First Thailand, now Myanmar: Asia protesters borrow from ‘Starvation Video games’

Dressed in face mask and purple ribbons on their blue protecting robes, the crowd of Yangon medics raised three-finger salutes in a gesture of improve for Myanmar’s ousted civilian chief Aung San Suu Kyi and defiance in opposition to the leaders of a army coup.

Within the nation’s 2d town Mandalay, the gesture used to be repeated via healthcare staff at a coronavirus remedy centre, a few of whom held a banner that learn: “We improve civil disobedience motion.”

Two senior contributors of Suu Kyi’s Nationwide League for Democracy posted footage of themselves making the similar gesture on social media following Monday’s takeover via the army.

The salute – 3 hands pointing up with palm clear of the frame – stems from the preferred “Starvation Video games” motion pictures, in response to Suzanne Collins’ dystopian novels. However lately it’s been followed via protesters towards authoritarian rule in Asia.

Popularised via Jennifer Lawrence’s personality, Katniss Everdeen, within the “Starvation Video games” the gesture become an emblem of the revolution and insurrection towards totalitarian rule in fictional country Panem.

It all started showing at the streets in 2014, when it used to be seized on via protesters in Thailand as a tactic to defy a ban on public gatherings imposed after a coup in Would possibly.

Later that yr, younger pro-democracy campaigners in Hong Kong additionally followed the salute of their marketing campaign for totally democratic elections.

The salute used to be extensively noticed once more in Thailand – which stocks a border with Myanmar and the place many migrants from Myanmar paintings – final yr, all through months of protests calling for the elimination of the federal government led via the 2014 coup chief and reforms to the monarchy.