The story follows two civil servants from Myanmar who joined the Civil Disobedience Moment after the military junta forcefully took over in a violent coup. It highlights their resilience and unbreakable desire to end dictatorships in Myanmar as they take on various roles to continue supporting the Spring Revolution.
It is very challenging to live in such a chaotic, collapsed, and lawless situation (a kind of failed state) in Myanmar. It affects a family’s unity, happiness, economy, and social status. There is no peace everywhere, not only in the family but in our minds as well as among relatives. I believe that the problems will be lessened once the country is back to normal. This experience taught me that politics is for everyone in the country.
I joined the resistance and went into some sort of military training which lasted 7 days only but every day was a different hell. It was kind of a hideout and a bit far from my city (Yangon). Up to 3 out of 10 people could not make it to the end. I somehow made it to the end but it took a lot of effort. However, I do not want to sacrifice for such people who look for their own sake and are willing to let others to death.
While it is true that I am struggling to make ends meet, I am sure that I will never turn back on their decision to participate in CDM, and I know that they will not give up on their dream to leave behind a better place for the next generation.
After the coup, switching off LNG stations and canceling solar projects approved by NLD government make occasional blackouts and prolonged power cuts. Skyrocketing fuel prices and prolonged power shortages hit all classes of people in Myanmar hard.
At the beginning of February 2021, I found myself overwhelmed, shocked and left in a state of fear and despair just like everyone else did. I kept asking myself what I could do for my country. On 8th February, I decided to participate in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) along with other civilians and civil servants who were working together to disrupt and dismantle all governing mechanisms. My friends told me to think about it, to not make a hasty decision since I am still too young to let go of the position and the job that I have, and a lot of opportunities for my future in the railway sector. However, I decided to continue participating in CDM until the revolutions win. I believe that I will be able to put on my favorite uniform again in the near future.
The banking sector collapsed following the coup in February 2021 in Myanmar with experiencing cash shortage, the Central bank’s difficulties in disbursing enough funds to private banks to cover the account holders’ daily needs, and running out of cash in ATMs as people wanted to withdraw their savings, and new requirements about withdrawals. Two stories by different authors about their experiences with the disrupted banking system were received under the “Living the Coup” Special initiative project and are presented below together since they complement each other.
Every day, the junta uses MRTV to threaten its own citizens by announcing the arrest warrants of those who took part in the protests, in the CDM (Civil Disobedience Movement) and those who support CRPH (Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw) and NUG (National Unity Government). The junta is capable of only one thing: Threatening and arresting.
အလုပ်မရှိတဲ့နေ့ရက်တွေရဲ့ မနက်ခင်းတွေဆိုရင် ဝီရိယနဲ့စောစောထလို့ လက်ဖက်ရည်ဆိုင်မှာဆုံ၊ မင်းအဆင်ပြေရင် ငါ့လည်းခေါ်ပါဦးလို့ မျက်နှာကိုဟိုးအောက်ဆုံးထိချလို့ သိပ်မခင်တဲ့သူငယ်ချင်း၊ လက်အောက်ငယ်သားပါမကျန် စကားမရှိ စကားရှာလို့၊ အပူရုပ်ကိုလည်း ဟန်မလုပ်အားပဲ ခေါ်မယ့်သူတွေများရှိရင်…မလိုလဲ လိုလဲ အိမ်မှာပြင်ထားခဲ့တဲ့ ထမင်းထုတ်ကလေးကို အိမ်ပြန်ယူလို့ သူငယ်ချင်းနောက် ကောက်ကောက်ပါအောင် လိုက်ခဲ့ရတဲ့ မနက်ခင်းပေါင်းလည်း မနည်းတော့ပါဘူး။
I would strike up a conversation with anyone I know to see if there might be a job opportunity for me. I would even ask people I barely know, and I would ask people who used to work as my subordinates in my previous job. I could not care If I might be looking too desperate. I would swallow my pride, divert my gaze to the ground, and implore them to take me along to their work if there is the slightest hope for me to get a job there.
