Southeast Asian MPs Condemn Myanmar Junta’s Arrest of Flower-Wearing Civilians, Demand Immediate Release

JAKARTA, 25 June 2025— ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) is concerned over the arbitrary arrest and public shaming of civilians in Myanmar, whose only “crime” was wearing flowers to peacefully mark the birthday of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

On 19 June, junta authorities in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, arrested 22 people who had posted pictures of themselves wearing flowers in their hair—a long-time symbol of Suu Kyi’s peaceful resistance. Local media, including Eleven Media, confirmed the arrests, citing junta sources.

The crackdown extended beyond Mandalay. In Sagaing, nearly 20 women were reportedly snatched off the streets for wearing roses. In Yangon, 29 people—mostly women—were forcibly taken from markets, bus stops, and residential neighborhoods after quietly praying with flowers in hand. One woman, witnesses told Radio Free Asia, was beaten in front of her husband and child, for no reason other than wearing a flower.

“As lawmakers in Southeast Asia, we cannot stand by while peaceful civilians are brutalized for symbolic expression,” said Mercy Chriesty Barends, Chairperson of APHR and Member of the House of Representatives of Indonesia. “If wearing a flower becomes a punishable act, it signals the complete erasure of fundamental freedoms—freedom of expression, assembly, and personal dignity.”

This current political state should resonate throughout our region. When a military state punishes its people for the quiet act of wearing a flower, it abandons any claim to respect basic human rights.

This is not about public order. It is about instilling fear and crushing even the gentlest forms of dissent,” said Rangsiman Rome, APHR Board Member and Member of Parliament of Thailand.

“Wearing a flower is not rebellion. It is a form of expression. The international community and ASEAN must not normalize this level of repression.”

These mass arrests and public shaming violate multiple international legal norms to which Myanmar is bound, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and customary human rights principles. They also undermine the ASEAN Human Rights Declaration, which guarantees freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and protection from arbitrary detention and torture.

Emmi de Jesus, former Member of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, emphasized, “We urge our fellow parliamentarians in ASEAN to raise these abuses directly with Myanmar’s military leaders and to lend their voices to demands for immediate release of everyone detained under these arbitrary charges.” 

“The military regime’s scare tactics over flowers will not crush Myanmar’s pro-democracy spirit, but they should spark outrage across Southeast Asia,” added de Jesus.

APHR reiterates that freedom of expression is not a privilege—it is a right. The junta’s use of arbitrary detention, gendered violence, and public humiliation to punish symbolic acts reveals the fragility of its rule and the depth of its disregard for human rights.

APHR will continue to drumbeat the call to every legislator, diplomat and citizen alike, to insist that the freedom to speak, to gather and to wear flowers as solidarity is non-negotiable. Anything less is to concede that even the softest voice may be silenced by authoritarian rule