Calls for a civil disobedience campaign in Myanmar have been increasing in response of a military coup that shock the country and saw the arrests of its mail political figures, including Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, and ended a brief experiment with democracy.
Suu Kyi's party won a huge landslide with her National League for Democracy (NLD) last November (396 seats out of 476) but the military -- whose favoured parties received a drubbing -- declared the polls were fraudulent.
Army chief Min Aung Hlaing appointed himself head of a new cabinet stacked with former and current generals, justifying his coup on Tuesday as the "inevitable" result of civilian leaders failure to heed the army's fraud warnings.
The military declared a one-year state of emergency and said it would hold new elections once their allegations of voter irregularities were addressed and investigated.
As the soldiers were deployed heavily on the streets of major cities, signs of public anger and plans to resist have begun to surface, especially online, according to AFP.
The clatter of pots and pans -- and the honking of car horns -- rang out across the country's biggest city Yangon on Tuesday evening after calls for protest went out on social media.
Activists also launched a "Civil Disobedience Movement" Facebook group to declare opposition and share ideas. By Wednesday morning, some 24 hours after its launch, it had nearly 150,000 followers.
Doctors and nurses were among professionals making early declarations of their intent to go on strike.
"We will only follow and obey the orders from our democratically elected government," a statement from medics posted overnight on the Civil Disobedience Movement page read.
But protesting against Myanmar's military is fraught with risk. On Wednesday morning the official Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper published a warning from the Ministry of Information against opposing the coup.
"Some of the media organizations and people are posting rumours on social media, releasing statements to occur riot and unstable situation," the English language statement read.
It called on people "not to make such moves and to cooperate with the government in accordance with existing laws".
During junta rule, dissent was quashed with thousands of activists detained for years, censorship was pervasive, while the military frequently deployed lethal force during periods of political turmoil, most notably during huge protests in 1988 and 2007.
Limited Foreign Options over Myanmar
The coup has been met with a growing international condemnation although the options are limited for those nations hoping Myanmar's generals might reverse course.
On Tuesday the State Department formally designated the takeover as a coup, meaning the US cannot assist the Myanmar government.
Any impact will be mainly symbolic, as almost all assistance goes to non-government entities and Myanmar's military was already under US sanctions over its brutal campaign against the Rohingya minority.
The UN Security Council held an emergency meeting Tuesday but failed to agree on a statement condemning the coup, due to China, which used the veto power.
"China and Russia have asked for more time", said a diplomat requesting anonymity at the end of the meeting, which lasted just over two hours.
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