Myanmar protesters counter military with creative disobedience
YANGON, Myanmar — Residents of Yangon, a sprawling city of gilded pagodas, colonial relics and tree-lined avenues, awoke to unusual gridlock Wednesday.
Scores of seemingly disabled cars with raised hoods appeared in major intersections, bridges and thoroughfares, blocking traffic from every direction. When prodded by passersby, owners of the vehicles shrugged and feigned engine trouble or an empty gas tank.
Facing a powerful junta that has spent decades inflicting terror on its own people, demonstrators in Myanmar have resorted to creative acts of civil disobedience to protest the Feb. 1 military takeover of the country’s civilian government.
In recent days, defiant citizens have laid down on train tracks to snarl rail traffic, emptied their accounts of cash from a military-owned bank forcing new withdrawal limits and plastered pictures of junta leader Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing on sidewalks for pedestrians to trample.
“People are trying everything they
