"In a beige stone townhouse on a leafy New York street, a political coup thousands of miles away has split an office in two. Downstairs in the dimly lit building, staffers at Myanmar's Permanent Mission to the United Nations receive orders from the military junta, which overthrew the country's elected government on February 1. Upstairs, charismatic ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun is leading what is effectively an underground diplomatic corps, part of an attempt to wrestle back control of the country. His conference room is decorated with portraits of a long line of his military-aligned predecessors, reminders of what he's up against. Staffers at Myanmar's dozens of diplomatic posts around the world have been faced with a predicament since the coup. Stay in their roles and be forced to represent the military junta that has killed hundreds of pro-democracy protesters and locked up the democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Speak out and risk being fired and placing themselves and their families in Myanmar in danger. At least 21 staffers across multiple regions -- including Kyaw Moe Tun -- have decided they won't cooperate with the military-controlled foreign ministry. Instead, they are quietly using their connections and relative safety abroad to counter messaging from Myanmar's military. To many of their former colleagues, they are defectors -- people who have turned their backs on duty and the chain of command. Several diplomats who spoke to CNN insisted they are actually loyalists to the democratic government that was overthrown in February. The issue is getting other countries to see them that way. They have already had a win -- the United Nations has allowed Kyaw Moe Tun to retain his seat and rejected a military-approved replacement. That makes him the only openly anti-coup Myanmar diplomat to remain in office. That alone won't be enough. Myanmar's military rulers could try again to replace him at any time -- and the longer the military remains in power, the harder it will be for underground diplomats to secure international recognition. A military coup In Berlin, Chaw Kalyar, 49, had stayed up late to watch Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) government be sworn in. The NLD had been reelected in a landslide vote last year and February 1 was meant to be the day parliament opened. Instead, the country woke up to find men in green military uniform swarming the capital Naypyidaw. Television channels went black. In the days to come, members of Suu Kyi's government would be hunted down or arrested. It was heartbreaking, said Chaw Kalyar, third secretary at the Berlin Embassy. As a 16-year-old, she had joined the country's historic 1988 protests against military rule, and seen friends killed in the ensuing government crackdown. She joined the foreign ministry more than 23 years ago, when Myanmar was under another brutal military dictatorship. When February's coup unfolded, Chaw Kalyar immediately knew she could not cooperate with the military junta -- she remembered how much people had suffered. "We could not just sit by this time," she said. As she talked with other embassy staffers in Berlin about publicly supporting the burgeoning civil disobedience movement, Chaw Kalyar was cautious that others in the embassy may support the military. Many of the country's career diplomats took roles in the foreign service during Myanmar's half century of military rule, which plunged Myanmar -- then called Burma -- into poverty, isolationism and civil war. Just over a decade ago, the military chiefs put in place a plan that would permit the country to hold elections, liberalize the economy, and transition into a semi-democracy while still maintaining their authority. Suu Kyi's NLD election win in 2020 was only the second democratic election held since direct military rule ended. The party appeared to be leading the country, but in reality the military remained a powerful force. The diplomats and embassy staff who denounced the coup were resisting a return to past repression. Chaw Kalyar knew that if she spoke out against the coup, and the movement against the junta was unsuccessful, she would likely never be able to go home. Despite the risks, she decided to act. "It's like all our life has endured this military dictatorship," she said. "We have to join this movement, and we think this movement can bring down this military coup, and we can finally eradicate this military brutality." Thet Htar Mya Yee San, 29, a junior diplomat at the Myanmar embassy in Washington, remembers an emotional conversation with like-minded diplomats in two European cities. Although she was on her first foreign assignment, she and other young diplomats decided they should "give up everything" to support the civil disobedience movement or CDM, which has seen people across Myanmar stop going to work to prevent the country from operating as normal under its new de facto rulers. But isolated in foreign countries, fearful for their families at home and uncertain of what would come next, they didn't take action immediately. That would come after a key moment a few weeks later..."