Junta forces arrested some 40 women wearing or selling flowers in Kalay, Sagaing Region, on Monday morning, with police and soldiers suspecting that the blooms were a tribute to detained State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi on her 78th birthday.
Suu Kyi, who is imprisoned by the regime in Naypyitaw, saw her elected government ousted in the February 2021 coup. She rarely made a public appearance without fresh flowers in her hair.
Those arrested in Kalay were held and questioned at the Central Police Station, with some still believed to be in junta custody at the time of reporting.
“I heard that as of noon, over 40 people were arrested,” a member of the township’s anti-junta strike committee told Myanmar Now on Monday. “Those that were wearing jasmine were released, but those who wore roses were still being interrogated. They arrested both the flower shop [vendors] and the passersby who were wearing flowers.”
“One of the victims was simply sitting peacefully at her own small flower shop,” he continued. “The soldiers told her to come with them to answer some questions, and she complied. She wears flowers every day, but she was wearing a red rose today.”
Resistance groups encouraged the public to mark Suu Kyi’s birthday by making offerings of flowers at temples, using them as decoration, or by participating in “flower strikes” by wearing flowers in honour of the leader.
People were seen doing so in major cities such as Yangon and Mandalay, as well as in resistance strongholds such as Kalay in Sagaing Region, where members of the public participated in 800 days of protests from the coup until April 16. More than 100 of the 400 people arrested in Kalay since the military’s attempted seizure of power were affiliated with these demonstrations, according to the township’s strike committee.
“To this day, the enemy is still deathly afraid of the public standing together with Aung San Suu Kyi on her birthday—these arrests for wearing flowers prove that,” another member of Kalay’s strike committee said of the junta.
