Ethnicity also came into play in Mandalay when a 19-year-old woman was shot by a Myanmar army sniper on March 3. Widely circulated pictures of the Sino-Myanmar woman, known as Angel, taken just moments before she was killed showed her in a T-shirt with the slogan “Everything will be OK.”
Kyal Sin, or, in Chinese, Deng Xia Ji, is now widely viewed as a fallen hero in the nationwide resistance against Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s military coup and an increasingly lethal crackdown on pro-democracy protesters, with at least 250 killed and thousands arrested.
Unlike Western countries, China’s response to the coup has been mainly muted. Protesters have taken critical aim at China’s portrayal of the democracy-suspending coup as a “cabinet reshuffle”, with thousands of protesters in front of the Chinese embassy expressing their displeasure with Beijing’s perceived support of the coup regime.
