JURIST EXCLUSIVE – Thousands of citizens took to the streets in Myanmar again Monday to protest the military coup that deposed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, physically confronting military vehicles sent into several cities yesterday in advance of an 8-hour internet blackout and defying newly-stiffened penal laws threatening dissidents with imprisonment. JURIST’s law student correspondents on the ground reported marches and mass protests in Yangon, the financial hub, and Mandalay, the country’s second-largest city. Protesters faced off against massed military vehicles at several locations, and in Mandalay one of our correspondents said soldiers fired “indiscriminately” to break up a protest Monday afternoon. Earlier, hundreds of university students sat in the streets of the city in peaceful defiance of military authority.

With soldiers and military vehicles in the cities, the situation in Myanmar is unstable, and our correspondents say that the military may be attempting to incite street violence that would give the military regime the excuse to crack down further on the citizenry. One of our law student correspondents writes:

Actually, we are so scared. No one knows when they will shoot with the guns… People are afraid of the soldiers but they pretend like they are not afraid.