Some, like Saw Tun Moe, have gone on strike and joined the NUG’s parallel education and health services, while others have taken up arms against the military, despite very little training or weapons expertise, including by joining ethnic armed groups or newly formed civilian militias, known as the People’s Defence Forces (PDFs). Outraged at the military’s toppling of Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government just 10 years after the start of a shaky transition to democracy, and horrified by a brutal crackdown on unarmed protesters in the immediate aftermath of the coup last year, the people of Myanmar have taken matters into their own hands. “Even then, he took the risk and chose to teach at the NUG school.”Īll across Myanmar, men and women are taking similar risks. “He was aware he could end up like this if he fell into junta hands,” one of Saw Tun Moe’s colleagues told the Irrawaddy newspaper after his death in late October. The 46-year-old mathematics teacher was a vocal critic of Myanmar’s military rulers and was running schools for the rival National Unity Government (NUG) – an administration established in opposition to the military by ethnic leaders, activists and the elected politicians the generals had removed from office – in the central Magway region Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia – A day after his capture by Myanmar soldiers, Saw Tun Moe’s decapitated head was found impaled on the spiked gates to the smouldering remains of a school building.
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