Cut Off

Ko Htike called from Yangon and said it sounded like war. Fifty shots, maybe more. Tear gas in the schools. The military had already killed the internet, so his voice on the phone was the last direct line out of the city I could reach.

I started collecting everything that leaked through - calls from people still there, stories from anyone who made it out, Ko Htike checking in whenever he could. I posted what came in, knowing it wasn’t close to the full picture, but knowing that not documenting it felt complicit somehow. Someone had to try.

The thought was always to lobby China, pressure the UN, as if international pressure mattered to a military junta. It’s a nice story - the world pays attention, things shift. But it wasn’t really how it worked. The junta cut the internet because it worked. Controlling information is the whole game.

What got to me was that people didn’t stop. Ko Htike didn’t stop calling. Others kept moving through the streets even knowing what was waiting for them. That refusal - not of the internet shutdown but of the entire premise that the junta could just silence things - that was the actual story. Bigger than any image or any international response.

Eventually the internet came back on. Photos and videos would surface. The world would have its documentation. But sitting in that black period, all you had was fragments of voice and the knowledge that something massive was happening and almost nobody could see it. You did what you could with the gaps. It wasn’t enough. But you did it anyway.