“At first, I waited and thought the lights would come back on again,” said Ma Than Tar of the power outage that has blighted her village for close to a year now.

 

Nearly 10 months on, when Burma Associated Press visited the village in Sagaing Region, people were getting ready to go to bed at around 9pm because the village is now dependent on solar panels and some generators for electricity. Only some dim lights were visible under a dark sky since the village has been cut off from the power grid.

 

Than Tar’s village is not far from a town and has good road connectivity. It only takes about three minutes to reach the main road by motorbike.

 

While large parts of Myanmar, especially in rural areas, are still unelectrified, the people in Than Thar’s village have had electricity for some three decades now, since the village was connected to the power grid in 1990. Since then, the village of Seik Khun has seen some degree of progress and there are now many weaving businesses that are dependent on electricity.

However, in January this year, some 20 villages including Than Tar’s had their power cut off by the military junta, casting a shroud of darkness over a large swathe of territory.

 

It all began in the first week of January, when bill collectors from the now military-controlled power company, accompanied by armed troops, attempted to collect payment for electricity in the village of Seik Khun.

 

Local resistance groups attacked the bill collectors and troops with improvised explosives. As a result, some junta troops were injured and some power lines were downed.

 

Since then, no one with any authority has bothered to fix the power lines without being paid first.

 

According to some people from the village, junta-controlled authorities first asked for K300 million (US$141,000) to fix the problem and then lowered it to K100 million.

 

But the villagers were in no mood to negotiate the sum that they viewed as extortionate anyway since one of the first widespread civil disobedience actions taken by ordinary people when the military seized power was to refuse to pay their power bills to junta-controlled utility companies.

 

Petrol or diesel powered generators and solar power are now being used to generate some electricity, and power banks are now a must-have to keep phones charged.

 

In the morning, people charge their phones and power banks when generators are turned on to power the machinery used by the weaving businesses. Here is where the power banks come in useful since there is no charging of phones whenever the generators go off.

 

Thar Tar works in one of the weaving businesses, and when she goes off to work in the morning she takes along with her all the power banks owned by her family so she can charge them at work on the electricity from generators.

 

This has now become a shared responsibility for those in the village who have some access to power during the day.

 

When she gets back home she redistributes the power banks just in time to top up her family members' phones that have been on throughout the day. The power banks are also important for charging flashlights once darkness descends.

 

Those in the village who can afford it have installed solar panels or bought generators powered by fossil fuels.

 

On top of the lack of electricity, the village also lacks internet connectivity.

 

The village is located in the township of Shwe Bo in Sagaing Region and Sagaing has been one of the places hit hardest by the military’s brutality.

 

While Shwe Bo itself still has some connection to the internet when it suits the junta’s purposes, the villages nearby are not so fortunate.

 

There is still one satellite-internet account active in the village but it is obviously not enough for everyone around.

 

Since Ma Than Tar’s village first received electricity in the 1990s, it is one of the more developed in the country. After the 2015 elections brought the National League for Democracy to power, even more progress was made and the village began to see power around the clock. The power cuts that were often a fact of life in Myanmar still occurred every once in a while, but the power would come back after a few hours.

 

This kind of progress gave rise to the weaving businesses to the village and the looms that are dependent on electricity. The new businesses supplemented the farming that is the common source of income in many villages in the country, which is why the current blockade on power makes the situation even harder. The blackout has set the village back decades in the blink of an eye.

 

Than Tar makes use of the internet whenever she goes to Shwe Bo. While in town she downloads local movies or foreign ones with subtitles or voice-overs. Thai, Indian, South Korean, and Chinese drama series are particularly popular.

 

Once back in the village, the movies are shared with friends via a file sharing app.

 

Since there is effectively no fixed line internet in the village to access social media (the current flavour of the day is Tik Tok), movies and TV series are what everyone uses as entertainment and it is not unusual for people to greet each other by asking, “What movies do you have?”.

 

The situation also makes keeping up with news difficult since it would gobble up mobile data that has roughly doubled in price since the coup.

 

Despite all the hurdles though, the villagers love to watch a programme called Phit Kyaung Kon Sin Anyar Takwin, which focuses on goings on in Anyar, the name many people use to refer to the central part of Myanmar.

 

The show is presented by Public Voice Television or PVTV, an internet-centric multimedia news outfit, and is hosted by Daw Thant Wai Kyaw, a National League for Democracy candidate who contested and won a seat in the 2020 elections to represent Kalay Township’s Constituency 1 in the regional assembly.

 

One unexpected benefit of the power and internet blackouts is that more people in the villages visit each other to chat, walking in the dark with the help of torchlights since they can’t watch television or surf the internet. Youngsters are busy sharing movies over their phones and adults gather at the monastery when its generator is running.

 

Kaylar, 30, who lives in another village in the area said she had a hard time getting used to the lack of power initially at first but is now coping better. She was sending text messages to a friend in the dark when Burma Associated Press spoke to her recently.

 

Despite the hardship, many say they are not willing to cave to the military and will continue to resist peacefully.

 

Some 20 villages around Shwe Bo Township have now been without power for almost a year.

 

Some villages had their power cut after clashes between resistance forces and junta troops broke out nearby.

 

The first village to lose its electricity was Bo Tae Gone to the west of Shwe Bo Township, but now the power cuts have reached villages in Debeyin Township.

 

Access to power being conditional to fealty to the military became obvious when people saw that villages where the Pyu Saw Htee, a pro-military militia, are active still have access to electricity.

 

The people of Bo Tae Gone, Seik Khun, Nan Thar, Tint Tal, Pauk Chine, Saung Tan, Htan Hsin, Tak Tu, War Rone Kan, Tanpayar Chan, Ohbo, Kin Byar, Than Taw, Htoo Gyi, Hti Pin, Thabyay Kan, Yaykyi Wa, Seik Thar, Ngarsu Gone, Oakkan Gone, Thit Gyi Taw, Yay Taw Mu, Kyaungshar Taw, Kyauk Myint have all been cut off from electricity for almost a year.

 

Just a few weeks after the power cut, Than Tar and her family had to flee their home as the military raided the village for the first time. Another raid happened in June, and now Than Tar and her family are always ready to run if they hear news of a potential raid.

 

The sounds of weaving machines and looms that had been prevalent before in the village are slowly fading away as more businesses are no longer able to bear the high cost of fuel for generators.

 

The knock-on effect is that more people are leaving the villages for lack of work. This in turn has caused a drop in the material support that local People’s Defence Forces receive.

 

“Small businesses closing and people losing their incomes because of the power cuts make life much harder for everyone,” said villager Ko Min Naing.

 

One member of a local PDF, 40-year-old Ko Aung Win, said, “Despite the hardship, we are not willing to succumb to the military’s demands. It seems there is no way to re-access the electricity and there is no way to distribute it to our side. Power outages are just something we will have to take in our stride.”