Ma Kyal Sin loved taekwondo, spicy food and good red lipstick. She adopted the English name Angel, and her father said goodbye with a hug when she took to the streets of Mandalay, in central Myanmar, to join the crowd that was peacefully protesting the recent takeover by the military.
The black T-shirt that Kyal Sin wore at Wednesday’s protest carried a simple message: “Everything will be fine.”
In the afternoon, Kyal Sin, 18, was shot in the head by security forces, who killed at least 30 people across the country on the single bloodiest day since the February 1 coup, according to the United Nations.
“She is a hero for our country,” said Ma Cho Nwe Oo, one of Kyal Sin’s best friends, who also participated in the daily rallies that electrified hundreds of cities in Myanmar. “By participating in the revolution, our generation of young women shows that we are no less courageous than men.”
Despite the risks, women were at the forefront of the Myanmar protest movement, sending a powerful rebuke to generals who ousted a female civilian leader and reimposed a patriarchal order that repressed women for half a century.
By the hundreds of thousands, they gathered for daily marches, representing unions on strike by teachers, clothing workers and doctors – all sectors dominated by women. Younger people tend to be on the front lines, where security forces seem to have chosen them. Two young women were shot in the head on Wednesday and another close to the heart, three bullets killing their lives.
Earlier this week, military television networks announced that security forces had been instructed not to use live ammunition and that, in self-defense, they would shoot only in the lower body.
“We may lose some heroes in this revolution,” said Ma Sandar, assistant secretary general of the Myanmar Confederation of Trade Unions, who participated in the protests. “Our women’s blood is red.”
The violence on Wednesday, which brought the death toll since the coup to at least 54, reflected the brutality of a military man used to killing his most innocent. At least three children were shot last month, and the first death in the post-military coup repression was a 20-year-old woman shot in the head on February 9.
In the weeks since the protests began, groups of female volunteers have patrolled the streets, caring for the wounded and the dying. Women have given strength to a civil disobedience movement that is paralyzing the functioning of the state. And they disrespected gender stereotypes in a country where tradition holds that clothes that cover the lower half of the bodies of both sexes should not be washed together, so that the female spirit does not act as a contaminant.
With defiant creativity, people tied poles of female sarong, called htamein, to protect the protest zones, knowing that some men are reluctant to go underneath them. Others posted images of General Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the army who orchestrated the coup, when he hanged htamein, an affront to his manhood.
“Young women now lead the protests because we are maternal in nature and we cannot let the next generation be destroyed,” said Dr. Yin Yin Hnoung, a 28-year-old doctor who dodged bullets in Mandalay. “We don’t care about our lives. We care about our future generations. “
Although the military’s inhumanity extends to many of the country’s approximately 55 million inhabitants, women are the ones who have the most to lose from the resumption of full power by the generals, after five years sharing power with a civilian government led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The Tatmadaw, as the military is known, is deeply conservative, giving its opinion in official communications on the importance of modest clothing for suitable women.
There are no women in the high ranks of the Tatmadaw, and their soldiers have systematically committed collective rape against women from ethnic minorities, according to United Nations investigations. In the generals’ worldview, women are often thought of as weak and impure. Traditional religious hierarchies in this predominantly Buddhist nation also place women at the feet of men.
The prejudices of the military and the monastery are not necessarily shared by the wider Myanmar society. Women are educated and are part of the economy, especially in business, industry and public service. Increasingly, women have found their political voice. In last November’s elections, about 20% of the candidates for the National League for Democracy, party of Aung San Suu Kyi, were women.
The party won with an overwhelming victory, defeating the Union of Solidarity and Development Party, linked to the military and much more dominated by men. Tatmadaw considered the results to be fraudulent.
When the military began to return some power in the past decade, Myanmar went through one of the most profound and rapid social changes in the world. A country that was once forcibly stopped by generals, who first seized power in a 1962 coup, went to Facebook and discovered memes, emojis and global conversations about gender politics.
“Even though these are dark days and my heart breaks with all these images of bloodshed, I am more optimistic because I see women on the streets,” said Dr. Miemie Winn Byrd, a Burmese-American who served as a lieutenant colonel in United States Army and is now a professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. “In this contest, I will bet on women. They are unarmed, but they are the true warriors. “
This passion has been ignited across the country, despite the Tatmadaw’s repressions in the past decades that have killed hundreds of people.
“Women have taken a frontier position in the fight against the dictatorship because we believe it is our cause,” said Ma Ei Thinzar Maung, a 27-year-old politician and former political prisoner who, along with another woman of the same age, led the first anti-coup demonstration in Yangon five days after the coup.
Both Ms. Hey Thinzar Maung and her fellow rally leader Esther Ze Naw, protest during the day and hide at night. About 1,500 people have been arrested since the coup, according to a local monitoring group.
The pair was politicized at a young age and defended the rights of ethnic minorities at a time when most people in Myanmar were unwilling to acknowledge the military’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims. At least a third of Myanmar’s population is made up of a constellation of ethnic minorities, some of whom are in armed conflict with the military.
When they led the demonstration on February 6, the two women marched in T-shirts associated with the Karen ethnic group, whose villages have been invaded by Tatmadaw troops in recent days. Ms. Esther Ze Naw is from another minority, the Kachins, and at the age of 17 she spent time in camps for tens of thousands of civilians who were uprooted by the Tatmadaw offensives. Military jets roared in the sky, launching artillery at women and children, she recalled.
“It was at that time that I committed myself to work to abolish the military junta,” she said. “Minorities know what it’s like, where discrimination leads. And as a woman, we are still considered a second sex. “
“This must be one of the reasons why women activists seem more committed to rights issues,” she added.
Although the National League for Democracy is led by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, its upper echelons are dominated by men. And, like the Tatmadaw, the top echelons of the party tend to be reserved for members of the country’s Bamar ethnic majority.
On the streets of Myanmar, even with security forces continuing to fire on unarmed protesters, the composition of the movement has been much more diverse. There are Muslim students, Catholic nuns, Buddhist monks, drag queens and a legion of young women.
“Generation Z is a fearless generation,” said Honey Aung, whose younger sister, Kyawt Nandar Aung, was killed by a bullet to the head on Wednesday in the city of Monywa. “My sister joined the protests every day. She hated the dictatorship. “
In a speech that was aired in a state propaganda publication earlier this week, General Min Aung Hlaing, the army chief, sniffed at the demonstrators’ impropriety, with his “indecent clothing contrary to Myanmar’s culture”. Its definition is commonly considered to include women wearing pants.
Moments before she was shot to death, Mrs. Kyal Sin, dressed in sneakers and ripped jeans, gathered her peaceful protesting friends.
As they staggered with the tear gas fired by security forces on Wednesday, Ms. Kyal Sin distributed water to wipe her eyes. “We are not going to run away,” she shouted, in a video recorded by another protester. “The blood of our people must not reach the ground.”
“She is the most courageous girl I have ever seen in my life,” said Ko Lu Maw, who photographed some of the final images of Kyal Sin, in an alert and proud pose amid a crowd of prostrate protesters.
Under her T-shirt, Ms. Kyal Sin wore a star-shaped pendant because her name means “pure star” in Burmese.
“She said, ‘If you see a star, remember, it’s me,'” said Cho Nwe Oo, her friend. “I will always remember it with pride.”