Making connections in Myanmar's fractured states

In a riverine battleground in western Myanmar, an entrepreneur hunts for reception using a makeshift bamboo antenna, his payphone kiosk providing locals a lifeline to connect with their loved ones.

- PONNAGYUN, MYANMAR (AFP)

In commercial capital Yangon, a student flicks through apps that cloak his online identity so he can skirt social media bans that accompanied the 2021 coup.

And in the mountainous east, customers at an internet cafe feverishly scroll for news from the outside, dependent on Elon Musk-owned satellites.

Four years of civil war between Myanmar’s military and its myriad opponents have shattered communications networks.

In response, people have resorted to methods ranging from the old-fashioned to the ingenious to the hyper-modern.

“I don’t want to be cut off from the world,” Hnin Sandar Soe, 20, said at an internet cafe in eastern Karenni state where she reads headlines, studies online and reaches out to friends and family.

“It always brings a warm and comforting feeling to keep in touch with them.”

PAYPHONE LIFELINE

Myanmar has been under military rule for most of its post-independence history, but a decade-long democratic thaw starting in 2010 was accompanied by an astronomical growth in connectivity.

That year, SIM cards cost $1,000 and fewer than five percent of the population owned a mobile phone, according to World Bank figures.

Seven years later, that figure had risen to 82%, as citizens seized on the rapidly developing cellular networks and novelty of free speech.