A Movement Begins
Coming Soon…
“I’m just doing what is right, what is wrong, what’s the matter? What should I do as a human being?”
When Dr. Myay Latt graduated from medical school in Myanmar, he could have chosen a comfortable city posting, working in sterile rooms and predictable schedules. Instead, he took a motorbike to the edge of the map. His first assignment was in the Naga Self-Administered Zone — a place so remote it seemed to exist in another century. There were no roads, no electricity, no phone lines, and no money economy. In some villages, he was the first doctor anyone had ever met.
He set up clinics in bamboo huts, trained volunteer medics, and fought malaria, tuberculosis, and other diseases in conditions that tested every human limit. In those steep, misty hills, he fell right off its cliffs five times — and somehow lived through all of them. The villagers practiced barter instead of currency, settled disputes through elders instead of courts, and danced around bonfires for 24 hours straight to bless their harvests. There, he saw what the rest of Myanmar rarely did: the country’s immense, unacknowledged diversity.
“[The Naga] think I’m a strange person, they even stated so many times,” he says, laughing.
From Naga, he traveled to Chin State and Rakhine, serving communities scarred by conflict and neglect. In Chin, he once got lost in the jungle for a full day while trekking to remote villages, narrowly escaping landmines and armed patrols. In Rakhine, amid the ashes of the Rohingya crisis, he walked through areas where wooden signs warned, No Entry for Rohingya. The local medical officer told him bluntly, "If you go there and they decapitate you, it’s your problem*."* He went anyway.
“I just want to heal people,” he says. “Not take sides. Just heal.”
Later, in Putao — Myanmar’s northernmost frontier — he lived among the Kachin mountains, organizing medical outreach missions to snow-capped villages that could only be reached by boat and on foot. He climbed the 12,000-foot Phonyin Razi, turning back just short of the summit when a snowstorm hit. In those mountains, he often slept in huts infested with leeches, waking up to find them fat with his blood. He laughs it off — part of the life of a doctor in Myanmar’s wild north.
Even then, as he rode his motorbike along the edges of cliffs, he was becoming something more than a doctor. He was learning to see the country through the eyes of its many peoples — Nagas, Chins, Rohingya, Kachins — all of them Myanmar, all abandoned by the same state. He began to realize that medicine was not only about treating wounds. It was about healing the fractures of a nation.
On the night of January 31, 2021, the rumors were everywhere: A coup was coming. Myay Latt and a few friends stayed up all night in Yangon, drinking whiskey and watching their phones. When the internet went dark at dawn, he knew. “It’s like slapping our face,” he says.
That night, February 1, at 11 p.m., he had an idea that would change everything.
He remembers the confusion in those early hours. “What shall we do? Shall we go out? Shall we make a protest? What shall we do?” he says, recalling the helplessness. Then, recalling some of Gandhi's nonviolent protests against the British in India so many decades ago, an idea crystallized: “How about we do not go to the hospital. We are not going to work. What about… stopping their machine.”
By morning, he and a handful of fellow doctors began calling others across the country. Within hours, the Civil Disobedience Movement was born — a mass refusal by public servants to work under the junta. Hospitals shut down. Teachers, bankers, and civil administrators joined in. For a moment, the military’s grip slipped. By morning, he and a handful of fellow doctors began calling others across the country. Within hours, the Civil Disobedience Movement was born — a mass refusal by public servants to work under the junta. Hospitals shut down. Teachers, bankers, and civil administrators joined in. For a moment, the military’s grip slipped. As Myay Latt explained, while they can’t fight back with weapons, they can resist by simply refusing to obey.
The junta responded with arrests and bullets. Still, the CDM spread. Myay Latt helped form the CDM Medical Network, coordinating tens of thousands of doctors and nurses who walked out of state hospitals and built underground clinics. They treated protesters wounded by gunfire, ran secret vaccination drives, and continued to serve the people — but no longer under the regime’s banner.
By mid-2021, Myay Latt was working with the National Unity Government (NUG), advising its Ministry of Health while declining any formal title. He wanted independence, not politics. His focus was saving lives. With his colleagues, he launched Heartland Union, a humanitarian organization now operating in the war-torn dry zones. It provides primary and secondary care, combats malaria and tuberculosis, and supports displaced families with only a few hundred thousand dollars in donations and grants — but infinite determination.
In the time since, Myay Latt has since survived airstrikes, watched hospitals burn, and coordinated aid where no aid is supposed to go. “The [military is] so inhumane," he says. "Since 2022, there are a lot of air strikes on the public places, like hospitals, clinics, and schools... They don’t even care who’s inside!” Then, with quiet anger, he adds, “Actually, according to the international humanitarian law, you cannot bomb the civilians, of course not! So that's a breach by the military.” He stresses that he isn’t asking for a no-fly zone, only that the bombing of hospitals, schools, and clinics must end.
Myay Latt notes that he has testified to the UN, pleading for sanctions, and meets regularly with labor unions to cut the military’s funding lines. He also speaks out about ASEAN’s failed diplomacy. “We don’t want to say, but if [ASEAN] cannot solve it, they’re useless, right? They’re useless."
The cost has been high. Many of his colleagues are dead or in hiding. He often works alone at night, haunted by the sound of bombs falling on clinics. He meditates to survive. Samathā, he says — breathing in and out, remembering impermanence. “Sometimes I’ve been crying at night… just… hearing a Burmese traditional song… my tears are just streaming off,” he says. He keeps going anyway. “I will do whatever I can to win this revolution,” he says.
“One thing is, be in the present. As I always said, ‘No, don’t regret about the past, and don’t worry too much about the future.”