Many health-care workers in Myanmar joined the Civil Disobedience Movement to protest against a coup by the nation’s military.Credit: Ya Aung Thu/AFP/Getty
On 1 February 2021, Myanmar’s democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup. There were mass protests against the military seizing power and many people were arrested for criticizing the new leadership. Frequent military airstrikes killed civilians and destroyed schools, hospitals and places of worship. According to the UK government, nearly 20 million people in Myanmar now need humanitarian aid.
More than 400,000 civil servants — including around 60,000 health-care workers — joined the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), resigning from their positions in protest against military rule. May T. N. Noe was one of them.
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Noe worked in a private hospital in Myanmar for two years before becoming a government-employed physician, then a teacher and finally a nutrition team leader. In February 2021, she joined the CDM and, as part of the movement, resigned from her job: a decision that left her unemployed for more than 18 months.
In 2023, as she approached her 35th birthday, Noe successfully applied to the Swiss Government Excellence Scholarships programme and is now living in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she is completing a PhD project on mental health in academia. She shares her story with Nature in the hope that it can encourage other people facing adversity.
What was it like in Myanmar when the coup happened?
It was frightening. Overnight, everything changed: communications were cut, the Internet was down and soldiers were on the streets. People were afraid — knowing that we were back under military control after just five years of democracy — and angry. That anger quickly turned into resistance.
Why did you join the CDM?
I joined the CDM because I wanted to resist the military regime. After the coup, life became difficult for many people. Most of the physicians in the country decided to resist by taking part in the CDM. There was a lot of social pressure for physicians to join, and those who didn’t faced criticism and public shaming from members of the community, especially on Facebook.
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