The Students Resist
In response to the 2021 coup, university students in Myanmar mobilized swiftly, leading some of the most visible resistance efforts across the country, as Thura explained on a recent episode. Inspired by a long history of student activism, they organized protests, boycotts, and the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), refusing to participate in military-controlled education systems. Many students risked their safety by joining large street demonstrations and faced brutal crackdowns, leading to arrests and deadly force from security forces. Others sought alternative education methods, enrolling in underground schools and programs like Spring University Myanmar, which allowed them to continue their studies outside military influence. Many students also shifted their focus toward advocacy, international awareness campaigns, and some even joined ethnic armed groups to further fight the military. Their resistance symbolized a renewed generational commitment to ending military rule and promoting a democratic future. In the following excerpt from a recent podcast conversation, Thura describes the struggles the education sector in Myanmar has faced in recent years.
“When a child misses a few years of learning, they cannot just pick up where they left off. They have to take time to make up for the period they were not exposed to an academic learning environment and hence, were not challenged intellectually.”
The remote virtual learning method began when the first COVID case happened in Myanmar around late March 2020. The universities were all shut down and all the schools were closed off temporarily. I think that the teachers and faculty members had a harder time than the students, in adapting to virtual learning. They had to do their best to learn the digital and cloud-based tools to effectively teach online, while most students were already familiar with the technology and they naturally slipped into the online learning space. Then, the coup happened in February 2021 after a year of virtual learning among students and teachers around the country. The universities were still closed with empty campuses. There were just a few administrative staff on campus without the presence of faculty members most of the time.
Honestly, I still can't figure out whether that was a good thing or a bad thing! It could have been a different case if the universities were just running with full operation when the coup came in 2021. In 1988 (nationwide protests) and in 2007 (the Saffron Revolution), universities were running and the students’ participation in protesting played a major role in the immediate uproar of civilians in reaction to the coups. So, we can imagine if it had happened with a full universities operating, the protest movements might have been a bit bigger and, maybe even more powerful than they were in our version of the timeline.
Anyway, although the universities were closed around 2021, the students joined the civilian protests. Actually, it was majority of normal individuals coming together to protest. When I say “normal individuals,” I mean people who are not traditionally active in the political debate in Myanmar, and who made up the majority of the countless numbers of protestors on the streets at different cities and rural areas, all simultaneously. Many of my friends, who couldn't care less about what we do on university campus nor our dialogue with the Ministry and the National Education law, were all at the forefront of these civilian protests! They were marching with us every day. We also joined hands with fellow students’ unions across the country. There were also national-level calls to encourage the international community to come together to support us. We were all organized in our first civilian protest movement.
For most ordinary individuals and young people, they were mainly participating in the protests as a response to the injustice the military coup inflicts, rather than to support Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD. Many protestors’ main motivation was to eradicate injustices felt by ordinary citizens; it was not other denials of democratic principles such as the denials of human rights values, human rights abuses nor media censorship, that enraged them.
Despite all the flaws and imperfections, the NLD won fair and square in a landslide during the 2020 national election. Many of these students voted for them, knowing all the limitations NLD faces. So when this coup happened and all their mandates were overturned, the result was very infuriating for many people, just on the political level, but on a personal level. It was then, I think, the political and ideological shifts among the people emerged. Before the 2021 coup, most people held a realist spectrum in the country’s political affairs – ‘whatever the military occupies, we do not mind it as long as we certain that this [remains free]. So, let's just make a deal out of it’. After the 2021 coup, there was a shift in the general ideologies of students’ efforts towards, perhaps, the left. It is common for revolutions to be more leftist and to adopt the doctrine that organizes the masses, and to have a common rally among all these demonstrators.
So that was what was happening on the streets.
When they were called to join the Civil Disobedience Movement, which came a few days after the coup, and allegedly, the movement was suggested in a letter written by Daw Suu during the days leading up to the coup. At the forefront of the civil disobedience movement was the students, doctors, teachers and other government workers standing altogether. Taking this stance was actually a very big decision for them. For the students, they had to decide between continuing or suspending their university studies. Most of the senior students in their final years faced a huge dilemma of either persisting for one more final year to graduate, or to completely stop going to university to show their resistance to the military coup. The amount of time invested by the senior university students made it hard to decide. For instance, the engineering students who attended university for the past five years to achieve a university degree, without much interest on the actual subjects they were studying, knew what they have give up. On top of this, prior learning credits from Burmese universities are not generally recognized in universities around Southeast Asian countries. This means the senior students who decide to join CDM would have to start their higher education degrees from scratch at the ages of twenty and twenty-two years old. So, they knew all too well what the risks were in joining the CDM. On the other hand, they also knew all too well that them joining the CDM would be a very powerful punch to the military. And It was! We did a survey, showing millions of students, nearly three quarters of the university faculties were dismissed from the university for their involvement with the CDM. We also found that the matriculation exam takers dropped by as much as 80% compared to pre-coup figures. So that that that motivation was going on at that time.
In terms of the coup and its impacts on intellectual development in students of all ages, I will say the CDM and dropping out of college actually helped the university-aged students intellectually. Notably, the students were missing out on the technical knowledge that only universities can provide in a certain disciplines (engineering, social sciences, medicine, finances, etc.). On the bright side, I believe more and more students now have higher levels of intellectual awareness, a better understanding, and appreciation of ethnic cultures and ethnic organizations in Myanmar. Now, these students are aware of the Ethnic Revolutionary Organizations (EROs) that have been waging a war against the military regime for the past several decades. Previously, a majority of Bamar people viewed these EROs as rebels who were just trying to destabilize the country. But with this coup and the subsequent lethal crackdowns of the military on peaceful protesters, everyone was increasingly aware that the military junta was not a regime that the citizens could make a deal with. I would say, this is the reason that led to many students pursuing their interests in different political ideologies and learning about different approaches on the art of revolution. More students are now also viewing the world in a bigger picture through the international superpowers that has been working actively to alleviate the injustices and human rights abuses that the ethnic minorities face in Myanmar under the military regime. So, I think the students became more generally intelligent and more well-connected to the outside world than they previously were. Before the 2021 coup, many students were just minding their own businesses, trying to get a degree and make a career out of it.
But of course, there were tangible learning losses students have suffered from in these times of the military regime and CDM. The negative impacts are more obvious and common among younger learners but, I think it's also relevant for university students. When a child misses a few years of learning and they return to campuses after a while, they cannot just pick up where they left their studies. They have to take time to make up for the period they were not exposed to an academic learning environment and hence, were not challenged intellectually. This is one tangible learning loss that the students went through. Plus, online learning experience is also a difficult situation for students to study properly. Many subjects from different academic fields were unavailable and were unsuitable to be delivered online. Some technical courses such as engineering subjects, other vocational jobs, and medicine require students to learn hands-on activities in a classroom environment with the professor or the teacher. Lectures can be taught online, but for the practical components of the subjects could not be offered online. The social sciences had less issues to be learned through online platforms, because they can make do with a laptop and a notepad to learn the entire spectrum of the courses.
For the average student, I think it was a time of challenging themselves intellectually and politically. This has been sustained movements! So far, the junta-run schools and university campuses are still nowhere near the pre-coup levels, partly because of economic factors and lack of faculty members. These are the times of student individuals becoming a more active citizen in the political scene of Myanmar, in the sense that they were drawn into the armed struggle and subsequent anti-regime activities that followed the 2021 coup.