Blue Shirt Day is an annual occasion that takes place on 21 April, writes Minn Tent Bo, Advocacy and Communications Officer at Burma Campaign UK.
It is not simply about people wearing a blue shirt; it is about standing against the ongoing practice of imprisoning, torturing, and disappearing political prisoners and the systematic effort to forget them. It is about refusing to give the Burmese military a propaganda boost to present its political prisons and torture facilities as places of reform and to portray sham elections as a new step for democracy. The purpose is to draw more international attention to political prisoners in the prison system and to demand the unconditional release of all political prisoners.
The Burmese military’s amnesties are nothing more than window dressing and its efforts to mask its continued rule as a civilian presidency are nothing more than a PR campaign using the laws on arbitrary detention and repression to do so. People are still being detained as pawns for such political manipulation. Blue Shirt Day is a modest reminder that these people cannot be forgotten and used as pawns and that, unless they are released, the blue shirts have yet to achieve their purpose.