Myanmar military’s worst enemy

• Myanmar’s military has focused its crackdown on young people.
• They are the ones making resistance.
• The junta “is treating every single kid as their deadliest enemy.”

Hnin Si lived in peace in the southern city of Dawei before the military overthrew the civilian government of Myanmar early last year and started killing and arresting thousands of people.

She went to work during the week and on the weekends went trekking with friends in the mountains overlooking the Andaman Sea or cycling through the neighboring wilderness.

Those times have passed.

The military has focused its crackdown on the young people who make up the resistance in an effort to put an end to the broad opposition to its authority. The fact that Myanmar’s economy is crumbling and their hopes of continuing their studies are being dashed add to the difficulties that young people there are facing.

The joint secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, Ko Bo Kyi, claimed that the junta “is treating every single kid as their deadliest enemy.”

According to the rights documentation group, the military’s crackdown on the pro-democracy movement has resulted in the deaths of more than 900 persons between the ages of 16 and 35 and the arrest of more than 2,800 people in that age range.

“The youth should represent the nation’s future. Ko Bo Kyi continued, “And yet, we have this so-called military imprisoning, torturing, and executing them. “It is harming our nation and the society of the future.”

In the southernmost region of Myanmar, Tanintharyi, where local armed resistance groups have become stronger in recent months and the military has responded by stepping up its surveillance, assassinations, and arrests, Al Jazeera spoke with eight people in their 20s and early 30s.

According to those surveyed, young people have generally abandoned the nation, sought refuge in regions held by armed opposition organizations, or joined the resistance, leaving cities and towns devoid of young people. Those who have stayed in the military-controlled regions claim that they do so out of fear and desperation.

In the weeks following the coup, Hnin Si, a woman in her late 20s, quietly protested and created a Facebook page to gather money for striking state officials.

These days, though, she barely leaves the house or writes anything online. She recently spent days hiding at a friend’s house after finding out that a close contact had been detained for offering aid to those displaced from their houses due to fighting.

Young people, she continued, “feel like we’re stuck here with no hope for the future.”

The possibility of military retaliation led to the employment of pseudonyms or requested aliases for all those interviewed for this story, with the exception of one protest leader who insisted on having his true name used.

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