The Return of the Darkness – Year One
Kyaukpadaung Township, Mandalay // One year after the coup d’Etat, many Burmese people stayed indoors as a form of protest against General Min Aung Hlaing’s seizure of absolute power. During this Silent Strike, Ko Aung Aung, a Mandalay resident, stood on his own in front of the local electricity office and set fire on himself. […]
Bloody Christmas
MOSO VILLAGE, HPRUSO TOWNSHIP, KAYAH STATE – The Karenni National Defense Force (KNDF), an ethnic armed organization in the east of Myanmar, reported that 35 civilians, including women and children were captured by soldiers, put in trucks and burned to death. On December 24th, the Karenni Army (KA) and the KNDF have clashed with Division […]
Silence As the Loudest War Cry
To mark International Human Rights Day, Myanmar citizens made a point of staying at home to show their opposition against the military junta’s rule, a “Silent strike”, which turned most places in the country into ghost towns. Four days earlier, Aung San Suu Kyi, the 76-year-old de facto leader of Myanmar prior to the February […]
The Great Fragmentation
SITTWE // In a televised address, Myanmar’s junta leader declared himself prime minister and extended the state of emergency for two years. The Tatmadaw reorganized itself as a “caretaker” government, and announced that it will remain in power until August 2023, when, it claims, new elections will be held. In Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine […]
Back to School Bombing
SALIN – All 500 villages around Salin, a township in Magway Region, central Myanmar, elected NLD candidates in the 2020 General Election. The small farmers who lived in the area lost all hope for a better life after the coup. Open protests stopped after a brutal crackdown early March, which left an engineering student dead […]
People Defense Forces
UNDERGROUND – As pro-democracy protesters grew increasingly frustrated and desperate with means of peaceful resistance such as CDM and flash protests on motorbikes, the NUG made a clear break with the non-violence advocated by Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD since its founding. On May 5th, the NUG announced the creation of a People’s Defense Force […]
Revolutionary New Year
NGAPALI BEACH // On the edge of Thandwe, an important port and the main agglomeration in South Rakhine State, lies Ngapali Beach. The beautiful spot is one of Myanmar’s most popular tourist destinations and gets particularly crowded during the Thingyan holiday. The five-day festival, which marks the beginning of the year in Theravada Buddhist nations, […]
The Day of Shame
LASHIO // To mark the annual Armed Forces Day, the generals paraded in the capital, while their men killed more than 150 people around the country and arrested hundreds of others, on the bloodiest day since the coup. The capital of Shan State, at the Chinese border, had already been under intense repression for a […]
Destroying the Opposition
SHWE TAUNG // A small town on the east bank of the Irrawaddy River near Pyay District, the city is a NLD stronghold and home to a large number of civil servants. The main protest leaders, including Kyaw Zeya, a local politician long engaged against military rule, and Hla Thwin, who served as chairman of […]
Urban Warfare
YANGON // No one will forget the fate of Kyal Sin ‘Angel’, a 19-year-old girl killed by police during a similar protest in Mandalay ten days earlier. Minutes before she fell, a photographer took a picture of her running from the frontline as she was wearing a black T-shirt with the message: ‘Everything will be […]