Street Art Muralists Arrested in Myanmar

Screen Shot of the Mural, Kachin State, Myanmar.
(undated).
© 2020 Myitkyina News Journal

Human Rights Watch reports that Buddhist ultranationalists have attacked a health information mural in Kachin State, Myanmar, and that the muralists have been arrested under a statue that prohibits 'insuling religion.' The nationalists had complained that the mural's depiction of the figure of Death, spreading the novel coronavirus, wore garb resembling that of a Buddhist monk.

The work, since painted over, show three medical workers reaching out to grab the arm of a personified beleaguered globe of the Earth, surrounded by the octopus like tentacles of a large green virus. Death tosses viruses into the air; one virus spews out, it would appear, copies of itself,  like a rapacious demon. (It is possible that the image of the green spiky virus is borrowed from imagery in public health campaigns in nearby Vietnam.)