Myanmar: “A coup is worse than covid. I’ve lived through three”

Voices from the streets of Yangon as the generals seize control again

By Aye Min Thant

Maung Kyaw is hunched over his key-cutting machine, perched on the pavement in front of a bubble-tea stall and a tourist hostel. In his pink shirt and blue-and-orange-check lungyi, he has the same, slight build as the old men in my family, the result of decades of hardship. Only in the past ten years, after the government began to liberalise the economy, have the middle classes in Myanmar been able to gorge on fried chicken and sugary snacks. Even now, many people still go hungry.

For over 50 years Maung Kyaw (all names have been changed) has occupied the same corner of downtown Yangon, the commercial capital. His shop has been here longer than any other on the street, he says proudly. But the past year has been tough, and the past few days have been the hardest yet. “Covid is bad...[but] a coup? Well that’s the worst. I’ve been through this three times now.”

After the army, the Tatmadaw, overthrew the semi-civilian government on February 1st, hundreds of government officials were detained, including Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, and many of her supporters (among them an uncle of mine). In the days since, some have been released but Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest. People have texted warning me to be careful, that journalists like me are next. I ended up at Maung Kyaw’s stall because I was getting a set of my house keys cut for a friend. If the rumours are true, at least there’ll be someone to feed my two kittens.

Street sellers have laid out their wares on the pavement, as they do each day, selling everything from pyjamas to the sweet dumplings that are eaten at Lunar New Year. On the day of the coup military vehicles drove through the city. Though these have now gone, Yangon feels different.

Friends have texted warning me to be careful, that journalists like me are next

The red flags of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, suddenly disappeared from many apartment windows in downtown Yangon. The streets are even busier than usual. Whole families are out and about, a sight you don’t normally see. People are desperate for information and strangers are gathering in groups, despite the risk of catching coronavirus.

It’s no good turning to official sources. As the army seized control, the government-backed newspaper ran stories about the falling price of black beans and the vice-president’s visit to a construction site. Digging out information online is getting harder. On February 4th the government blocked Facebook and WhatsApp – temporarily, so it says.

On the day of the coup people rushed to buy sacks of rice from the shops. They are urging each other to swap kyats for gold and American dollars. Long queues formed at ATMs straight after the coup, but the machines stopped working when the internet was cut off. People know they have to be prepared for any eventuality: the tough reality of life under a military regime is well within living memory.

The army first seized power in 1962, ending the fragile democracy that had been in place since the country gained independence from Britain in 1948. Military rule, said the generals, was the only way to keep ethnic tensions in check.

The tanks have gone for now, but Yangon feels different

Their reign of brutality lasted nearly five decades. Ethnic and religious minorities were persecuted, as well as anyone else who happened to get in the way. Rape was used as a weapon of war. Free speech was crushed, assembly was criminalised. Universities were shut down for years at a time; you could get into trouble just for joining a book club.

The generals drove the economy into the ground and that, combined with international sanctions, made it hard to earn a living if you didn’t have military connections. In normal times people struggled to feed themselves; when natural disasters struck many died of starvation. In the past few days, the memories of that terrible time have bubbled up to the surface. Even those who are too young to remember the era live in its shadow.

I meet my friend May at her home. The shiny aluminium-and-glass façade of her apartment block contrasts with the intricate brickwork of the 19th-century buildings on either side. Unlike many other Asian cities, Yangon is full of decaying colonial-era buildings: they were spared demolition because there was never enough money for redevelopment.

People are desperate for information, even asking strangers what they know

We chat over a traditional Burmese salad of fermented tea leaves, fried beans and peanuts. May’s parents fled Myanmar in 1988 after the army killed thousands of people to try and repress a mass movement that had emerged, calling for democracy. Her family moved from camp to camp on the border with Thailand, where May was born, before settling in another country (May doesn’t want me to say where).

May was finally able to return to Myanmar in her early 20s, as Myanmar began to open up. “It was always my dream...to be able to contribute something.” Even then, things were far from perfect. The civilian government was hamstrung by the army, which still controlled many of the levers of government. Aung San Suu Kyi’s policies disappointed many former supporters. She alienated ethnic minorities when their political parties were marginalised; journalists and activists were hounded. She refused to condemn the army's massacre of the Rohingyas, a Muslim minority, in 2017, which the UN described as genocide.

In spite of this, much of the country still adores “Mother Suu”, as they call her, for the personal sacrifices she made during her long fight for democracy, and her party was re-elected in a landslide last November. (May has changed her Facebook profile picture to one of Aung San Suu Kyi on a red background.) Despite May’s parents’ experience of military rule, they’ve given her their blessing to stay in Myanmar and help, in whatever way she can. “Maybe they will need extra bodies at protests, or medical aid…There is very little hope, but we must keep working on the side of hope.”

This week she has been teaching people how to connect to the internet using a virtual private network, which means users can visit websites blocked by the government and communicate on encrypted messaging apps. She doesn’t want to “let the haters win”.

On the morning after the coup many of us felt a sense of disorientation. That is now starting to give way to something else. Some people are panicking. Others are taking to the streets. On Twitter I’ve been talking to an activist – she describes herself as “an ordinary teacher” – who is summoning support for a growing movement of civil disobedience.

It wasn’t long before the new government blocked Facebook and WhatsApp

Myanmar has a long history of defiance. A street in Yangon is named after Sayar San, who led an armed rebellion against the British in the 1930s. Aung San Suu Kyi made her name in the protests of 1988, which brought down the dictatorship of General Ne Win before being crushed by another junta. In 2007 thousands of Buddhist monks demonstrated against poverty – only to be shot at by the army.

Yesterday morning the “ordinary teacher” tweeted a live stream of a demonstration in Mandalay, and a photo of her hand giving a three-finger salute. This symbol of resistance, popular with pro-democracy campaigners in Thailand, originally came from “The Hunger Games”. Many are showing dissent in other ways, such as banging pots and pans at the start of the evening curfew that the military has imposed. Each night the banging gets longer and louder. The message couldn’t be clearer: this is a traditional ritual to drive out evil spirits.

Activists have learnt from Thailand and Hong Kong that it is risky to release information too soon: the “ordinary teacher” won’t give me any details about the next protests, only saying that times and locations are announced closer to the date. She also refused to give any details about herself, even her age, and asked me not to mention her Twitter handle: “Everyone knows how the military behaves towards people, monks, students, and others.” The people of Myanmar, she said, “know about the military.”

Maung Kyaw certainly knows about the military. On August 9th 1988, on the major thoroughfare in downtown Yangon where his shop is located, the 22nd Light Infantry Division opened fire on crowds that had gathered the previous day to protest against the regime. Hundreds were killed, possibly thousands.

“There is very little hope, but we must keep working on the side of hope”

He gets up from his plastic stool and spits an impressive amount of red liquid onto the road, the juice from a betel quid, a stimulant that is popular in Myanmar. He has the stained teeth of a lifelong betel chewer. “The 2020 election was observed and declared free and fair by the whole world,” he says, returning to his stool. “The Tatmadaw calls itself our parents, but look at what they are doing. Is it right?”

Aye Min Thant is a Pulitzer-prizewinning journalist based in Myanmar. Additional reporting by Charlie McCann, The Economist’s South-East Asia correspondent

PHOTOGRAPHS: MIN LWIN (pseudonym)

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