‘We have no one on our side’: from Thailand to Singapore, Myanmar nationals react to coup with shock and sadness

The military coup in Myanmar came as a shock to Sai Purng, a 36-year-old from Myanmar’s Shan State who works at the Human Rights and Development Foundation in the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai.

“Since the 2015 general election, those whom the military mistreated, including political prisoners, said they had forgiven the military so the country could have a new beginning,” he said. “The people were counting on compromise and democracy.”

That expectation was shattered on Monday when members of the governing National League for Democracy, including its leader Aung San Suu Kyi, were detained after the military alleged there had been irregularities in elections held in November.

For the past month, Jack has been helping his compatriots who need to be registered as part of the Thai government’s effort to curb the spread of Covid-19 among migrant workers. About 400,000 such workers are employed in Samut Sakhon, the centre of Thailand’s seafood industry, which emerged as a cluster in December and was hit with a strict lockdown of seafood markets and migrant worker dormitories.