Sarong-like cloths strung out on lines may seem innocuous, but long-held superstitions around women’s clothes appear to have stopped security forces in their tracks as they move to quell an uprising against Myanmar’s junta.
They have used tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets and sometimes even live rounds against protesters, who are responding with imaginative tactics of their own. “If they go under a women’s longyi, that means their hpone is destroyed,” activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi told AFP. Some of the longyis also have images of junta leader Min Aung Hlaing’s face pasted on them, in a further superstitious ploy.
Plastic bags full of water — to help diminish the sting of tear gas in the air — are distributed in hotspots of unrest. Even with all their ingenuity — thanks to some tactics borrowed from Hong Kong and Thailand’s pro-democracy movements — the field remains unequal, said Thinzar Shunlei Yi.