As Inflation Soars, Myanmar Shop Owners Are Jailed for Hiking Wages

With Myanmar’s currency plunging and inflation soaring, the owner of three cellphone shops in Mandalay announced he was giving his employees a raise. Word of his generosity quickly spread on Facebook, and his workers cheered the news.

But the military regime that rules Myanmar saw it differently. Soldiers and police officers arrested the owner, U Pyae Phyo Zaw, shuttered his three shops and charged him with inciting public unrest under a vaguely worded law often used to suppress dissent, his brother and an employee said.

Mr. Pyae Phyo Zaw is one of at least 10 business owners arrested in recent weeks after word circulated online that they were increasing their workers’ pay. Hiking wages has not been outlawed, but the business owners are charged with undermining the regime by making people believe that inflation is rising, one legal expert said. They all face three years in prison.

Soldiers posted a notice outside one of Mr. Pyae Phyo Zaw’s shops saying it was closed for disturbing “the peace and order of the community.”

The junta’s spokesman, Gen. Zaw Min Tun, declined to take repeated calls from The New York Times.

“We were very grateful for the salary increase, but now the shop is closed and I don’t get paid,” said the employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid arrest. “Ordinary people like us are suffering from high prices, almost to the point of despair.”

The military’s return to power in a 2021 coup and the ensuing popular rebellion against its rule have plunged the country into economic crisis, reversing progress achieved during a decade of quasi-democratic leadership.