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Speeches by beauty pageant contestants rarely make headlines.

But when Han Lay, Miss Grand Myanmar, spoke out last week against alleged atrocities committed by her country's military, her speech turned heads.

"Today in my country Myanmar ... there are so many people dying," she said at the Miss Grand International 2020 event in Thailand. "Please help Myanmar. We need your urgent international help right now."

A little over a month ago, Han Lay, who is 22, was on the streets of Yangon, Myanmar's largest city, protesting against the military.

The unrest in Myanmar began two months ago when the military seized control of the country, undoing a democratic election in which Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won by a landslide.

When tens of thousands of people took to the streets nationwide to protest the coup, the military used water cannon to disperse them. After a week, the response escalated to rubber bullets and then live ammunition.

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The deadliest day of the conflict came last Saturday, when more than 100 people were killed. A local monitoring group puts the overall death toll at more than 500. According to Save the Children, 43 of those killed were children.

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