Thiha Tin Htun, a 26-year-old doctor, is one of the 135 medical professionals that Myanmar’s junta authorities have killed since their military coup d’etat four years ago.
He was shot while participating in a mass protest of teachers and students in the city of Mandalay on the afternoon of March 27, 2021, two months after the Feb. 1 coup.
Thiha Tin Htun, who had sidelined his promising medical career to become one of Mandalay’s more prominent opponents to military rule, was at the front lines of the protest that day.
He was helping to protect middle and high school students, when police shot him in the arm. He was running to seek treatment when he was shot yet again, this time in the head.
In a video that circulated online afterwards, police could be seen dragging his bleeding body to the side of the road before covering him with a piece of sheet metal and kicking him.
Shortly after, two officer dragged his motionless body — presumed dead — into a waiting vehicle and took him away.
“Their brutality — etched in my memory like an unshakable nightmare — is a scene I will never forget,“ Thiha Tin Htun’s mother, Aye Aye Khaing told RFA Burmese. ”We endured our suffering ... I pray that they, too, will endure theirs when their time comes.”
On that same day, in towns across the country — including Yangon, Mandalay, Dawei, and others — the police and military unleashed a massacre, killing more than 100 protesters.
Civil Disobedience
Thiha Tin Htun is just one of nearly 50,000 health workers who left their jobs to join the anti-junta Civil Disobedience Movement, or CDM, in protest of the coup. Countless other civil servants have also quit and joined the movement.
In addition to the 135 medical professionals who have been killed, some 860 others have been arrested, most of whom remain behind bars, according to Insecurity Insight, an academic and research institution based in Switzerland.
Four years since the coup, the persecution continues.
The World Health Organization’s Surveillance System for Attacks recorded six attacks on health care workers in Myanmar between Jan. 1 and Feb. 28, 2025.
Of the attacks, five involved heavy weapons, killing 33 people and injuring 66 others. In all of 2024, the WHO recorded a total of 26 attacks that killed 45 and injured 96.
It’s no surprise then that the WHO has called Myanmar one of the most dangerous places in the world for health workers. Even prior to the coup, Myanmar’s health sector was already in ruins, with the agency rating the country among the 10 worst in the world.
The targeting of health care workers is even more tragic given Myanmar’s low educational attainment and economic downturn since the military takeover, which force families to endure years of hardship in support of a relative studying to attain a medical degree.
Christina Wille, the director of Insecurity Insight, called the situation facing the health care sector in Myanmar “dire.”
“Not only have many health care workers been forced into providing care clandestinely to avoid being violently targeted, but they have also worked without receiving incomes and been forced to live in constant fear of repeated attacks,” she said. “Meanwhile, at a time when people are most in need of health care, their access to it has been denied.”
From wielding syringes to weapons
Some health care workers have chosen more active roles in openly defying military rule, including Zin Lin and Khin Khin Kywe, a 35-year-old doctor and 24-year-old nurse from the commercial capital Yangon.
Immediately following the coup, the two left their jobs at a clinic and hospital and joined anti-junta protests.
But in March 2021, as protests across the country were violently suppressed, Zin Lin and Khin Khin Kywe shifted their approach to organizing urban guerrilla strikes and collecting weapons to defend themselves.
Ponnya, an engineering student who was protesting with Khin Khin Kywe at the time, told RFA that Zin Lin “couldn’t bear witnessing people dying in front of him,” noting that he had personally dragged dead bodies behind the front lines during a protest in Yangon region’s Hlaing township.
“The sight deeply unsettled him, and it fueled his growing resolve to defend and resist with weapons,” she said.
However, on Sept. 25, 2021, at around 1 a.m., the Sanchaung township apartment where Zin Lin and his group were sheltering was raided, Ponnya said.
Zin Lin and Khin Khin Kywe returned fire after the security forces entered the apartment in force, but they were captured alive, dragged out to the street and shot dead.
On the morning of Sept. 26, several people shared videos of junta authorities killing Zin Lin and Khin Khin Kywe, Ponnya said.
“As far as I could see, they were shot but they were still alive,” she said. “Police and soldiers ran up and kicked them many times.”
Later that day, during an interrogation of one of the team’s members, junta authorities placed Zin Lin’s body next to the detainee, warning him that he would be next if he didn’t comply.
Other attacks on medical staff
RFA learned of many other tragic incidents that befell health care workers in Myanmar after the military takeover.
In January 2023, junta soldiers raped and killed a 28-year-old nurse named May Zun Moe who was operating a sorely needed clinic in Rakhine state’s Yoma Mountains.
In August 2021, a 45-year-old surgeon named Maung Maung Nyein Htun died from COVID-19 in Mandalay’s notorious Obo Prison, where he was jailed for collaborating with the Ministry of Health of the shadow National Unity Government, or NUG, made up of former civilian leaders.
And in June 2021, authorities in Yangon arrested Htar Htar Lin, the former director of the National Immunization Program who left the government shortly after the coup, for alleged ties to the NUG.
When she refused to enter her password to unlock her computer, which contained data about other CDM health care workers, the junta took her husband and 7-year-old son hostage, forcing her to divulge the information.
Shortly after her interrogation, the junta released a list of 25 doctors accused of having ties to the NUG, after which it embarked on mass arrests of suspected CDM medical professionals.
For those health care workers who have joined the CDM and are lucky enough to have avoided arrest or death, the junta has found other ways to persecute them, including suspending their medical licenses and preventing them from going abroad to pursue their studies.
Earlier this month, the junta announced that it would only issue certificates to around 200 of 1,022 students who graduated from various medical schools in 2020 and would blacklist around 800 apprentice doctors for allegedly participating in the CDM after the coup.
Those who received their medical degrees are required to work under the junta’s Ministry of Health for at least three years or face a fine of 1 million kyats (US$475).
Translated by Kalyar Lwin and Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Edited by Joshua Lipes and Malcolm Foster.