Looking serious, her hair tied in a ponytail, a woman stands in the middle of a group of men on a shooting range. She has the determined expression of a soldier in the making. When not practicing shooting, however, she makes a very different impression. Polite, speaking in a soft voice, she becomes a schoolteacher again.
Until last year, Swe Lay taught at a primary school in Chin State [dans le nord ouest de la Birmanie]. She is now an administrative officer of the Yaw People’s Defense Force (PDF) [une unité de l’armée de résistance créée par les résistants au coup d’État du 1er février 2021]in the Magway area.
Refusal to work for a military dictatorship
Originally from the Gangaw district of the Magway region, where part of the Yaw people live, she had been teaching for eight years in a village school in the hills of Chin country. She loved her job so much that she didn’t mind being appointed to a position so far from her hometown.
But when the military regained power, the 1is February 2021 [mettant un terme à une décennie de démocratisation]she quit working to join the ranks of the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), like several thousand other civil servants across the country.
Like many other teachers – who were among the first to join the movement – she could not bear the lies put forward by the junta to justify its coup. The young re