An Ethnic Voice Speaks Out
Real Stories Not Tales (RSNT) is a dedicated team in and out of Myanmar that aims to bring awareness to the reality of young people’s lives since the Myanmar military staged a coup on February 1st, 2021. Stories are collected through interviews with each protagonist by the team, either in Burmese or in English. Each character is drawn by a professional illustrator bringing a visual context to the story. RSNT is a anonymous name that is used by the group to guarantee security to all parties involved in the collection of the Stories. These posts are part of collaboration between Tea Circle and Insight Myanmar to publish Real Stories Not Tale's Report #2. To read Report #1, visit Tea Circle or Insight Myanmar. Two additional stories from RSNT’s Report #2 will be published on Tea Circle at a later date.
Hnin Nu is a women’s trainer for a local organization. She was interviewed on August 20th.
“As I did not take part in the 1988 demonstrations, I feel like now my time to participate in the revolution has come.”
"I work for a local organization, and my responsibility is to organize long-term and short-term trainings for women, mostly in politics. Because of Covid-19, the trainings were moved online. The women who attend these trainings often live in conflict-affected areas, so learning online was quite challenging for them. After the coup, however, even the online trainings had to be cancelled.
Originally, I come from a small and remote village located in a conflict zone where different armed groups are present; the villagers distinguish them by the language or dialect they speak. Having armed groups in our region is both good and bad. If there were none, we—the minority ethnic people—would be bullied by the majority Bamar people. But since they are here, civilians have to give food and money to them. Local people have very limited knowledge of politics. The older generations are uneducated, and we suffer the consequences of that.
On the day of the coup, I was in my village to visit my mother, and it seemed like just another ordinary day. Even the impacts of the coup have been quite unnoticeable, apart from some participating in the CDM. Local teachers were afraid of getting arrested, but teachers from central Myanmar participated in the movement.
As for me, I went to a town not that far from my village to join the protests. Since I didn't grow up in that area, I had to build relationships with the local youths. It is a small town, and everybody knows everybody, which meant that we were often alerted before the police came to arrest us. One night, we received information that one of our protest leaders was about to be arrested, and we managed to help them escape before the police came. Since then, we were no longer allowed to protest. Another night, my friend was invited to meet the township general and was warned not to participate in the protests again. My friend signed a document to agree to that, and after that, there were no more protests.
For International Women's Day, I went to another town to join the protests with a women's organization. I will never forget that day in my life. As the protests were getting bigger and bigger, we began hearing gun shots. At one point, my friends and I ran to hide in a small shop. The owner was quite good-natured and allowed us to hide in there. After about 45 minutes, we thought there was no more police around and went out, but when we got on our motorbikes the police started chasing us. Luckily, we managed to get away. To make sure I went unnoticed, I went into a beauty salon, pretending I was a customer getting a hair wash. It worked! I couldn't join the protests the following day, because I was feeling sick, and I found out afterwards that four people had died on that day. So our group decided to organize ‘protests without people’ from then on.
In general, I am really interested in politics. As I did not take part in the 1988 demonstrations, I feel like now my time to participate in the revolution has come. However, I am quite upset with the leaders of the EAOs in my area. Even though our common enemy is the military dictator, they keep on fighting each other. That is why I tried cooperating with the representatives of different ethnic youth groups in the region to send letters to those organizations, asking them to stop the civil war between them. We encouraged them to solve their problems in political ways, but no armed group listened to us, no one cared. I am quite depressed about this situation. We, the ethnic people, have become disunited because we have different political beliefs.
There is not much to say about my daily life at the moment. There are only two people in my family: me and my mother. She is still in my home village whereas I am studying in Thailand. I have been here for about three months, and it is a great opportunity for me. What keeps me going in the current situation is the organization I work for. We are trying to increase women’s participation in politics. At the moment, we are focusing on supporting women in Karenni State.
When it comes to my mental health, I have to say I am depressed and upset. I feel like I haven't done anything for my country, that I haven’t been able to help our youth enough. I feel sad hearing the news about Covid-19 cases in my area. And I also feel like we—minority ethnic people—suffer twice as much, compared to the Bamar majority. At the same time, looking at my life from a positive perspective, I can see the opportunity to finally remove military dictatorship from politics, to achieve ethnic rights, federal democracy, and gender equality.
I feel kind of lost when I think about my future. I want to continue my studies; I want to get a scholarship to study in a Western country or even here in Thailand. I want to develop my knowledge and skills as much as possible. After we beat the military, we will need a lot of human resources for nation building. Later in life, I would like to work in the humanitarian sector.
I think even political researchers on Myanmar are not able to guess what the future holds for our country. Me, I want federal democracy. Do I have to wait seven or seventy years for that? It is quite difficult to predict what will happen tomorrow."