Asia’s ‘Milk Tea Alliance’ is uniting youth protesters from Hong Kong to Myanmar

March 3 marked a deadly day in Myanmar’s protest movement, when security forces opened fire on a crowd with both rubber and live bullets. Thirty-eight people were killed, including three teenagers, one as young as 14. 

Mass protests have been ongoing across the country since February 1, when a military coup forced Aung San Suu Kyi and her party from power and installed a military junta in their place. Protesters immediately began calling for an end to the coup and the release of Suu Kyi, but these efforts have so far only intensified the crackdown against civilians. 

Undaunted by the recent bloodshed, protests have continued in force, with mass demonstrations held in Mandalay and Yangon amidst a threatening show of force from fighter jets overhead. The protests against the coup are the largest that Myanmar has seen since the Saffron Revolution in 2007, when thousands of monks demonstrated against the military regime, which was eventually overturned to pave way for democratic elections in 2015. 

World powers have viewed the 2021 coup with distant unease since the crisis began in February. Myanmar’s military has said that they are prepared and willing to withstand sanctions, and Myanmar’s ambassador to the UN faces internal replacement after making an impassioned call for Western intervention to the General Assembly. The Biden administration has issued condemnation and sanctions in response to the crackdown, while the US State Department is working with other countries to provide a unified international response. 

While geopolitical rivals wait to out-maneuver one another, it is the people of Myanmar who bear the brunt of violence in a courageous stand against the military power. Taking symbolic and tactical cues from similar demonstrations in Thailand and Hong Kong, the protesters of Myanmar have seemingly joined the ‘Milk Tea Alliance’ of Southeast Asian pro-democracy movements, an informal coalition that has grown online since 2020.

Named after a shared love for Milk Tea in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand, the hashtag has become a shorthand of solidarity for popular demonstrations against oppressive regimes. On March 2, as Hong Kong protesters gathered locally to support 47 pro-democracy politicians charged with subversion, they made symbolic displays of support for their counterparts in Myanmar. Hong Kong activists raised the three-fingered salute from the Hunger Games films, which gained local popularity in the 2014 Hong Kong Umbrella Revolution and has since spread to Myanmar and Thailand. 

As an informal, online network, the Milk Tea Alliance has little political function or official organization. But these networks have played an important role since the 2019 Hong Kong protests in creating a sense of solidarity amongst popular movements that face long odds and brutal suppression. Thai activist Rathasat Plenwong said the growing pan-Asian solidarity movement has helped separate movements connect with one another. “Myanmar activists have been very active in engaging with Milk Tea Alliance since the coup,” he reported. “We feel like we’re in this together.”

That feeling of solidarity is crucial for civil society in an unfolding movement that involves the threat of escalating state violence. UN decisions or American sanctions could take weeks, and it could even longer for their impacts to be felt by Myanmar’s military. While policy is debated across the ocean, both the protests and military counter-action show no signs of letting up, leaving protesters on their own, facing bullets and tear gas. In the meantime, these digital solidarity networks are instrumental in communicating effective outreach strategies, organizing logistics, and providing support to the civilians most in need. 

In this respect, the advice shared between the Milk Tea Alliance is not just symbolic displays of solidarity. The protesters in Myanmar have already begun wearing the yellow hard hats and tear gas masks, which were prolific in the Hong Kong protests, as a proactive safety measure against escalating violence. 

With mass strikes planned in the days ahead, the military has begun to occupy hospitals and schools in an effort to consolidate control over the dissent. With the potential for more violence and unrest on the horizon, the protesters of Myanmar will need every ounce of international solidarity, both large and small scale, to leverage a peaceful solution.