ONE afternoon in November, Aye boarded a bus after shopping at Yangon’s bustling Mingalar Market. The vehicle was packed, but that did not stop 10 men from squeezing in somewhere along the journey.
Once on board, they pulled out knives and forced a passenger to surrender her earrings. Another commuter next to her was ordered to remove her necklace. When a young man tried to intervene, he was beaten up by the gang.
The bus driver, rather than trying to stop the robbers, stopped the bus and opened its back door.
“He didn’t drive the bus to the police station,” Aye, who did not give her full name for security reasons, told The Straits Times.
“He only opened the back door for passengers, some of whom tried to escape through the bus windows,” said the 36-year-old teacher who was not robbed.
The gang fled via the back door.
That was the first time Aye had witnessed an armed robbery, which appears to have risen in tandem with petty crimes following the political and economic crisis in Myanmar triggered by the military coup in February 2021.
Water pumps affixed to apartment blocks and even large generators – a common sight on Yangon streets due to the frequency of blackouts – are being stolen as economic desperation takes hold.
Some residents say they now close their windows even when home to deter burglars.
The general state of insecurity is growing even in areas far away from the fiercest battles like those in Chin State fought by the Myanmar junta against ethnic armed groups and people’s defence forces (PDF) that have emerged in response to the coup.
Residents allege that police are too preoccupied with trying to crack down on anti-junta resistance to pay heed to petty crimes, and that attacks on PDF have also made the forces wary of venturing out of their bases to investigate crimes.
Oo, a grocer in Yangon, has witnessed a rise in brazen thefts from her shopfront.
“In November, a young man came to my shop to transfer money via the Wave Money application. When he was checking his phone, two men on a motorcycle grabbed his phone and rode away,” she said.
“The criminals have gotten bolder because people have no idea where to report the crimes and no organisations take action against this.” — The Straits Times/ANN
