Myanmar blocks Facebook as resistance grows to coup

YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s new military government blocked access to Facebook as resistance to Monday’s coup surged amid calls for civil disobedience to protest the ousting of the elected government and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Facebook is especially popular in Myanmar and is how most people access the internet.

The military seized power shortly before a new session of Parliament was to convene on Monday and detained Suu Kyi and other top politicians.

It said it acted because the government had refused to address its complaints that last November’s general election, in which Suu Kyi’s party won a landslide victory, was marred by widespread voting irregularities. The state Election Commission has refuted the allegations.

About 70 recently elected lawmakers defied the new military government on Thursday by convening a symbolic meeting of the Parliament that was prevented from opening. They signed their oaths of office at a government guesthouse in the capital, Naypyitaw, where about 400 of them were detained in the aftermath of the takeover. They have since been told they can return to their home districts.

The unofficial convening was a symbolic gesture to assert that they, not the military, are the country’s legitimate lawmakers.

Some expressed their anger and their determination to resist the coup as they left the guesthouse.

“This violates the human rights of the whole citizenry. This is not a coup. This is a treason against the government.

I will have to say that this is state treason,” said Khin Soe Soe Kyi, a member of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party.

The military declared a oneyear state of emergency and put all state powers into the hands of the junta, including legislative functions. It said that at the end of that period it will call an election and turn over power to the winner.

Anti-coup graffiti appeared in Yangon, the country’s biggest city, with the slogan “Don’t want dictatorship”’ scrawled on a wall on a busy street.

In Mandalay, a city known for its activist politics, a spirited protest by about 20 people in front of the University of Medicine was broken up by police. Three were arrested.

Medical personnel have declared they won’t work for the military government. Health workers are highly respected for their work during the coronavirus pandemic that is taxing the country’s dangerously inadequate health system.

For a second night Wednesday, residents of Yangon conducted noise protests, banging pots and pans and honking car horns.