Young Myanmar Artists Host Art Challenge to Raise Awareness of Junta Atrocities

By The Irrawaddy 4 October 2022

Young Myanmar artists are hosting an art challenge named #Revotober this month to draw the world’s attention to Myanmar’s forgotten struggle for democracy.

Inspired by the worldwide art challenge Inktober, artists involved in Revotober, a combination of revolution and Inktober, will do daily drawings and paintings, according to a provided prompt list for the 31 days of October, and will share the artwork on various social media platforms including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Campaigners said Revotober aims to raise awareness in the international community of the atrocities committed by Myanmar’s military regime.

Since the February 2021 coup, the junta has killed at least 2,332 civilians including around 300 children, while detaining over 15,700 people including elected leaders, student activists, protesters, striking civil servants, politicians and journalists.

“We demand that the international community helps [the innocent people of Myanmar],” artists posted on social media.

In the first four days of the challenge, artists created art to show how the Myanmar military’s coup robbed them of their dreams, freedom and ordinary life, the fate of children targeted in junta’s attacks, including the recent regime airstrike on a school in Sagaing Region that killed 11 children, and the day-to-day brutality of junta forces.

The challenge aims also to highlight the Myanmar people’s continuing determination to fight the military dictatorship, said the artists. International artists have also been invited to join Revotober.

Myanmar has been devastated politically, economically and socially since the military takeover. But armed resistance to the junta is increasing all the time and the regime is now struggling to control many parts of the country.

Junta forces have responded by escalating their terror campaign against the Myanmar people including killings of civilians, burning and looting villages, launching air and artillery strikes against civilian targets, the use of torture and sexual violence and arbitrary arrests.

Despite the sheer scale of the junta’s atrocities against civilians since the coup, including increasing brutality against children, the regime has gone unpunished by the international community, including the United Nations.

Nor has the resistance movement received any material or financial support from the international community, and is instead reliant on donations from Myanmar people at home and abroad.