“Everything will be OK”- I am here!!! End of a Tragic Episode!!!
Parvedge Haider
General people have taken over the street despite the fear of bullets. Yes, I am talking about the present situation in Myanmar. Hundreds of thousands marched in towns and cities across the country doing demonstrations, processions since the military staged its February 1, 2021 coup. The streets of downtown Yangon are flooded with people as the protesters blocked traffic at major junctions around the city to prevent people from going to work and to keep out army and police vehicles. Teenagers are also the active participants of the present movement. The banners, placards and display boards are full of hatred messages against the military junta. There are also motivational and confidence generating messages by the protesters.
A 19 year old teenager Kyal Sin was there among the protesters. She was also known as Deng Jia Xi which means ”Hope of the Deng family”. This extremely talented teenager joined the movement with a message of encouragement, “Everything will be OK,” in her T-shirt. As she was a known face for her performance in dance and taekwondo, her every movements were attracted by the general people and the journalists. Seen in pictures of her at the protest, the phrase from Kyal Sin’s T-shirt quickly went viral on social media as the users posted it in defiance of security forces who killed at least 18 people around Myanmar on March 03, 2021.
Kyal Sin was not only mere participating but also had been encouraging others join the movement. In Myanmar, the military junta doesn’t care for anything. Recently, Myanmar’s deputy military chief Soe Win said, Myanmar is ready to withstand sanctions and isolation after its Feb 1, 2021 coup; it was his response when a top United Nations official Schraner Burgener urged countries to “take very strong measures” to restore democracy in the Southeast Asian nation. In a conversation, she warned Myanmar military high official that the military was likely to face strong measures from some countries and isolation in retaliation for the coup. In reply the military general said with an egoistic tone, ‘We are used to sanctions, and we survived’. That means, the people of Myanmar lead a life with fear, they lack in confidence; they think that real democracy will never reach to them. The young generations are not ready to accept this backwardness. There were movements of peacock generations in last to last year[1]. Although there were not much of success at that time, some kind of awareness has been created definitely; the sign of it has been seen in the present movement.
Kyal Sin or Deng Jia Xi was killed by a shot in her head on the streets of Mandalay as she fought for a democracy in which she had proudly voted for the first time last year, an election overturned by the February 1,2021 coup. God knows, possibly she must have known, it might not be OK, she left details of her blood group, a contact number and a request to donate her body in the event of her death.
Myat Thu, who was with Kyal Sin at the protests, recalled a brave young woman who kicked open a water pipe so that protesters could wash tear gas from their eyes, and who lobbed a tear gas canister back towards the police.
“When the police opened fire, she told me ‘Sit! Sit! Bullets will hit you. You look like you’re on a stage’,” recalled Myat. “She cared for and protected others as a comrade.”
Myat Thu said he and Kyal Sin were among hundreds who had gathered peacefully in Myanmar’s second city to denounce the coup and call for the release of detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Before the police assault, Kyal Sin can be heard on video shouting, “We won’t run” and “blood must not be shed”.
First police hit them with tear-gas, Myat Thu said. Then the bullets came. Pictures taken before she was killed show Kyal Sin lying down for cover beside a protest banner, with her head slightly raised. Myat Thu said, everyone was scattered, later on, he got the message, one girl was dead. “I didn’t know that it was her,” pictures soon appeared on Facebook showing her lying beside another victim.
The army said their as usual comment, one policeman has died, it acted against the “riotous protesters”.
Myat Thu got to know Kyal Sin at a taekwondo class. She was an expert in martial art as well as in dance. She has posted videos of her latest moves in the Facebook at Mandalay’s DA-Star Dance Club. She also shared her pride in voting for the first time on November 8, 2020 posting a picture of herself kissing her finger, stained purple to show she had voted.
“My very first vote, from the bottom of my heart,” she posted, with six red hearts. “I did my duty for my country.”
It is to be mentioned that the army seized power to dissolve that vote, alleging that the sweeping victory of Suu Kyi’s party was down to fraud. Its accusations were rejected by the electoral commission. On the day of the coup, Kyal Sin joked in the Facebook that she didn’t know what was going on when the internet was cut off. In the days that followed, she made her stand clear, she will be in the street waving the red flag of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. In one set of pictures she posed as her father tied a red ribbon to her wrist.
Kyal Sin kept going even as protests grew more dangerous and as the junta deployed combat troops with assault rifles alongside police. Like Kyal Sin, more than a dozen other protesters have been killed by shots to the dead, raising suspicions among the rights groups that they were intentionally targeted. Kyal Sin had known she was risking her life. One of the friends of Kyal Sin, Kyaw Zin Hein shared a copy of her last message to him on social media.
“This might be the last time I say this. Love you so much. Don’t forget. We are not in a war. There is no reason to use live bullets on the people. If they are human, they would not do it.”
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