Myanmar junta celebrates itself with military pageant 

NAYPYIDAW, Mar 27: Myanmar's junta will muster its embattled troops for a show of strength on Armed Forces Day on Thursday after a year of seismic defeats and forcibly conscripting civilians to bolster its ranks.

Thousands of soldiers will march before junta chief Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyidaw, where a banner over the approach to the parade ground reads: "Only when the military is strong will the country be strong."

Special forces guarded the main entrance to the remote, purpose-built capital, where the annual parade has become progressively smaller in the four years of civil war since the military deposed Aung San Suu Kyi's civilian government.
The junta has lost the key northern town of Lashio -- including a regional military command -- and swaths of the western Rakhine state since the last Armed Forces Day. It has also sought to conscript more than 50,000 people. �"AFP