By Conelly
Myanmar’s new military leaders blacked out nearly all access to the internet as protests over last week’s coup continued.
Internet connectivity dropped to 16% of ordinary levels, the monitoring group NetBlocks Internet Observatory told BBC News.
The shutdown followed hours after access to Twitter and Instagram were shut off to stop people from communicating about protests. Facebook, used by more than half of the people in Myanmar, was blocked on Thursday. The military said people were trying to spread “fake news.”
Many users had evaded the restrictions on social media by using virtual private networks, but the wider blackout made it harder to evade the bans.
Despite the efforts to curtail communications, about 1,000 protesters marched past police barricades in the streets of the capital, Yangon, chanting, “Military dictator, fail, fail; Democracy, win, win,” and held up and held banners reading “Against military dictatorship.”
Many of the protesters wore red, the color of elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, which had a landslide win in November’s election.
Scores of protesters were seen marching with three fingers in the air, a symbol of defiance adopted from protesters in neighboring Thailand, who borrowed the gesture from the “Hunger Games” movie franchise, The Associated Press reported.
They were met by police in riot gear.
The military filed charges against Suu Kyi on Wednesday, two days after the coup, for illegally importing communications equipment and said she will be detained until Feb. 15. The coup is a major setback after 10 years of movement toward democracy for Myanmar.
