\u201cRegime\u2019s forces kill two, loot donations from mosque\u201d
\u201cHusband and wife shot dead on motorbike by junta\u2019s armed forces\u201d
\u201cLocals flee as soldiers raid more than 1,000 homes\u201d
These are just some of the headlines from the news website Myanmar Now over this Songkran holiday.
Since the military coup on 1 February, the ruthless crackdown on pro-democracy protestors in Myanmar has resulted in more than 700 civilian deaths, last reported on 11 April.
Many questions have arisen about the crisis in Myanmar, one of which is this:
\u201cNever mind the generals sitting in their comfortable homes, how could the soldiers do this to their own people?\u201d
There are soldiers who are appalled at what\u2019s happening in Myanmar. Some have defected. But most still continue to serve General Min Aung Hlaing, whether willingly or by force.
One reason is this.
On 13 April, Myanmar Now published an article with the headline:
\u201cJunta uses control over military families to prevent defections, say army insiders\u201d
The article quoted Capt. Lin Htet Aung, who recently joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM):
\u201cThat is the situation right now. Those living in military compounds have basically been kidnapped. They use soldiers\u2019 family members to control them so they can\u2019t act freely. If a soldier wants to run, he has to take his family with him.\u201d
The article also stated:
\u201cMany more would be willing to disobey the dictatorship if their families weren\u2019t effectively held hostage by the junta\u2014or \u2018kidnapped by a gang,\u2019 as one of the recent defectors put it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cRegime\u2019s forces kill two, loot donations from mosque\u201d \u201cHusband and wife shot dead on motorbike by junta\u2019s armed forces\u201d \u201cLocals flee as soldiers raid more than 1,000 homes\u201d These are just some of the headlines from the news website Myanmar Now over this Songkran holiday. Since the military coup on 1 February, the ruthless crackdown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":508,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[173,12,14,172,13],"class_list":["post-507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thisurpt","tag-myanmar","tag-thailand","tag-thisrupt","tag-whatshappeninginmyanmar","tag-whatshappeninginthailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisrupt.co\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}