On the 1st of February, the Burmese military, known in the country as the Tapmador, launched a coup

to tower against the elected government of Aang San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy,

which had been returned to power in November in a landslide victory.

Alleging electoral fraud, the Tatmador's leader Minang Lange promised that military rule would last

for one year and then be followed by new elections.

The coup is perplexed outside observers since Aung San Suu Kyi had done little during her time in office to threaten the power of the Tatmador and had defended the military's atrocities against the Muslim Mahinia people in Rakhine's state.

To make sense of the coup, I spoke with Carlos Sardinia Galatej.

Carlos is a journalist based in Bangkok who has covered Burma's internal conflicts for many years.

I began the interview by asking Carlos what the current situation is in the country,

his sense of the scale of the military repression and the degree of popular resistance to the coup.

The resistance seems to be widespread.

There are daily demonstrations, not only in the former capital Rangoon or major cities

like Mangalai, but in virtually every city there are daily demonstrations, huge demonstrations.

It seems to be uniting different groups, different classes, different professions and so on.

Many civil servants are joining the protests.

As for the repression, there had been some instances of violence from the state forces, especially in Michina,

in Mandalay and in Napido.

One girl is basically a brain death in the hospital after being shot in the head by the police

in Napido.

But I think that the wars is still to come

in terms of repressing. We are talking about a very violent and repressive military

that doesn't have any compunction about shooting civilians, shooting with life ammunition.

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