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Junta pressures Mandalay street vendors to install surveillance cameras

Locals say the junta relies on CCTV to track members of the resistance in Myanmar’s second largest city

Street vendors in Mandalay have been threatened with losing their business licenses if they do not set up CCTV camera systems at their shops, local sources said. 

Plainclothes soldiers, police officers and city development committee staff delivered the warning indiscriminately to small business owners while walking through Aungmyaythazan Township on August 24. 

A shopkeeper in the township said that the military council had threatened to “take legal action” against them under the city development law if they failed to comply. 

“They gave that order to every shop, that we must set up two CCTV cameras inside and two outside or they would no longer grant us licenses,” he told Myanmar Now. 

Another shopkeeper in Mandalay’s Maha Aungmyay Township said that he and other vendors on 84th and 85th streets were given a similar ultimatum two days later. 

“If they want to set up security cameras, they should provide us with the cameras! We can’t afford to buy anything extra as business is not good these days,” he explained. “I had to sign a pledge that we would comply, but we still don’t know what to do next. It’s really troubling.”

The deadline for installation of the surveillance equipment was August 31. 

A 40-year-old Mandalay local speculated that the order was issued to assist the junta in tracking members of the resistance movement in Myanmar’s second largest city. 

“CCTV cameras are the worst enemy of urban guerrilla troops. They’ve arrested so many of them through those cameras,” the man said. 

Some 50 people were taken into custody by the military in Mandalay in August, and several houses, private schools and clinics were sealed off for alleged links to the resistance movement. 

CAPTION: A CCTV camera on a main road in Mandalay (EPA/EFE)

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