Speaker 1: Dime, no.
Speaker 2: Demo crazy, I wordam my josh Oa.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty, millions of Americans took to the streets
Speaker 3: to protest police violence. They were met with police violence
Speaker 3: on a massive scale. Shootings, vehicle attacks, and assassinations occurred
Speaker 3: alongside these protests, often in defense of the police, and
Speaker 3: in total, at least twenty five Americans died. We now
Speaker 3: know that President Trump repeatedly urged General Mark Milly to
Speaker 3: deploy US military forces to crack down violently on demonstrations.
Speaker 3: Milly claims that Trump told him to have his soldiers
Speaker 3: crack skulls, beat the fuck out of and just shoot protesters.
Speaker 3: In the end, we were all lucky. Military leaders, including
Speaker 3: General Milly, resisted to use their men to suppress domestic descent.
Speaker 3: National Guard were called in to police several major cities,
Speaker 3: but in many cases their behavior was tame compared to
Speaker 3: the militarized police who were reliably shot and beat protesters.
Speaker 3: For millions of Americans, twenty twenty was their first exposure
Speaker 3: to the violence the state will do to avoid change.
Speaker 3: And then Trump lost the election. He and his followers
Speaker 3: tried to carry out a coup but failed. For now
Speaker 3: and millions of Americans who'd taken to the streets mostly
Speaker 3: went back to their lives. Some were satisfied justice had
Speaker 3: been done, others were furious to have stopped short of
Speaker 3: instituting real change. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: business went on as usual. A version of normal prevailed.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty one, the military of Myanmar, known as
Speaker 3: the Toatmadaw, overthrew the elected government in a coup. Hundreds
Speaker 3: of thousands of citizens, most of them young, gin z
Speaker 3: and millennial men and women, took to the streets. Police
Speaker 3: responded with tear gas, water cannon, and eventually bullets. The
Speaker 3: international community expressed its horror at the brutality of the Tautmda,
Speaker 3: but that's all they did. Over the course of several months,
Speaker 3: the military pushed protesters mostly out of the cities, and
Speaker 3: a protest movement against the military coup turned into a
Speaker 3: civil war. Now those same protesters, mostly kids who wanted
Speaker 3: nothing more than a normal life, have become revolutionaries. With
Speaker 3: home made guns, three D printed rockets, and stolen rifles,
Speaker 3: they battled the tot MADA. Some of them fight in
Speaker 3: the jungles, some of them fight in the cities, and
Speaker 3: some of them fight on the internet. This is their story.
Speaker 3: We're sitting in a large suburban home in Mysout, Thailand,
Speaker 3: a small city on the border of Menmar. The boys
Speaker 3: singing and playing music around us range in age from
Speaker 3: seventeen to twenty two. Their existence in Thailand is a crime.
Speaker 3: If they are caught here, they'll be forced to cross
Speaker 3: the border into mi Anmar, whose government executed their friends
Speaker 3: and sold the old organs for profit. But tonight they're
Speaker 3: playing music. We're drinking beer. Later, James Stout and I
Speaker 3: will play pool with them and get our asses just
Speaker 3: catastrophically wrecked.
Speaker 4: We met Andy, aged twenty two and head of the
Speaker 4: family for his Instagram page. That's not his real name,
Speaker 4: but for obvious reasons, we can't identify him. We first
Speaker 4: met when I send him a DM asking if we
Speaker 4: could buy one of his photos for our first series
Speaker 4: on Me and Ma. He was a bit skeptical, but
Speaker 4: I tried my best to get him to see we
Speaker 4: just wanted to give him money and promote his work.
Speaker 4: Over the next six months or so, we weren't from
Speaker 4: talking on the phone to messaging almost every day, to
Speaker 4: Robert and I booking tickets to Thailand to sitting on
Speaker 4: the top floor of their house. It used to be
Speaker 4: his landlord's office, but now it's home to Andy and
Speaker 4: his partner, Sarah. That's also not her real name, because
Speaker 4: she's a citizen of a Western nation working in Thailand.
Speaker 4: The boys we talk about are the brothers, his cousin
Speaker 4: and friends. They live at a small building across the garden,
Speaker 4: and in the daytime they sit under a gazebo and
Speaker 4: play their guitars. The first night we met Andy and Sarah,
Speaker 4: we sat behind a bar in an unpaved alleyway. We
Speaker 4: drank beer out of sippy cups because selling beer is
Speaker 4: still banned at the local COVID regulations, but apparently the
Speaker 4: cops don't check sippy cups. We drank far too much,
Speaker 4: in fact, and the next day I work up with
Speaker 4: a headache and a blurry photo of me, Robert and
Speaker 4: Andy engaged in a pose which was half hug and
Speaker 4: half mutual support structure. We walked home and according to
Speaker 4: my phone, at some point we took photos of a puppy,
Speaker 4: and in a hopefully unrelated incident, at some point I
Speaker 4: started bleeding. It was immediately obvious that Andy needed the
Speaker 4: chance to blow off some steam over the last year.
Speaker 4: In Change, he is chronicled every stage of the coup
Speaker 4: in its aftermath. In early videos we see joyous protests,
Speaker 4: moments of resistance, and splendor in the streets of cities
Speaker 4: like Miawiti. Later we see violence, death, and guerrilla warfare.
Speaker 4: And he didn't have what you would call an easy childhood,
Speaker 4: thanks in part to me and Mau's long history of
Speaker 4: revolutions being crushed by the army. People there, like people everywhere,
Speaker 4: want to be free and determine their own futures. And
Speaker 4: so each generation has its own uprising, and each generation
Speaker 4: has its own massacre in very little progress to show
Speaker 4: for it.
Speaker 5: I was born in two thousand, so when I was seven,
Speaker 5: two thousand and seven, there was a revolution. It's called
Speaker 5: Saffron revolution. It wasn't it wasn't like this, you know,
Speaker 5: it wasn't like what happened now, But like, there were
Speaker 5: a lot of people that were involved in it, a
Speaker 5: lot of people that kill and a lot of people
Speaker 5: left yarmar and came to the refugee camps in here,
Speaker 5: and we were one of the families that came to
Speaker 5: the refugee camps. And yeah, in mess out Thailand.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Andy's mother is Buma, the dominant ethnic group in me
Speaker 3: and Maar due to their decades long control of the
Speaker 3: military and government. His father is Krin, the ethnic group
Speaker 3: once used by the British government as soldiers. Since nineteen
Speaker 3: forty nine, the Karin have fought a war in the
Speaker 3: mountains against the top Mada. Their name is often anglicized
Speaker 3: to be spelled just like the English name Karen, which,
Speaker 3: given present Internet trends, makes explaining the conflict sometimes awkward.
Speaker 3: Andy primarily identifies as and was raised Bamah. His family
Speaker 3: left after the Saffron Revolution. They did not flee to
Speaker 3: escape political repression, but because the economy had collapsed. This
Speaker 3: put them in an awkward position in the camps, which
Speaker 3: were filled mostly with Karin people who had fled state violence.
Speaker 5: We weren't refugees, right, We were more like, how do
Speaker 5: you say, like economic refugees. You know, we go because
Speaker 5: not because our village has been burned down and our
Speaker 5: family has been killed, you know. So then if we
Speaker 5: were to go back to Yangon, we still could find
Speaker 5: a job, we still could fine, you know. But then
Speaker 5: for these current people, like this place is the only
Speaker 5: place that they could exist at that moment, right and
Speaker 5: probably still now too. So yeah, so they say that,
Speaker 5: but that education wasn't very good there. The life wasn't good,
Speaker 5: you know, it wasn't It wasn't. It was very bad. Honestly,
Speaker 5: it was very bad. It was a lot of violence,
Speaker 5: a lot of hate, a lot of understandable, you know,
Speaker 5: like these people have gone through so much shit and
Speaker 5: so much trauma that and nothing. No one is coming
Speaker 5: there too, but fix that. So they had a lot
Speaker 5: of anger. They had a lot of problems. But my
Speaker 5: mom said, yeah, we're going back because the education he
Speaker 5: is very bad. And if you go back to Miami,
Speaker 5: at least, you know, if you do like the thing
Speaker 5: that people do, maybe you'll get somewhere. Yeah, in the future.
Speaker 5: Here there's no future, so she said, So we went
Speaker 5: back and I stayed in yourmar for like four years.
Speaker 3: Andy had never been very political. His family was more
Speaker 3: or less neutral, tending to side with the military more
Speaker 3: often than not. Out of a sense of inertia. Me
Speaker 3: and Mar attended to cartwheel between attempts at democracy and
Speaker 3: military dictatorship. So when the world media celebrated their first
Speaker 3: democratic elections in twenty five years in twenty fifteen, Andy
Speaker 3: was not particularly excited.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, I mean we did realize that there was
Speaker 5: a change in the country, right because we grew up
Speaker 5: in the military to take your ship. But then one
Speaker 5: intensity takeover took over. There were some changes, like the
Speaker 5: phones got cheaper, the internet got cheaper, and if you
Speaker 5: look back then you can see big, big changes. But
Speaker 5: the thing is it was never real democracy, and I
Speaker 5: think a lot of people in the Western countries thought
Speaker 5: that it was democracy when al Sensergi took over.
Speaker 3: Ansongsucci came to prominence during a nineteen eighty eight uprising
Speaker 3: against the military, which ended in bloodshed in the streets
Speaker 3: of Yangon, and she'd been a long time democratic activist.
Speaker 3: As Andy noted, westerners celebrated her election as the first
Speaker 3: democratic head of state for me and Maar. She even
Speaker 3: won a Nobel Prize. But the agreement her party had
Speaker 3: made with the military gave the generals significant permanent control
Speaker 3: over the government.
Speaker 5: But I think most of the people in the country
Speaker 5: knew it wasn't real democracy because you know, the military
Speaker 5: always had twenty five percent twenty fight seats in the parliament,
Speaker 5: right like they were always they were in charge of
Speaker 5: electricity and all these all these big things, a weapons army,
Speaker 5: like the military itself, they are in charge of all
Speaker 5: these things, and they make it very clear.
Speaker 3: And even with a Nobel prize on Soongsuchi did not
Speaker 3: fight to stop the top Mada from pursuing their decades
Speaker 3: long wars against the ethnic armed organizations in the Hills,
Speaker 3: nor did she act to stop their ethnic cleansing of
Speaker 3: the Rohinga people. In fact, she and others in her
Speaker 3: party didn't even call them Rohinga. They called them Bengali
Speaker 3: and insisted they were illegally residing in Myanmar, despite mountains
Speaker 3: of evidence documenting a group by that name living in
Speaker 3: what is now the Rakian State. I think most Americans
Speaker 3: and Westerners in general can empathize with the feeling of
Speaker 3: electing someone who promises change and then getting very little
Speaker 3: of what you'd expected.
Speaker 5: I think Alsensucci used to be this hope that that
Speaker 5: was like the opposition against the military. But I think
Speaker 5: when she got power, she couldn't do all the things
Speaker 5: that she promised to do, or like you know, we
Speaker 5: looked at her before, we looked at her as something,
Speaker 5: you know, something hope for everyone, you know, for all
Speaker 5: the ethnic groups and for everyone in the country. But
Speaker 5: then when she became empower she mainly focused all these
Speaker 5: changes for the Bama people. Well, you know, the mainland people,
Speaker 5: Like the military was still fucking killing people and killing
Speaker 5: ethnic groups. Did they do something, you know, like, so
Speaker 5: then for the ethnic groups, what's the difference?
Speaker 3: And so while Andy was hopeful that his country might
Speaker 3: take a better path, he was not exactly convinced that
Speaker 3: things were going to get better. Conflict within his family
Speaker 3: eventually pushed him to make the decision to leave.
Speaker 5: My dad was very abusive, right, he would be the
Speaker 5: shit out of my mouth every day like that. It
Speaker 5: was fine, Like it was fine when we were younger.
Speaker 5: We couldn't do anything, you know, we just kind of
Speaker 5: watched it, right, But the older we got, the more
Speaker 5: we involved, the more we try to stop it. But
Speaker 5: then we were fight with him too, you know, And
Speaker 5: so at some point it became too much, and so
Speaker 5: I left my home, I think in twenty sixteen, just
Speaker 5: by myself, and I was like, I've been to Messad,
Speaker 5: I will go back here, you know.
Speaker 3: So Andy lived across the border on his own for
Speaker 3: more than five years. He'd fallen in love gotten a
Speaker 3: home with his own and set himself up in the
Speaker 3: sort of odd jobs you can do without papers or
Speaker 3: legal residency. And that's where things were for him when
Speaker 3: the top MA dog carried out their coup in early
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5: Twenty twenty one February. First, I was a messout I
Speaker 5: was here and yeah, in the morning, I woke up,
Speaker 5: called me my girlfriend and as she said, the military
Speaker 5: just did a coop in your country. You should call
Speaker 5: your family.
Speaker 3: The military claimed voter fraud and used that is the
Speaker 3: pretext to stay in power. It's a situation that should
Speaker 3: be unsettlingly familiar to most of our audience. For a while,
Speaker 3: Safe in Maysat, Andy watched it in horror as he
Speaker 3: texted with friends and family across the border.
Speaker 5: They arrested Ansen Suji and all the big leaders right
Speaker 5: at the top. So we were kind of like, okay,
Speaker 5: is someone going to tell us what to do? And
Speaker 5: especially for us, we didn't have any experiences. We didn't
Speaker 5: know anything about any of this that I'm talking about
Speaker 5: right now. I didn't have any knowledge of that. But yeah,
Speaker 5: so after I think six day the most you cut
Speaker 5: off the internet, like for like two days and I've
Speaker 5: lost all contact with everyone inside, my family, my friends.
Speaker 5: And that's the night I started playing it. Like I
Speaker 5: started thinking, oh fuck, I should go back and like
Speaker 5: and I saw the protest photos from Yangon. They looked amazing, right,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, I'm a photographer. I should be there
Speaker 5: and you know, document that.
Speaker 4: While Andy was staring at the protest photos from the
Speaker 4: capital of mianmar Napodor, as well as Miawiti and the
Speaker 4: largest city, Yangn, wondering he should take his camera and
Speaker 4: document yet another rising for democracy in his home country,
Speaker 4: a young woman named Amiror was in the thick of
Speaker 4: those protests and Yangn when the coup started. A mirror
Speaker 4: age seventeen, had just finished high school. She was looking
Speaker 4: forward to university and more pressingly, looking forward to playing
Speaker 4: futsal with her friends. She liked to spend her days crafting,
Speaker 4: she says, making little things to gift or to keep,
Speaker 4: Like every other day. When she woke up, she spent
Speaker 4: ten minutes in medication before facing the world on the
Speaker 4: first of February. Hansomsduki was her hero, she says. In
Speaker 4: our interview. Her boyfriend translated for her. We'll get to
Speaker 4: their story later. But when the coup began, they lived
Speaker 4: a world apart. They joined the whole generation and feeling
Speaker 4: in rage by Tatmador trying to rip the freedom their
Speaker 4: parents would fought for from them, A mirror took her
Speaker 4: rage into the street. Someone gave her a bullhorn.
Speaker 6: Because of her voice, and then she became the leader,
Speaker 6: you know, with the the bullhorn.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what kind of stuff would you say to the
Speaker 5: boat through the bullhorn?
Speaker 7: Hello, you don't want you She's saying, uh, this is
Speaker 7: anfeil and then uh, this is uh that the arresting
Speaker 7: that SUCHI is a anfel not fair?
Speaker 4: Okay, yeah, okay yeah.
Speaker 6: And then and then she believed that, Uh, she believed
Speaker 6: in what San Succhi said, like everything is paused the
Speaker 6: wall and we haven't do anything. We haven't studied yet,
Speaker 6: and then but when we study and then we can
Speaker 6: finish it, so everything is possible. So that's what she
Speaker 6: believe in. So she went on the road and then
Speaker 6: she brought us.
Speaker 4: Across the city from a mirror. On coup day, Miok's
Speaker 4: girlfriend woke him up with the news that the government
Speaker 4: they'd voted for had been arrested. We're calling him milk
Speaker 4: here because that's his name. In the revolution, everyone has one.
Speaker 4: Amr's his baby because she's so young yet so fierce. Mewk,
Speaker 4: if you're wondering, means monkey. These revolutionaries who have risked
Speaker 4: life and limb for each other, didn't know the legal
Speaker 4: names to the people. They call their revolution family because
Speaker 4: it's safer that way, and we don't either, meowk could
Speaker 4: spend the night well, I'll let you hear Harry phrased it.
Speaker 1: Actually, I would just like our tailing with my a
Speaker 1: scare for you know.
Speaker 7: Our tailor.
Speaker 1: And we were you know, Nephlis and Chae generary netflist
Speaker 1: and I think it's a Sunday. I think it's Sunday
Speaker 1: Nephla and ch and we we slid together.
Speaker 4: If you didn't catch that, there were Netflix and chilling.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 1: I was literally not wakere but any louder show. I
Speaker 1: was so sleep but but at the full am there's
Speaker 1: a po rings and I suddenly wake here there's phone
Speaker 1: ring from my girlfriend, her anti call call Call, call Heart,
Speaker 1: and she said there's a cool de feast. Oh and
Speaker 1: she wake her and she told me there's a cool
Speaker 1: of I didn't you know I don't believe it.
Speaker 5: I believe it.
Speaker 1: I didn't believe it, so other than I chat the
Speaker 1: social media, oh sh or may I actually do this?
Speaker 1: I'm so angry and I'm so angry, you know. I
Speaker 1: was going down downstairs and I told to my family,
Speaker 1: there's a cool of everyone's angry and I those times
Speaker 1: the internet they cut off.
Speaker 4: The next revolutionary we're going to mean is a fellow
Speaker 4: will call doctor Wonder because that's his revolution name. When
Speaker 4: the coups started, he was just waking up after a
Speaker 4: twenty four hour shift at the hospital in Yangon where
Speaker 4: he worked. Doctors were some of the earliest and most
Speaker 4: visible dissidents in the protests. Their rarity and therefore their
Speaker 4: relative value to the regime made them a potent symbol
Speaker 4: of the pro democracy movement. But as doctor Wonder made
Speaker 4: clear many older medical professionals, we're not at all certain
Speaker 4: that resistance was a right move here.
Speaker 8: At the morning, I saw the news that bad news,
Speaker 8: really really bad news for us.
Speaker 9: It was how would I say that they bro you know, yeah,
Speaker 9: they broke our future.
Speaker 4: Doctors were some of the earliest most visible dissidents in
Speaker 4: the pro democracy protests. Their rarity and relative value to
Speaker 4: the regime made them a potent symbol of the Protomok movement,
Speaker 4: But as doctor Wonder made clear, many older medical professionals
Speaker 4: were not at all certain that resistance was a right
Speaker 4: move on that money.
Speaker 9: We go back to our our society, our hospital.
Speaker 8: We are shen guys, you know, all professors or concernders
Speaker 8: did not much interest about that because they told us,
Speaker 8: you know, whoever rules our camfe is not our business,
Speaker 8: it is one of our seniors, doctors from our society
Speaker 8: for our department pool us like that.
Speaker 9: But we reply him, no, it should be the last time.
Speaker 4: If didn't catch that, he said it should be the
Speaker 4: last time, the last time kids had to die in
Speaker 4: the streets. They didn't want another generation to have to
Speaker 4: go through the same thing. So they got together a proposal,
Speaker 4: a sort of manifesto for peaceful, nonviolent resistance, and they
Speaker 4: submitted it to their seniors.
Speaker 8: We negotiated with our ship you know, young resident, our society,
Speaker 8: and we discussed about that, and we plan to start
Speaker 8: with one of our prior movement.
Speaker 9: Before save a disagreement.
Speaker 8: We have got our Red Ripon movement, of course, because
Speaker 8: we want to write peacefully on the media. Okay, we
Speaker 8: started like that, and then uh, some of our seniors
Speaker 8: from our society, they were from Mendally Hospital. Okay, they
Speaker 8: accept our propose there, Yes, because our generation has already
Speaker 8: passed that difficulties before, but not your generation shouldn't accept that.
Speaker 4: Three days before the queue, TK got off a plane
Speaker 4: in San Francisco. He's from me in Ma, but he
Speaker 4: lives in the Bay Area. Now, before you ask, he
Speaker 4: says that the Burmese restaurant there is not as good
Speaker 4: as stuff back home.
Speaker 10: It's only three days three days before, three days before
Speaker 10: I went back to the to the United States, and
Speaker 10: I wish I'm staying a youngle and doing the revolution
Speaker 10: and a participate in a everywhere that I can, but
Speaker 10: that I couldn't do from the from the long distance,
Speaker 10: you know.
Speaker 6: So that's all I can.
Speaker 5: Do for now.
Speaker 4: TK had just been in me and Ma. He had
Speaker 4: connections to many people on the ground there, his friends
Speaker 4: with it, his family were it. When the government cut
Speaker 4: off into thee access, he remained able to get good
Speaker 4: international reporting on the situation in his home country. Slowly,
Speaker 4: he found ways to communicate with his friends and a
Speaker 4: growing core of the protesters, taking to the streets.
Speaker 10: I was a keyboard fighter.
Speaker 6: I have no idea about a politic I have no
Speaker 6: idea about the military stuff.
Speaker 4: This is a single most common sentiment we've heard across
Speaker 4: all the revolutionaries we've met. None of them considered themselves
Speaker 4: to be very political. Prior to the coup. They started
Speaker 4: marching in the street because the military coup was obviously bad,
Speaker 4: but they stayed there because the violence dished out by
Speaker 4: the state was so horrific. Save at their house in Maso.
Speaker 4: We talked to the boys and these brothers and cousins,
Speaker 4: all of whom were living in Napo door when the
Speaker 4: coup kicked off. It didn't take him long to try
Speaker 4: and join them.
Speaker 5: Then I went in. I went to Nyawiti, which is
Speaker 5: across the border in your marside, and I was there
Speaker 5: for a week and it was it was something else
Speaker 5: like I've never been to protests now, I've never been
Speaker 5: involved in any of this thing, and I never thought
Speaker 5: I would be, you know, like I don't know. I
Speaker 5: always thought like I wasn't going to be a part
Speaker 5: of it. But when I went there, the first day
Speaker 5: I arrived, there were two hundred thousand people on the street, protest.
Speaker 5: And then it's like and this big group of people
Speaker 5: walk in streets after street and everyone coming out of
Speaker 5: their house and we have this symbol like three fingers
Speaker 5: from Hangergang. I think, yeah, yeah, so that's like our
Speaker 5: symbol for democracy now or our movement now. And everyone
Speaker 5: come out of their house doing that and you know,
Speaker 5: like giving us water, food, everything. It was beautiful, like
Speaker 5: it was something else. It was something else. And then
Speaker 5: from that day I was like hook. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 5: this is what I'm going to do.
Speaker 9: Now.
Speaker 5: I'm going to be a photographer and I'm gonna in this,
Speaker 5: you know, and I'm gonna I'm going to take photo
Speaker 5: of these people and their stories and I'm gonna share it,
Speaker 5: and that's my part, that's my rule.
Speaker 4: Soon he found friends among the protesters. Within a few days,
Speaker 4: he was feeling a feeling that so many people felt
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty. It's a feeling you felt if you've
Speaker 4: ever been in the thick of a crowd of people
Speaker 4: filled with right tous anger and facing down overwhelmed police
Speaker 4: or soldiers. It's a sensation. I can't really described you
Speaker 4: you haven't experienced it, but I can say that there's
Speaker 4: no time that I've ever felt more empowered than the
Speaker 4: times I've been crushed, shouldered with strangers, toe to toe
Speaker 4: with state violence and watch cops break and retreat. It's incredible.
Speaker 4: It's addictive, and if I'm honest, it's probably why Robert
Speaker 4: and I booked a flight to visit a stranger I've
Speaker 4: been dming on the ground.
Speaker 5: I think after three days, I met this group of people,
Speaker 5: young people like students trying to be lawyers and stuff,
Speaker 5: and I figured out that they were the ones trying
Speaker 5: to organize these big protests, like two hundred people, one
Speaker 5: hundred thousand people. They were the ones that's making that happen.
Speaker 5: So I started kind of following them, trying to get
Speaker 5: close because I wanted to get stories from them. And
Speaker 5: then they became they and they realized what I've been doing.
Speaker 5: They've been watching like and so they were like very welcome,
Speaker 5: and they took me to this hide out that they
Speaker 5: go to and then we will have discussions and medians
Speaker 5: about what we should do the next day. Da da
Speaker 5: da da. But then kind of it's because it's a
Speaker 5: small town, right, Slowly, I think police and military started
Speaker 5: realizing that we are that group too.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, demo crazy word.
Speaker 6: Oh do.
Speaker 4: So by now you're probably wondering what that cover of dust?
Speaker 4: And it's a song that boys learned when we first
Speaker 4: took to the streets, but it tells the story of
Speaker 4: a previous revelation, one that didn't succeed.
Speaker 3: Can you tell us what that song's about? Like, do
Speaker 3: you know what the lyrics are and stuff?
Speaker 10: And yeah, we can try.
Speaker 3: I heard the word democracy in there.
Speaker 5: I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it's like all the lives that
Speaker 5: we democracy.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Do people use it for the Spring Revolution as well
Speaker 4: as eighty eight?
Speaker 5: Yeah, because it is the same thing, Tell the world,
Speaker 5: and that's the name of the song, tell the world.
Speaker 3: It is cool, Yeah, I tell the world.
Speaker 5: So basically the song is like, yeah, they sang it
Speaker 5: in the back in the eighty eight and then it's
Speaker 5: like we used it quite a lot when when we
Speaker 5: were in the protest to Yeah. The lyars are We'll
Speaker 5: keep fighting until the end of the world for the
Speaker 5: sake of history and revolution in our blood and of
Speaker 5: the fallen heroes who fought for the democracy. Oh, our
Speaker 5: dearest heroes, this is the lene of like heroes, like
Speaker 5: yeah and yeah, it goes on and then m hm
Speaker 5: m hmm, yeah, basically saying like something like the history
Speaker 5: went wrong along the way, but we have to fix it. Yeah,
Speaker 5: like the country has shed its blood and how could
Speaker 5: they commit such violence to its own people, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and yeah, like they say, like the blood on the
Speaker 5: rods and the streets are not dried yet. And for
Speaker 5: the sake of these people who die for the democracy,
Speaker 5: for fighting for democracy, for the sake of them, we have.
Speaker 9: To keep fighting basically.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now in their exile, they keep singing it to remember
Speaker 4: the first day of the revolution, when the fights were
Speaker 4: in the street, not the jungle, before they lost so
Speaker 4: many of their comrades.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then there was a night protest in front
Speaker 5: of the police station. Oh this is they're singing the song. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I got very very heated.
Speaker 4: The protest, friends were just talking about occurred in reality,
Speaker 4: but the song popped up all across the country.
Speaker 5: When you played it in Yangon, you will sing it, yeah,
Speaker 5: they and ygo. It wasn't one guitar, it was a
Speaker 5: whole band. Well, you have like protest sitting down and
Speaker 5: then there's a group of people who were playing this
Speaker 5: and repeatedly there are a bunch of songs that will
Speaker 5: play and then.
Speaker 9: There's like words that we would say.
Speaker 5: And yeah, like yeah, I beam gown and you'll see
Speaker 5: from the footage how it's.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how does it make you feel singing it?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 6: It's scary, you know, it's like.
Speaker 11: The song, the song is very real. So like at
Speaker 11: first we didn't want to play the song. It's too dark,
Speaker 11: it's too it's too intense, right yeah, like yeah, but.
Speaker 5: It's not like the levers are there like you can
Speaker 5: see it.
Speaker 10: You know.
Speaker 5: It's like because we've been through it too, so it's
Speaker 5: very intense. And yeah, I think the first time I
Speaker 5: heard it, like I heard the song, I remember that
Speaker 5: we are fewing of Yeah, I still have it like
Speaker 5: every time we're saying it now, like this is not
Speaker 5: one of the songs that we usually sing like, it's
Speaker 5: not a fun song.
Speaker 12: Yeah, bebi album, Oh God, Bedia.
Speaker 2: De more Crazy.
Speaker 4: On the next episode, which you'll be able to download tomorrow,
Speaker 4: we'll talk about how the Hunter began to clamp down
Speaker 4: on the protests. Now, the protesters decided this struggle was
Speaker 4: too important to abandon and decided to fight back. Hi everyone,
Speaker 4: it's James here. I just wanted to note that lots
Speaker 4: of the words in this script are Burmese or Karen
Speaker 4: or Thai, and we've made every effort to make sure
Speaker 4: that we pronounce them correctly. But we're sure we've obviously
Speaker 4: made some mistakes along the way. That's not out of
Speaker 4: a lack of respect or out of a lack of
Speaker 4: re recording on my part, but we did want to
Speaker 4: note that where we've made a mistake, we're very sorry
Speaker 4: for doing so.
Speaker 3: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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Speaker 10: You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 10: monthly at Coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.