I’m back online after over three weeks of being blocked from the internet network. Like many people facing the same challenges, I felt annoyed, frustrated, and impatient by information cuts and limited communication with those I love. Despite being violated by our free speech and access to info, we didn’t sit with empty hands and give up at all but figured out the alternatives on how to have access to info as much as we could. Let me share some of my experiences.
Turning on the radio felt a bit strange in 2021, but who cares. In the beginning, I struggled a bit with how to manually catch the right channels on the radio. Later on, it became a habit to get up early in the morning and turn on the radio and catch the news – I just recalled the memory – the first big news I heard from the radio was that the Myanmar embassy in London was raided. The DVB and Mizzima channels from PSI satellites were useful, but it was blocked again after a few days. No surprise for me, but a bit ridiculous thing was that the junta even blocked international channels like BBC World News, CNN, and CNA on the private broadcasting company – I yelled and almost threw away the remote control when I found it out. Given that, I just had a chance to watch CNN coverage about their Myanmar tour at the end of this month, which actually had been broadcast since the 5th or 6th of April.
There were two times I felt pretty impatient and tortured by knowing nothing. So, I took a motorbike and went to the nearby town, which was 20 miles away from the place I lived, just to access the fiber WiFi at the teashop and digest the news, which I wished I could do every day but was hardly possible to do under the burning summer sun and unstable circumstances. So mostly, I relied on the radio, phone calls, and the short messages sent by friends and colleagues for the summarized news – many thanks, buddies!
Based on those experiences, I just came to realize that the consequences of cutting information flow is huge – which I think probably can lead to the military controlling everything day by day. The rumors spread an unimaginable amount both for local movements and what is happening nationwide. We barely had sources to countercheck and confirm the news. Above all, people barely trust each other.
At the same time, we are propagandized by false news that is fabricated all the time through state-owned newspapers and television channels. You might argue that no one believes that news, but believe me – there are people who are confused between rumors, false news, fear, and tremendous pressure.
Nonetheless, there were some moments that I felt inspired, re-energized, and with a to-stay-positive vibe when I witnessed some real stories about my town. Let me share.
A woman gets up every morning to pick up the star flowers from the trees around the town and then goes to the market and sells it because her husband is a public servant from the local train station and has been joining the CDM movement. So, selling star flowers is the only way to earn money for her family’s survival in this difficult time so that his CDM husband can still resist the military and not return to work.
There were big protests in the town every day for nearly one and a half months, but they transformed into guerilla-like protests later on and were just spotted in the public streets at dawn and dusk. The result is security forces came into the town at night, shot the guns, and tried to catch people. So, people involved in the protest just ran from their homes and slept in the paddy fields around the town. On the Myanmar New Year's Day, almost the whole town boycotted the communal offering of provisions to monks and nuns (which has been a hundred years old tradition in our town) because township-level SAC members tried to take advantage of the event to politicize their legitimacy.
Every time I hear those kinds of stories, the voice of protests, and the individual resistance to the coup in tiny ways in daily life, I’m humbled to be part of that community's resilience. Again, these experiences made me think of something further on the revolution. People are against the military coup and giving up their lives not because they want something back but to hold the power for their own interests. In the stories of my beloved town – a woman chose to sell star followers because she stands up against injustice; people chose to keep protesting and sleeping in the paddy fields at night because they are brave and determined enough to root out the 70 years of dictatorship; people chose to boycott doing good deeds in new year day and momentum the resistance because we all know how future would not be a certain but only nightmare as long as the military is holding guns to kill its people instead of going back to the barracks and doing their job – to protect the people.
In our country's history, counting back from the colonial era to now, people always chose staying on the right side of history to make good trouble (by the words of late U.S. congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis)—fight for good, fight to go forward—just for one reason: to pass on a better future from one generation to another.
Now is the best call – with this unity, strength, and collective action against the coup, justice has to prevail; democracy has to be reclaimed; and peace has to be restored once and for all.
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