Mae Sot, Thailand – On the outskirts of this small Thai town on the border with Myanmar, a tattoo artist’s gun buzzes alongside a blaring punk music soundtrack.“Punk means freedom,” says Ng La, his face and body covered heavily in tattoos.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list“It’s more than just music or fashion – it’s a way of life,” he tells Al Jazeera while tattooing a fellow Myanmar national-in-exile at the back of his “punk bar” in Mae Sot, in Thailand.To live free was one of the reasons Ng La fled his home in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city.But the 28-year-old now lives precariously as an undocumented Myanmar national in Thailand, though that is, he says, better than being captured by the military regime that he first resisted, fled from and then fought against.“The biggest fear was that if I got arrested, I would be deported back into the hands of the Myanmar military,” Ng La said.“We are no longer afraid of dying,” he said, but getting caught by the military would be worse than death.Ng La’s journey into exile in Mae Sot is not uncommon for many young people from Myanmar who have fled the civil war back home.His journey began when he joined demonstrations in February 2021 after Myanmar’s military toppled the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi.The coup overturned the results of Myanmar’s 2015 and 2020 elections, which were considered the first fair elections in Myanmar’s history and were …
