MYANMAR marked its normally boisterous New Year water festival with silence and boycotts today, as fighting between the military and opponents of the coup raged across the country.

The Southeast Asian nation has been in turmoil since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government last year, sparking huge protests and a bloody crackdown.

The Thingyan water festival – part of a cleansing ritual to welcome in the Buddhist New Year – is typically marked by jubilant pandemonium as crowds engage in large-scale street water fights.

But thoroughfares in central Yangon are quiet today, with no sign of the usually disruptive festivities, said AFP correspondents.

One small group – among them several children and a soldier – did indulge, splashing each other within the shelter of a sandbagged security post as residents looked on from the other side of the street.

There is a heavy security presence leading to the Sule Pagoda in Yangon, with barricades barring the way to a stage where celebrities performed traditional songs and choreographed dancers swayed as part of a junta-sponsored programme.

State TV footage also showed singers and musicians performing traditional Thingyan songs in the second city of Mandalay.

But there, too, the mood is sombre as the military continues its crackdown on dissent.

“We have no plan to celebrate the water festival this year,” said resident Zin Zin, requesting to use a pseudonym.

“I do not go out, and I am not interested whether others are celebrating. We are worried in case something might happen.”

Local media images showed small anti-junta protests from across the country, with some activists holding banners calling for a boycott of festivities.

New clashes

As junta-sponsored celebrations took place, fighting between the military and opponents of the coup was reported across Myanmar.

Near Myawaddy in the east, ethnic rebels clashed with junta troops in the latest day of hostilities that local media reports said sent hundreds fleeing across the border into Thailand in recent weeks.

Fighting resumed along the Asia Highway, which connects Thailand and Myanmar, this morning, said Padoh Saw Taw Nee, a spokesman for the Karen National Union, which claims to represent the Karen minority in the country and has battled the military for decades.

He said junta troops called in multiple airstrikes in recent days.

In Sagaing in the north, junta troops overrun a post held by a local People’s Defence Force, a civilian militia that has sprung up to fight the military, yesterday.

In a separate incident on Monday, the junta said its troops displaced hundreds of anti-coup fighters and ethnic rebels from Pinlebu town in the region after days of fighting.

A military source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed that airstrikes were called in to support ground troops and that heavy fighting took place elsewhere in the region in recent days.

More than 1,700 people have been killed in a military crackdown since the coup, according to a local monitoring group. – AFP, April 13, 2022.