Doctors healing patients while in hiding, teachers giving up their classrooms and bankers losing their savings are among the stubborn holdouts still on strike to protest Myanmar’s military coup six months ago.
Thousands of civil servants joined a mass walkout in the days after the February ouster of Burmese State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in an effort to deny the junta legitimacy, a sufficient work force and resources. It is difficult to know how many are still participating in the campaign, with many sacked for joining protests and a severe COVID-19 outbreak likely keeping others away from their desks.
The strikes have left the junta deprived of staff to manage utilities and collect taxes. It has appealed for medical workers, engineers and IT specialists to come forward to help its pandemic response — and dangled the promise of COVID-19 vaccines for those who do.
A state-backed power company in Myanmar’s commercial capital, Yangon, warned this month that a running boycott on bill payments was bleeding it of cash and affecting electricity supply. Agence France-Presse spoke to three people about how they were resisting the junta regime. All asked to use pseudonyms for safety reasons.
Shwe Ya Min worked for Myanmar’s central bank for 17 years, but she and her husband went on strike soon after the coup, joining colleagues in a walkout that paralyzed the country’s banking system.
Businesses have since been struggling to pay employees and buy supplies, and a World Bank report this week forecast that Myanmar’s economy would contract by 18 percent this year.
Shwe Ya Min and her husband were both fired in May for not coming back to work, a dismissal she said was a “relief” — even though it came with a demand that they return their back pay.
“We loathe [the junta] very much,” she said. “They are wicked.”
She and her family are not paying any government bills and have stopped sending their daughter to school, but money is tight.
“We have been eating with what we saved, which will last only until next month,” she said, adding that some of her colleagues “are selling eggs and betel nut to pay the rent.”
However, she has no regrets about the decision, she said.
“I will choose to die from starvation instead of going back to work,” Shwe Ya Min added.
Yin Maung, a 33-year-old doctor, left his job to work in a clinic providing free treatment for wounded protesters in Mandalay, Myanmar’s cultural capital.
He was one of nearly 500 doctors studying for advanced degrees to be expelled from the program after defying calls to come back to work.
He now practices medicine underground with other doctors, giving online and telephone consultations to people with COVID-19 who boycott junta-run hospitals.
“I fear they will kill me from behind while I am treating the patient,” he said, adding that practicing remotely is hard because “doctors are happy only when they are in contact with patients.”
“The goals I lived with my whole life are now hopeless, but it also gives a stronger determination that we won’t turn back,” he said.
Khin Lin, her mother and her sister all worked as teachers until they joined the civil disobedience movement, giving up salaries they used to support their relatives.
Her mother was just eight months shy of retirement and a pension when the coup happened, but ignored requests from her extended family to keep working.
Khin Lin now goes from house to house to teach, work she finds “exhausting,” but she needs the money.
“I am naturally stubborn and determined,” the 28-year-old said. “I continue what I have to do. They don’t treat us like human beings.”
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