54 Million Heartbreaks in Myanmar

Magazine portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi: pastel on Paper by Gary Kelley

On February 1, 2021, the day a new democratically elected government was supposed to take office, Myanmar military staged a coup, thereby, plunging the country into darkness, robbing the budding democracy of its path to a full bloom. Below is an open letter to the military regime by the blogger, Aye, dated February 1, 2021, originally appeared on her blog:

You with your army of darkness. You with your truck loads of soldiers bearing weapons bought with our country’s resources.

So you claimed that democratically elected new government is fraudulent and appointed yourself and your cronies as the government.

Who elected you? No one. The guns didn’t elect you either. With this coup, you tried to put us back in the dark ages that we recently barely crawled out after fifty years. With this act you’ve tried to silence the majority and suppress the will of people.

Like a parasite, you had been lying dormant the last few years plotting for this day but we always saw you relentlessly waging wars on ethnic tribes. You haven’t changed a bit. You maybe a third generation military but you wear the same uniform of evil.

Nothing will satiate you because you’re empty inside. You have wealth beyond imagination, enough to live opulently for four generations and beyond. This isn’t just about money. This is about total domination of 54 million people. This is about total suppression of free will of a country. Your country. My country. This is the ultimate act of brutality to keep us down for generations to come.

All night I lay awake thinking, “How could you?” “Why would you?” I know I’m not alone in this. In every phone call, text, and comments, I see heartbreaks and anguish of Burmese people. I feel the weight of our collective helplessness, hopelessness and despair so crushing that I am unable to move or think at times.

Regardless of this loss, I want to say to my sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles; mothers and fathers; we need to be thinking “what’s next?” “What could we do next?”

As the American civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer said, nobody is free until everybody is free. We have to keep speaking up. Keep helping each other. Keep fighting. Keep listening. Keep finding answers. Keep saving Myanmar.