This story comes to KHOL through the Rocky Mountain Community Radio collaborative.
The military of Myanmar, or Burma*, seized power during a Feb. 1 coup after declaring the Southeast Asian country’s November 2020 election to be fraudulent. Since then, the country has been under curfew and under siege. The military is detaining a reported 3,000 political prisoners, including Nobel Laureate and democratically-elected leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Demonstrations against the military have been met with violence, and it is estimated that more than 700 civilians have been killed.
Kate Redmond of KVNF in Paonia, Colorado, interviews a Fort Collins woman named Tamara Doak, who was recently evacuated from Burma. Doak was teaching at a school in the city of Yangon and speaks with Redmond about her first-hand experience of the protests, violence and arrests that have followed the coup. Listen above for a shortened version of the interview, and click here for the full conversation between Redmond and Doak, plus a second interview with a resident of Delta, Colorado, originally from Burma’s Karen State.
As a warning, this story includes descriptions of violence that may be disturbing for some listeners.
*While military leaders changed the country’s name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989, many Burmese citizens (including one whom Redmond interviewed for this story) still use the former name.
