Watchful eye: Policemen patrolling a street in Yangon on the 78th Martyrs’ Day. — AFP
The head of the military government made a rare appearance at a ceremony honouring Gen Aung San, an independence hero and father of jailed former leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Yesterday was the first time 69-year-old Senior Gen Min Aung Hlaing attended the Martyrs’ Day wreath-laying since the army ousted Suu Kyi and seized power in February 2021.
Martyrs’ Day was an important event in Myanmar’s calendar for decades.
However, the military has downplayed the holiday in recent years.
It commemorates the assassination of Aung San, a former prime minister who was gunned down at the age of 32 along with six Cabinet colleagues and two other officials in 1947, just months before the country – then called Burma – achieved freedom from British colonial rule.
A political rival, former prime minister U Saw, was tried and hanged for plotting the attack.
Suu Kyi, who was detained when the army took over in 2021, was absent from the event for a fifth consecutive year.
She is currently serving a 27-year prison term on what are widely regarded as contrived charges meant to keep her from political activity. She has not been seen in public since her arrest.
Ye Aung Than, a son of Suu Kyi’s estranged older brother, was seen laying a wreath in front of his grandfather’s tomb during the main ceremony at the Martyrs’ Mausoleum near the foot of the towering Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon.
With Myanmar national flags flying at half-staff, members of the ruling military council and Cabinet as well as high-ranking military generals joined Hlaing in placing a basket of flowers in front of the tombs of the nine martyrs.
As the ceremony was held, people in Yangon paid tribute to independence leaders by blaring car horns and sirens at 10.37am, the time of the 1947 attack.
The event comes five months before elections that the military has promised to hold by the end of this year.
The poll is widely seen as an attempt to legitimise the military’s seizure of power through the ballot box and is expected to deliver a result that ensures the generals retain control.
The 2021 military takeover was met with widespread nonviolent protests, but after peaceful demonstrations were put down with lethal force, many opponents of military rule took up arms, and large parts of the country are now embroiled in conflict. — AP
