Darkness under military rule: The blackouts the coup brought to Myanmar

“I grew up shining a diesel lamp for light as my father drove our tractor,” said Kachin State resident Seng Awng*, now a father of four himself, in a recent, nostalgic Facebook post. Seng Awng included a photo in the post showing his children sitting at a wooden table, staring at the candle burning between them. Needing fire for light brought back memories that are now more than 30 years old, he said. He said he first encountered electricity at the age of 10 when his parents moved the family from their rural village to Putao, the centre of Putao Township, Kachin State, which had a population of around 60,000 at the time of the last union-wide census in 2014. The civil war and turmoil into which life in Myanmar has descended since the military overthrew the incumbent, elected civilian government in 2021 has displaced more than 3.5 million people and killed more than 5,000. Millions in Myanmar are in danger of becoming victims of famine, according to the latest data released by the United Nations’ World Food Programme (WFP). “A staggering 15 million people are expected to face hunger in 2025, up from 13.3 million last year,” the WFP said on its website on January 29. The country is wracked by a civil war raging across several fronts, and the military has proved incapable of preserving stability and the free availability of goods amid a deteriorating economy. These circumstances have left Myanmar’s authorities incapable of allocating enough electric energy for functioning businesses, factories, or homes—with the conspicuous exception of the generals’ homes. During nighttime hours, or on days without sunshine, gloom descends over every part of the country from tiny villages to cities of Yangon, Mandalay, and Naypyitaw, the military regime’s administrative capital. In family homes like Seng Awng’s, located in the far north of Kachin State, candles were the only way to keep some dim light shining in the thick darkness that blanketed his town. Electric lights out, candlelight in Seng Awng said power outages began hitting Putao Township in the months after the coup as two of the three generators powered by a hydropower dam in the area—the only nearby electric energy source—broke down. A former officer for the forestry department, Seng Awng was in touch with local officials and said they were unable to repair the engines. Seng Awng had been unemployed for most of the time since he joined the civil disobedience movement (CDM), a campaign that organised strikes and boycotts in opposition to the 2021 coup. Remittances from his wife, who is working as a maid in Oman on the Arabian Peninsula, were practically the only source of income the family used to pay for food, healthcare, education, and other necessities. With a woefully unreliable electricity supply in Putao, Seng Awng has had to use a solar panel, a light bulb, and many candles to light his home, mainly to allow his children to study for school. Room lit by rechargeable bulbs in a Yangon hostel (Photo: Kan Kaung/Myanmar Now) “I’m able to use my solar panel to charge a rechargeable light bulb. When it runs out, though, the candles come to the rescue,” he said. “It is sad, though, to see our kids are facing the same thing we did.” In Putao, the electricity came on roughly once every four days, and occasionally within less than three days. When it came, it lasted all day, according to local residents, but the availability had become too unreliable. The town’s residents, who used to use electric stoves to cook, went back to using firewood. For families that did not own plots of rural land, getting the firewood was an added burden. A month’s supply of cooking firewood costs around 200,000 kyat (US $95) which is equivalent to about a year’s worth of electric bills. Prices of candles and kindling both shot up when Chinese authorities shut down border crossings and blocked trade, stopping the flow of these necessities into the state. The cost of cooking and lighting a home rose to levels three to four times higher than when electricity was available. “These days, the candles are far more expensive than before,” Seng Awng said. “And the cost of firewood is far more expensive than an electric bill.” Amid the soaring prices, the remittances sent by his wife were barely enough for a household of five, even when Seng Awng cooked mostly with vegetables and limited meals with meat or fish to twice a month, he said. Food and other kitchen costs have risen to around 900,000 kyat (US $430) in remote Putao. “We can buy meat or fish, but only twice a month. We need to rely mainly on seasonal vegetables,” he said, adding that a viss of pork, a unit of weight approximately equal to three and a half pounds, now costs around 40,000 kyat (US $19). “Even when I am being as frugal as I can, I can’t save money,” Seng Awng said. “At the end of the month, there is nothing left to save. That’s why my wife can’t come back home either.” People walk in a Yangon street during a nighttime power outage (Supplied) The thriving market for candles As of the first week of January 2025, the Myanmar junta has reduced its stated provision of electricity to twice a day for eight hours, a reduction from the previous limit of 16 hours. This rule applies in major cities like Yangon and Mandalay as well as the junta’s capital, Naypyitaw. The regime-run news outlet the Global New Light of Myanmar on January 8 cited a claim made by Admiral Tin Aung San, the chair of the military council’s electric power and energy commission, that the military council was making efforts to allocate electrical energy efficiently to consumers. Myanmar relies on hydropower and diminishing supplies of natural gas to generate its electricity, Tin Aung San noted, He also blamed the armed resistance for what he called its destructive actions, which he said hindered maintenance projects initiated in response to natural disasters like flooding. Against this dim backdrop, however, some enterprising business people have made the most of the new opportunities that the electricity shortage has created. A 36-year-old man living in Yangon said his business, Moonlight Candle, has profited hugely since the coup as candle sales rallied amid frequent power cuts. Asking that his personal name and other identifying details be withheld, the candlemaker said people were previously only interested in buying candles for religious purposes like the Thadingyut full moon festival. “Now the demand for candles is so high we sometimes can’t fulfill our orders,” he said, adding that demand had increased at least tenfold. “At the moment, the candle business is booming.” Despite profits being promising yet depending on China-Myanmar border trade, through which raw wax is imported, he said, he feels a mixed of emotions -- being content with his business but a sense of sadness for his troubled customers. “As a candlemaker, I feel both happy and sad because we’re thriving, but the people are struggling with these cuts,” the Moonlight Candle manager added. According to candlemakers, candles sell at the highest rate in rural areas of Myanmar’s rural areas, especially in places like Rakhine State, Mandalay Region, and outside of Dawei, Tanintharyi Region, because electricity is no longer accessible due to conflict and road blockades. A female candlemaker named Yadana Htoo operates a Yangon-based candle business. She said she sold most of her products to Rakhine State. The state has been devastated by incessant war since a powerful ethnic armed group in the state, the Arakan Army launched an offensive aimed at taking over territory from the military in late 2023, causing hardships aggravated by military-imposed blockades that have cut off telecommunications networks and stopped medicine and other vital goods from reaching the state. “Manaung Island in Rakhine State, and Dawei, are areas with high demand for candles,” she said, noting that there was also some demand from outside Yangon. She noticed that orders from Yangon tended to be for the smaller candles used in religious rites, while the demand from Rakhine State was for bigger candles that provide more light. Her customers on Manaung Island, located off the mainland coast of Rakhine State in the Bay of Bengal, sometimes went without electricity for months at a time. Despite her success, Yadana Htoo deplores the reasons for it. “Nobody wants to live with the candlelight, but we have no choice,” she said, also noting how hard it was to live without the power needed for air conditioners or fans in the hottest, most humid months. “We are happy when the electricity returns. It not only brightens the whole environment, but it’s also needed to ward off the mosquitoes,” she said. Mandalay’s Chanayethazan Township during a blackout in May 2023 (Supplied) The long, dark shadow of the coup According to Yadana Htoo, people living in Yangon Region’s outer townships or industrial areas like Shwepyithar suffered much more from the outages than the people living near the city centre. “There are nothing but industrial zones behind our home, so it’s worse than in other townships,” she told Myanmar Now. In Yangon, the junta supplies electricity to different parts of the city in allotted quotas. However, the industrial zones are lucky to get four hours, and often get as little as two, despite being promised more according to the junta’s schedule, she said. “We can only use it when it’s on, and it does not come on schedule,” she added. “Sometimes, they just cut it off arbitrarily.” The entire neighbourhood—including not just the sprawling industrial compounds and the dormitories housing hundreds of factory workers—is plunged into total darkness whenever there is an outage at night. “They don’t have lights set up by their landlords. The only house that remains bright is mine in the neighborhood because we use solar panels, batteries, and the candles,” she said. “They go to work at the factories from morning to night and then there is no electricity when they come home,” she added. “I think they struggle, because there’s no way they can cook their meals.” Other Yangon residents confirmed the blackouts had grown worse, leaving streets eerily deserted at night and restaurants sitting open with few or no customers. Hla Yee, 60, said Yangonites were shocked by the junta’s announcement that it would be limiting the electric supply to the city even further than before. While it is difficult enough to live without power in the winter, she said, in the summer it will be barely possible to tolerate it. Room lit by rechargeable bulbs in a Yangon hostel (Photo: Kan Kaung/Myanmar Now) Having spent her whole life in Yangon and witnessed the disruptions of demonstrations, war, the Saffron Revolution and Cyclone Nargis—a catastrophic storm that devastated Myanmar in 2008—Hla Yee said she had never seen such severe shortages in her life. “I have never experienced outages like this,” she said. “The power cuts these days are far worse than when I was younger.” Among the many consequences rippling out from the lack of power, Hla Yee said there had been an increase in muggings and robberies around the city by criminals taking advantage of the darkness or driven to desperation by the bad economy. “Even downtown, they’ve been looting and burgling jewelers’ shops,” she said. Recounting how rising prices, the difficulty of finding enough money for food and shelter, and worsening blackouts were causing more hardship in a country that was already poor, Hla Yee paused and said, “Life living in the darkness—it is just sad.” Power cuts are widespread across Myanmar, with even downtown Yangon often experiencing blackouts (Photo: Myanmar Now) Despite the blackouts affecting most parts of the city, Hla Yee said, Shwedagon Pagoda is still brightly lit when she pays regular visits there to pray. “Shwedagon Pagoda is just as bright and shining as before, because it is a VIP area. That is why the electricity is supplied all the time there,” she told Myanmar Now. Blackouts have visibly affected how people live their lives in the city, Yangon residents said. In Hla Yee’s view, blackouts have sapped people’s will to go out and made success in some kinds of business nearly impossible. Her personal friends’ restaurants or factories had shut down, she said. Fear of conscription had also aggravated young people’s reluctance to leave home, she said. In February in 2024, lacking the manpower to keep fighting ethnic armed groups and resistance fighters on multiple fronts throughout the country, the military regime reactivated a law requiring men between the ages of 18 and 35 and women up to age 27 to serve in the armed forces. In the country’s stagnant economy, Win Win, a 40-year-old housewife, said she found it difficult to get enough food to cook each day since her husband, a goldsmith, was now barely getting any business. Borrowing money from relatives has become routine, Win Win said, adding, “We are just an inch away from starving. There is no electricity, there is no work.” Asked how she was able to cook without electricity, she answered: One can only cook when the electricity is on, and that happens twice a day. Her electricity always comes on between 1am and 5am, and she has to stay up to take full advantage while she can. The unusual hours have taken a toll, she said. “I’ve had many sleepless nights. Every day like this, I feel like I am going to lose my mind from sleep deprivation,” said Win Win, a mother of two. “I get up whenever the electricity comes on, even if it’s at 1 in the morning,” she said, “Between the lack of rest and the chores I have to do during the daytime, I’m exhausted.” Besides cooking at night, she also has to prepare her children to go to school in the morning despite her fatigue from the previous, sleepless night. Win Win also suffers from diabetes and said that sleep deprivation severely aggravates the symptoms. “With my underlying condition, I could die soon. Or catch another terminal disease,” she said. There was no electricity available when she spoke to Myanmar Now on a weekday at 5pm. She conversed from a darkened room while her son played on a phone nearby. She explained that she had three rechargeable light bulbs to use in the household, could only charge them during periods when electric power was available, and only used them when it was absolutely necessary. When one of her sons picked up a light bulb and lit up the room, Win Win shouted at him to turn it off. “Don’t waste that! We have to save it up for the night.” Reflecting on the state of her country, Hla Yee remarked: “Burmese people are constantly living in fear and worry, especially families with young men or living from hand to mouth. Life just cannot recover to what it was. It saddens me to see the overall situation war has brought about in this country.” “I pray for Burma to recover from all sorts of sufferings,” she added, “and become a happy country again, with prosperity and grace in the world.” *The names of sources in this article have been changed to protect their security

Darkness under military rule: The blackouts the coup brought to Myanmar

As Myanmar’s newest dictatorship enters its fourth year since seizing power, its people are suffering through worsening scarcity and daily chaos, exemplified by the power outages hitting cities every day

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