Bitch Better Have My Democracy (2021), Artwork by Indo-Burmese artist Richie Htet Bitch Better Have My Democracy (2021), Artwork by Indo-Burmese artist Richie Htet

It was just another winter morning in Februarypara manalo, three years ago, for physical education (PE) teacher Khing Hnin Wai, as she set up her apparatus outside Myanmar’s Parliament at the Raised Lotus Roundabout in the capital city of Naypyidaw to film her daily aerobics routine. It was around 6:30 am. Just an hour later, she had danced her way into a surreal moment in the nation’s history.

Ikram has a long association with the sport. The former Pakistan and China hockey coach is a member of the IOC Olympic Solidarity Commission, and has been an Executive Board member of the FIH since 2016. On 5 November 2022, he was elected as the 13th President of FIH.

The South Korean team, on the other hand, is coming off a strong yet disappointing performance against Japan, ending in a 5-5 draw. They began their Asian Champions Trophy 2024 tournament with a 2-2 draw against Pakistan on Monday.

As she bopped to the beats of a techno-pop Indonesian protest song for a government fitness campaign video, a convoy of armoured SUVs approached the checkpoint behind her. Unknowingly, she captured the early moments of Myanmar’s 2021 military coup against Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government. Shortly after, the military detained Suu Kyi and senior National League for Democracy (NLD) leaders, declared a state of emergency and seized power. The surreal juxtaposition of the lively aerobics with a coup unfolding in the background stunned viewers worldwide.

This story was published as part of Outlook Magazine's 'War And Peace' issue, dated January 11, 2025. To read more stories from the Issue, click here.

Looking back on that morning, Wai, seen dancing nonchalantly in the viral video, seemingly oblivious, says she had noticed the SUVs in the background, but assumed it was just another security exercise. “I did not know I would become a global meme,” she laughs. Living in a suburb of Naypyidaw, Wai declines to comment on how the coup has affected her life. Following the video and the global fame it brought, Wai faced criticism, with some accusing her of “mocking” the coup. “I was simply filming an aerobics video for work,” she said.

That morning, about 250 kilometres away in Yangon, American art curator Nathalie A. Johnston had just emerged from COVID-19 quarantine at a local hotel when she heard about Suu Kyi’s arrest. She immediately knew life was about to change forever.

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On February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military overthrew the democratically elected government, erasing a decade of progress by pro-democracy activists and civilians. Violence against civilians surged, with thousands jailed, tortured and killed. A UN Office of the United Nations High Commissioner (OHCHR) report estimates 5,350 civilian deaths and over 3.3 million displaced since 2021, with half the population “living below the poverty line mainly due to violence perpetrated by the national armed forces”. The junta has used “shelling, airstrikes and arson” to destroy civilian infrastructure and has systematically persecuted minorities. Over 27,400 people have been arrested since the coup, according to the report.

“Anybody who tries to raise their voice against the military or object to their policies is instantly targeted,” said M, an independent journalist from Kachin state in northern Myanmar, requesting anonymity. According to a March 2024 report by the International Centre for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL), “206 journalists, including 31 women reporters from nearly 100 media outlets in Myanmar, were arrested by the junta” between 2021 and February 2024. Of these, 147 were released after six months, while 59 remained in prison at the time the report was released.

Just this year, four journalists have been killed allegedly by the junta in custody. In August, freelance journalists, 28-year-old Htet Myat Thu and 26-year-old Win Htut Oo were shot dead when thejunta raided their home in the southern Mon state.

Despite arrests and brutal state-sponsored violence, the people of Myanmar continue to resist the junta. The coup sparked a civil disobedience movement, dubbed the Spring Revolution, followed by armed resistance. The first protest against the junta occurred on February 2, 2021, a day after the coup and protests persist despite crackdowns. On February 4, four protesters were arrested and by mid-February, 19-year-old protester Mya Thwe Thwe Khine became the first civilian casualty. Her death became a symbol of resistance. “That moment consolidated the people of Myanmar. There would be no more compromise,” said M.

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In 2022, Burmese analyst Saw Kapi described the Spring Revolution as more than regime change, calling it a “revolution of thought” to reinterpret Myanmar’s histories and cultures. This shift is most evident in young artists’ responses, who use their work to portray the conflict, injustices and inequalities shaping their world.

Opened in 2016 in Yangon, Myanmart served as a “safe zone” for experimental artists seeking a liberal space in a society shaped by military conservatism. The exhibition space became a hub for younger Burmese artists to push boundaries, embracing openness and creativity during Myanmar’s transition to democracy, offering a platform for innovation in a fledgling post-censorship era.

“There wasn’t any censorship during the Suu Kyi years, technically. But there were many invisible lines we couldn’t cross and we didn’t know where they were. Myanmart’s role was to test those lines,” said founder Nathalie Johnston. She left Yangon three months after the coup and now works internationally with Burmese artists, helping them survive and create amid the chaos. “It was important not just to provide artists a safe space to live and work but also to show the world what Myanmar’s artists were expressing amid a seemingly never-ending loop of violence,” she explained.

Contemporary Myanmar artists explore critical themes like women’s empowerment, LGBTQIA rights and equality for sexual and ethnic minorities—issues that gained momentum during Myanmar’s decade of democracy.

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Some artworks remain hopeful for a peaceful, inclusive future, while others starkly portray life under military siege, exile and the atrocities inflicted by the junta. Indo-Burmese queer artist Richie Htet Nath, born and raised in conservative Yangon, has gained acclaim for works addressing propaganda, violence and resistance, alongside homoerotic, non-binary reinterpretations of Burmese mythology and history. His painting, Bitch Better Have My Democracy, created after the coup, reimagines the Hindu goddess Durga vanquishing Mahishasura—depicted as a junta soldier. The goddess symbolises the Burmese people, making the painting an emblem of the Spring Revolution. Thanks to efforts by Johnston and international art and solidarity networks, the artwork remains preserved today.

“We managed to move it out of Myanmar and displayed it in Berlin as part of the We Are the Seeds—The Art of Myanmar’s Spring Revolution exhibition featuring artworks of 18 contemporary Burmese artists like Nath, Pinky Htut, Sai Thiha Soe, Emily Pyeoh, Mayco Naing and others.

Anonymous groups like the Myanmar Film Collective have actively portrayed life under military siege, with documentary films like Myanmar Diaries offering crucial insights. Artists like Sai Thiha Soe have used video and sculpture to explore themes of constraint, identity and violence. While some, like Soe, remain in Myanmar facing conscription and persecution, many who fled after the coup have been unable to return. “I am sure I will be arrested and tortured if I return,” Richie Nath, who currently in asylum in Paris, has previously said. His mother and brother remain in Myanmar and have faced arrests.

For exiled artists and activists, the uncertainty of their family’s safety and the guilt that comes from leaving the country when others who stayed back continue to suffer, often reflect in their works. Not every artwork, however, is directly about politics. Some choose to depict “all that is still good and was ever good,” in Myanmar, including the short stints of democracy.

Throughout history, art has reflected violence, loss, political shifts and societal changes. Myanmar’s artists, inheritors of this global resistance legacy, have their own unique responses, shaped by generations of confronting injustice and upheaval in their society. “Most people in Myanmar today have parents, grandparents or great grandparents who were involved or impacted by some kind of conflict. Whether it was the colonial occupation, WW II, Japanese occupation, socialist dictatorship, military dictatorship, everybody in Myanmar has a story and can relate to conflict. That’s key to understanding how artists are responding to these identities and making art to fit the contemporary narrative,” a Burmese artist states, requesting anonymity.

Contemporary artists in Myanmar offer an alternative narrative to the often myopic international media coverage of the 2021 coup, which tends to focus solely on the junta and Suu Kyi’s fall from power. This Eurocentric or intrinsically ‘western’ gaze overlooks Myanmar’s colonial past and the military’s deep influence on the nation’s identity and politics, providing a more nuanced view of the ongoing crisis and its historical context. “There is also a tendency to ignore Myanmar altogether. While wars in other parts of the world get attention and coverage, most of the world does not realise that we too are a besieged population living under threat of violence,” M states.

Since gaining independence in 1948, Myanmar has been embroiled in ethnic conflicts, with armed groups fighting the military or Tatmadaw, for self-determination. The military helped defeat colonial Britain and initially enjoyed popular support.

Even after the 2011 transition to partial democracy, the junta maintained control over politics. The military’s role in the 2017 Rakhine state massacre, under Suu Kyi’s, further highlighted its ongoing influence in the government.

Burmese political scientist, the late Nehginpao Kipgen, had stated that the coup was the result of the failed transition to democracy. In his 202ff1 paper titled ‘The 2020 Myanmar Elections and the 2021 Coup: Deepening Democracy or Widening Division?’ a fthe political scientist explained how “controversies” surrunding the 2020 General Elections in Myanmar, in which the Suu Kyi-led NLD was re-elected, ultimately culminated in the 2021 military coup.

An expert on the geopolitics of the South China Sea and Myanmar’s prolonged civil unrest, Kipgen stated that the “controversies” included allegations of election fraud and malpractices, along with growing fears of political disenfranchisement among ethnic groups following the cancellation of polling in conflict-affected states like Shan, Rakhine, Kachin, Kayin and Mon, as well as the Bago region.

The Myanmar coup is a reminder that while elections are necessary, they may not always be sufficient for the establishment of a strong and vibrant democracy. “Developments in Myanmar’s electoral process show that the successful holding of an election was evidence of the country moving towards being a democracy,” said Kipgen. But he adds that the events that followed perhaps reflect the deep fault-lines in Burmese politics and its “fragile transition to democracy, even before the coup”.

Such questions remain crucial in Myanmar, where resistance armies, comprising various armed ethnic groups, have been waging a tough war against the junta. In Rakhine state, on the Myanmar-Bangladesh border, over 600,000 Rohingya Muslims continue to face persecution by the military and the dominant Rakhine Buddhist population. The Arakan Group (AA), an armed faction claiming to represent the Buddhist Rakhine people, has regained control. Meanwhile, under the Myanmar regime’s new conscription rules, Rohingya Muslims are being recruited to fight the rebels. The fate of the community remains uncertain, no matter which faction prevails.

The AA is part of the larger Three Brotherhood Alliance, a collection of anti-junta groups, that launched an offensive in October 2023, securing several significant victories along Myanmar’s border with China. “What happens after all the fighting? Will the Spring Revolution bring about a successful spring in Burmese thought and identity? Will the country become more inclusive and tolerant toward difference? We can only hope,” said M, the journalist.

(This appeared in the print as 'Bombs Over Burma')para manalo

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