Before the Feb. 1 coup, Zarni Win* worked for a United Nations-funded committee that monitored a ceasefire between Myanmar’s junta and ethnic armed groups. Today, the 27-year-old from Yangon, the country’s largest city, is getting ready to enlist in one of those groups herself.
“Now is the time to start preparing to eliminate the terrorist military,” she tells TIME. “I am ready to join the armed revolution.”
Myanmar is veering dangerously toward all-out civil war as the military, known as the Tatmadaw, terrorizes the public, and attacks restive ethnic territories. The U.N. special envoy for Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, warned on Mar. 31 that “a bloodbath is imminent.” In an online presentation cited by the Associated Press, she said civil war “at an unprecedented scale” was a possibility and spoke of Myanmar’s deterioration into a “failed state.”
Protesters in Myanmar have maintained a largely peaceful resistance to dictatorship since the coup ousted a democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Millions of people have taken to the streets, and hundreds of thousands of government workers have gone on strike. On March 25, Myanmar’s Civil Disobedience Movement was nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize—and just weeks ago, protesters were using creativity, humor and the arts to inspire solidarity and mock the junta.
