Moments later, we heard music and chanting from the road. A procession of vehicles flying the Myanmar flag rolled down the road, carrying younger males wearing army camouflage and carrying conventional swords. They chanted slogans supporting the army and Common Min Aung Hlaing, the commander of the armed forces, now the last word authority.
Individuals on balconies watched in silence and took photographs. The vehicles, accompanied by vehicles stuffed with Buddhist monks, drove on to the Yangon Metropolis Corridor to affix a rally supporting the coup. My aunt, who lived via the 1988 crackdown and the coup in 1990, began cracking jokes. “Now we’re North Korea,” she stated with a giggle. “It is rather like it was earlier than. Such enjoyable.”
We ate lunch round midday. A few of us acquired our cell phone service again. Verified N.L.D. pages on Fb began sending messages telling individuals to protest, regardless of the web page directors’ being beneath arrest. As I listened to my household speak, I felt a definite sense of being transported again to the outdated, remoted Myanmar, when international journey was virtually not possible and communication with the surface world was costly and unlawful.
“There was a coup in 1990, and now it’s occurring once more,” my uncle, who’s in his mid-60s and resides via his third coup, remarked. “We have now been free for 10 years,” he added. “I don’t know how one can stay like that anymore.”
We sat round and talked about what Myanmar was sure to lose. We had been nearly to begin railway tasks with Japanese assist that will replace the getting older Yangon to Mandalay line. We apprehensive in regards to the return of financial sanctions. We talked about our garment exports to the European Union. We questioned whether or not the coup would have an effect on worldwide cooperation on Covid vaccines.
The day handed in a blur of anxious conversations. We finally collapsed into an uneasy sleep. The following day, the army’s supporters held a big rally at Individuals’s Park, within the shadow of the enduring Shwedagon Pagoda, one of many holiest websites within the nation. College students, medical staff, and legal professionals started organizing a resistance motion on-line.
We’re traumatized and exhausted, however by the point the 8 p.m. curfew got here into impact on Tuesday, individuals in my neighborhood gathered on our balconies and began banging pots and pans, asserting that we received’t quit with out a struggle.
Aye Min Thant is a journalist from Yangon, Myanmar. She was a part of the workforce of Reuters journalists who received the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Worldwide Reporting.
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