“Killing informants is cool”: how a Myanmar hipster became a guerrilla fighter

By Charlie McCann

Htin Lynn* woke up early, threw on his disguise – a nylon jacket emblazoned with the logo of a food-delivery service – and hopped on his bicycle. As he wove in and out of the morning traffic, listening to street-food sellers drumming up custom and angry commuters honking their horns, it felt almost as though life in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital, had returned to normal. If you ignored the soldiers stationed at every junction, you could almost pretend that the coup had never happened.

When Htin Lynn arrived at the address he’d been given, he was relieved to see a pickup truck parked on the street corner with a dozen soldiers inside. A tangerine-coloured rubbish bin was a few feet away. He stopped at a food stall opposite, ordered a fish-and-rice salad and sent a message to his comrades: the target was there, as expected. Job done, he settled into his chair. The bombs wouldn’t be detonated for another couple of hours. He had more than enough time to enjoy his breakfast.