Armed Forces Day (), formerly known as Resistance Day (), is the professional holiday of the

Tatmadaw Tatmadaw (, , ) is the official name of the armed forces of Myanmar (formerly Burma). It is administered by the Ministry of Defence and composed of the Myanmar Army, the Myanmar Navy and the Myanmar Air Force. Auxiliary services include th ...

(), celebrated annually on 27 March. It commemorates the start of

Burmese army The Myanmar Army ( my, တပ်မတော်(ကြည်း), ) is the largest branch of the Tatmadaw, Armed Forces (''Tatmadaw'') of Myanmar (Burma) and has the primary responsibility of conducting land-based military operations. The My ...

's resistance to Japanese occupation in 1945. The holiday has been referred to as Anti-Fascist-Resistance Day by participants in the

2021 Myanmar protests 1 (one, unit, unity) is a number representing a single or the only entity. 1 is also a numerical digit and represents a single unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of ''unit length'' is a line segment of length 1. I ...

Holiday events

Military parade

The main event of the holiday is a military parade in central

Naypyidaw Naypyidaw, officially spelled Nay Pyi Taw (; ), is the capital and third-largest city of Myanmar. The city is located at the centre of the Naypyidaw Union Territory. It is unusual among Myanmar's cities, as it is an entirely planned city outs ...

, the capital, and formerly held in Yangon. The reviewing officer of the parade is the

Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services The commander-in-chief of Defence Services () is the commanding officer of the Tatmadaw, the armed forces of Myanmar. Since a state of emergency was declared following the 2021 military coup d'état, the commander-in-chief has been the highest ...

, a billet of a general ranked officer usually holding Senior General (equivalent to Field Marshal) rank. Parades in past years: * 2013:

Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes established by the will of Swedish industrialist, inventor and armaments (military weapons and equipment) manufacturer Alfred Nobel, along with the prizes in Nobel Prize in Chemistry, Chemi ...

laureate

Aung San Suu Kyi Aung San Suu Kyi (; ; born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Minister of Foreign Affairs from ...

was notably among the attendees. * 2019: Senior General

Min Aung Hlaing Min Aung Hlaing ( my, မင်းအောင်လှိုင် abbreviated: MAL ; born 3 July 1956) also known as Alaungsithu is a Burmese politician and army general who has ruled Myanmar as the chairman of the State Administration Coun ...

was unable to attend the 74th Armed Forces Day event leaving his deputy, Vice Senior General Soe Win, to represent him instead. *2020: The parade of 2020 commemorating the 75th anniversary of the defeat of Japanese forces was postponed due to the

COVID-19 pandemic in Myanmar The COVID-19 pandemic in Myanmar is part of the worldwide pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 () caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (). The virus was confirmed to have reached Myanmar on 23 March 2020. On 31 March 202 ...

. The Myanmar military declared it would plan the diamond jubilee celebrations after the

World Health Organization The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for international public health. The WHO Constitution states its main objective as "the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of h ...

declares that the disease is under control. Among the expected attendees included

National League for Democracy The National League for Democracy ( my, အမျိုးသား ဒီမိုကရေစီ အဖွဲ့ချုပ်, ; Abbreviation, abbr. NLD; Burmese abbr. ဒီချုပ်) is a liberal democratic political party in Myanm ...

leader

Tin Oo Tin Oo ( my, တင်ဦး, ; born 11 March 1927), often referred to as U Tin Oo, is a Burmese politician, activist and retired general in the Armed Forces who was one of the founders of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Myanmar, the c ...

and former

Prime Minister of Myanmar The prime minister of Myanmar is the head of government of Myanmar. The post was re-established in 2021 by the State Administration Council, the country's ruling military junta, to lead its nominally-civilian provisional government. The provis ...

Than Shwe Than Shwe ( my, သန်းရွှေ, ; born 2 February 1933 or 3 May 1935) is a Burmese strongman politician who was the head of state of Myanmar from 1992 to 2011 as Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). During this ...

. *2021: The 76th Armed Forces Day parade was scaled back to follow health guidelines. Russian Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Fomin was one of the dignitaries in attendance.

Other events

A nighttime dinner is among the other events that are held on 27 March.

Gallery

File:2021 Myanmar Armed Forces Day 07.jpg, Female personnel File:2021 Myanmar Armed Forces Day 08.jpg, Alexander Fomin at the parade.

2021 incidents on Armed Forces Day

On 27 March 2021, during the annual Armed Forces Day holiday, at least 107 were reported to have been killed, with news outlet

Myanmar Now Myanmar Now is a news agency based in Myanmar (Burma). Myanmar Now journalists publish bilingual Burmese and English articles on an eponymous online news portal. The agency provides free syndication throughout the country, with a distribution net ...

reporting 114 deaths, the highest death toll of any individual day since the Myanmar protests began after the coup d'état on 1 February, staged by

, the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Earlier that day, the Myanmar military launched airstrikes on a village controlled by ethnic army the

Karen National Union The Karen National Union ( my, ကရင် အမျိုးသား အစည်းအရုံး; abbreviated KNU) is a political organisation with an armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), that claims to represent the Ka ...

, which had earlier taken over an army post near the

Myanmar–Thailand border The Myanmar–Thailand border is the international border between the territory of Myanmar (formerly ''Burma'') and Thailand. The border is 2,416 km (1,501 m) in length and runs from the tripoint with Laos in the north to Andaman Sea coast in ...

, killing ten people including a lieutenant colonel. General

Yawd Serk Yawd Serk ( shn, ယွတ်ႈသိုၵ်း, my, ယွက်စစ်) is a Shan ethnic and political leader in Myanmar (Burma), who was chairman of the Restoration Council of Shan State and commander in chief of the Shan State Army ...

of the

Restoration Council of Shan State The Restoration Council of Shan State ( my, သျှမ်းပြည်ပြန်လည်ထူထောင်ရေးကောင်စီ; abbreviated RCSS) is a Shan political organisation in Shan State, Myanmar, founded in 1996 by Sh ...

Shan State Army-South Shan may refer to: People *Shan (surname), or 单 in Chinese, a Chinese surname *Shan, a variant of the Welsh given name usually spelled Siân *Occasionally used as a short form of Shannen/ Shannon Ethnic groups *Shan people, Southeast Asian et ...

stated during an interview "The Myanmar Armed Forces Day isn't an armed forces day, it's more like the day they killed people", and "If they continue to shoot at protesters and bully the people, I think all the ethnic groups would not just stand by and do nothing." The European Union delegation to Myanmar has stated "This 76th Myanmar armed forces day will stay engraved as a day of terror and dishonour", with U.S. Ambassador

Thomas Vajda Thomas Laszlo Vajda is an American diplomat who has served as the United States Ambassador to Myanmar since 2021. Education Vajda received a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University in 1988 and a Master of Arts from the Fletcher School of ...

saying "security forces are murdering unarmed civilians" and calling for "an immediate end to the violence and the restoration of the democratically elected government".

References