One year after Myanmar’s military coup, the country has been plunged into civil war. Facing escalating violence and an uncertain future, tens of thousands of people have fled their homes since the February 1 coup. FRANCE 24 spoke to refugees trying to rebuild their lives abroad, from Thailand to France.
“The hardest part was learning French!” says Yadanar with a laugh. The 34-year-old Burmese artist has spent the last three months learning her way around Perpignan, a mid-sized city on France’s Mediterranean coast, near the border with Spain. She divides most of her time between work projects, administrative appointments and her grammar textbooks.
Yadanar left her native Yangon for Germany on April 21, 2021. A few weeks later, she settled in France. “I already travelled a lot, over the last ten years or so, to exhibit my work internationally,” she told FRANCE 24. “The coup just made up my mind to leave for good.”
When General Min Aung Hlaing first staged the coup in Myanmar on February 1, Yadanar wanted to fight. But after three months of protesting almost daily, she decided she would rather leave it all behind. She was able to get a visa quickly thanks to her job.
“At that time, all the foreigners were trying to leave the country. The hardest part was to find a plane ticket,” she says. “But I was among the lucky ones who left early. Today, it’s much more dangerous. The junta makes you fill out a ton of documents to keep track of who’s leaving.”
‘I wanted to learn how to handle weapons. I wanted to fight’
Recently, one of her best friends, Kolat, joined her in France. For a long time, he held out against the idea of fleeing Myanmar. Around the time Yadanar got a on a plane to Germany, “I was leaving for the jungle to train with ethnic armed militias”, he tells FRANCE 24. “I wanted to learn how to handle weapons. I wanted to fight.”
Kolat left his…
Source : france24
