Resilience and Revolution: One family's story

I was happy in the morning of that day because I sold many more bowls of noodles than usual. Our family of five had been living in harmony, running our small noodle shop. With the whole family to help, we had no need to hire other workers. Just before closing the shop that day, some police officers and soldiers arrived and asked about my eldest daughter. They said she was involved in the rebellion and they would have to arrest her parents or a sibling if they couldn’t get her. And they took the picture the contracts of my house, compound and car, and they brought the copies, inferring that they can take any of this property that they so choose at any time. The news and what they did to us was a shock and caused me to freeze for a while. I had nothing to say to what they said about my daughter. For a minute they thought I was deaf. My husband told them our daughter had gone off with some friends and would be back in a few days, so they told us to stay put and that they would be back soon. I don’t know if they were stupid or if we were lucky, but they left without taking anyone. Once they left I dropped into a chair and was overwhelmed with memories of nightmares. 

There was a military coup in my country on February 1, 2021. That morning, I was preparing to open the shop with my husband, so I didn't notice that both the phone and the internet weren’t working. My daughter got up early rushed in to say she had to go somewhere else because she was the president of her university’s student union and the military would go after the university students first after the coup. I was shocked to learn my country was going through another coup. I had had many nightmares about a military coup that happened when I was young. We had been living in Yangon because of my father’s job, although we were not Bamar but belonged to the Ta Aoung ethnicity.

During the last military coup I saw students shot on the street and dead bodies picked up by public buses, and bodies without heads hanging on the street during the 1988 revolution. These nightmares came back to me and made me paralyzed without being able to speak this time. I couldn’t say a word to my daughter. Finally, I sent her to my sister. My son and younger daughter woke up because of their older sister and also didn't know what to do. I sighed from the heavy burden. 

After my husband retired, we opened the noodle shop to support ourselves and pay for our children’s education. My oldest daughter attends the Technological University and her sister the Economic University. My son has already graduated and was planning to open a guitar school. He was trying to make a band with some of his friends. Before the coup, everything was going according to plan, but now nothing is certain and we have no idea what to do. After a few days, the protests started. My whole family also took part and gave support to people who were protesting. We made many donations to the protesters and my children were in the front lines of the peaceful protest movement. My oldest daughter led her classmates in the protests every day, only resting when she got sick. When the military started shooting protesters and making aggressive arrests, I started worrying about my children because of what I had seen and experienced from my own childhood, but I never told them to stop protesting. The military had a master plan for the coup and knew what to do step by step to control the people, but they didn't expect the entire country to reject them and rise up in a massive movement. As soon as they realized that they had no place in the people’s hearts, they started killing protesters and arresting people, trying to control them aggressively like before. My children had to flee when their names were put on lists of people to be murdered. Those were restless days and nights for me, not knowing when the police would come to take the lives of my children.

When the Third Wave of the pandemic started, the people became focused on that and the military slowed down their arrests and murders. I took a risk and decided to call my children back but my oldest daughter had already joined an ethnic resistance force and stayed with them. Training to join a defensive team was the only way she could stay alive. I truly can’t understand when foreigners write that we Burmese are being just as violent as the soldiers. If you knew your government put your children on a list to be exterminated, please tell me, would you learn how to defend yourself? It is enough that no one helps us, but when we do what we can to stay alive, they say we are just like the Tatmadaw. I don’t know how these people make money writing such things when we are only trying to survive here.

Anyway, I planned to send my son and younger daughter to Japan where my sister was working and had become a Japanese citizen, in hopes their lives at least could be spared. Meanwhile, my oldest daughter moved from a place to place for training and was doing everything she could for the revolution. As a mother, I am proud of her and also worried for her. Yet I support her completely. She did nothing wrong except become a university student leader, and she must do what is necessary to avoid the abduction attempts on her life.

If you ever experience a coup or live under military rule, you will understand how uncertain life is. 

One morning, I woke to the voice of my husband asking, “What should we do?” I had no idea so I decided to call my oldest daughter. She told me to come to her, to leave everything and come to where she was near the border. I have no time to think about leaving my house, my shop and all of my belongings. I told the rest of the family to join me but my younger daughter would not because her student visa to Japan was coming any day, and we all agreed this was a better chance of survival. I had no choice but to leave her behind. I do not know when I can see her again. The rest of us decided to join the oldest daughter. Once we decided to leave, my husband called a friend to pick us up. 

When I left, I thought that the only reason to leave the house, our shop and everything we owned was my responsibility to protect my children. This was the start of our escape. Please understand how a parent feels. I cannot bear to lose my children to another evil regime in my country. We no longer expect anyone else to help us. We are prisoners here.

First we went to Mawlamying, where we stayed for a day before moving on to Myawady. There we made contact with the brokers who would take us to Mae Sot. I never dreamed I would go on this kind of journey. Before reaching Mae Sot, we needed to wait for a while on the banks of the river separating Myanmar and Thailand. Around midnight, we started crossing the river in silence. After that we had to climb a hill for 30 minutes. My husband fell and got cuts allover his legs and hands. Along the way, one of the carrier guys ran up telling us to go back because groups who had gone before us had been arrested by Thai soldiers, where they were returned to the Burmese soldiers, and promptly taken away. In shock, I thought how unlucky we were to be running away from arrest by Myanmar soldiers and now facing arrest by Thai Soldiers. We ran back to the hill where we waited for a couple hours. Around 3 am the scout gave the signal we moved on, walking for about an hour this time before arriving at a group of small bamboo houses where we waited for a car. Around 6 am a motorized tricycle arrived and told us to get on in a hurry. But it was too small for all of us so my husband and son went first while I waited with my younger daughter. There is a saying "When God sleeps, Satan wakes." 

My husband and son were arrested by the Thai police and brought to a police station. I had no idea what to do. I called my older daughter who told me to be calm and hang up the phone. That left me with nothing to do but pray. I forget to mention that our family is Christian. Around 9 am my daughter arrived on a motorcycle and brought me to her house, where my husband and son were waiting. She explained that she had gathered a large sum of money from her friends to pay off the police. I sighed and hoped this would be the end of our flight. 

I hope by reading my story you can understand something of what lives are like under a dictatorship. There is no place for good people under a dictator and our lives have changed because of the coup. They can do whatever they want to your life. To own a house and run a business in Yangon is not easy and we had to work very hard over many years. But all of that disappeared in a day, except for my family. In any case, I have no regrets for what I've done and I am glad to see my family whole. I will be part of the revolution in different ways, and I hope that others will be safe and strong against the dictators.

This essay was written in English. I believe that Burmese know this pain already. But foreigners must not. If they understood what evil we were facing, and they still did not speak for us, what must this tell me about the world? So surely the other people must not know what is really happening in our country, otherwise they would not be so silent like they have been for a year. Please do not forget me. Please do not forget us. Stories like my family’s are happening every day. If you do not believe it, please find out. We are begging for your support.