Aerobics instructor unwittingly films Myanmar coup in the background of her live workout

Khing Hnin Wai works out as Myanmar falls

(Image credit: Screenshot/YouTube/Telefe Rosario)

published 2 February 2021

Myanmar's military arrested the country's civilian leaders and seized control of the government early Monday, ending a fragile 10-year transition to civilian rule. An aerobics instructor, Khing Hnin Wai, was recording her morning workout, it appears, "at the very moment Myanmar’s military was seizing power," Los Angeles Times Southeast Asia correspondent David Pierson reports, though she seems blissfully unaware as a convoy of black military vehicles stream behind her toward the parliament building in Naypyidaw, the capital.

After her livestream of the coup went viral, Khing Hnin Wai posted earlier videos of her workouts to Facebook, all of them shot in the same location, in front of "the absurd emptiness of the 20-lane Yaza Htarni Road," Pierson notes, to prove that she did not stage her workout in front of the military staging its coup. "It's normal when I wake up in the morning," she wrote.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.