Speaker 1: It's not easy to leave your home, even when people
Speaker 1: there are trying to kill you. Doctor Wonder, like everyone else,
Speaker 1: struggled with the choice. His hospital had next to no supplies.
Speaker 1: COVID's third wave was ravaging the population, and he couldn't
Speaker 1: even get oxygen to treat sick patients. All around him
Speaker 1: was death and fear, but he still wanted to stay.
Speaker 2: Actually, I don't want to live my country because if
Speaker 2: we just live like that, our country will be We'll
Speaker 2: go back to yes before centuries. You know, you know,
Speaker 2: they control everything. We have to just queue. We have
Speaker 2: to just make it queue to get a patrolium, petroleum.
Speaker 2: We have faith in our young age. I don't. I
Speaker 2: don't want to fit that feeling again, not for me,
Speaker 2: not just for me, not of for our people, for
Speaker 2: our new generation are too young accents. Yes, one is
Speaker 2: a five year one is the ideas. So I just
Speaker 2: want to fight. Yeah, and then my last friend back,
Speaker 2: I can't tolerate because they are trying, you know, around movement.
Speaker 2: I'm trying my best.
Speaker 3: From the decision to go was made for him. By
Speaker 3: the top of door.
Speaker 4: We are making the meeting with him. He is in
Speaker 4: a control at those times he is a control yes
Speaker 4: at those times. So we're making a meeting then asking
Speaker 4: him did did he's safe or not? You know, I
Speaker 4: start at the end of the meeting, he he, he
Speaker 4: told me the hint. They were going to the insight
Speaker 4: oh oh ship, the holy ship.
Speaker 5: He was arrested.
Speaker 4: So so time I was living the younger and you
Speaker 4: know the government of that, the Millers. We also announced
Speaker 4: that the remain do arrest Yeah, REMAINU arrests too. I'm
Speaker 4: thinking all of my things that you have to goal
Speaker 4: because you have all of the data, so you have
Speaker 4: the goal. So I decided to go.
Speaker 1: Okay, Andy and the boys made the decision to abandon
Speaker 1: their apartment and head for Karin Territory and eventually Thailand.
Speaker 1: Once one of their protest friends was arrested by the government,
Speaker 1: his phone was on him when he got caught, potentially
Speaker 1: exposing all of them. After a harrowing drive into the
Speaker 1: jungle and several days among the Koran, they succeeded in
Speaker 1: finding a people smuggler to get them across the border
Speaker 1: without getting stuck in one of the refugee camps operated
Speaker 1: by the Thai government.
Speaker 5: Three days later, we were trying to cross at night time,
Speaker 5: and these guys said, okay, you know, you go in,
Speaker 5: you cross, you get to Thailand at the same night.
Speaker 5: And we thought, okay, you know, and we swim across
Speaker 5: the river. It was very scary, but for me, I've
Speaker 5: done it like three times, so it was a little bit.
Speaker 5: I thought it was going to be better, but it
Speaker 5: was more stressful because I had them right. So I
Speaker 5: was like, if it was me alone, maybe I could,
Speaker 5: you know, whatever happened, I would find a way out.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure if I could do that with three
Speaker 5: other people, you know, so I was quite nervous. We
Speaker 5: paid what five thousand bodies. Yeah, it is not cheap,
Speaker 5: it is, no, no, but because that's the thing, it's
Speaker 5: not just one person. Yeah, it's not just one person.
Speaker 5: He the person that crossed us from the river from
Speaker 5: the Avidy to this side is one and then from
Speaker 5: there to the nomansland is another one. Right, So yeah, we.
Speaker 3: Saw the soldier were like Alex stayed in four or
Speaker 3: attempted to fight with the current, but most of the
Speaker 3: time only did with stamp sentry. Where about getting enough
Speaker 3: to eat? I wonder when he gets his hands on
Speaker 3: something better than.
Speaker 6: A squirrel rifle kind because we don't have like enough girls.
Speaker 6: Uh you know, Like so by the time like there
Speaker 6: was like STROI happening in uh Lekic, I thought like, oh,
Speaker 6: we're gonna have to like go and you know like
Speaker 6: fight them now. But uh stay, like we have to
Speaker 6: pack our staff and move to a deba jungle. So
Speaker 6: we were like kind of like refugees with uniforms. But yeah,
Speaker 6: you know, if I just keep staying there like we
Speaker 6: if we are just going to keep running away like this,
Speaker 6: Like I don't want to stay there. I want to
Speaker 6: do something about the needs, like you know, like the
Speaker 6: Maynes in our canvas, the weapons against So I want
Speaker 6: to like come here and like you know, like walk
Speaker 6: work for that.
Speaker 1: He called his unit refugees with uniforms, and that's about
Speaker 1: what they were. This is why rebels like me Off
Speaker 1: and Daddy UMCD are so motivated to find a way
Speaker 1: to reliably print functional semi automatic weapons. The Karin are
Speaker 1: desperately under armed, and yet they've been able to hold
Speaker 1: off the military for decades. If the Korn and other
Speaker 1: ethnic organizations were able to build functional arms production infrastructure
Speaker 1: alongside the new rebels with the PDF, they have a
Speaker 1: real chance at victory. If they succeed in building this,
Speaker 1: the repercussions around the world could be massive. That is, however,
Speaker 1: a story for another day.
Speaker 3: Seeing this kind of conflict isn't good for you. Nobody's
Speaker 3: supposed to live through this kind of stuff, and certainly
Speaker 3: not when they're just kids. Even in a rich country
Speaker 3: replete with therapists and VA clinics. Thousands of US veterans
Speaker 3: live every day with PTFT. The difference for them is
Speaker 3: that they went to war in myanma what comes to you?
Speaker 5: And then there's another one, which is this one. And
Speaker 5: I did the first part and I'm too scared to
Speaker 5: do the second part. So yeah, I mean this is
Speaker 5: fucked up, Like every time I have to do it,
Speaker 5: I get my head get fucked like.
Speaker 3: That's one of the guys.
Speaker 5: And so that's in Yang in the protest, that's one
Speaker 5: of the nightway, that's one of the days. But the
Speaker 5: AANA but on a hundred people would kill over one
Speaker 5: hundred people. You can see in the video they come
Speaker 5: in and you will see that the military, how the
Speaker 5: military came in and how they were trying to I'm
Speaker 5: not sure if I have in anymore.
Speaker 3: Maybe here.
Speaker 1: You developing.
Speaker 5: Me. They surrounded and they killed everyone.
Speaker 3: What they've seen is bonded the boys. They do anything
Speaker 3: for each other, and I've already done things that most
Speaker 3: of us can't imagine. When one of their mothers wanted
Speaker 3: to take him home, he felt helpless without them. When
Speaker 3: the rest of them crossed. One of their moms came
Speaker 3: back to get him without them and stuck in the country,
Speaker 3: falling apart, he didn't want to keep going. Every day
Speaker 3: he watched soldiers outside himself popping yabber pills. Yaba's a
Speaker 3: myth based drug and soldiers are often given by the military.
Speaker 3: He worried they'd kill him. His brother in law was
Speaker 3: arrested and tortured just for having a lighter. Can you
Speaker 3: remember what it felt like when your mom came home.
Speaker 5: He kept saying, he's going to fucking kill himself for
Speaker 5: a long time, for a line time I will come to. Yeah,
Speaker 5: he wasn't in a good space. I so he was
Speaker 5: saying that if he has to go back. He was
Speaker 5: telling us like, you know, now he's alone, like he
Speaker 5: doesn't even have us anymore. And so he was saying,
Speaker 5: like he's going to go out to the protest and
Speaker 5: he's going to try to kill the cops, right, the soldiers,
Speaker 5: the police. And it was very difficult like for us too,
Speaker 5: like because we know his mom can't really like help
Speaker 5: him with that stuff. You know we can, but she
Speaker 5: really wanted to take him.
Speaker 3: So over time they chatted on the phone and he
Speaker 3: felt better. But now he's here with the boys. It's
Speaker 3: him playing his guitar and the music you heard.
Speaker 5: He got a lot better coping with this in a
Speaker 5: good way, you know what I mean. I mean, if
Speaker 5: you're young and you see people killing people like this terribly,
Speaker 5: you have some job fucked up thoughts yourself too, right,
Speaker 5: Like well I could do this to someone too, and
Speaker 5: stuff like that. So he's struggled a lot with that
Speaker 5: for a long time. And I think the worst thing
Speaker 5: was being alone. He was alone. He couldn't talk to
Speaker 5: his mom about all these things, right, He was paranoi,
Speaker 5: he was scared, he was traumatized. So I mean, it's
Speaker 5: just see like the first time we write, but then
Speaker 5: actually can na ask you. It's been five months since
Speaker 5: he was he's here, but the first few months it
Speaker 5: was very difficult. Yeah, I'm kind of like I talked
Speaker 5: to them all the time about this, because I know
Speaker 5: talking helps with these stubs, like and especially when you
Speaker 5: all feeling the same thing. It's like, you know, and
Speaker 5: I think our ways of coping with this is like
Speaker 5: we talk about it, but like kind of like a
Speaker 5: joking way, like you put humor in it. That's the
Speaker 5: best way.
Speaker 3: To deal with it, Like to get through those hard
Speaker 3: days on his own, looking down at men who wanted
Speaker 3: him dead, he picked up a cheap acoustic guitar. When
Speaker 3: he got back, he began teaching the others if you
Speaker 3: hadn't picked it up, they're pretty good. When we went
Speaker 3: out to the pool bar at night, in between kicking
Speaker 3: your asses, the boys would look up at the stage.
Speaker 3: It was occupied by a pretty second rate cover band
Speaker 3: for whatever reason, probably not helped by the incredibly rough
Speaker 3: ti gin we've been smashing back. I looked at them
Speaker 3: looking at the stage on our last night, and I
Speaker 3: wanted to cry. Teenage kids shouldn't be caught picking up
Speaker 3: guns to fight or picking up cameras to film their
Speaker 3: friends die. They should be doing what I was doing
Speaker 3: when I was a teenager, which is making a complete
Speaker 3: prick of myself on a stage with a guitar one day.
Speaker 3: Hopefully soon they'll be able to sing happy songs again
Speaker 3: and the war will just be a memory. I start,
Speaker 3: then when you write it.
Speaker 6: Before, Yeah, I don't have from for tall like, so
Speaker 6: I start.
Speaker 3: Their bond is so close now, they're barely ever apart.
Speaker 3: It's a lot of responsibility for Andy, who's just twenty
Speaker 3: two himself, but he wouldn't want it any other way,
Speaker 3: and neither would they one right, and you and Sarah
Speaker 3: have appointments, and so Robert and I take the boys
Speaker 3: for dinner. It's a lot of fun and actually a
Speaker 3: lot of food. But when we talked to him about
Speaker 3: their options, it's refugees. He might be able to come
Speaker 3: to the US. One thing is clear. They don't want
Speaker 3: to be a part.
Speaker 5: For me, it's like I'd rather fucking take bullet than
Speaker 5: any of them, because if they die or if something
Speaker 5: happened to them, I am in so much trouble, you
Speaker 5: know what I mean. But I know that that's what
Speaker 5: they want to do. Like if the mom trap him
Speaker 5: in Yangon and he doesn't do anything and the revolution
Speaker 5: is over, he's going to feel so much regret, you know,
Speaker 5: like for not being involved in this and that's for me.
Speaker 5: It's like people, if people want to fight, like, you know,
Speaker 5: like we shouldn't keep them. We shouldn't just say yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: It's been a few months since we got back from
Speaker 1: May Saught. It's the rainy season there now and that
Speaker 1: makes fighting reporting harder. Amrah is still stuck in mayst
Speaker 1: It's not safe for her to go back to a
Speaker 1: country where her family wants her dead, but it's not
Speaker 1: possible for her to leave May Sought either without travel documents,
Speaker 1: something the UNHCR would have to issue. She's stuck in
Speaker 1: a little room in a hotel. It's not a great
Speaker 1: place for a young woman, and it's even worse when
Speaker 1: she has to watch her friends continue to struggle without her.
Speaker 1: We both wrote to the UN and the various embassies
Speaker 1: on her behalf, but months later we've heard nothing. This
Speaker 1: is typical of a lot of refugees. They're often presented
Speaker 1: as a faceless mass of humanity, bereft of hope, but
Speaker 1: each of them has a story, and those refugee camps
Speaker 1: along the border between Thailand and Myanmar are full of stories.
Speaker 1: Some of those are stories of fear, some of heroism,
Speaker 1: and some of tragedy, but until things change at the
Speaker 1: UN all of those stories aren't being told.
Speaker 3: The three D printed firearms Maalk and his colleagues are
Speaker 3: working on I've made massive progress over the last few months,
Speaker 3: but even though three D printed guns cost a small
Speaker 3: fraction of the price of an M sixteen or an
Speaker 3: AK forty seven, the pro democracy forces are still desperately underfunded.
Speaker 3: They're at war with the state, but they don't have
Speaker 3: any of the apparatus of a state with which to
Speaker 3: fight back. Instead, the gen Z rebels have turned once
Speaker 3: again to the Internet. Alongside crowdfunding campaigns like Liberate Memma,
Speaker 3: they've developed a more innovative fundraising method that allows for
Speaker 3: donations even from people who don't have any money. Instead
Speaker 3: of soliciting cash donations risking exposing their donors, they began
Speaker 3: using a method that they call click to Donate, where
Speaker 3: supporters could help the rebels by clicking on adverts on
Speaker 3: certain videos and websites in order to generate advertising revenue.
Speaker 3: It's used to find everything from weapons purchases to shelter
Speaker 3: for the ten thousand eternally displaced people in the Anmar.
Speaker 3: I spoke to several people in Themma who asked not
Speaker 3: to be named for their own safety, but are very
Speaker 3: familiar with the funding of the PDF. One of them
Speaker 3: told me to donate started to support government staff who
Speaker 3: had decided to join a civil disobedience movement. Government staff
Speaker 3: are always low paid and so they were not very
Speaker 3: financially stable in the beginning. The fund from click to
Speaker 3: donate allowed these workers to strike without pay. After a
Speaker 3: few weeks of being on strike, financial concerns were weakening
Speaker 3: the movement and people were being forced to work or stave.
Speaker 3: Younger pro democracy activists responded by setting up YouTube channels
Speaker 3: and then using the anti coup telegram channels to direct
Speaker 3: millions of views and add clicks to them from across
Speaker 3: the country and from supporters abroad. The resulting advertising revenue
Speaker 3: allowed them to fund the civil disobedience movement and later
Speaker 3: to equip the PDF. By December of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 3: these clicks were yielding an income of about five hundred
Speaker 3: million kiats about twenty eight thousand dollars every day.
Speaker 1: The Military Hunter responded to this an international indignation at
Speaker 1: videos of protesters being massacred in the street by tripling
Speaker 1: data prizes and throat modeling Internet connection speeds. Pro democracy
Speaker 1: keyboard warriors responded with viral content that required less bandwidth,
Speaker 1: including writing personal finance blogs to attract a US audience
Speaker 1: that was unknowingly supporting a revolution with its clicks. People
Speaker 1: in Myanmar also began to use VPNs to access the Internet.
Speaker 1: This helped them get around some of the junta's restrictions
Speaker 1: and also yielded a higher advertising payment per click on
Speaker 1: a given advert. Websites like Digital Revolution allow users to
Speaker 1: find content that supports pro democracy rebels and click on it,
Speaker 1: lending their support with nothing more than a broadband connection
Speaker 1: and a few seconds of their time. Alongside their videos
Speaker 1: and websites, the Ginz rebels also launched games. At first,
Speaker 1: they were just simple little online phone app games that
Speaker 1: would let you throw darts at the coup leader or something.
Speaker 1: One source told us that these games didn't just support
Speaker 1: the rebels through funding, but also provided a little bit
Speaker 1: of mental health care. You know, at least people could
Speaker 1: virtually kill the folks in their city and their home
Speaker 1: who were ruining their lives, and at the same time
Speaker 1: time the games earned the money, and that money went
Speaker 1: to fund the PDF.
Speaker 3: The most impressive of these games is a recently launched
Speaker 3: War of Heroes, which you can buy for just a
Speaker 3: dollar on the Apple and Google App stores if you
Speaker 3: want to check it out. In the game, which is
Speaker 3: available in Burmese or English, a player can fight as
Speaker 3: a man or a woman and take on government troops
Speaker 3: and even zombies. The money donated via these games and
Speaker 3: adverts doesn't just go into a black hole, According to
Speaker 3: the sources I spoke to, we have a click to
Speaker 3: donate Facebook page, they said, and regularly we release financial
Speaker 3: statements on a Facebook page, saying like this month we
Speaker 3: gave ten million kyats to that group. I spoke to
Speaker 3: Billy Ford, a program officer for the Burmer team at
Speaker 3: the US Institute of Peace. He says this kind of
Speaker 3: innovation is what's allowed the pro democracy movement to survive
Speaker 3: in me and Mah since it was last violently suppressed
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty eight. Activists and resistance movements in Miamma
Speaker 3: have historically been an example to the world of creative, strategic,
Speaker 3: and resilient models of activism, he said. This post twenty
Speaker 3: two one movement has taken that to a new level,
Speaker 3: enabling it to defy all historical precedent and sustain an
Speaker 3: anti coup movement for more than eighteen months, now actually
Speaker 3: gaining ground against a regime with an enormous structural advantage,
Speaker 3: rather than seeing their lack of weapons and funds as
Speaker 3: the fatal flaw. Ford says that the highly onlined rebels
Speaker 3: have looked for areas where they could outflank the aging
Speaker 3: generals who stole their futures from them. The movement has
Speaker 3: leveraged comparative advantages large numbers of people with time and
Speaker 3: tech savvy to raise money. He says. This tactic, although unusual,
Speaker 3: has been a great success. According to Ford, the approach
Speaker 3: has grown enormously, with one of the video games, for example,
Speaker 3: rising to become the number two paid app on the
Speaker 3: App Store at one point.
Speaker 1: However, all the clicks in the world might not be
Speaker 1: enough to sweep the rebels into Mandolay and return the
Speaker 1: country on its path towards democracy. Sources inside me en
Speaker 1: Mars say that less and less revenue is generated by
Speaker 1: a me and marip address, and that they have had
Speaker 1: to encourage men members of the People's Click Force to
Speaker 1: install VPNs to make their clicks appear to come from
Speaker 1: the US or Europe. Sometimes the traffic is so massive
Speaker 1: that Utube's algorithm mistakes it for an artificial intelligence botnet.
Speaker 1: They're looking, they tell me, at pivoting towards affiliate links
Speaker 1: and the sort of content driven commerce that has swept
Speaker 1: the US media thanks to the success of sites like
Speaker 1: The Wirecutter. Meanwhile, on the ground, PDF forces are regularly
Speaker 1: getting the better of the totmadaw in small arms conflict,
Speaker 1: but coming off worse when they can't defend themselves against
Speaker 1: the Russian jets which the HUNTA uses to bomb civilian
Speaker 1: and military targets. Without man portable anti aircraft systems, the
Speaker 1: rebels are sitting ducks. The world has sent thousands of
Speaker 1: these to Ukraine and none to people in Myanmar fighting
Speaker 1: the same battle for democracy against the same Russian jets.
Speaker 1: Despite this, they're not discouraged. PDF rebels tell me they
Speaker 1: have been scouring the Internet and they're working on a
Speaker 1: solution that doesn't need the apparatus of support of a
Speaker 1: state and instead relies on stable broadband and the increasing
Speaker 1: ingenuity they've shown and in eighteen months of revolution, demo
Speaker 1: crazy word.
Speaker 4: My joh.
Speaker 6: Oh do o ye.
Speaker 3: Has on you.
Speaker 5: On you.
Speaker 1: Yeah he d.
Speaker 3: Oh my.
Speaker 6: Really young irby boy.
Speaker 5: Okay lang and on this long heavy.
Speaker 6: Ollo.
Speaker 3: Hi everyone, it's me again, James.
Speaker 1: Don't worry.
Speaker 3: I'm not coming to you at the end of the
Speaker 3: series to report something tragic like I did, and I'll
Speaker 3: ask me. I'm my series. I'm just recording this little
Speaker 3: message at the end to say that we're very grateful
Speaker 3: to Daniel an Ian for all their hard work on this,
Speaker 3: and we've gone through countless edits for this particular project,
Speaker 3: and they've done a lot of hard work to get
Speaker 3: it to you in the form that you listen to
Speaker 3: it today and for the last week. We also want
Speaker 3: to say that although this appears to be a podcast
Speaker 3: written and recorded by Robert and I, that Andy is
Speaker 3: very much a co author and that none of this
Speaker 3: would have been possible without him. As we said, Andy's
Speaker 3: not his real name, and we can't put his real
Speaker 3: name in the credits because we're worried for his safety.
Speaker 3: But his work has been invaluable and without him, none
Speaker 3: of what you've heard would be possible.
Speaker 1: It could happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 6: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 6: cool Zonemedia dot com or check us out on the
Speaker 6: iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts,
Speaker 6: you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
Speaker 6: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 4: Thanks for listening.