YANGON - Two weeks after the military took power in a coup, growing work stoppages are undermining the ruling generals’ attempt to assert authority over an angry population.

Myanmar’s coup leaders have called on hundreds of thousands of government employees — doctors, garbage collectors, electricity workers — to set their “emotion” aside, abandon their protests against the military and return to work.

But on Monday, even after the army had put armored vehicles in the street in a nighttime show of power, the workers displayed little interest in returning to their jobs.

As the Myanmar military deploys troops in an (unsuccessful) effort to deter protests, it encounters the growing problem of people who stay home from work in protest, including some three quarters of civil servants who won't "work under a dictatorship.”

Myanmar Police are cruel and terrorise with weapons to unarmed people demonstrating peacefully.Girls are also beaten with sticks. We do not have human rights now. There are no women's rights. Hopes are lost. We hope that military action will be taken as soon as possible.

The UN has told Myanmar's military junta that "the right of peaceful assembly must fully be respected" and has warned that “any form of heavy-handed response is likely to have severe consequences.” Meanwhile, deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been charged with a second offence.