REVOLUTION IN MYANMAR

CARLO COZZOLI

One of the most active units within the KNDF (Karenni Nation Defence Force) is the drone operators unit. The U.A.V. battalion is made up exclusively of 20-year-olds who have learned to build and fly drones through internet.
In hidden camps in the jungle the young people drone operators manufacture and train to fly the aircrafts they then use to spy positions of the Burmese military and to provide cover for their comrades engaged
in the frontlines. In the photos fighters testing a new drones.

Some members of the PDF Naypydaw battalion cross on the back of an elephant the Htoo Chaung River in the Karenni territory to head to the Loikaw front.
The People's Defense Force is the military arm of the Government of National Unity of Myanmar, the executive deposed by the military putsch in February 2021 and which today, in exile, represents the legitimate government
of the country. The PDF was born on May 5, 2021 and includes young people from all over the country who have decided to join the ethnic guerrillas to fight the regime.

A peasant woman works in a rice field in Loikaw a few kilometers from the front line and the explosions of the artillery used by the S.A.C (State Administration Council) Burmese government forces. Due to the conflict in
Myanmar today 18.6 million people need humanitarian assistance and there are over 3 million internal refugees in the country and15 million citizens are in a state of food insecurity.
Despite the dangers and the proximity of the shells, farmers do not abandon their own lands as the work in the fields is their only source or support.

Children in a school in Demoso take refuge in an anti-aircraft bunker. The council military often bombs schools to intimidate the population.

The church of St. Matthew in the parish of Dognekhu of the diocese of Loikaw was set on fire on June 15, 2022. According to church officials, the soldiers They were camped inside the church and had burned it and several
houses before leaving the area. At least nine Christian churches have been hit by artillery shelling and airstrikes by the Burmese army in the Loikaw diocese since the eruption the conflict between military forces and rebels
in May 2021.

A KNDF fighter tests a drone that crashes moments later.

A KNDF boy injured during the shelling in Loikaw, the capital of Kayah State.

A goat has been sacrificed and is now being prepared for a birthday ritual..

In a secret location in the jungle near Demoso, a prison has been established where several military junta soldiers captured in the city of Shar Twa during the battle that took place in February 2024. The prisoners are forced
to spend their days with one leg immobilized in a wooden pillory. The military claims that their rights are respected but they all confess that they have not committed any crime and that they were forced to enlist due to the
regime's introduction of obligatory military service.

Min Tar, Central Committee Member.

A moment after a funeral in a village in Karenni State.

3D is the wars nickname of the KNDF UAV battalion commander. The young commander, only 23 years old, earned his name due to 3d printing light weapons when the civil war began. Today 3D creates, tests and pilots
combat drones and teaches young Karenni guerrillas how to use a drone. His true dream though, once the war is over, is to use drones to transport food and medicine to the most remote areas of the country.

A landscape of Shar Twa village, Karenni state.

On June 28, 2024, the junta forces begin a large-scale attack to regain full control of the city of Loikaw. The military uses artillery and drones without interruption. A soldier, little more that twenty-year-old, member of
the General Maui’s unit, was irremediably hit in the eye by a fragment of a missile Grad.

Maui, 31 years old, general of the revolutionary formation KNDF (Karenni Nationalities Defense Force), before the pustch he was an agronomist with a degree in geology. After the military junta took power he was among the
founders of the rebel group and today he is the military leader of the Karenni guerrilla. Every year he gets the tally marks tattooed on his back as to remember his soldiers who fell in battle. Today 369 KNDF soldiers lost their
lives in the conflict.

A group of Gen Z guys attending a tech class on how to use drones.

Paskwar Let, 21 years old, is one of the commanders on the Pekon front. He joined the guerrilla along with his brother Aung Myo who lost his life in battle at just 19 years old. He considers the war a necessary act to liberate
the country but a termable condition that he will leave irreversible scars across the country's youth.

31-year-old Bu Buu and his 26-year-old girlfriend Yo Yo left their studies and life in the city to join the guerrilla and serve as nurses. For years they have lived near by the frontlines helping wounded soldiers.
On June 28, the Burmese junta intentionally bombed the first aid center where the two young engaged men worked, injuring a colleague of theirs that they immediately medicated.

On June 28, 2024, the junta forces began a large-scale attack to regain full control of the city of Loikaw. The military continuously used artillery and drones. A soldier, in his early twenties, a member of General Maui’s unit,
was in shock after seeing a fellow soldier seriously injured in a S.A.C. artillery attack.

Nay Lin Aung, a math teacher at Daw See Ei School, was teaching class on the morning of February 5, 2024, when the junta conducted an air raid that intentionally hit the school, killing four children and injuring dozens.
The teacher, after trying to shelter his students in the trenches that line the schoolyard, then tried to help the injured students and it was he who found the lifeless bodies of four of his students.

KNDF fighters prepare for the night in the jungle.

A landscape of a village in Shan State.

A Kayan woman wearing her neck rings which are added as the years pass. They are an ethnic population of the Karenni and due to the war, many villages were destroyed and depopulated and made the Kayan people
migrate to Thailand over the years.

Mari-oo is 18 years old and one of the youngest members of the Burmese guerrillas. After his brother was killed by the junta’s military forces, the young man ran away from home to join the revolution. Before the coup Mari-oo
was a brilliant student who dreamed of working in the IT field. However today he admits his only wish is to return to school but only when his country will be free and at peace.

I entered Myanmar in the summer of 2024 by illegally going up the Salwin River after meeting contacts in Thailand with the KNDF, the rebel group that controls Myanmar's Karenni state. The journey took two days crossing several rivers by elephant and car until arriving in Demoso.
The hottest front for the KNDF is Loikaw, the capital of Karenni state, surrounded by rice paddies and further out the jungle, Loikaw was lost and retaken by military junta soldiers during my stay, I had the honor of following Commander Maui with his soldiers at the front, the story of boys saving lives every day at the front and with a Buddhist spirit, far from our imagination, fighting military junta soldiers, some of whom were captured and tied to a pillory for months. I documented Generation Z, composed of young guerrillas conquering new territories thanks in part to Internet video tutorials and the use of self-made kamikaze drones that are the main cause of deaths at the front. However, their efforts, far from the international media spotlight, are iconic for understanding the struggle between authoritarianism and democracy in our time, between dictatorship and freedom.
Myanmar is a strategic country located between India and China in Southeast Asia.
Civil war has been ongoing for three years, claiming more than 55,000 lives and displacing more than 2.6 million people. Yet another conflict in the country after the Burmese army seized power in a coup on February 1, 2021, establishing one of the most brutal and repressive regimes of our time.

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REVOLUTION IN MYANMAR

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