I.In the days before his escape, Sergeant Yay Khal had led the guards to believe normality. At irregular intervals, the soldier left the administration building that he and his unit had occupied since the military coup in Myanmar at the beginning of February. He played for them: “I’m just going to get a quick snack,” Khal shouted to them.
He returned a few minutes later. He did so for a while, up until that one day in September. “It should be different this time,” says the soldier looking back. That day he threw his laundry bag over his shoulder before going out the gate. He told the guards that he only wanted to take a few items of clothing to the dry cleaner.
His heart pounded in his chest as Khal stepped out into the street. The commanders would not only accuse him of leaving his weapon behind and leaving his base without permission. They would also try him before a court-martial. “They would sentence me to death if they caught me.”
In the eyes of the army, he would not only be a deserter, but a defector and rebel. As soon as he was out of sight of the guards, he tore his uniform off and threw the heavy boots in the trash. He had to be careful not to run into any acquaintances. Mandalay, where his unit was stationed, was his hometown.
The anger boiled up
He had entered the military six years earlier at the seat of previous kings, says Yay Khal, whose real name is different. “When I was young, I looked up at the soldiers with respect and admiration. They subordinate their ego and self-interest to the nation and the people. ”But this rosy image was lost with the coup.
As in millions of Myanmares, he was furious when he heard of the seizure of power. “I could not believe it. The civil government had been in power for five years. She had only just been re-elected. I thought we had reached a new age of openness and would not fall back into the past, ”Khal told the FAZ over the Internet.
In his anger at the military, his employer, he was not alone. In a gigantic outcry, the people reared themselves against the seizure of power by the putschists. In the evenings, as a sign of protest, people beat pots and pans until they were dented. The young Myanmares met for demonstrations that looked like colorful happenings, at least until the military began to answer the idealism of the youth with live ammunition. After that, more and more young women, men and even children were killed in the hail of bullets, many of them from targeted head shots. By mid-December, the number of deaths had risen to more than 1,300.
Violence against one’s own people
Soldier Khal found out on social media how the military turned their weapons on their own people. He didn’t notice anything of the worst acts of violence. But he had to watch as his comrades beat the demonstrators in Mandalay, put them on trucks and brought them to the base. After that, he had to listen to them brag about what they had done.
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