Hundreds of people from Taiwan’s large Sino-Burmese community yesterday rallied in New Taipei City’s Jhonghe District (中和) to denounce the coup in Myanmar and express their support for deposed Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Taiwan is home to about 40,000 people from Myanmar, most of whom are ethic Chinese. Some are descendants of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) troops trapped in Myanmar at the end of China’s civil war in 1949 and others have come more recently, fleeing repression and anti-Chinese sentiment.
Dressed in red, the color of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, holding pictures of her and signs in Chinese, English and Burmese condemning the coup, about 300 people marched down the streets around Little Burma in Huasin Street.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Finishing up in a plaza outside an apartment block they sang: We Won’t Be Satisfied Until The End Of The World, the Burmese-language anthem from the country’s 1988 pro-democracy uprising, brutally put down by the military government.
Ko Ko Thu, 54, who fled to Taiwan after those protests were suppressed and helped organize the rally, said that he took inspiration from democratic Taiwan.
“Taiwan is a very democratic country. I hope that in the future, even if I am dead, that Myanmar can be democratic like Taiwan,” said Ko Ko Thu, who, unlike most participants, is not ethnically Chinese.
Yee, an ethnic Chinese woman who asked to be identified by her Burmese name, also came to Taiwan after the 1988 protests, and said that it is important to show opposition to the coup.
“We have had more than 30 years of repression from the military government. We don’t want to go back to that,” she said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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