceremony.
The junta spent at the very least $5 million on the ceremony, a neighborhood media outlet reported.
One of the primary teams behind the protests, the General Strike Committee of Nationalities, stated on Facebook that political prisoners being held at Insein jail in Yangon had begun a starvation strike on Saturday. It was not clear what number of prisoners had begun the starvation strike.
A decade of democratic reforms and financial progress in Myanmar got here to an finish with the Feb. 1 2021 coup.
Min Aung Hlaing repeated the junta’s assertions that it took energy as a result of it believes Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) fraudulently received the 2020 election. The NLD says it received democratically.
The junta has arrested hundreds together with Suu Kyi, who stays in detention in an undisclosed location going through authorized costs that might result in sentences including as much as 150 or extra years in jail.
Security forces have killed at the very least 1,547 individuals who resisted the takeover, in response to a tally by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).
The junta says the AAPP numbers are exaggerated and troopers have additionally been killed in battles.
(Reporting by Reuters workers; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)
