The schoolteacher had just gotten out of bed when four Myanmar army soldiers pounded on her door. Her electricity payment was overdue, they said, and ordered her to pay it immediately at the government power company office. The teacher, Daw Thida Pyone, asked what would happen if she refused. "One soldier pointed his gun at me and said, 'If you choose your money over your life, then don't go pay the bill,'" she recounted. She was so frightened she got goose bumps. She grabbed her money and went straight to the payment office, not even taking time to change out of her yellow and pink pajamas. After the Myanmar military seized power in a Feb. 1 coup, millions of people walked off their jobs in protest. Millions also began refusing to pay for electricity, an act of civil disobedience aimed at depriving the junta of a crucial source of revenue. Experts doubt that these efforts alone can bring down the regime. But eleven months after the coup, the military appears so desperate for cash that its soldiers have begun acting as debt collectors. For weeks, residents say, troops have been going door to door alongside power company workers to extract… Read full this story
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