YANGON: Myanmar’s junta said on Friday (Dec 26) it will lift a curfew imposed in Yangon since its 2021 coup, just days before the start of elections it touts as a return to normality.
The military staged a 2021 putsch ousting Myanmar’s elected government and sparking massive pro-democracy protests in cities nationwide.
As security forces battled to put down the demonstrators, the junta enforced a dusk-to-dawn curfew in the largest city of Yangon, home to around seven million people.
In the years since then, the span of the curfew has shrunk incrementally, and the junta said the remaining 1am to 3am (2.30am to 4.30am, Singapore time) lockdown would be lifted as of Saturday.
“Regional stability in Yangon region is improving now,” said a statement shared by junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun.
The statement said the decision was made “in order to improve economic, social and religious matters, for the convenience of people’s transportation and to improve business development”.
The military crushed the protest movement, but many activists quit the cities to fight as guerillas alongside powerful ethnic minority armies which have long held sway in the nation’s fringes.
The dynamic has plunged Myanmar into a civil war killing thousands, displacing more than 3.6 million and leaving half the nation in poverty, according to the United Nations.
https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/myanmar-junta-lifts-yangon-curfew-ahead-elections-5724136
