Revolutionary roads: how the army tried to crush Yangon’s most anti-coup district

Hlaing Thayar was at the centre of Myanmar's protests, but brutal crackdowns and the collapse of the local garment industry have taken their toll

• Read more in our Reporting Myanmar series

As Thitsar* walked through her neighbourhood one December morning, she was struck by its emptiness. The bamboo shacks that line the streets of Hlaing Tharyar, an industrial township on the outskirts of Myanmar's largest city, Yangon, lay in tatters, overgrown with weeds. The vendors who once weaved through traffic had vanished, as had many of the informal settlements where they lived and the roadside tea shops where they gathered.

Streets that had once resounded with chants for democracy were now eerily silent.