Reuters :
The knife that carved through Gue Gue’s abdomen wasn’t exactly meant for pulling out her inflamed appendix. But it was the only one available in the sweltering jungle clinic, a bumpy ride over mountainous terrain from her guerrilla training camp.
There was no option for general anesthesia to put her under, so Gue Gue was conscious for the operation. The former tour guide, a stylish 26-year-old who listed her interests on Facebook as “Traveling, Adaptive Hiking, Dance, Writing, Gymnastics, Fashion Photography, Listening to Music, and Reading,” tried to keep her mind focused on all the work she had yet to do and not the surgery. “They were cutting the muscle like we are chopping pork,” said a friend who was there.
Gue Gue had no regrets, she said later, except about the jagged red mark left behind. “I really don’t want any scars!” she said, laughing. “After the revolution, I’ll go and remove my scar with a laser.”
Only a few weeks earlier, on an April evening, Gue Gue had slipped out of her family home in Mandalay, an ancient royal city careening into the 21st century, with shiny new malls, snappily dressed students and hipster cafes. Carrying a single change of clothes, she left behind the home where she had lived with her parents as the baby, the youngest daughter, well-loved and comfortable.
She was going to fight the junta, and not just with words.
Since Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup on Feb. 1, toppling the civilian government, Gue Gue had seen many of her peers killed by troops on the streets of her hometown as they chanted democracy slogans. Hopes that the international community would respond to the military’s mounting brutality with practical action had fizzled. For her, and thousands like her, the only option was force.
“I have family. I have dreams. I have things that I want to achieve. I want to travel. I want to write. I want to study,” Gue Gue said a few weeks before her operation in the jungle, in the first of a series of interviews over several months. Two other people, and video and photo footage shared with Reuters, confirmed the outline and many of the details of her story.
Because she still hasn’t healed from her ad hoc surgery, she hasn’t yet been involved in any fighting. But she says she is ready. “I sacrificed all this and joined this training with only one ambition: that we must win.”
The men and women rebelling against Myanmar’s junta vow to be the last generation to live under the boot of the country’s military. This, they say, is the “final battle” to root out the army, which has been the most powerful institution in the country since it became an independent nation in 1948. The military has withstood popular uprisings and civil war for decades, including the mass uprising in 1988 that led to the emergence of Aung San Suu Kyi as a human rights icon.
It is a fight that has in a few short months made guerrilla fighters of university lecturers, day laborers, I.T. workers, students and artists and forced countless young men and women into a life on the run.
