"SINGAPORE — In Myanmar’s biggest city, Yangon, soldiers patrol the streets at all hours. Police officers stop pedestrians at random, hauling them to jail if they show signs of sympathy for the opposition. Poverty rates in the city have tripled, according to the United Nations, and crime is rife. Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for the latest updates on Russia’s war in Ukraine. It has been two years since Myanmar’s military ousted its democratic government in a coup, plunging swaths of the Southeast Asian country, also known as Burma, into violent conflict. The junta has crushed free expression, imprisoning journalists, revoking the licenses of independent news outlets and gone to other lengths to limit visibility into the realities of life under military rule. To capture the struggles of quotidian life, The Washington Post asked three of Yangon’s residents to share their experiences on a single day late last month, each recounting in a series of voice messages the arc of their day. All three are members of a young generation that came of age as democratic rule arrived in Myanmar in the early 2010s and then saw it snuffed out. Willion, one of a dwindling number of journalists in the city, tried to avoid a run-in with authorities. Sam, a small-business owner, wrestled with the contempt he felt toward the soldiers swarming his city. South of downtown, power outages left Hannway, a young activist, struggling to connect to the revolutionary movement for which she’d put her education on hold. They are being identified by their English instead of Burmese names to limit the chances of repercussions. Daybreak Willion, 30, sat up straighter when he heard his neighbors stir. He’d stayed up in case the police arrived for one of their random checks. Opening his laptop, he blinked at the clock at the bottom right corner: 7:13 a.m. He’d made it through another night. The authorities had been going after journalists like him since the coup. A few weeks ago, police arrested one of Willion’s co-workers, seizing his phone, which had photos and messages implicating Willion. As a precaution, he’d been moving every few days, he said, traveling with a backpack that had just his laptop, a hard drive and a few sets of clothes. Willion sat back against the wall, his face lit by the laptop screen. He was preparing a presentation on citizen journalism, showing people in conflict-ridden parts of the country how they could document the military’s atrocities. But he was tired, and there was a lot on his mind. He hadn’t seen his parents in almost a year, and his mother had recently been hospitalized for a heart condition, he said. He wanted to visit but that meant devising a safe route across town. The military had spies across the city and a new Chinese-built surveillance system equipped with advanced facial recognition technology. As he weighed the risks, Willion felt his head grow heavy. Farther east, past a river, Sam, 36, was driving to work. A fire had broken out in his middle-class neighborhood overnight, consuming a house and its residents. On his morning walk, neighbors told him the police never responded. Sam wasn’t surprised. Every day, he read reports of banks being robbed in broad daylight, and people being murdered in their homes. The authorities almost never caught the perpetrators. He glanced out the window. Traffic had slowed around a government building guarded by a garrison. Sam looked at the soldiers in uniform, most of them young men, and thought the same thing he always did at this point in his commute. “I hope they get sent to the front line and die.” As a Buddhist, he knew he shouldn’t think such thoughts, he said. But looking at the soldiers wielding their guns reminded him of the young activists shot dead on the streets of Yangon. Sam’s office was dark when he arrived. He groaned. He blamed them for this, too. Energy suppliers pulled out of Myanmar after the coup, and in recent months, rebel armies had started to attack transmission lines to hurt the junta. At Hannway’s family home, the blackout had shut down running water. At a tea shop for Myanmar exiles, songs from home and resistance in the air Hannway, in her early 20s, heard her parents in the kitchen figuring out what to do. She rolled over in bed and looked at her phone — 10:30 a.m. Two years ago, she recalled, she’d be in class by this time studying to be a doctor. But when the military seized power, she’d chosen to participate in a civil disobedience movement (CDM) aimed at crippling the health-care system. She scrolled through messages that came overnight. “They’re investigating CDM students,” read one from a friend. “Be careful.” Afternoon Hannway paced around the kitchen. It’d been four hours, and the power was still out. Her mother tried to calm her down, but the message from her friend had unnerved her. News had started to spread recently that the military planned to punish boycotting students like her. For her safety, she rarely left her house, she said. She killed time by taking online language classes and working remotely on projects supporting the resistance movement. But without electricity, she couldn’t do even that. How long could she keep on like this? Hannway checked the time — 2:27 p.m. There was a virtual meeting with some CDM doctors in three minutes. The WiFi was still out. Sam, too, felt the military had made so many aspects of life harder. He was at a tea shop north of Hannway’s home, meeting a friend vexed over whether to re-enroll his children in government schools. Sam didn’t know what to say. He had his own frustrations: He’d been forced to spend money on generators and solar-powered batteries because of the blackouts; he was facing surging costs of food and gas; the local currency wouldn’t stop falling in value so his small business had to keep raising its prices. Passing by soldiers on his way back to the office, he felt bile rising inside him again. Why, he asked, were they everywhere? A love story, forged in Myanmar’s political strife, ends in execution At 5:30 p.m., after a few hours of sleep, Willion finally prepared to leave his apartment. On his phone, he logged out of his usual social media accounts and into fake profiles that showed no links to journalism. He scrubbed personal messages and contacts, then scanned the Telegram groups where people shared sightings of soldiers in the city. Nothing too alarming. He flagged down a cab for the hospital. But minutes after leaving his complex, he saw a congregation of soldiers outside a nearby hotel. He squinted through the window — authorities had cuffed three men, he said. Soldiers were interrogating passersby. Willion fought the instinct to take out his phone to film what was happening. There were too many of them. Securing his face mask, he slunk deeper into his seat. He had to get to the hospital. Nightfall Before the coup, Sam liked to explore Yangon’s various neighborhoods on foot. But he was wary these days about appearing suspicious so he kept his walks to the public parks. Lined with palm trees and often empty, they were one of the only remaining reprieves from the military’s hold over the city, he said. Strolling as the sun set, Sam let himself relax. He didn’t want to keep praying for those soldiers to die. Every time he did, he heard his mother’s voice telling him to “keep kindness in his heart.” But it was hard when he woke up each morning to videos of villages set on fire and accounts of rape and torture. Where was he supposed to find the humanity? He saw three older men walking briskly in the park. As they drew closer, Sam could hear they were talking loudly about Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the junta leader. One made a joke, turning the general’s name into a curse word, and the other two guffawed, their pot bellies shaking. Sam smiled as he listened. It sounded for a moment like old Yangon, he said. He wondered if he should strike up a conversation. But maybe they would think he was an informant. He kept walking. Back in her bedroom, after dinner, Hannway settled in front of her laptop. The electricity was finally back. She pulled up a “click-to-donate” site, where people could get advertisers to send a few cents per click to a cause. The money raised by this site was going toward rebel groups. Hannway tapped her index finger repeatedly. She felt deflated, she said. She missed attending lectures and visiting old bookshops; she missed the rigor of having an ambition. She thought, as she often did at night, about a friend — a woman serving 20 years in prison after being caught at a safe house for activists. Hannway felt something turn inside her. She couldn’t give up, she told herself. She didn’t have the right. As the world moves on, Myanmar confronts a mounting, hidden toll It was dark by the time Willion reached the hospital. His mother looked better than he expected, but it still made him sad he couldn’t care for his family. A relative had passed away recently, his mother said. It would probably be safer for everyone, he told her, if he didn’t attend the funeral. After returning home, Willion logged back into his real social media accounts. There’d been renewed fighting in the country’s central Sagaing region, and citizen journalists had sent him reports earlier in the day that soldiers had set fire to seven houses. Once he compiled more information, he’d distribute it to other outlets. But his sources had suddenly gone dark. Maybe the junta had jammed the signal. He hoped it was that. Just after midnight, Willion warmed up dinner. He’d have to find another place to stay in a few days, once people in the neighborhood started to recognize his face. But, for now, he’d spend another night awake, waiting for daybreak. Diamond reported from Yangon..."