Three Salzburg Global Fellows from Myanmar describe their experiences in the country during a time of political, social, and economic unrest
Names have been changed for the privacy and safety of the people involved.
Phyo, Aung, and Khaing are Salzburg Global Fellows from Myanmar. In February 2021, a coup occurred in their home country, in which the military seized power from a democratically elected government. This prompted widespread protests by many civilians, which triggered a harsh response from the military junta. The people of Myanmar continue to experience the consequences of this political unrest and are living through a humanitarian and economic crisis.
With different backgrounds as an activist, journalist, and educator, Phyo, Aung, and Khaing have experienced the coup and its consequences in various ways. They shared excerpts of their stories through the following three passages.
Phyo: The Activist
I currently hold a position within the National Unity Government, a revolutionary government actively opposing the military regime. While some may refer to us as an exiled government, this isn't entirely accurate. We control approximately 65% of the territory, have established our own army, and formed strong alliances with various ethnic resistance groups.
Currently, I am based along the Thai-Myanmar border, while many of our forces are stationed throughout the country. Our acting President, Prime Minister, Minister of Defense, and Minister of Home Affairs are all within Myanmar, actively leading the movement on the ground.
Before the coup, I was an educator and activist, working to mobilize young people and raise awareness about the importance of human dignity, rights, and democracy. When the coup happened, I couldn’t just step back or run away. It would have been shameful to promote those values and then walk away. So, I chose to stand with the people, committing myself to the fight for democracy and freedom from the regime. After the coup, I initiated strike movements and was one of the first protesters to take to the streets. I helped mobilize others to stand against the regime, fighting for freedom and the restoration of our people's future.
When the coup happened, I was at my office, and many of my colleagues joined me there. It quickly became a hub for the protests—a place where people would gather, sleep, eat, meet, and plan their demonstrations. However, in March 2021, the military began shooting at protest groups and violently dismantling the movement. Despite being unarmed, we were shot at indiscriminately—men, women, children, and the elderly—often with shots aimed at the head. Faced with this brutal repression, our protest movement had to go underground.
Since then, the military started to pay attention to our hub and identified me as a key figure mobilizing the movement. They raided my office, but we received a tip-off in advance and managed to escape just in time. Anticipating their arrival, we also informed our parents and family members to move to safe locations. In early October, the military came to my house looking for me. When they found no one there, they set the house on fire.
These years have been emotionally devastating for me, as I have lost many friends, brothers, and sisters along the way. Our future is filled with uncertainty and hardship, and most days are marked by pain. I often find myself questioning whether my heart has grown stronger or simply become numb. Having spent my entire life under a military regime, I have witnessed firsthand how life unfolds in such an oppressive environment.
Young people there lack opportunities and dignity; we have only one or two hours of electricity each day, and accessing the internet is prohibitively expensive. This was the reality of our lives under the regime. With this coup, I feel our country has regressed to a primitive state, disconnected from the progress seen in other parts of the world. We cannot return to the way things were before. I am certain that the dictator and the military regime will continue to hold our country back.
The military is currently in a precarious position. We have cut off all their resources, and public support for them has dwindled significantly. All they have left is their firepower and a contingent of soldiers who lack intelligence. Given the momentum of the movement, I believe the revolution has the potential to succeed. The crucial factor is that people have already decided to break away from the regime, fully aware of the costs involved.
Aung: The Journalist
It was around 2010 when the country started opening up for liberalization from the authoritative military dictatorship. The previous government led by President Thein Sein, a former military general, decided to transition into a “quasi-democracy” as the military regime was trying to transition as part of their existing strategy. At the time, the government started to create some space for freedom of expression, and they started lifting restrictions on journalism and press freedom. In this period of nascent democracy, a lot of print media and journalists emerged. I decided to work as a journalist, as I'm very much interested in politics, peace, and ethnic conflict.
The last journal that I worked for was called “Unity Journal”. It mostly covered ethnic affairs, peace, and conflict issues. It was the first-ever ethnic minority affairs journal in Myanmar. At the time, we investigated and publicized a story criticizing the Myanmar military. By then, the government was trying to show its willingness to be open to press freedom and democratic reforms, especially to the international community. However, they were not happy with our reporting, so they forced us to shut down the journal. Some of my colleagues were arrested for doing their jobs. That's the time that I left my journalism career.
Right now, the dynamic has changed. Especially after the military coup, there is no freedom at all. Since the coup, the military has targeted both current and former journalists; this is because journalists have contacts, and one way or another, they have an association with resistance groups, opposition government members, and other human rights and civil society activists. Many journalists tried to escape from these arbitrary arrests, and most are now based in the Thai-Myanmar border areas on the Thai side.
Regarding the Myanmar people’s struggle for democracy, we always said that we wish we would get more attention from the international community. We understand that the international community, and international governments, have different priorities, like the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. But the situation in Myanmar is also tragic and needs dire assistance from the outside world. Every day, many people are killed, tortured, raped, and their houses are burned down by the military. I do wish the story of what is happening in Myanmar would get more international attention.
I still have hope even though I might be a little bit optimistic. It might take time to get on the path to a peaceful return to democracy. But I strongly believe that democracy will prevail because I have seen so many courageous people in Myanmar. When I was in Yangon, the capital of Myanmar after the military coup, people on the streets were shouting anti-coup slogans to demonstrate they wanted democracy back.
Khaing: The Educator
I'm an educator. I opened schools in Myanmar, and I've been doing that for the past ten years. We have preschools to high schools, and we are trying to offer affordable, quality education.
Around 2012, a lot of parents had faith in the new government and moved their kids from private schools to public schools. They believed in the new curriculum and the new way of life. They trusted the message of what was going to be taught and felt like their kids were going to be ready for the 21st century.
When schools were supposed to reopen after COVID-19 in 2022, the coup happened, and education was in crisis. People began to think that "if everyone chooses not to go to school, we shouldn't go to school either, because the education system will be under the new government”. But if you don't educate, you can't move forward either, in terms of grades or standards. So, we kept opening our schools and now there's a boom in private schools because the public education system has collapsed. In doing that, a lot of parents started to also choose the international curriculum instead of the Myanmar curriculum.
Since the coup, things have also changed in kids’ behaviors. It starts from home. Parents are frustrated and stressed because of work, the shrinking economy, and increasing hardships. With so much stress and anger, it’s easy for our language to be more violent. Then kids will use the same language. Kids have also become more familiar with guns and have learned to distrust the police. This trickles down into their behavior at school. School is not supposed to represent a government; it’s an institution where you first learn respect and how to work with others, but now a lot of kids feel like it’s okay to be more violent.
What I'm trying to do with the schools is primarily to make sure kids become good citizens; this comes before academic excellence. We want to do that with all the research that we have in human development science to learn how, why, and in what conditions people can learn.
It's not easy to survive in Myanmar, but I want people to know about the kind of resilience people have here and how we are supporting each other in different ways to live, despite what is happening now.
Phyo, Aung, and Khaing were members of the third cohort of the Asia Peace Innovators Forum. This Salzburg Global program shapes long-term peace, stability, and regional cooperation in Asia by building a network of mid-career professionals working in different sectors and countries to exchange knowledge, community-driven approaches, and best practices.
