Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Robert Evans here and I wanted to let
Speaker 1: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 1: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 1: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 1: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 1: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be nothing new here for you, but you
Speaker 1: can make your own decisions. All dem crazy died word.
Speaker 1: Millions of Americans took to the streets to protest police violence.
Speaker 1: They were met with police violence on a massive scale. Shootings,
Speaker 1: vehicle attacks, and assassinations occurred alongside these protests, often in
Speaker 1: defense of the police, and in total, at least twenty
Speaker 1: five Americans died. We now know that President Trump repeatedly
Speaker 1: urged General Mark Milly to deploy U S military forces
Speaker 1: to crack down violently on demonstrations. Milly claims that Trump
Speaker 1: told him to have his soldiers cracked skulls, beat the
Speaker 1: funk out of and just shoot protesters. In the end,
Speaker 1: we were all lucky. Military leaders, including General Milly, resisted
Speaker 1: calls to use their men to suppress domestic descent. National
Speaker 1: Guard were called in to police several major cities, but
Speaker 1: in many cases their behavior was tame compared to the
Speaker 1: militarized police who were reliably shot and beat protesters. For
Speaker 1: millions of Americans, twenty twenty was their first exposure to
Speaker 1: the violence the state will do to avoid change. And
Speaker 1: then Trump lost the election. He and his followers tried
Speaker 1: to carry out a coup but failed for now and
Speaker 1: millions of Americans who'd take into the streets mostly went
Speaker 1: back to their lives. Some were satisfied justice had been done,
Speaker 1: others were furious to have stopped short of instituting real change,
Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, business went on
Speaker 1: as usual. A version of normal prevailed. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: the military of Myanmar, known as the Totmadau, overthrew the
Speaker 1: elected government in a coup. Hundreds of thousands of citizens,
Speaker 1: most of them young, gin zy and millennial men and women,
Speaker 1: took to the streets. Police responded with tear gas, water cannons,
Speaker 1: and eventually bullets. The international community expressed its horror at
Speaker 1: the brutality of the Totmadau, but that's all they did.
Speaker 1: Over the course of several months, the military pushed protesters,
Speaker 1: mostly out of the cities and a protest movement against
Speaker 1: the military coup turned into a civil war. Now those
Speaker 1: same protesters, mostly kids who wanted nothing more than a
Speaker 1: normal life, have become revolutionaries. With home made guns, three
Speaker 1: D printed rockets, and stolen rifles. They battled the Totmadau.
Speaker 1: Some of them fight in the jungles, some of them
Speaker 1: fight in the cities, and some of them fight on
Speaker 1: the internet. This is their story. We're sitting in a
Speaker 1: large suburban home in my Sought, Thailand, a small city
Speaker 1: on the border of me An Mar. The boys singing
Speaker 1: and playing music around us range an age from seventeen
Speaker 1: to twenty two. Their existence in Thailand is a crime.
Speaker 1: If they are caught here, they'll be forced to cross
Speaker 1: the border into my an Mar, whose government executed their
Speaker 1: friends and sold the organs for profit. But tonight they're
Speaker 1: playing music. We're drinking beer. Later, James Stout and I
Speaker 1: will play pool with them and get our asses just
Speaker 1: catastrophically wrecked. We met Andy, aged two and head of
Speaker 1: the family. For his Instagram page, that's only real name,
Speaker 1: but for obvious reasons, we can't identify him. We first
Speaker 1: met when I sent him at d m asking we
Speaker 1: could buy one of his photos for our first series
Speaker 1: on Me and mar He was a bit skeptical, but
Speaker 1: I tried my best to get him to see we
Speaker 1: just wanted to give him money and promote his work.
Speaker 1: Over the next six months or so, we weren't from
Speaker 1: talking on the phone own to messaging almost every day,
Speaker 1: to Robert and I booking tickets to Thailand, to sitting
Speaker 1: on the top floor of their house. It used to
Speaker 1: be his landlord's office, but now it's home to Andy
Speaker 1: and his partner Sarah. That's also not her real name,
Speaker 1: because she's a citizen of a Western nation working in Thailand.
Speaker 1: The boys we talk about are brothers, his cousin and friends.
Speaker 1: They live at a small building across the garden, and
Speaker 1: in the daytime they sit under a gazeeba and play
Speaker 1: their guitars. The first night we met Andy and Sarah,
Speaker 1: we sat behind a barn an unpaved alleyway. We drank
Speaker 1: beer out of sippy cups because selling beer is still
Speaker 1: banned at the local COVID regulations, but apparently the cops
Speaker 1: don't check sippy cups. We drank far too much, in fact,
Speaker 1: and the next day I work up with a headache
Speaker 1: and a blurry photo of me, Robert and Andy engaged
Speaker 1: in a pose which was half hug and half mutual
Speaker 1: support structure. We walked home and according to my phone,
Speaker 1: at some point we took photos of a puppy and
Speaker 1: and hopefully unrelated incident. At some point I started leading.
Speaker 1: It was immediately obvious that Andy needed the chance to
Speaker 1: blow off some steam over the last year and change,
Speaker 1: he is chronicled every stage of the coup in its aftermath.
Speaker 1: In early videos we see joyous protests, moments of resistance,
Speaker 1: and splendor in the streets of cities like me Awiti.
Speaker 1: Later we see violence, death, and guerrilla warfare. And he
Speaker 1: didn't have what you would call an easy childhood, thanks
Speaker 1: in part to me and mas long history of revolutions
Speaker 1: being crushed by the army. People there, like people everywhere,
Speaker 1: want to be free and determine their own futures, and
Speaker 1: so each generation has its own uprising, and each generation
Speaker 1: has its own massacre and very little progress to show
Speaker 1: for it. I was born in two thou so Um.
Speaker 1: When I was seven seven, there was a revolution. It's
Speaker 1: called Staffron revolution. It wasn't it wasn't like this you know,
Speaker 1: it wasn't like what happened now, but like there were
Speaker 1: a lot of people that were involved in it, a
Speaker 1: lot of people that killed. A lot of people left
Speaker 1: Myanmar and came to the refugee counts in here, and
Speaker 1: we were one of the families that came to the
Speaker 1: refugee counts. Um And Andy's mother is Buma, the dominant
Speaker 1: ethnic group in Myanmar due to their decades long control
Speaker 1: of the military and government. His father is Karin, the
Speaker 1: ethnic group once used by the British government as soldiers.
Speaker 1: Since nineteen forty nine, the Karin have fought a war
Speaker 1: in the mountains against the Top Medal. Their name is
Speaker 1: often anglicized to be spelled just like the English name Karen, which,
Speaker 1: given present Internet trends, makes explaining the conflict sometimes awkward.
Speaker 1: Andy primarily identifies as and was raised Mamma. His family
Speaker 1: left after the Saffron Revolution. They did not flee to
Speaker 1: escape political repression, but because the economy had collapsed. This
Speaker 1: put them in an awkward position in the camps, which
Speaker 1: were filled mostly with Karin people who had fled state violence.
Speaker 1: We weren't refugees, right, We were more like how do
Speaker 1: you say, like economic refugees. You know, we go because
Speaker 1: not because our village has been burned down and our
Speaker 1: family has been killed. You know. So then if we
Speaker 1: were to go back to Yangon, we still could find
Speaker 1: a job, We still could find you know. Um, but
Speaker 1: then for these current people, like this place is the
Speaker 1: only place that they could exist at that moment, right
Speaker 1: and probably still now too. So yeah, so they said that,
Speaker 1: but that that education wasn't very good there. There's the
Speaker 1: life wasn't good, you know, it wasn't It wasn't. It
Speaker 1: was very bad. Honestly, it was very bad. It was
Speaker 1: a lot of violence, a lot of hate, a lot
Speaker 1: of understandable you know, like these people have gone through
Speaker 1: so much ship and so much trauma that and nothing,
Speaker 1: no one is coming there to fix that. So they
Speaker 1: had a lot of anger, They had a lot of problems. Um,
Speaker 1: but my my mom said, yeah, we're going back because
Speaker 1: the education here is very bad. And if you go
Speaker 1: back to Nama, at least, you know, if you do
Speaker 1: like the thing that people do, maybe you'll get somewhere. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in the future. Here there's no future. So she said,
Speaker 1: so we went back. Um, I was stay in your
Speaker 1: mar for like four years, Andy had never been very political.
Speaker 1: His family was more or less neutral, tending to side
Speaker 1: with the military more often than not out of a
Speaker 1: sense of inertia. Me and mar attended to cartwheel between
Speaker 1: attempts at democracy and military dictatorship. So when the world
Speaker 1: media celebrated their first democratic elections in twenty five years,
Speaker 1: Andy was not particularly excited. Yeah, so, I mean, we
Speaker 1: we did realize that there was a change in the country,
Speaker 1: right because we grew up in the military to take
Speaker 1: your ship. But then when intensity take over took over,
Speaker 1: there were some changes, like the phones got cheaper, the
Speaker 1: internet got cheaper, and if you look back then you
Speaker 1: can see big, big changes. But the thing is, it
Speaker 1: was never real democracy, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the Western countries thought that it was democracy
Speaker 1: when all Sensorgi took over. On Song Suchi came to
Speaker 1: prominence during a nineteen eighty eight uprising against the military,
Speaker 1: which ended in bloodshed in the streets of Yangon, and
Speaker 1: she'd been a long time democratic activist. As Andy noted,
Speaker 1: westerners celebrated her election as the first democratic head of
Speaker 1: state for Myanmar. She even won a Nobel Prize, but
Speaker 1: the agreement her party had made with the military gave
Speaker 1: the general significant permanent control over the government. But I
Speaker 1: think most of the people in the country knew it
Speaker 1: wasn't real democracy because you know, the military always had
Speaker 1: twenty five seats in the parliament, right like they were
Speaker 1: always they were in charge of electricity, entered, all these
Speaker 1: all these big things that weapons army, like the military itself,
Speaker 1: they are in charge of all these things, and they
Speaker 1: make it very clear, and even with a Nobel prize
Speaker 1: on song SUCHI did not fight to stop the top
Speaker 1: Mada from pursuing their decades long wars against the ethnic
Speaker 1: armed organizations in the Hills, nor did she act to
Speaker 1: stop their ethnic cleansing of the Rohinga people. In act,
Speaker 1: she and others in her party didn't even call them Rohinga.
Speaker 1: They called them Bengali and insisted they were illegally residing
Speaker 1: in Myanmar, despite mountains of evidence documenting a group by
Speaker 1: that name living in what is now the Rocking State.
Speaker 1: I think most Americans and Westerners in general can empathize
Speaker 1: with the feeling of electing someone who promises change and
Speaker 1: then getting very little of what you'd expected. I think
Speaker 1: all Sensuchi used to be this hope that that was
Speaker 1: like the opposition against the military. But I think when
Speaker 1: she got powered, um, she couldn't do all the things
Speaker 1: that she promised to do or like you know, we
Speaker 1: we looked at her before, we looked at her as something,
Speaker 1: you know, something hope for everyone for you know, for
Speaker 1: all the ethnic groups and for everyone in the country.
Speaker 1: But then when she became empowered, she mainly focus all
Speaker 1: these changes for the Bama people. Well, you know, the
Speaker 1: more the mainland people, like the military, Tree was still
Speaker 1: fucking killing people and killing athnic groups, they did they
Speaker 1: do something, you know, like, so then for the athnic groups,
Speaker 1: what's the difference? And so while Andy was hopeful that
Speaker 1: his country might take a better path, he was not
Speaker 1: exactly convinced that things were going to get better. Conflict
Speaker 1: within his family eventually pushed him to make the decision
Speaker 1: to leave. My dad was very abusive. He would be
Speaker 1: the ship out of my mom every day like that.
Speaker 1: It was fine, Like it was fine when when we
Speaker 1: were younger, we couldn't do anything, you know, we just
Speaker 1: kind of watched it, right, But the older we got,
Speaker 1: the more we involved, the more we try to stop it. Um.
Speaker 1: But then we were fight with him too, you know,
Speaker 1: and that so at some point it became too much,
Speaker 1: and so I left my home I think in two six,
Speaker 1: just by myself, and I was like, I've been to Massa.
Speaker 1: I will go back here, you know. So Andy lived
Speaker 1: across the border on his own for more than five years.
Speaker 1: He'd fallen in love, gotten a home with his own
Speaker 1: and set himself up in the sort of odd jobs
Speaker 1: you can do without papers or legal residency, and that's
Speaker 1: where things were for him. When the Topmadu carried out
Speaker 1: their coup in early two thousand one, February one, I
Speaker 1: was a mess. D I was here and yeah, in
Speaker 1: the morning, I woke up, called me my girlfriend and
Speaker 1: as she said, the military just did a coup in
Speaker 1: your country, you should call your family. The military claimed
Speaker 1: voter fraud and used that as the pretext to stay
Speaker 1: in power. It's a situation that should be unsettlingly familiar
Speaker 1: to most of our audience. For a while, Safe and
Speaker 1: Masat Andy watched it in horror as he texted with
Speaker 1: friends and family across the border. The arrest alsen Sugi
Speaker 1: in all the big leaders right at the top. So
Speaker 1: we were kind of like, okay, is someone going to
Speaker 1: tell us what to do, and especially for us, we
Speaker 1: didn't have any experiences. We didn't know anything about any
Speaker 1: of this that I'm talking about right now, I didn't
Speaker 1: have any knowledge of that. But yeah, So after I
Speaker 1: think six day, the military cut off the internet like
Speaker 1: for like two days, and I've lost all contact with
Speaker 1: everyone inside my family, my friends. And that's the night
Speaker 1: I started playing it, like, I started thinking, funk, I
Speaker 1: should go back and like and I saw the protest
Speaker 1: photos from yeng On. They looked amazing, right, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm a photographer. I should be there and you know,
Speaker 1: document that. While Andy was staring at the protest photo
Speaker 1: it's from the capital of Myanmar, napid Or, as well
Speaker 1: as Meality and the largest city, Yang Gone wondering if
Speaker 1: you should take his camera and document yet another rising
Speaker 1: for democracy in his home country. A young woman named
Speaker 1: a Mirror was in the thick of those protests and
Speaker 1: yeng Gone when the coup started. A Mirror, aged seventeen,
Speaker 1: had just finished high school. She was looking forward to
Speaker 1: university and more oppressingly, looking forward to playing footsore with
Speaker 1: their friends. She'd like to spend a day's crafting. She says,
Speaker 1: making little things to gift or to keep, like every
Speaker 1: other day. When she woke up, she spent ten minutes
Speaker 1: in medication before facing the world on the first of February.
Speaker 1: Long Sam Suki was her hero, she says. In our view,
Speaker 1: her boyfriend translated for her. We'll get to their story later.
Speaker 1: But when the Cube began, they lived a world apart.
Speaker 1: They joined the whole generation in feeling in rage. But
Speaker 1: Tapma door trying to rip the freedom their parents had
Speaker 1: fought for from them. A mirror took her rage into
Speaker 1: the street. Someone gave her a bullhorn because of her wife,
Speaker 1: and then she became the leader, you know with the bullhorn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what kind of stuff would you say to the ball
Speaker 1: through the bullhorn? Helloa, you don't want you do? Oh,
Speaker 1: she's saying, uh, this is and fell and then uh
Speaker 1: this is what? Oh that the erastian that ar Sansoti
Speaker 1: is a and fell not fair? Okay okay, yeah. And
Speaker 1: then and then she believed that, uh, she believed in
Speaker 1: what the sense she said, like everything is possible, and
Speaker 1: we haven't do anything, we haven't studied yet, and then
Speaker 1: but when we study it, and then we can finish it.
Speaker 1: So everything is possible. So so that's what she believed in.
Speaker 1: So she she went on the road and then she
Speaker 1: put us across the city from a mirror. On co
Speaker 1: Dayak's girlfriend woke him up with the news that the
Speaker 1: government they had voted for had been arrested. We're calling
Speaker 1: him Yak here because that's his name. In the revolution,
Speaker 1: everyone has one. A mirror is his baby, because she's
Speaker 1: so young yet so fierce. Yeah, if you're wondering, means monkey.
Speaker 1: These revolutionaries who have risked life and limb for each other,
Speaker 1: didn't know the legal names of the people they call
Speaker 1: their revolution family because it's safer that way, and we
Speaker 1: don't either. Miall could spend the night. Well, I'll let
Speaker 1: you hear Harry Phraset. Actually, I was just like I
Speaker 1: was chilling with my scare friend, you know, our tailing
Speaker 1: and we were you know, you know, Neflis and Chay
Speaker 1: like one in January Neflist and I think it's a Sunday.
Speaker 1: I think it's Sunday. Nele and Chay we sleep together.
Speaker 1: If you didn't catch that they were Netflix and chilling,
Speaker 1: you know, I was literally no wake up but any
Speaker 1: louder show. I was so sleep but but at the
Speaker 1: four a m. There's a phone rains and I suddenly
Speaker 1: wake up. That's phone ring from my carel friend. How
Speaker 1: Angie called ca call call hat and she said there's
Speaker 1: a cool defeat. Oh and she wake up and she
Speaker 1: told me there's a cool And then you know, I
Speaker 1: don't believe it. I believe it. I didn't believe it.
Speaker 1: So other time I chaed the social media. Oh ship,
Speaker 1: may I'll actually do this. I'm so angry and I'm
Speaker 1: so angry, you know. I was boord the doll down
Speaker 1: there and told to my family, there's a good of
Speaker 1: the everyone's angry at those things that the internet they
Speaker 1: cut off. The next revolutionary were going to mean, it's
Speaker 1: a fellow. Will call doctor Wonder because that's his revolution name.
Speaker 1: When the coup started, he was just waking up after
Speaker 1: a twenty four hour shift at the hospital and Yangon
Speaker 1: where he worked. Doctors were some of the earliest and
Speaker 1: most visible dissidents in the protest. Their rarity and therefore
Speaker 1: their relative value to the regime made them oppotent symbol
Speaker 1: of the pro democracy movement. But as doctor Wondered me clear,
Speaker 1: many older medical professionals and not at all certain that
Speaker 1: resistance was the right move here at the morning, I
Speaker 1: saw the news that bad really really bad news for us.
Speaker 1: How could I say that? Ah name bro you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: Dad broke our future. Doctors were some of the earliest
Speaker 1: most visible dissidents the pro democracy protests. Their rarity and
Speaker 1: relative value to the regime made them a potent symbol
Speaker 1: of the pro democracy movement, But as doctor Wonder made clear,
Speaker 1: many older medical professionals were not at all certain that
Speaker 1: resistance was a right move. On that money, we go
Speaker 1: back to our h I also said our hospital we
Speaker 1: are send that you know or professors or concerntors did
Speaker 1: not much interest about that be whilst they told us, um,
Speaker 1: you know whoever rules our campee, this is not our business.
Speaker 1: This is one of our seniors doctors from our society
Speaker 1: for our department pool us like that. But we reply him, no,
Speaker 1: this should be the last time. You didn't catch that?
Speaker 1: He said, it should be the last time, the last
Speaker 1: time kids had to die in the streets. They didn't
Speaker 1: want another generation to have to go through the same thing,
Speaker 1: so they got together a proposal, a sort of manifesto
Speaker 1: for peaceful, non violent resistance, and they submitted it to
Speaker 1: their seniors. We negotiated with our ship, you know, young resident,
Speaker 1: our society, and we discussed about that and we plan
Speaker 1: to start with our one of our prior movement before
Speaker 1: say that disagreement. We have got a rep one movement
Speaker 1: because we want to try peacefully on the media. Okay,
Speaker 1: We started like that and then uh, some of our
Speaker 1: seniors from our society, they were from mentally hospital. Okay,
Speaker 1: they accept our propos yes, because our generation has already
Speaker 1: passed that difficulties before, but not your generation shouldn't accept that.
Speaker 1: Three days before the queue, t K got off a
Speaker 1: plane in San Francisco. He's from Myanmar, but he lives
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area. Now before you ask, he says
Speaker 1: that the Burmese restaurant there is not as good as
Speaker 1: stuff back home. It's only three days three days before,
Speaker 1: three days before I went back to the to the
Speaker 1: United States, and I wish I'm would stay in a
Speaker 1: young ol and a doing the revolution and I participate
Speaker 1: in a everywhere that I can, but that I couldn't
Speaker 1: do from the from the loud distance, you know. So
Speaker 1: so that's all I can do for now. T K
Speaker 1: had just been in Mianma. He had connections to many
Speaker 1: people on the ground there. His friends were there, his
Speaker 1: family were there. When the government cut off internet access,
Speaker 1: he remained able to get good international reporting on the
Speaker 1: situation in his home country. Slowly he found ways to
Speaker 1: communicate with his friends and a growing core of the
Speaker 1: protesters taking to the streets. I was a keyboard fighter.
Speaker 1: I have no idea about the politics. I have no
Speaker 1: idea about the military stuff. This is a single most
Speaker 1: common sentiment we've heard across all the revolution we've met.
Speaker 1: None of them considered themselves to be very political prior
Speaker 1: to the coupe. They started marching in the street because
Speaker 1: the military coup was obviously bad, but they stayed there
Speaker 1: because the violence dished out by the state was so horrific.
Speaker 1: Safe at the house in Maso, we talked to the
Speaker 1: boys and his brothers and cousins, all of whom were
Speaker 1: living in Napidor. When the cook kicked off, it didn't
Speaker 1: take him long to try and join them. Then I
Speaker 1: went in. I went to Maality, which is across the
Speaker 1: border in ther marside Um, and I was there for
Speaker 1: a week and it was it was something else like
Speaker 1: I've never been to protest now I've never been involved
Speaker 1: in any of this thing, and I never thought I
Speaker 1: would be, you know, like I I don't know. I
Speaker 1: always thought like I wasn't going to be a part
Speaker 1: of it. But when I went there the first day,
Speaker 1: I write there were two thousand people on the street protesting.
Speaker 1: And then it's like, and this big group of people
Speaker 1: walk in streets after street and everyone coming out of
Speaker 1: their house and we have this symbol like three fingers
Speaker 1: from Hangar game. I think, um, yeah, so that's like
Speaker 1: our symbol for democracy now, our our our movement now.
Speaker 1: And everyone come out of their house doing that, and
Speaker 1: you know, like giving us water, food, everything. It was beautiful,
Speaker 1: like it was. It was something else. It was something else.
Speaker 1: And then from that day I was like hook, I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, this is what I'm gonna do. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be a photographer and I'm gonna in this,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm gonna I'm gonna take photo of
Speaker 1: these people and their stories and I'm going to share
Speaker 1: it and that's that's my part, that's my rule. Soon
Speaker 1: he found friends among the protesters. Within a few days,
Speaker 1: he was feeling a feeling that so many people felt
Speaker 1: in It's a eat you felt. If you've ever been
Speaker 1: in the thick of a crowd of people filled with
Speaker 1: righteous anger and facing down overwhelmed police or soldiers, it's
Speaker 1: a sensation. I can't really described you you haven't experienced it,
Speaker 1: but I can say that there's no time that I've
Speaker 1: ever felt more empowered than the times I've been crushed
Speaker 1: shoulders shoulder with strangers, toe to toe with state violence,
Speaker 1: and watch cops break and retreat. It's incredible. It's addictive,
Speaker 1: and if I'm honest, it's probably why Robert and I
Speaker 1: booked a flight to visit a stranger. I've been dem
Speaker 1: ng on the grand Um. I think after three days,
Speaker 1: I met this group of people, young people, like students
Speaker 1: trying to be lawyers and so, and I figured out
Speaker 1: that they were the ones trying to organize these big protests,
Speaker 1: like two people, a hundred thousand people. They were the
Speaker 1: ones that's making that happen. So I started kind of
Speaker 1: following them, trying to get close because I wanted to
Speaker 1: get stories from them. Um. And then they became they
Speaker 1: and they realized what I've been doing. They've been watching
Speaker 1: like and so they were like very welcome, and they
Speaker 1: took me to this hide out that they go to,
Speaker 1: and then we will have discussions and meetings about what
Speaker 1: we should do the next day. Da da da um.
Speaker 1: But then it's because it's a small town. Right. Slowly,
Speaker 1: I think police and military started realizing that we are
Speaker 1: that group too young. Oh, Demo crazy died word very much.
Speaker 1: Oh so by now you're probably wondering what that cover
Speaker 1: of dust in the window. It's a song the boys
Speaker 1: learned when we first took to the streets. But it
Speaker 1: tells the story of a previous revelation, one that didn't succeed.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us with that? Songs about like you
Speaker 1: know what the lyrics are and stuff and everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we can try. I heard the word democracy in there.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it's like all that were lost
Speaker 1: in fighting for democracy. Yeah. The people use it for
Speaker 1: the Spring Revolution as well as because tell the World,
Speaker 1: and that's the name of the song. Tell the World
Speaker 1: is cool, Yeah, I till the world. So basically the
Speaker 1: song is like, yeah, they sang it in the back
Speaker 1: in the AD eight and then it's like we used
Speaker 1: it quite a lot when we were in the protest too. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the laris are We'll keep fighting until the end of
Speaker 1: the world. For the sake of history and revolution in
Speaker 1: our blood and of the fallen heroes who fought for
Speaker 1: the democracy. Um oh, our DearS heroes. This is the
Speaker 1: lend of like heroes. M hmm. Yeah, and yeah it
Speaker 1: goes on and then m yeah, basically saying like something
Speaker 1: like the history went wrong along the way, but we
Speaker 1: have to fix it. Yeah, like the country has shuttis
Speaker 1: blood and how could they commit such violence to its
Speaker 1: own people, you know, um yeah, and yeah, like they say,
Speaker 1: like the blood on the rose and the streets are
Speaker 1: not dried yet. Um. And for the sake of these
Speaker 1: people who have die for the democracy, for fighting for democracy,
Speaker 1: for the sake of them, we have to keep fighting basically. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now in their exile, they keep singing it to remember
Speaker 1: the first day of the revolution, when the fights are
Speaker 1: in the street, not the jungle, before they lost so
Speaker 1: many of their comrades. And then that was a night
Speaker 1: protest in front of the police. Issue candy. Oh, this
Speaker 1: is they're singing the song that the sing Yeah, I
Speaker 1: got very very heated. The protests our friends were just
Speaker 1: talking about occurred in reality, but the song popped up
Speaker 1: all across the country when you played it and young
Speaker 1: you will sing it? Yeah, there they and yeah, it
Speaker 1: was in one guitar. It was a whole band, like
Speaker 1: will you have like protesters sitting down and then there's
Speaker 1: a group of people who are playing this and repeatedly
Speaker 1: there are a bunch of songs that will play. And
Speaker 1: then there was like words that we would say and yeah,
Speaker 1: so getting myself, yeah, being down and you'll see from
Speaker 1: the footage, Oh yeah it's yeah. Yeah, how does it
Speaker 1: make you feel seeing the game now? It's scary, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like this song is very real. So like at first, um, um,
Speaker 1: we didn't want to play the song. It's too dark,
Speaker 1: it's too um it's too intense, right yeah, like yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's not like the levers are they're like you
Speaker 1: can see it, you know. It's like because we've don't
Speaker 1: we've been through it too, so it's very intense. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the first time I heard it, like I
Speaker 1: heard the song, I remember that we were few and
Speaker 1: of yeah, I still have it like every time we're
Speaker 1: saying it now. This is not one of the songs
Speaker 1: that we usually say. It's not a fun song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: bo video must Room Wait the more crazy died word.
Speaker 1: On the next episode, which you'll be able to download tomorrow,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about how the Hunter began to clamp down
Speaker 1: on the protests. Now the protesters decided this struggle was
Speaker 1: too important to abandon and decided to fight back. Oh
Speaker 1: Like many people in my amber, the boys weren't usually
Speaker 1: political before the protest, but what they saw in the
Speaker 1: street to change them. This wasn't about the minor disagreement
Speaker 1: between two parties. It was about fighting for the right
Speaker 1: to live their lives without a boot. On their next election,
Speaker 1: had delivered victory to Asan Suki's National League for Democracy
Speaker 1: and delivered a resounding vote of no confidence in the
Speaker 1: political arm of the top of the door, the nation's military.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting here that yes, we are compressing some
Speaker 1: complex things. The elections weren't perfect, and people in areas
Speaker 1: that were largely non Berman tend not to support the NLD.
Speaker 1: The NLD had failed to prevent a genocide, but in
Speaker 1: the country that was well accustomed to harsh military rule,
Speaker 1: there remained a better option than a military which saw
Speaker 1: ruling is its right and it's sold just a separate
Speaker 1: from the citizens. So when the military lost a record
Speaker 1: number of seats. Everyone knew what would happen next, the
Speaker 1: same thing that happened in the same thing that always
Speaker 1: happened when the people came a little too close to
Speaker 1: taking power from their military. So that happened on the
Speaker 1: very first one and the first few days we didn't
Speaker 1: know what to do. We I mean we we knew
Speaker 1: the military was going to make it coop because one
Speaker 1: the analogy won the election. That's why. That's how it started,
Speaker 1: right and then and the military saying that they you know,
Speaker 1: they cheated, they like, I don't know how to say,
Speaker 1: they like funked up the votes, and you know, they
Speaker 1: make themselves win. It wasn't true. I mean, the military,
Speaker 1: what's not gonna win at all? Like it was because,
Speaker 1: like I said, there were changes. You know, people saw
Speaker 1: those changes, and and people were saying, yes, if she
Speaker 1: had one more you know, like four more years, qight
Speaker 1: more years, she could make a real difference. Those first
Speaker 1: few days of protest, everyone says felt hopeful, just like
Speaker 1: our protagonists and Zor who he met in the previous episode,
Speaker 1: thousands of young people ran into the streets and found
Speaker 1: solidarity in a simple politics to fuck that guy. There
Speaker 1: were so many people man insane, so in reality there
Speaker 1: was I think two hundred thousand people that day. The
Speaker 1: marches got bigger every day and it seemed like nothing
Speaker 1: could stop them. Briefly, Western news organizations public stories and
Speaker 1: everyone hoped that the U N or the U S
Speaker 1: or EU would show up and the Top Meadow will
Speaker 1: be dealt with once and for all. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: trying to film, but then one of the guy pointed
Speaker 1: a gun at me and I was like, but none
Speaker 1: of that happened. The stories stopped. The West never sent
Speaker 1: a single bullet or soldier, and the Top Meda deployed thousands.
Speaker 1: Even after a year. All the boys remember the first
Speaker 1: time they saw the force of the state turned against them.
Speaker 1: Even before he got out of the border town of Milwadi,
Speaker 1: and he saw the Top Medau begin to fight back
Speaker 1: against the movement that had grown up to oppose them.
Speaker 1: It's a story we heard from everyone we spoke to.
Speaker 1: Once they began organizing, the cops started trying to infiltrate
Speaker 1: their groups. I think police and military started realizing that
Speaker 1: we are that group too, so then they started trying
Speaker 1: to like tracked down. So there was one night where
Speaker 1: two of the guys almost got arrested and then they
Speaker 1: ran away and then we're like, okay, they were kind
Speaker 1: of following us. Yeah yeah, And so after a week, Um,
Speaker 1: the same thing happened. I was living because I wasn't
Speaker 1: from yality. They didn't know I was just a new face,
Speaker 1: so they didn't really know where I lived or you know,
Speaker 1: and I always like take like two or three taxi
Speaker 1: just to get to where I was there. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but the same place or you like switching. No, that
Speaker 1: was the same place, but it was out of town.
Speaker 1: Three of his friends got arrested. They're still in jail.
Speaker 1: Actually in jail is the best case scenario because the
Speaker 1: top medal make a habit of executing captured activists. The
Speaker 1: stakes were life and death at every moment, and covering
Speaker 1: the movement on a daily basis took its toll on
Speaker 1: Andy and his brothers too. So my younger brother, Um,
Speaker 1: they were in the capital city and that the first
Speaker 1: time the military killed someone, they were there, they were
Speaker 1: in the same protest, so they saw the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and you know, they were traumatized. And so I thought
Speaker 1: at the second time, I went back and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: you know, like it's better to bring them all together
Speaker 1: with me, like in the same place that we do
Speaker 1: it together than all of us spread out everywhere, you know.
Speaker 1: And like I said, my family's military on the military side,
Speaker 1: so they didn't like that my brothers were going out
Speaker 1: to protest. So that I was like, Okay, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: bring you guys, um, and yeah, so we did all that.
Speaker 1: We did the young protests together, six of us. They
Speaker 1: came face to face with the potential cost of their
Speaker 1: struggle and they were in neapedal when that happened. They
Speaker 1: and it's it's military city, so it's very heavily controlled
Speaker 1: by the military. And the first time they went out
Speaker 1: to the protest um, the military shoot people. And he was, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was like these trucks with the water penants. So
Speaker 1: he got here by one and like he he wasn't
Speaker 1: feeling well, so they took him to the angulands. But
Speaker 1: then once he got in there, there was a guy
Speaker 1: without his eyes because they shot like broad bullets into him. Um,
Speaker 1: he was When Andy says Napierda is a military city,
Speaker 1: he isn't just saying it's a city like Colleen, Texas
Speaker 1: or San Diego Napioda is a city created out of
Speaker 1: nothing starting in two thousand two to be a capital
Speaker 1: for Myanmar. If you've seen it at all, it's probably
Speaker 1: in a TV show that mocks the totalitarian excess of
Speaker 1: building seven lane motorways in a city that was until
Speaker 1: recently only populated by the people building it. Top Gear
Speaker 1: played car football on the empty freeways, and the TV
Speaker 1: show Dark Tourists also featured the city. Today, it is
Speaker 1: a real city with a real population, but everything about
Speaker 1: it was designed to reinforce authority. And yet the boys
Speaker 1: and thousands of others took to the streets here, streets
Speaker 1: built to reinforce the power of the people they were
Speaker 1: fighting to demand that the military listened to them. Andy
Speaker 1: shows us a picture of the man with his eyes
Speaker 1: shot out. It looks how you think it would, and
Speaker 1: it is worth noting that shooting people's eyes out is
Speaker 1: a time honored international policing tactic. US cops shot more
Speaker 1: than a hundred and fifteen people in the face with
Speaker 1: less lethal munitions, thirty suffered permanent damage to their eyes.
Speaker 1: But in Myanmar everything escalated several levels higher than that.
Speaker 1: Shooting out eyes wasn't radical violence. For the Totmadal, they
Speaker 1: treated it more like stretching before a run. In one protest,
Speaker 1: the boys saw some drunk people tossing water bottles at
Speaker 1: the police. The police responded with live gunfire from the
Speaker 1: police can fall. The people's are turned to the side
Speaker 1: and the retreat. Yeah, yeah, very intense situation. Peoples are running.
Speaker 1: They also some guys during rocks back to the police.
Speaker 1: That's when the police shooting. Andy translated the next part
Speaker 1: for us. He so he was in the protest and
Speaker 1: then they started shooting, and he ran away and got
Speaker 1: a mail. But he was not in his neighborhood or
Speaker 1: in his area of the city. He was somewhere else.
Speaker 1: Um So when they started running, he didn't have anywhere
Speaker 1: to go. And then someone um like accepted him at
Speaker 1: the house. They say, coming, coming, and he hid and yeah,
Speaker 1: so yeah, he hid in that house for like two
Speaker 1: hours until the shooting stopped. It wasn't until they got
Speaker 1: home that they realized the police had killed someone. In
Speaker 1: the early days of what became the revolution, people formed
Speaker 1: tight bonds and made radical commitments in the form of
Speaker 1: legal activity. Well, the top of the door was still
Speaker 1: scrambling to counter the counter coup. Everyone felt the clamp
Speaker 1: down bite at a different time. It longer than average
Speaker 1: for the cops to find the mirror and her carter
Speaker 1: of revolutionaries, but eventually that day came. It came, and
Speaker 1: she and her friends were gathered in a T shirt
Speaker 1: preparing for an action. At that time on that day,
Speaker 1: they are trying to protects in a sandal provenience. Uh
Speaker 1: so before the protests that they catering the people at
Speaker 1: the T shop. Uh. They sitting in the table with
Speaker 1: with her teams about including her five people, but she
Speaker 1: had to go and give the banner to the other groups.
Speaker 1: So she's leaving just about like this match. And then
Speaker 1: then the soldiers came into the tea shop and then
Speaker 1: arrested her teammates. She's lucky to escape it, yeah, really narrowed,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, so did she could leave immediately? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So that's how she came here because her teammates know
Speaker 1: where she left, her house and everything. So she has
Speaker 1: no choice to stay in the Younger, but that she
Speaker 1: stay organizing her teams to the protests in the Younger
Speaker 1: from here? From here? What her parents think when she
Speaker 1: had to leave, So her parents told her the survival.
Speaker 1: It's the first so she can do whatever she wants
Speaker 1: and then but she have to be on her own. Okay,
Speaker 1: well yeah, and then they don't they agree, you know,
Speaker 1: like if she wants to leave, just leave. If she
Speaker 1: stay want to do the you know, uh, protesting or
Speaker 1: whatever she wants, and they're not saying no to her,
Speaker 1: but they're not supporting. They just sort of thing she's
Speaker 1: on her own. Yeah, she's on her own. That's that's
Speaker 1: how last night I told you guys that she lost
Speaker 1: her inheritance. Uh, like you know, she had to give
Speaker 1: up on everything. Well, every in San Francisco. T K
Speaker 1: could see what was happening through his scouts on the
Speaker 1: ground and soldiers post on Facebook. He started to amass
Speaker 1: a huge amount of intel. He also knew where the
Speaker 1: underground groups and obedience movement centers were in the city's
Speaker 1: and when he saw the cops of the military coming
Speaker 1: for them, he was able to give them their heads up.
Speaker 1: So whenever we we have like you know, information about
Speaker 1: from the you know, some cd M soldiers, some CIDIUM police,
Speaker 1: and then they gave him the informations had so we
Speaker 1: got to inform mentions. So like okay, those guys are
Speaker 1: going to the you know, let's say, okay, this place
Speaker 1: and within one hour so from that place wherever living
Speaker 1: the underground kings move out to get out. Yeah, get out. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So so so that kind of things are with with that,
Speaker 1: we save a lot of people. And then we got
Speaker 1: arrested people too, But we also saved people. Everyone we
Speaker 1: spoke to told us the same story. They went into
Speaker 1: the street thinking that if they made enough noise, the
Speaker 1: world would listen, and that the US or the EU
Speaker 1: or the u N would defend democracy and invoked their
Speaker 1: responsibility to protect innocent people being gunned down in the street.
Speaker 1: To quote from the online publication The Diplomat, endorsed by
Speaker 1: all Member States of the United Dations in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: are two advances a potentially revolutionary idea that state sovereignty
Speaker 1: entails a responsibility for government to protect its population from
Speaker 1: massive trustee crimes and human rights violations. When a nation
Speaker 1: fails to exercise this responsibility, our two P grant the
Speaker 1: international community the legal warrant to intervene. The doctrine authorizes
Speaker 1: the use for a range of coercive tools, with military
Speaker 1: intervention as a last resort. People in Myanma thought that
Speaker 1: if they were peaceful, civil and respectable, the government of
Speaker 1: the world would do the right thing. The government of
Speaker 1: the world, however, didn't give a fuck. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: the protests are very very peaceful, you know. It's it's
Speaker 1: when you go into the protest, it's very peaceful, very organized,
Speaker 1: very um it's they try to make it look so clean,
Speaker 1: so nice because I guess you know, no, it was
Speaker 1: at the beginning they were trying to get attention from
Speaker 1: the international community, and they were hoping that someone will
Speaker 1: come in and say, you know, take down the military
Speaker 1: and put our government back. Yeah, a lot of people die,
Speaker 1: just like there was this saying like to you, and
Speaker 1: you know, people were saying how many like how many
Speaker 1: dead people do you need for you to take action? Right?
Speaker 1: And there are people saying I will if you need
Speaker 1: one more, I'll be that person. I'll just sucking die.
Speaker 1: I'll just get killed by the military so that you
Speaker 1: will come in and fix it and change the situation
Speaker 1: in the country. Right. A Mirror felt the same. She
Speaker 1: even organized the protest five people displaying the map of
Speaker 1: the whole country on the river and you ain't going
Speaker 1: She called it a suicide mission, but she thought it
Speaker 1: would send a visible signal to the world and it
Speaker 1: was worth risking her life to make the statement. At
Speaker 1: the time, she she she didn't know anything about the politics,
Speaker 1: so she believed in our TWOPI because people are protesting peacefully,
Speaker 1: but the government take the action. So other countries are
Speaker 1: gonna wait in and see and then they're gonna take
Speaker 1: the actions about that. That's what she believed in. And
Speaker 1: then she she decided to go protesting Peacefolly Theater And Okay,
Speaker 1: did she think that other countries, United States, whatever, we're
Speaker 1: gonna come in and intervene. Yeah, yeah, that that that's
Speaker 1: what she thought, Like, you know, I want the wall seal,
Speaker 1: the government take the actions and the convernment killing people
Speaker 1: and if they if the war knows, and then we
Speaker 1: can get a hab from the front. The other countries
Speaker 1: where they did find support within other countries in Asia,
Speaker 1: fighting games dictatorship, they formed the so called nulk Ti Alliance.
Speaker 1: Drough on the example of Hong Kong to learn how
Speaker 1: to stay in the streets when the government doesn't want
Speaker 1: you there. But then when it happens in our country,
Speaker 1: it's like, oh fuck, where does it happen before. And
Speaker 1: then we went back straight with Hong Kong and there
Speaker 1: was it's not just us, like, there were so much
Speaker 1: infographics and like you know, how to be in the protests,
Speaker 1: how to do certain things. It depending on the situation. Um,
Speaker 1: so we had a lot of information. We were yeah,
Speaker 1: we were looking through and I think that these are
Speaker 1: the same thing that like people in Hong Kong used,
Speaker 1: I think, but Hong Kong didn't have sniper shooting kids
Speaker 1: in the head or cops faring rifles blindly into crowds.
Speaker 1: But then later on, like by the time we got
Speaker 1: too young and people were sitting down, they were little protests.
Speaker 1: What the military does is they would come in and
Speaker 1: they would just start shooting everyone. There was no there's
Speaker 1: no negotiation, there was no hey, guys, can you move
Speaker 1: and then you know any any of that stuff. They
Speaker 1: were coming and they would treat this as a battlefield.
Speaker 1: And it didn't take a while, and didn't well, it
Speaker 1: did take a while. I think it's it took about
Speaker 1: like a month and a half for us to finally say,
Speaker 1: fuck the peaceful protests, the international community, they're not coming.
Speaker 1: If they would have come, they would have come a
Speaker 1: long time ago, you know, and we started fighting back.
Speaker 1: But when we say we fight back, it's like molt
Speaker 1: to cut tails slingshots. Dr Wondon exactly when and how
Speaker 1: police were killing people. He would spend his days charging
Speaker 1: people who would survive from those who might not make it. Soon,
Speaker 1: the worst nightmares of his medical team are coming true
Speaker 1: and the police began seizing his colleagues the alleged crime
Speaker 1: of saving lives. I remember before the military Melify police,
Speaker 1: a military man totally totally intruded our hospital one day.
Speaker 1: I think at the middle of their may. Okay, they
Speaker 1: totally intruded our hospital because the they have hearts our
Speaker 1: city and doctors are doing operation at that hospital because
Speaker 1: we have no more another police like that. Roum Trauma
Speaker 1: said that we we could give good treat man for
Speaker 1: that Trauma division because we have to take a risk.
Speaker 1: That's what we're gonna take a rest soon. One of
Speaker 1: our concenter was arrested at and Majesty Unity because he
Speaker 1: took he took also his race. But if he wasn't here,
Speaker 1: his junior can't handle that situation. You know. You know,
Speaker 1: so many tense hand dress injury endure patient on that day,
Speaker 1: mostly are can't you our pasion? You know, some are
Speaker 1: open at domen open limbs. Okay, so we have so
Speaker 1: many prices on that not things only got worse. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: There was a pregnant woman who got shot and obviously
Speaker 1: with the kids, and she died because she accepted like
Speaker 1: twenty protesters in her house and when they came, they
Speaker 1: shot and she wasn't like five weeks. Oh it's it's
Speaker 1: you can see that she was pregnant. Molty used straight
Speaker 1: up real bullets, like they don't give a ship, They
Speaker 1: don't give a ship. That the way the military control
Speaker 1: people is fear right, So then they want people to
Speaker 1: see that if you go against me, you'll die horribly,
Speaker 1: and they shoot hat. We saw so many faces with holes,
Speaker 1: you know, so many people with holes in their face,
Speaker 1: and it was fucked up, and it was scary because
Speaker 1: every time you go out, you're saying, that could be me,
Speaker 1: that could be my brothers, that could be you know.
Speaker 1: Very quickly the revolution organized itself, not with hierarchies, officers
Speaker 1: or vanguard parties. The people who existed in those roles
Speaker 1: had already been arrested or fled, so instead the revolution
Speaker 1: started with people giving whatever they could to the struggle
Speaker 1: and taking whatever they needed to get by. The revolutionaries reinterviewed.
Speaker 1: All initially thought that the struggle would be sure, that
Speaker 1: the world would come to their aid, but even when
Speaker 1: it became clear that this was not the case, they
Speaker 1: continue to fight under the logic that's better to die
Speaker 1: than live with a bluet on your neck. They took
Speaker 1: all the leaders from the opposition side, so there was
Speaker 1: no one to tell us what to do. There was
Speaker 1: no instructions, right, so there was like two days of Okay,
Speaker 1: what the funk do we do? You know? And then
Speaker 1: people started protesting, but small, like very small, and then
Speaker 1: I think after like five days, then there was like
Speaker 1: two d people everywhere, Like now that I remember the
Speaker 1: first day we arrived, I mean, we haven't seen each
Speaker 1: other since COVID started, so it was like rather, you know,
Speaker 1: back again and together. And then yeah, it was quite
Speaker 1: fun for like one night and then we're all hanging
Speaker 1: out and trying to plan what we're gonna do the
Speaker 1: next day. So basically we kind of planned that, like
Speaker 1: each of us had a rule, and our plan was
Speaker 1: to go out and kind of be like a media crew. Right,
Speaker 1: So we're filming, we're writing news, we're posting on the
Speaker 1: internet so that everywhere else people can see it. Um.
Speaker 1: So yeah, two of us are like the camera people,
Speaker 1: and then this too. They look out for the roads
Speaker 1: and streets, like because these places we've never been, right
Speaker 1: Danuel in these areas, So whenever we go to a protest,
Speaker 1: we'll sit down or we'll walk around and take photos
Speaker 1: while these twos goes around and look for the fastest escapes.
Speaker 1: You know, if the military come in, what would be
Speaker 1: the best way to go? Would you know? Escape? And
Speaker 1: then him another one. They kind of look after us.
Speaker 1: They look at the news to see what's happening around us,
Speaker 1: so that if there's an post on Facebook saying, oh
Speaker 1: there's a military truck heading towards you, we kind of
Speaker 1: be prepared, you know. But yeah, that was yeah, so
Speaker 1: we had a lot of energy at that time. It
Speaker 1: was like constant. We were going out out and you
Speaker 1: can see like it's always following me, like that's me
Speaker 1: and leaving him and he's always following me everywhere I go,
Speaker 1: so that's something happening and just grab me around. Well,
Speaker 1: the boys and Andy were reporting. Amira found her call
Speaker 1: on the front lines. It's almost impossible to stress how
Speaker 1: incredible she is. Before we recorded, she casually dropped into
Speaker 1: conversation that she also trained in knife fighting sometimes. We
Speaker 1: met her at a shooting range near my soft and
Speaker 1: blasted a few paper targets together with a twelve gage
Speaker 1: shotgun we've been using for a bit of target practice.
Speaker 1: When it jammed, and it always jammed, she cleared the
Speaker 1: chamber and got it back into action with a practiced
Speaker 1: efficiency that any formally trained soldier would have recognized. In
Speaker 1: the revolution, it didn't take long for her to find
Speaker 1: her way to the front lines, and she's got the
Speaker 1: scars to prove it, including some from hucking a tear
Speaker 1: gas grenade bare handed back at the cops. Others adopted
Speaker 1: roles to Some picked up shields and took on the
Speaker 1: police toe to toe. Other supported protesters with medical aid
Speaker 1: and food and water. So you can see the shield
Speaker 1: two three, four or five two Yeah, to make it
Speaker 1: and then you can see like they have these wet
Speaker 1: plus did bad too, like watch people's faces when they
Speaker 1: are two or like um two killed the smokes with
Speaker 1: the have what towels too, and then there's someone always
Speaker 1: watering it like you see here. Yeah, and this is
Speaker 1: all from the neighborhood like they provided to us. They
Speaker 1: built barricades and even developed a system of communications for
Speaker 1: when things were getting violent. This allowed folks who were
Speaker 1: not comfortable to get away, or at least that was
Speaker 1: the goal. So the white flag means like we have
Speaker 1: this place, like this is our But then the black
Speaker 1: flag means will suck you up back, like if you've
Speaker 1: done so much that we're gonna suck you up. You know, um,
Speaker 1: I have a video of it. Wanted changed to from
Speaker 1: white to black. Their tactics improved over time. When one
Speaker 1: group got kettled, another group would pop up nearby and
Speaker 1: draw soldiers away. Oh yeah, sure way. And then there
Speaker 1: was one time when one of one part of the
Speaker 1: city was enter attacked by the military. A lot of
Speaker 1: protesters were trapped in there, and so we decided to
Speaker 1: go out. So every other part of the city came
Speaker 1: out at nighttime to protest, so that they soldiers have
Speaker 1: to connect. Yeah, a mirror too, came face to face
Speaker 1: with state violence. Oh yeah, che yeah, Ballodi and d
Speaker 1: she read thrown in and she wants she wants to
Speaker 1: take the action path because they are all protesting peace
Speaker 1: folly and at that time she wants to have a superpower.
Speaker 1: M m yeah, maybe she does. What what did she
Speaker 1: what did she decided to do? What wouldn't they do
Speaker 1: at that time? And she feels like she's going until
Speaker 1: the act and then she would keep moving and then
Speaker 1: she was participate in every role that she can and
Speaker 1: then she would do as much as she can. That's
Speaker 1: that's what she decided to We saw that picture of
Speaker 1: her in front of the car. It was burnie. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're happened there with a throwing molotov cocktails. Yeah okay,
Speaker 1: so like smoke bombs and then something like that, and
Speaker 1: then she's trying to tow them back the picture. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so she picked it out and then she told them back,
Speaker 1: hurt your hand, Yeah you have a scar fucking well
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. Then uh she got hit by the smoke
Speaker 1: bone like a twice. And then at the time she
Speaker 1: lost everything. She lost her bags, she lost her phones,
Speaker 1: and someone have her to hold and took her back.
Speaker 1: That's how she escaped. They helped you. You know who
Speaker 1: helped you with it? A friend or just a stranger.
Speaker 1: Her friends is with her and I went to to
Speaker 1: your guess hit down, and then the other strangers had them,
Speaker 1: and then she got hit by that your guess, and
Speaker 1: then and then she almost faint and a black out.
Speaker 1: Our doctor who goes by wonder face a difficult choice.
Speaker 1: Returning to the hospital meant risking arrest. The military could
Speaker 1: come in any time to arrest injured protesters, and the
Speaker 1: doctors helping them, but not going back then letting his
Speaker 1: comrades die. State violence increased. He decided he needed to help.
Speaker 1: They killed so many paceful protester on that day, I
Speaker 1: think around about nearly round about hand or more might
Speaker 1: be more than that, Yes, on that day, you know,
Speaker 1: or because we have already we have already started see
Speaker 1: that this Orvidian movement on that on that time, because
Speaker 1: we didn't go the hospital there that was room by
Speaker 1: that generate Okay, okay, so we dear outside the hospital,
Speaker 1: you know, we we managed temporary camp like that because
Speaker 1: for emergency in Joel patient. At that time, I was
Speaker 1: involved one of the term side. Yeah, because but actually
Speaker 1: we can't do uh, some of the injury of pelet
Speaker 1: that may need for emergency operations like that bullet go through, Yeah,
Speaker 1: go to break the bombs and open wound. So but
Speaker 1: we have to take the risk because we have to
Speaker 1: operate that patient. We go to hospital trauma emergency department.
Speaker 1: We did our operation. I remember that night one of
Speaker 1: the patients was shot down by police and they chased,
Speaker 1: they followed that patient. We kept that patient in our
Speaker 1: hospital in our war We emergency or we did emergency
Speaker 1: operation on that at that night, on that night, and
Speaker 1: we imagining move him out on their not because we
Speaker 1: can't keep him on that hospital because ah soon he
Speaker 1: just left our hospital. The police just came and sat
Speaker 1: for him. But it is one of our ice creams. Uh.
Speaker 1: They just quite there again. Yeah, what is that guy?
Speaker 1: T K got on telegram? Lots of people couldn't be
Speaker 1: underground fighting, but they still wanted to be part of
Speaker 1: the struggle. He developed good connections with people on the ground,
Speaker 1: but first that was just him desperately try and stay informed.
Speaker 1: But soon he realized that he was well placed to
Speaker 1: be doing the informing. With internet access cut off and
Speaker 1: VPN is slowing down, only someone outside the country with
Speaker 1: blazing fast Bay Area WiFi could collect all the info
Speaker 1: coming in and turn it into useful, actionable advice for
Speaker 1: protesters on the ground at that time, we know nothing
Speaker 1: about it. No one's no one's teaching us what to do.
Speaker 1: So we have to do it, do it, you know,
Speaker 1: like we we we met. We like I said, we
Speaker 1: have a seventy people. So we have a meeting every day,
Speaker 1: every night. So we're trying to you know, brainstorm me
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. And then so we're making we're
Speaker 1: making the plans and then we're making like, Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna get the informations from you know, everything of details
Speaker 1: that we can get, and that that's we're going to
Speaker 1: share to the people. That's what we're gonna share to
Speaker 1: the underground teams and other people. Within a few weeks,
Speaker 1: it become clear that a diverse range of people, tactics,
Speaker 1: and tools are going to be needed in the fight
Speaker 1: for freedom and Mianda, next time, we'll talk about how
Speaker 1: that fight took shape and tell you what it's like today.
Speaker 1: Sitting at a pool bar and Mason listening to covers
Speaker 1: of Cretan songs by the house band and losing a
Speaker 1: pool against Andy and the boys. It's hard to think
Speaker 1: of them hold up behind a barricade, clutching molotovs, but
Speaker 1: not so long ago. The choices the boys face were
Speaker 1: pretty stark. Every day every time they went out from
Speaker 1: their little apartment, they knew they might not come back.
Speaker 1: But I think the most fucked up thing that we
Speaker 1: had to plan was what if someone get shot one
Speaker 1: of us and the other person have to go carry
Speaker 1: um who do you go? Who gets hits? You know?
Speaker 1: And we had to kind of like what we did
Speaker 1: this now, but like, okay, if I get hit, you know,
Speaker 1: two of you this, this, and this person will come
Speaker 1: out and you know, do this to me because it's
Speaker 1: it's um, I don't know. I think we were planning
Speaker 1: because it just it's just good to have that, you know,
Speaker 1: because if someone gets shot and if all of five
Speaker 1: of us go run in there, there's more targets, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So then like if someone would
Speaker 1: weight last weight get shots and you know this person go,
Speaker 1: if someone heavier get shot, this two person go something
Speaker 1: like that. When Andy says like we did earlier, he's
Speaker 1: talking about a small stop the bleed type course that
Speaker 1: we had given the boys. Most journalist operating in war
Speaker 1: zones will take at minimum a week long hostile environment
Speaker 1: and first aid training or heath at course many of
Speaker 1: us will take extra courses. James and I both refreshed
Speaker 1: our wilderness first Responder certificates once we had this trip planned.
Speaker 1: Andy and his brothers didn't have access to any of this.
Speaker 1: They learned what they could off the internet and tried
Speaker 1: to protect themselves as best as they were able with
Speaker 1: gear they purchased from an air soft store. The afternoon
Speaker 1: we spent practicing skills. Wasn't nearly enough, but until they
Speaker 1: can travel safely more than a few miles from the border,
Speaker 1: it was better than nothing. Their little apartment had one
Speaker 1: way in and one way out. If the cops came,
Speaker 1: there was no escape. They had a plan for that too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so our plan was literally just to burn that fucking
Speaker 1: door down so then it would be difficult for them
Speaker 1: to come in. Then you know, we'll do I don't know,
Speaker 1: whatever we can with the weapon we had um, but
Speaker 1: we weren't going to make it out, you know, And
Speaker 1: having to plan all that with these kids, like it's
Speaker 1: like funked up. There were times that like they wake
Speaker 1: up by night screaming like they you know they I
Speaker 1: think now it's better, right, It's been a year and
Speaker 1: a half and we are like we're better at coping
Speaker 1: with it. But at that time it was very, very scary,
Speaker 1: so that they'd be prepared to burn their door and
Speaker 1: the rest of their apartment down around themselves. The boys
Speaker 1: kept a stockpile of molotovs mixed and ready by the
Speaker 1: front door at all times. They lived in a state
Speaker 1: of permanent readiness to commit revolutionary suicide for weeks on end.
Speaker 1: Eventually they decided they had to flee. We should probably
Speaker 1: talk history here for just a little bit. Me and
Speaker 1: Mar is a new name for a very old land.
Speaker 1: Over the centuries, it's been ruled by a series of
Speaker 1: empires and dynasties. The Mongols took over for a while
Speaker 1: in the twelve hundreds and thirteen hundreds, and when they
Speaker 1: left Lower Burma had a warring states period of its own.
Speaker 1: The modern nation of Burma didn't start to come together
Speaker 1: until the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, and things didn't
Speaker 1: really congeal into a state until the reign of the
Speaker 1: last two Burmese kings, who industrialized the country and reformed
Speaker 1: its military enough to win a series of wars against
Speaker 1: neighboring groups like the Irakan. This is what brought them
Speaker 1: into conflict with the British Raj right at the turn
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century. Their wars were sending refugees into India,
Speaker 1: and the Burmese King's designs on Thailand and British controlled
Speaker 1: Bangladesh led to a policy wherein the Bridge supported insurgent
Speaker 1: fighters who struck out at Burmese positions. A series of
Speaker 1: near clashes between British and Burmese forces followed, and in
Speaker 1: January of eighteen twenty four, the Burmese King Bagadah gave
Speaker 1: his generals the order to attack. A pair of brutal
Speaker 1: jungle wars followed, and despite winning several victories early on,
Speaker 1: Burmese true were crushed comprehensively whenever they engaged British forces
Speaker 1: in conventional battles. In January of eighteen eighty six, British
Speaker 1: forces entered the capital, Mandalay and brought an end to
Speaker 1: Burmese independence for almost sixty years. These are the broad
Speaker 1: strokes of the story, as you'll find them summed up
Speaker 1: in almost any history book. As with most colonial history,
Speaker 1: the reality is somewhat messier than that. The Burmese Empire
Speaker 1: the British destroyed was dominated heavily by the Bumah people,
Speaker 1: who gave the colony its name, But there were other
Speaker 1: peoples in the territory. They claimed the Shin, the karin Urakan,
Speaker 1: the Rohinga, and dozens. More Like most empires dominated by
Speaker 1: a single ethnicity, they were brutal. Father San Germano, who
Speaker 1: lived in pre raj Burma, wrote of the king, he
Speaker 1: is considered by himself and others absolute lord of the lives, properties,
Speaker 1: and personal services of his subjects. He exalts into presses, confers,
Speaker 1: and takes away honor and rank, and without any process
Speaker 1: of law, can put to death not only criminals guilty
Speaker 1: of capital offenses, but any individual who happens to incur
Speaker 1: his displeasure. It is here a perilous thing for a
Speaker 1: person to become distinguished for wealth and possessions, for the
Speaker 1: day may easily come when he will be charged with
Speaker 1: some supposed crime and so put to death in order
Speaker 1: that his property may be confiscated. Every subject is the
Speaker 1: Emperor's born slave, and when he calls anyone his slave,
Speaker 1: he thinks thereby to do him honor. Hence, also he
Speaker 1: considers himself entitled to employ his subjects in any work
Speaker 1: of service without salary or pay, and if he makes
Speaker 1: them any recompense, it is done not from a sense
Speaker 1: of justice but as an act of bounty. And while
Speaker 1: Bagudah was a fairly modern king, brutality like this went
Speaker 1: back hundreds of years in the region. Most of the
Speaker 1: kings and princes and other people who ruled the land
Speaker 1: we now call me Anmar did so with brutal force
Speaker 1: and an awful lot of conscription. This is broadly true
Speaker 1: of much of Southeast Asia. Western histories of this region
Speaker 1: tend to flatten life into kingdoms and empires and assume
Speaker 1: life in their region coincidedtically with the lines drawn on maps.
Speaker 1: This was never the case. Much of mainland Southeast Asia,
Speaker 1: from the central highlands of Vietnam through Myanmar, northeast India
Speaker 1: and several southern Chinese provinces, is filled with terrifying mountains
Speaker 1: and brutal hills covered with the densest jungle imaginable. Standing
Speaker 1: in Masot and staring across the border into Myanmar, all
Speaker 1: you see is a vast expanse of jagged, deep green
Speaker 1: peaks rolling endlessly on James and I are both experienced backpackers,
Speaker 1: and neither of us would have wanted to take on
Speaker 1: that terrain without quality gear and weeks of endurance training.
Speaker 1: In an era before planes, helicopters, or satellite communications, this
Speaker 1: area was practically ungovernable. People were aware of this at
Speaker 1: the time, and for roughly the last two thousand years,
Speaker 1: this chunk of highland Southeast Asia, known to political scientists
Speaker 1: as Zonia, has been a refuge for people pushed out
Speaker 1: and put down by the great state powers of the area.
Speaker 1: Empires and kings would stick to the coasts and the
Speaker 1: flat lines, perfect for cultivating rice. When they taxed their
Speaker 1: subjects too hard or conscripted too many of them into
Speaker 1: the military, some would flee to the hills to take
Speaker 1: their freedom. As James C. Scott, a Yale policy professor, writes,
Speaker 1: the frontier operated as a rough and ready homeostatic device.
Speaker 1: The more estate pressed its subjects, the fewer subjects it had.
Speaker 1: The Frontier under wrote freedom. He calls the people who
Speaker 1: chose to inhabit this stateless zone barbarians by choice. While
Speaker 1: many of these ethnic groups were mocked for their lack
Speaker 1: of so called civilized values like widespread literacy, Scott argues
Speaker 1: that this lack was actually a conscious rejection. The refusal
Speaker 1: to educate themselves in a manner acceptable to the powers
Speaker 1: of the day was a rebellion against the legitimacy of
Speaker 1: those powers and their standards. Human history and our modern
Speaker 1: globe is filled with places like this, muddied areas at
Speaker 1: the borders of great powers, where the detritus of war,
Speaker 1: refugees and beaten soldiers can congregate without fear of the state.
Speaker 1: The term for these places is shatter zones. Rojava, the
Speaker 1: radical feminist enclave in northeast Syria, would be one example
Speaker 1: of a shatter zone and the unique political potential such
Speaker 1: places have. Myanmar is, by land mass, mostly shatter zones,
Speaker 1: and since nineteen forty nine, different ethnic armed organizations have
Speaker 1: existed in a more or less constant conflict with the state.
Speaker 1: This includes the Karin people, whose territory borders Thailand. When
Speaker 1: the young millennial and zoomer protesters in the cities realized
Speaker 1: they were going to have to flee their homes to
Speaker 1: continue the fight, Karin territory was a natural place to
Speaker 1: retreat to. People had been making versions of the same
Speaker 1: decision for two thousand years. The current situation between the
Speaker 1: Kuran and Myanmar's military junta actually owes a lot to
Speaker 1: the British Empire. When they took over in Myanmar, they
Speaker 1: had to figure out how to govern it, and they
Speaker 1: went with the tactic that had served them well all
Speaker 1: across India and Africa. They picked a minority ethnic group
Speaker 1: to act as their colonial shock troops. In Uganda, their
Speaker 1: preferred warrior race were the Kaqwa people, from whom future
Speaker 1: dictator Idi Amine descended. For their colonial troops. In India,
Speaker 1: the Brits used Sikhs and Gurkhas, and in colonial Burma
Speaker 1: they used the Karin. Ever since the British left, the
Speaker 1: Karin have wanted as little as possible to do with
Speaker 1: the central government and Napoda. Instead, they fought to maintain Cadule,
Speaker 1: a land without darkness, as they were promised in Burma's
Speaker 1: nineteen forty eight constitution. Today they might not be recognized
Speaker 1: by the UN or the US, but the Karin have
Speaker 1: their own schools, hospitals, and army. They have been at
Speaker 1: war since nineteen forty nine. Andy, whose father is Karin,
Speaker 1: only really found out about the struggle for Quadule, a
Speaker 1: home for the Karin language peoples when he became a
Speaker 1: refugee he moved into the camps along the border after
Speaker 1: the Saffron Revolution. He was only eight years old. The
Speaker 1: border is dotted with camps, some of them more like towns,
Speaker 1: but they're always temporary, and while the Thai government tolerates
Speaker 1: the Karin presence, people there are seen as temporarily displaced.
Speaker 1: They can't build solid homes and don't have the identity
Speaker 1: documents they need to travel even internally in Thailand, despite
Speaker 1: not growing up there. Andy's identity cards, says Karin, it
Speaker 1: doesn't take a pH d in history to know that
Speaker 1: ethnic identity cards issued by imperial and formerly post colonial
Speaker 1: governments are bad news. But if you need more information
Speaker 1: about that, maybe google i D cards Comma Rwanda. Like
Speaker 1: most people in most places, the young people from Mima
Speaker 1: we talked to you had thought relatively little about the
Speaker 1: injustices on the edge of their world. They tend to
Speaker 1: think of the karen Is terrorists up in the hills
Speaker 1: rather than freedom fighters. But once the top medor started
Speaker 1: unloading machine guns into crowds, people were confronted with the
Speaker 1: reality of a situation that they've been able to ignore before.
Speaker 1: Suddenly they saw that the karen and other marginalized ethnic
Speaker 1: groups were victims of the same government violence that they
Speaker 1: now faced, and now that the scales had fallen from rise,
Speaker 1: they were going to do something about it. The main
Speaker 1: majority of groups people they are current people, which is
Speaker 1: another ethnic groups from Nemore, and they they had a
Speaker 1: different view, right because obviously the military. While we were
Speaker 1: like because we were born in the city, we were
Speaker 1: more like you know, like we didn't suffer that much,
Speaker 1: even though it wasn't that great, you know. But then
Speaker 1: for them, the military come to their states, the military
Speaker 1: come to their villages, they burned the villages, they kill
Speaker 1: the people, they read the people, you know, they do
Speaker 1: all these atrocities. Um. So then they have a very
Speaker 1: different view on the Miamar military and how the country
Speaker 1: is you know, working doing and um so that's when
Speaker 1: I started learning, oh, ship, like there is some other
Speaker 1: stuff going on in the country. But you know, like
Speaker 1: you kind of just you kind of just live with
Speaker 1: your life. You know, you're your kid, You're trying to
Speaker 1: get by day to date, like so you didn't really
Speaker 1: think about it. Um And for me, that gold on
Speaker 1: that go that went on for a long time until
Speaker 1: the military will happen in the present revolution is not
Speaker 1: the only flaer up of inter ethnic violence in the country.
Speaker 1: The Tatmodor, under ming A Klan, began a concerted campaign
Speaker 1: of genocidal ethnic cleansing against the Hina people, a largely
Speaker 1: Muslim ethnic group who live in the country's or a
Speaker 1: kind state. The Tatmodor, claiming the Rehinia were variously terrorists
Speaker 1: or illegal immigrants native to modern day Bangladesh and hence
Speaker 1: not native to myan Ma, spent months raping, killing, and
Speaker 1: burning the villages of the Rehanga people. While the world,
Speaker 1: perhaps distracted by a neoliberal consensus which demoniedes both migrants
Speaker 1: and Muslims, did funk all to stop them. In Myanmar,
Speaker 1: nobody spoke about the genocide, at least not in those terms.
Speaker 1: Most people didn't even speak about the Hinda in those
Speaker 1: terms because Tatmodor propaganda was so effective that citizens in
Speaker 1: Yangon really believe that the Rahana were mike and terrorists
Speaker 1: coming from Bangladesh. Government newspapers like The New Light of
Speaker 1: Myanmar published daily stories linking them to groups like Isis
Speaker 1: or Al Qaida, who, despite their best efforts, remain totally
Speaker 1: irrelevant in this story. BOS popped up on Facebook, which
Speaker 1: is basically synonymous with the Internet for many people living
Speaker 1: in Myanmar, and seared a steady diet of anti raheinga
Speaker 1: hate speech into political discourse, gradually shifting the Overton window
Speaker 1: towards the endocide. And without better information, most people believe them,
Speaker 1: and these Western friends, probably weirdos like me who had
Speaker 1: crept into his d MS. At some point I started
Speaker 1: to ask him questions. So the rein thing happened into
Speaker 1: done seventeen. I was seventeen, and you know, we started
Speaker 1: hearing it. I started getting phone calls from my friends
Speaker 1: in the western countries, like Westerners. They would be like, Hey,
Speaker 1: what's happening in your country? Why are you killing like
Speaker 1: all the Muslims, And I mean like mess out thaily
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1: I've never heard anything like that, right, um, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: and then I like, I try to learn a little
Speaker 1: bit more, but everyone has so intense opinions about it
Speaker 1: that at some time like funk, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: know anymore, you know, because the military was in control
Speaker 1: at that time still kind of so they control the news,
Speaker 1: they control the media, they control it's the same thing,
Speaker 1: you know, like they control who was saying what, and
Speaker 1: so we never hear about it that much. If you only,
Speaker 1: if only you care so much and you're following everyone
Speaker 1: that is saying you know the truth, then you know.
Speaker 1: But otherwise you you didn't know. It was all very blurry,
Speaker 1: very so that that's another time when I'm like funk,
Speaker 1: like I don't know what to do. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: you know. And then one on in my life, um
Speaker 1: and yeah, I never I never realized how much, like
Speaker 1: how much they had to suffer, and they are still
Speaker 1: suffering right number of international protests to stop the ethnic
Speaker 1: cleansing of the Rainer. As they huddled hidden in their apartment,
Speaker 1: Andy and his brother began to embrace the need for
Speaker 1: deadly violence against Sarah Pressus. We never had any plans, actually,
Speaker 1: we were just like, no, I think I remember, it's
Speaker 1: like that was not really planned. It was like they
Speaker 1: killed our people who were fucking hurt them back, you know.
Speaker 1: It wasn't too get their guns or shoot them back.
Speaker 1: Like we didn't even know how to use any of that,
Speaker 1: you know. And honestly, we didn't even want to kill them.
Speaker 1: We just want to be like, you can't do these
Speaker 1: things and not feel, not feel any any anything, you know,
Speaker 1: not not feel any consequences of that. Like we're not
Speaker 1: fucking We're not animals, and you know, you can't just
Speaker 1: come in and killed one of our friends and think
Speaker 1: that we're not going to do anything back, you know,
Speaker 1: like if we let that happen, then they're never going
Speaker 1: to stop. You know. You they were trying to scare us,
Speaker 1: and we were trying to scare them back, but they
Speaker 1: actually kill people. We didn't. We never wanted to kill anyone,
Speaker 1: you know. Indy's situation felt hopeless at this stage. Trapped
Speaker 1: at the capitol and watching his friends disappear one by one.
Speaker 1: It seemed like he was running out of options. Thousands
Speaker 1: of young people and me and Mark felt the same,
Speaker 1: and some of them decided to take an option they
Speaker 1: hadn't even known existed. A few weeks earlier, when we
Speaker 1: were in Massat, we conducted a phone interview with a
Speaker 1: former rebel fighter named Alex. Like everyone else we talked to,
Speaker 1: he woke up on the first of February to find
Speaker 1: out that his phone didn't work and the internet was out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought like it was just you know, like something
Speaker 1: wrong with my phone. And then like I started talking
Speaker 1: to my friends and all my friends are having the
Speaker 1: same problem. So we looked down and everybody is like
Speaker 1: watching down to the market because we live close to
Speaker 1: the market, and like they were like you know, like
Speaker 1: doing like like buying lots of rise and like full
Speaker 1: until I spoke, because no one knows what's gonna happen.
Speaker 1: Like everyone else, he wasn't into politics, but he was
Speaker 1: absolutely not into having the military funk with every aspect
Speaker 1: of his life, so he got into the streets at first,
Speaker 1: like we are not like that into the politics and stuff,
Speaker 1: so we didn't know. But you know, like they can't
Speaker 1: even like shut down the Internet is kind of like
Speaker 1: controlling our life, right, so like if they can't even
Speaker 1: do that, like you know, like we cannot imagine like
Speaker 1: what other things they can do and which they did,
Speaker 1: like killing the innosensibilians and stuff. So yeah, at first
Speaker 1: we're just like, oh, yeah, we need to do something
Speaker 1: about this, and then enjoy the protests. He and his
Speaker 1: friends later found a shop to buy gas masks, tasers,
Speaker 1: and goggles, but even with all their gear, they were
Speaker 1: powerless against soldiers with guns and tear gas. He said
Speaker 1: that the next few weeks were hard. Protests were less
Speaker 1: and less safe, but nobody dared to talk about their
Speaker 1: plans to take the fight to military. Everyone was worried
Speaker 1: about informants and snitches. We didn't really like actually talk
Speaker 1: about those stuff, Like we're only like discussing about you know,
Speaker 1: like a protests and also like how to get attention
Speaker 1: from the like embassies and stuff, but for like fight
Speaker 1: fighting bag and you know, like going on the wars.
Speaker 1: Like I think, like almost everyone they just decided on
Speaker 1: their own unless they have super like trust their friends.
Speaker 1: By April, he says he's seen people die in the streets.
Speaker 1: He decided the protesting wasn't working and he needed to
Speaker 1: pick up a gun. Then he probably was. He didn't
Speaker 1: have one, nor did his friends. He knew some people
Speaker 1: who had guns and hated the top of the door,
Speaker 1: but he had been raised his whole life to think
Speaker 1: of them as terrorists before this. We be you know,
Speaker 1: like brainwashed by the military like pretty much our whole life,
Speaker 1: so you know, we always think, oh, ethnic groups are
Speaker 1: like like you know, they were okay, like wherever they
Speaker 1: see or and he didn't like it. Just terrorist terrorists, right,
Speaker 1: that's what like the military like make us believe our
Speaker 1: whole life. And I was kind of scared to like
Speaker 1: join them because like, yeah, I didn't know, like you know,
Speaker 1: how to live off there or like if they're gonna
Speaker 1: came in just because like I don't speak her, and
Speaker 1: so yeah, it was bizarrely his boss who hooked him
Speaker 1: up with the rebels in the hills, but he couldn't
Speaker 1: tell anyone he was going, okay, say got captured or
Speaker 1: turned out to be a snitch. Instead, he packed his
Speaker 1: bag with some of his old clothes, didn't even say
Speaker 1: goodbye to his family, and took a bus. He got
Speaker 1: off that bus, waited until a man in the car
Speaker 1: picked him up. By that night, he was in the jungle.
Speaker 1: During the first night, they're like, you know, we have
Speaker 1: to go God like one or the leader from the Junger,
Speaker 1: like you know, like trainers by you like walking in
Speaker 1: the dark in the forest, So we have to walk
Speaker 1: to like somewhere we don't even know. We have to
Speaker 1: sleep in there like deep gener He'd read about the
Speaker 1: PDF on Facebook, but suddenly found himself among them. Technically,
Speaker 1: they were distinct unit fighting for a return to democracy,
Speaker 1: but in practice they're trained and equipped by the current
Speaker 1: National Liberation Army who have been fighting for aeral democracy
Speaker 1: for decades. Pretty soon his opinion of the Kurrent had changed.
Speaker 1: But like during my time, I did some observation about them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like obviously, like the government is not the
Speaker 1: current people fighting the cup the military. The military has
Speaker 1: been like you know, like invading the Karrent villagers like
Speaker 1: Karen Land. H Yeah, they were like banning down. They're
Speaker 1: like villagers like waving the woomas You're like killing the
Speaker 1: people for like many years. So they cannot do anything
Speaker 1: but to fight back, you know, they have to fight
Speaker 1: back to prove that their land. Just like the now
Speaker 1: deceased rebel soldier who interviewed for our last series, I
Speaker 1: like received rudimentary training. He never fired a gun before,
Speaker 1: and supplies are very limited, but he's still got a
Speaker 1: kick out of sending a few rounds down range. Like
Speaker 1: not even in my dream, Like I never thought like
Speaker 1: I will be like houlding it again or I shouldn't
Speaker 1: should in it. So if be pretty good? Yeah, do
Speaker 1: you what kind of gun was it? Was it a
Speaker 1: point to too or was it? Yes, the first one
Speaker 1: was a point to two. Was it hand homemade, handmade
Speaker 1: or was it you know, no, it's not made, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of really old. Even in the jungle, they
Speaker 1: were worried about males. It took a while to make friends,
Speaker 1: he says, but eventually he fell in with a cop
Speaker 1: who had defected, a photographer, and a construction worker. Their plan,
Speaker 1: he says, was a train up in the jungle and
Speaker 1: then go home and find the cities. Like our idea
Speaker 1: was like we went there and praying for a few
Speaker 1: miles and then go back to the city. Like we thought,
Speaker 1: like it's gonna be like a huge wars in the
Speaker 1: city is like in Yango or mentally and also like
Speaker 1: everywhere Yama. But yeah, it did. It turns out like that.
Speaker 1: But instead he found himself pulling sentry duty in the jungle.
Speaker 1: For a city kid, it was scary alone out there
Speaker 1: in the night with a gun, surrounded by potential threats.
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, like okay, like it's gonna
Speaker 1: happen tonight, Like they're gonna come to our base tonight,
Speaker 1: so we I'm gonna have to shoot that, I have
Speaker 1: to product my people find. But it didn't happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll expend eight months in the field putting sentry duty
Speaker 1: and learning the skills of a soldier. But without arms
Speaker 1: and ammunition, there wasn't much you could do. And his
Speaker 1: whole time training, he says, he only fired five shots
Speaker 1: I've kind of used because we don't have like enough ghans,
Speaker 1: you know. Like so by the time that there was
Speaker 1: a like a straight happen if uh like a goo,
Speaker 1: I thought like, oh, we're gonna have to like go
Speaker 1: and you know, like fight them now. But instead, like
Speaker 1: we have to pack our staff and move to a
Speaker 1: deeper jenko. So we were like kind of like reputees
Speaker 1: with uniforms. But yeah, you know, if I just keep
Speaker 1: staying there like we if we're just going to keep
Speaker 1: running away like this, Like I don't want to stay there.
Speaker 1: I want to do something about the needs, like the
Speaker 1: main needs in our candles, the weapons gainst. So I
Speaker 1: want to like come here and like work for that.
Speaker 1: The transition was hard for eight months in a light
Speaker 1: bulb or flashing toilet. Now he crossed the river and
Speaker 1: everything seemed normal, every kind of weird, like you know
Speaker 1: from the jungle and metal. It's just a small river
Speaker 1: across and they're like the life. Yeah, it's totally different.
Speaker 1: Like peoples are living their normal life and now having
Speaker 1: to like worry for like any things or like it
Speaker 1: was like the whole time I wasn't younger, you know,
Speaker 1: like we have to worry about our country and like
Speaker 1: we don't want to live a normal life. And I'll
Speaker 1: take them mad, like the military's gold so like, but
Speaker 1: they're like here, everyone is living in normal life and
Speaker 1: it's just only one river across. Now that he's across
Speaker 1: the river, we won't say, well, he's still part of
Speaker 1: the revolution. He's raising money and doing interviews like this,
Speaker 1: trying to organize medical supplies and hoping that one day
Speaker 1: he can return to his country not as a refugee
Speaker 1: with a uniform, but practiced a soldier liberating his people,
Speaker 1: or better yet, as a citizen in a free democracy.
Speaker 1: Miyak wasn't ready to be a refugee quite yet. He
Speaker 1: quickly found a role for himself on the militant side
Speaker 1: of what had become a full fledged civil war. Before
Speaker 1: the coup. He'd been studying engineering at university, and he
Speaker 1: liked to understand how things worked. Although Alex and his
Speaker 1: comrades had a critical shortage of weapons. Miyak didn't only
Speaker 1: make guns at first, he made bombs too, using knowledge
Speaker 1: that he had gained after traveling into the jungle and
Speaker 1: getting training from Karin experts and explosives and as he
Speaker 1: told us, they were very effective. Do you think the
Speaker 1: explosives took out any soldiers? Of course is bosies are
Speaker 1: for the biddings for the base. Some o the trouble.
Speaker 1: So you know they came and pick the ball and
Speaker 1: trying to cut off the bowl and just a slow
Speaker 1: so they die. So my truf cut off the wire
Speaker 1: bone wire, yes, but they die anyway. So it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: my best memory is that we are using and the
Speaker 1: very first E T N E T N in and
Speaker 1: in thank angel. Now this revolutionary thing is the whole
Speaker 1: things that arrest there or just arrest. It's very sad
Speaker 1: when they made May made the idian bowl. Uh we
Speaker 1: we had that the ambulas ambulus ambulus abus umblessed land.
Speaker 1: It's like five fine ambular track is coming here. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is I think this is my best memory. Yes, okay, wow,
Speaker 1: So the bomb goes off, they have to send in
Speaker 1: five ambulances, yes, yes, yes, was it soldiers or police soldiers. Yes,
Speaker 1: that the soldier whole who checked the role. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was just bombs that the young rebels learned about. They
Speaker 1: also shattered many of their misconceptions about the roles of
Speaker 1: men and women. Yeah yeah. As a woman like a mirror,
Speaker 1: stepped up to the front lines and fought alongside their
Speaker 1: male comrades, it became hard to ignore the sexism which
Speaker 1: underpinned much of traditional Burmese culture. The music you just
Speaker 1: heard from a yang On punk band called Rebel Riot.
Speaker 1: They gave a submission to use it here. They have
Speaker 1: some great songs about the Spring Revolution, and this one
Speaker 1: focuses on the role of women. In the video, you
Speaker 1: see young women in the streets and then you see
Speaker 1: them in the jungles carrying him sixt Me and Mama
Speaker 1: might previously have had a woman leader, but gender equality
Speaker 1: had been far from universal. And he told us a
Speaker 1: story about this, and we recorded it. But it was
Speaker 1: our last night in the country. We were on our
Speaker 1: way to another spectacular hangover, one that would see me
Speaker 1: vomiting with such ferocio of flight. But an elderly tie
Speaker 1: lady took pity on me and gave me her shopping
Speaker 1: bag once I filled up my sick bag in the
Speaker 1: second month of the revolution, and he said when they
Speaker 1: were in Yangon, the protesters would build giant barricades to
Speaker 1: keep the police back. We've seen videos of these. They're
Speaker 1: pretty impressive, huge amounts of palettes, boxes and burning tires.
Speaker 1: We got some other audio of him describing them. No,
Speaker 1: we could never get close to the military. Um, it
Speaker 1: was never it was never attack, it was always defense.
Speaker 1: So later on, when we started seeing how military cracked
Speaker 1: down these protesters, we started building these gates and like
Speaker 1: sandbags in our every base in the in the young On, Melody,
Speaker 1: whatever across the country, we started building these barriers so
Speaker 1: that the military trucks kind of just come in. And
Speaker 1: it's actually crazy because sometimes to build these things, you
Speaker 1: have to take over the road first, so like like
Speaker 1: a main road or a highway. So then what we
Speaker 1: do is all these little groups will gather, so one street,
Speaker 1: two street, through street, you know, and then we will
Speaker 1: go to the street, or we will walk down the
Speaker 1: street saying we're gonna try to take over the street,
Speaker 1: please come join. People will come down, people will come
Speaker 1: down from the streets, from the buildings, and then we
Speaker 1: go to the next street, we say the same thing,
Speaker 1: and then people would join. Nothing they did could stand
Speaker 1: up to a tank, though, just as that shopping bag
Speaker 1: couldn't stand up to James's vomit. The military started using
Speaker 1: human shields to get through the barricades and the groups
Speaker 1: of people throwing molotovs. Usually we would defend our places, right,
Speaker 1: we will use molotov sling shots, uh, and we will
Speaker 1: resist like we will attacked, like we will be in
Speaker 1: the behind the gate, but we will kind of make
Speaker 1: them cannot come too too far, you know. But when
Speaker 1: the military have someone that they're gun pointing, just a
Speaker 1: normal civilian and making him move, we can't do anything
Speaker 1: man like, we can't go through a moltav like, you know.
Speaker 1: So that's when the military clean out all of that.
Speaker 1: In Yangon, I think there was a time when it
Speaker 1: was packed. It was every road had it, every street
Speaker 1: had it, and everyone was guarding that right. But then
Speaker 1: when the military started and then they said it in
Speaker 1: the statements, they were saying, if that's near your house,
Speaker 1: you're responsible. Then they came up with a better idea.
Speaker 1: In Burmese culture, men fear passing under women's clothing if
Speaker 1: it's hanging on a washing line, they'll go around rather
Speaker 1: than under it. It is as Andy told us, bullshit.
Speaker 1: So they decided to turn that bullshit back on the
Speaker 1: troops and they grabbed as many women's launcheese a traditional
Speaker 1: garment went around the waist like a sarong as they
Speaker 1: could and hung them up above their barricade. It worked,
Speaker 1: he said, and just like that, a generation of Burmese
Speaker 1: kids realized that sexism hurts everyone who perpetuates it. Miak
Speaker 1: told us an interesting story about this. He said, the
Speaker 1: first time he met his fiance, he thought that she
Speaker 1: was pretty sharp for a girl that he says now
Speaker 1: was his bad me and mar he says, has some
Speaker 1: gender hang ups, but he soon realized that she was
Speaker 1: the bravest person he knew. They went to protest together,
Speaker 1: and when something needed moving from one town to another,
Speaker 1: they took advantage of those gender hang ups and her bravery,
Speaker 1: and she risked her life carrying weapons in her bags
Speaker 1: on inner city buses. We'll let him tell you how
Speaker 1: they met. It's like we we met on a meiden,
Speaker 1: like you know, we we started making maybe it's a
Speaker 1: very first. We first we all match making, very very
Speaker 1: very very respect their memories. The name of the media
Speaker 1: is braced to me. Okay, prased all me. The name
Speaker 1: of the media is she She is very you know, respected.
Speaker 1: She said the very thoughtful things. You know. Oh she
Speaker 1: is you know, it's so so thoughtful. I don't even think,
Speaker 1: you know. In the memo, Carter is lays a Joanna.
Speaker 1: You know, so buy is always good like people, you know,
Speaker 1: something like this. So I thought she's really good, or
Speaker 1: that she is a kid. This is my bad some
Speaker 1: Janna I do die. But but later I met with
Speaker 1: her on the protest, so I saw she is so beautiful.
Speaker 1: I thought she has just twenty years agays. But we
Speaker 1: know that later. So we keep doing together other things
Speaker 1: and she she is my bad dad. I was grow
Speaker 1: like this and well, whatever I have I have in danger.
Speaker 1: All the contact her. We asked him if you worried
Speaker 1: she got arrested while she was making trips into the
Speaker 1: mountains with guns and bombs, But he said no. Was
Speaker 1: it hard to leave her to go to the jungle
Speaker 1: because she could get arrested, you could get no. No,
Speaker 1: she is very clever, So I I never worry about her.
Speaker 1: I just boy about mindset because she is more, you know, secret,
Speaker 1: I see more play by than me. So she only
Speaker 1: teached me how to be clear about much. LETTONK and
Speaker 1: Mirror was falling in love as well. Her relationship was
Speaker 1: a bit different though. At first we were in the
Speaker 1: group chat Yeah, but then did you make the private? Yeah? Private?
Speaker 1: He started the private chat? Did I did? I did,
Speaker 1: because at that time I feel like, oh, she is
Speaker 1: so young. At the time, she she's not even a team.
Speaker 1: She's seventeen years old and she's leading the one of
Speaker 1: the food tast team. So I'm like, wow, this girl
Speaker 1: is like amazing, right, So that that's how I met her,
Speaker 1: and then that's how I, you know, try to hit
Speaker 1: her now. Admittedly t K, a security guy is translating here.
Speaker 1: He's also her boyfriend for now. He's here with her
Speaker 1: to make sure she's okay. When we met them both,
Speaker 1: it was just weeks after he'd arrived in Thailand and
Speaker 1: the two had met in person for the very first time.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of story you can't help but find touching.
Speaker 1: Two people in opposite sides of the world, united by
Speaker 1: a fight for justice, the bonds of revolutionary care. At least,
Speaker 1: it's a nice counterweight to all the stories of death
Speaker 1: and violence, which will have more of you tomorrow on
Speaker 1: part four of this series. Through the time we're reporting
Speaker 1: this story, Robert and I walked miles and miles around
Speaker 1: the streets Mason baby, only two journalous in town and
Speaker 1: also both giant white guys. We kind of stood out,
Speaker 1: and taking a turn due to a sensitive interview isn't
Speaker 1: always a smart choice. Even when it was, they frequently
Speaker 1: dropped us off in a wrong place and we end
Speaker 1: up walking anyway. Everyone in Mason rides scooters, but riding
Speaker 1: without a helmet can get you a fine. We figured
Speaker 1: that his relative noviceist to the world of scooting, we
Speaker 1: probably funded something up and we probably better off walking.
Speaker 1: When the time came to meet me out, though he
Speaker 1: offered us a ride That was very nice, but it
Speaker 1: put us in an interesting position. What exactly do you
Speaker 1: say when a guy you've never met, who's a friend
Speaker 1: of a guy you dem on Reddit who you know
Speaker 1: he's engaged in the illegal production and smuggling of guns
Speaker 1: into a war zone, offers to pick you up at
Speaker 1: the cafe so you can go out for dinner. We
Speaker 1: decided to call our friend a long suffering guy we
Speaker 1: go to or we have a security question. Paul his request,
Speaker 1: we're keeping him anonymous, but he works in security and
Speaker 1: has an extensive professional background dealing with situations just like
Speaker 1: this or maybe mostly like this. Yes, So basically, Paul
Speaker 1: were meeting with these people. Uh, we don't have an
Speaker 1: established human chain with them of trust. They're they're just
Speaker 1: averted account that James has been talking with but for
Speaker 1: like six or seven months. Um, it doesn't really seem
Speaker 1: like there's much else we can do besides, uh, keep
Speaker 1: our eyes open and try to meet in a digital place. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean the big concern is that it would be
Speaker 1: the government, which is not um from what you guys
Speaker 1: have said. The government simply doesn't have the wherewithal to
Speaker 1: do operations like this, and I mean rebel groups like this,
Speaker 1: they're they're trying, they want to get everything out there
Speaker 1: they can. UM. So, Yeah, it is there a concern
Speaker 1: about the fact that you don't have a chain of
Speaker 1: people that can vouch for each other. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: situation there and everything's in their favor, they are, everything's
Speaker 1: in your favor. Even minor cultural faux pause shouldn't be
Speaker 1: an issue. With Paul's help, we came up with a
Speaker 1: watertight plan. I should note here that he was at
Speaker 1: least as concerned with our fate as he was with
Speaker 1: the fate of the pair of pants he'd loaned James
Speaker 1: for the trip. And I mean, yeah, it's a story
Speaker 1: that needs to get out, so uh, being slightly lax
Speaker 1: on the rules while knowing that it's in everybody's favor
Speaker 1: that it goes well. I guess you gotta been the
Speaker 1: rules sometimes. Yeah, I guess we'll check in trying to
Speaker 1: approve of life. Yeah, we'll do a proof of life.
Speaker 1: I will. I will send you a picture of James
Speaker 1: holding a piece of paper that says big wife guy.
Speaker 1: And if if we are kidnapped, I'll send you a
Speaker 1: picture of me that says Elon Musk will be a
Speaker 1: good custodian of Twitter. Ok, I'll know that that's the
Speaker 1: that's the sign, and you know I'll get a black Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll figure out something. Yeah, me and me and a
Speaker 1: few friends will be on our way. That sounds awful.
Speaker 1: James has my favorite pants. Yeah, yeah, you gotta get
Speaker 1: those pants bag. Oh yeah, this is all about the pants.
Speaker 1: If I find hs dead body, I'm killing those pants off. Luckily,
Speaker 1: both I and Paul's trousers made it back that night.
Speaker 1: The only damage was to several delicious plates of food,
Speaker 1: his fiancee and their godfather. We're the most gracious host,
Speaker 1: and we decided not to record that first night. Instead,
Speaker 1: we met up the next day. But there is one
Speaker 1: thing from that night but I want to share with you.
Speaker 1: Rather than explaining it, I let the song me out
Speaker 1: played for us, talk to you to the beautiful medium
Speaker 1: of punk music, bell A Chow. Of course it's an
Speaker 1: anti fascist anthem. Then. It's original version tells the story
Speaker 1: of a young partisan who says goodbye to his girlfriend
Speaker 1: before he goes off to fight Italian fascists. If he dies,
Speaker 1: he says he wants to be buried under a flower
Speaker 1: in the mountains so people will see it and remember him. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: After a few months of revolution, all our characters found
Speaker 1: themselves mourning their friends, and many of them were in
Speaker 1: the mountains. Their struggle is one they see in the
Speaker 1: same vein as the Italian partisans who fought facists in
Speaker 1: their mountains and the anti fascists who came from around
Speaker 1: the world to fight the Spanish Civil War. I first
Speaker 1: heard that song Belacho from a Spanish civil war vector.
Speaker 1: And it's a strange closing of the loop to be
Speaker 1: here sitting hearing it with young people who, just like
Speaker 1: the Spanish Republicans, are fighting a coup with next to
Speaker 1: no international support and a critical shortage of weapons. But
Speaker 1: me Out was trying his best to fix their shortage.
Speaker 1: A month into what would become the Spring Revolution, and
Speaker 1: the stakes have become clear when the first protester would
Speaker 1: shot and they kept marching. When people decided to go
Speaker 1: back into the streets, they showed that the future of
Speaker 1: their country was worth dying for. A few weeks later,
Speaker 1: some of them decided it was also worth killing for.
Speaker 1: It was about then that me Out's buddy and Keen
Speaker 1: read it. User Daddy u m c D said he'd
Speaker 1: been online we reckon they could use their three D printers,
Speaker 1: a steel pipe and the expertise are some strains on
Speaker 1: the internet to arm themselves. The promise of revolutionary technology
Speaker 1: would take quite some time to have any kind of
Speaker 1: battlefield impact in Myanmar, but the effects of a different
Speaker 1: kind of revolution would be felt immediately. But then they
Speaker 1: young activists took up our arms against the government. I
Speaker 1: was like I'm entrusted us in how West and three
Speaker 1: D printing especially my profession is a grand us and
Speaker 1: virtual reality and one to tell us three D printing
Speaker 1: is my hobby. So I just do I just download
Speaker 1: some time from a thinking bust or other three D
Speaker 1: three D printing criminal D and just do it for
Speaker 1: my task, not specially especially like desk toys and stuff. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: just or twice yes, what do you think of guns?
Speaker 1: Then I have never emerging a care because you know,
Speaker 1: we have been living and a military booth for a
Speaker 1: long time, so we're afraid or soldier especially not the
Speaker 1: su especially the care that they hope. So we are
Speaker 1: so afraid of that, so we never imagine, like like
Speaker 1: we are the same as in North Korea. We're so
Speaker 1: afraid of that, so we never imagine of making game.
Speaker 1: But after that the story began at first Meal and
Speaker 1: his team felt safe despite the dangerous nature of their work.
Speaker 1: He felt the top medor was so behind the times
Speaker 1: they wouldn't even know what a three D print. It
Speaker 1: was like adult side the military didn't didn't know or
Speaker 1: didn't give our funk about defriend So it is okay
Speaker 1: a dose that it's really okay, one one one, one day,
Speaker 1: can we need to hide the campus. If the three
Speaker 1: print that, that's okay, Because we were saying this is
Speaker 1: for our job or for some hobby that we can
Speaker 1: see I do with that, but but not just that.
Speaker 1: This time everyone the print that yes camp camp go
Speaker 1: the like yeah yeah. Soon that head shop became a
Speaker 1: lot closer to being a possibility. It's like a song.
Speaker 1: As we we we finished the second second apt De nine,
Speaker 1: we're trying to test that in young and we send
Speaker 1: it to our warehouse. But unfortunately this way how it
Speaker 1: exposed and ambushed by in the military and this gun
Speaker 1: is taken by the military, and they announced this on
Speaker 1: the new by picturer and this uh like like hammag
Speaker 1: games and the don give funk about this just a
Speaker 1: hammaga they just at the very first time, but later
Speaker 1: and later later and later one they one the second
Speaker 1: time they will arrest that. At this time they arrest
Speaker 1: my revolutionary from my team. So I'm told him about
Speaker 1: the efficiency and how do you use and the history
Speaker 1: also the game at the time, maybe maybe he was
Speaker 1: investigator and he told the truth. At this time he says,
Speaker 1: like the FCC nine announced announced the name FCC nine
Speaker 1: like like this before before at the very first time
Speaker 1: team and now the game from the tagish Yeah if
Speaker 1: you missed that, they thought the guns were turned. Is
Speaker 1: the reason we giggled at this is that whenever we
Speaker 1: see videos of combat in me and mar James and
Speaker 1: I send them to a group chat and try to
Speaker 1: work out what the weapons are and where they came from.
Speaker 1: Nearly every time we're stumped. The guns turned out to
Speaker 1: be some kind of niche Turkish shotgun made to look
Speaker 1: like an a R fifteen. It seems the military we're
Speaker 1: operating on the same assumption, only this time they were
Speaker 1: very wrong. Like Alex Myak started this second more deadly
Speaker 1: phase of the Spring Revolution by taking a trip out
Speaker 1: to the jungle and he stayed for several months to
Speaker 1: learn some of the skills he was going to need
Speaker 1: to fight back against the top medal. I was going
Speaker 1: the Monday as a cuminating data so I'm not like
Speaker 1: the I'm not have a video training or something like that.
Speaker 1: I just going as a cuminator guy. So I met
Speaker 1: with them Sundgain specially or some Freya and I said,
Speaker 1: I want to know how to shoot ga, how do
Speaker 1: amber the gag so to teach me, I said, uh say,
Speaker 1: I'm in acuminated. I can to the Traineer, but I
Speaker 1: want to lamb the folks out of being so they
Speaker 1: sent me some videos I did to lamb by myself.
Speaker 1: Yet later he went back to carry prototype printed guns
Speaker 1: to the E. A O S for testing. We asked
Speaker 1: if it was scary being an undercover gun runner in
Speaker 1: a dictatorship. He says it was, but he found that
Speaker 1: he had a powerful ally in his fight homophobia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oscar Of. We need to discloses, so you know, yeah,
Speaker 1: disguises though. I just that I have a long hair,
Speaker 1: so I act like a day so you know that
Speaker 1: the military has so Jianna and equality, so they hate game.
Speaker 1: That's why I just just our brand. The military, assuming
Speaker 1: me Of was gay and therefore incapable of fighting, let
Speaker 1: him go. Miak kept his mouth shut and let their
Speaker 1: homophobia help him smuggle the guns with which he hopes
Speaker 1: to help topple the regime that places so much stock
Speaker 1: and values like these. Miak said he had to go
Speaker 1: to the jungle to prove that his guns worked because
Speaker 1: at first the ear didn't believe him about the gain.
Speaker 1: No one, no one believes I believed that. No one
Speaker 1: believed that, so we have to made made it fast
Speaker 1: and show them. So we made it first, uh we said,
Speaker 1: we got again. It's it's a self fool. We lie,
Speaker 1: we need to lie, and we send this to the
Speaker 1: e O. Then they made it and it didn't walk
Speaker 1: out and the adjust and walk out. Okay, yeah, how
Speaker 1: do they feel made? Oh? Oh my my one of
Speaker 1: my revolutionary and it was they said, oh, they're really
Speaker 1: really happy. There's all that, all of the friend that
Speaker 1: and most progession. Let's do it right now. Yes that
Speaker 1: Almost everyone we met spend time in the jungle. Rooney,
Speaker 1: that's a normed the gear not a given name, started
Speaker 1: off as a protester, and just like everyone else, he
Speaker 1: fled into the jungle to avoid being murdered by the
Speaker 1: government and to learn from the ethnic armed organizations how
Speaker 1: to fight back when when we try and make peace
Speaker 1: protesting and it's really break down. Then he decided, like
Speaker 1: he also we so we decided to choose to have
Speaker 1: an ass and to make to make a revolution. So
Speaker 1: at this time he goes to the EO or stays
Speaker 1: and he lands the trainees, you know, even especially the
Speaker 1: explosive trainees, and he got back to the town and
Speaker 1: he's still making this explosive with the head of the teachings.
Speaker 1: After learning from the e a O S, he came
Speaker 1: back to Young Gone to put his knowledge to use.
Speaker 1: Of course, just like MIAs gunmaking team and the street
Speaker 1: protesters who learned from Hong Konger's he took to YouTube
Speaker 1: and Google to try and find a better way to
Speaker 1: build killing machines. So it's like the EO teaches the
Speaker 1: very business explosives just came bound. You can produce and
Speaker 1: you guysn't like this, But after they land a very
Speaker 1: business then and they want to improve. So the landbine
Speaker 1: theirselfs just like d I Y the lambine yourself with Google,
Speaker 1: with YouTube, so later and later even they can make
Speaker 1: TNT and et Y using YouTube. Of course, nearly everyone
Speaker 1: we met at some point googled something like how to
Speaker 1: make gun or how to make bomb. Now this is
Speaker 1: not ideal, op SEC, but it speaks to the desperation
Speaker 1: of the times. They used crowdfunding websites to raise money
Speaker 1: for ingredients, and Rooney soon started putting his knowledge into practice.
Speaker 1: What that meant was that people died he killed human
Speaker 1: beings with the explosives that he made. Now, those people
Speaker 1: would have killed Rooney or anyone else we've spoken to
Speaker 1: in this series. He was defending himself and others by
Speaker 1: making killing machines. But still, if you're a decent person,
Speaker 1: it's not easy to watch your work result in a
Speaker 1: stranger being blown into a pink mist. He is not
Speaker 1: proud of that, but you know, you know, he is
Speaker 1: never trying to kick even a cat on any man.
Speaker 1: He is sad, but he had to do because of revolution.
Speaker 1: Revolution was in Rooney's blood. The military had stolen his
Speaker 1: house as a kid, and he'd grown up with his
Speaker 1: uncle sharing men Marie's of the pro democracy uprising and
Speaker 1: it's violent repression. He'd seen his family, his cousin brothers
Speaker 1: and their parents harassed for his whole life. Now he
Speaker 1: had a chance to fight back. He carried out hundreds
Speaker 1: of missions before he eventually had to flee the city
Speaker 1: when an accident led to serious injury. Like in June
Speaker 1: Tones Saven, there's a nine mission, so he has to
Speaker 1: made nine boom, Yeah, really big ball. So they did
Speaker 1: trying to assembly this bowl adult one of his brands
Speaker 1: smoking and this this family is called Campo. After the blast,
Speaker 1: he had to run away from his house before the
Speaker 1: police arrived. His friend was not so lucky, and he's
Speaker 1: in jail now. Rooney is mostly recovered, but it's not
Speaker 1: safe for him to go back, so he's hoping to
Speaker 1: make a new start in Mason. The fight didn't stay
Speaker 1: in Yangon, in Napod or even for villages living outside.
Speaker 1: The coup was just as real, but so was a
Speaker 1: desire to fight back. People outside of town found themselves
Speaker 1: in the cross hairs at the Topmador as well. The
Speaker 1: military employs a strategy which they call four cuts. It's
Speaker 1: designed to alienate the rebels from local support. It doesn't work.
Speaker 1: It's kind of scorched earth. Stuff has never worked. Didn't
Speaker 1: work when the Nazis tried in Europe, didn't work when
Speaker 1: the US tried in the Middle East of Vietnam, doesn't
Speaker 1: work when it Rael keeps doing it, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: work in Myanmar. What it does do is drive people
Speaker 1: who lose their families to pick up a gun and
Speaker 1: kill soldiers. And it's not hard to see why. I
Speaker 1: just want to play you our conversation watching one of
Speaker 1: Andy's videos about one of hundreds of mascarets that have
Speaker 1: happened since last February and as a warning that stuff
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about, it is about as horrible
Speaker 1: as stuff can be. But yeah, basically about I think
Speaker 1: twenty eight people were killed that day. They just came
Speaker 1: into a village and show everyone. That's the handmade guns
Speaker 1: that these villagers had. But it was just they weren't
Speaker 1: shooting anyone though. It's that's all the everyone died. All
Speaker 1: these guys died. Look at that his hands tied. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: looks like the love trying to tie their hands. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's electrical, it looks like. And they burned the whole village.
Speaker 1: Now yeah they did, yeah twice, you guys are yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's why we say massacre because it's fucking look
Speaker 1: at all the brains out, you know. Yeah, yeah, all
Speaker 1: these kids, they weren't even eighteen. So all the villagers
Speaker 1: that run away, they took a photo of the village
Speaker 1: from afar and they burned the where the tith and
Speaker 1: then left. Yeah Jesus fucking Christ, Yeah, it was all
Speaker 1: he did. And he says. A nonprofit called Liberate Myanmar
Speaker 1: supports the families every month, keeping them fair and sheltered,
Speaker 1: because however hard the government tries to divide the people
Speaker 1: from one another, it always seems to fail. Instead, it
Speaker 1: just pushes them closer and closer together. While we were
Speaker 1: in Thailand having a drink on a rooftop actually and
Speaker 1: talking about some kind of meditation retreat that a guy
Speaker 1: we met had gone on, we got to see some
Speaker 1: of the action for ourselves. That night was a fun one.
Speaker 1: We were hanging out with some nonprofit folks and we'd
Speaker 1: acquired some pretty terrible whiskey. At various points in the
Speaker 1: evening we would ambush one of the boys and tell
Speaker 1: them they've been shot in the arm or the leg,
Speaker 1: and have the others rush into practice the stop the
Speaker 1: bleed skills well, and I demonstrated some improvised carrying techniques
Speaker 1: and how to effectively turn and drop to the floor
Speaker 1: when you're in the intimate presence of a grenade. Everyone
Speaker 1: else at the party probably thought we were pretty strange,
Speaker 1: but we were having fun. Then in the distance we
Speaker 1: saw a huge yellow flash. It took a few seconds
Speaker 1: of us all wondering if that whiskey had sent us
Speaker 1: blind before the boom reached us. The first we thought
Speaker 1: it was one of the air strikes that have been
Speaker 1: happening in the border region. But it was close and
Speaker 1: it was just one huge boom, not the rockets and
Speaker 1: cluster bombs that tap the door like to drop on civilians.
Speaker 1: Within minutes, minutes of nervously waiting on the rooftop to
Speaker 1: see what was coming next, Andy's phone started buzzing. It
Speaker 1: was a car bomb and it had gone off about
Speaker 1: a hundred yards from the border where we stood earlier
Speaker 1: that day. Camera or something, let me see, right, how
Speaker 1: did they fucking get it in there? Immediately we had questions,
Speaker 1: but very few answers. Car bombs hadn't been the thing
Speaker 1: thus far in the revolution. This was new. Car bombs
Speaker 1: are also extremely scary. It's hard not to be around
Speaker 1: cars in the city, and when any one of those
Speaker 1: cars might kill you, it's hard to do anything feeling
Speaker 1: any semblance of safety. I want to know who did well?
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, probably no car bombs. I've never heard
Speaker 1: of it. It hasn't yet. Is it somebody who driving it?
Speaker 1: Or kind of like I don't think it's someone driving it?
Speaker 1: Is it like you don't see anything there? Like h no,
Speaker 1: I mean it could have is it by the because
Speaker 1: if if there was a person in here, there wouldn't
Speaker 1: be anything left. Yeah, you wouldn't se it. No, no, no.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, look, there's the fence like that
Speaker 1: that looks like it was there one at Yeah it was.
Speaker 1: It looks like right by the breach. But then I
Speaker 1: don't know why, what this, what happened. We still aren't
Speaker 1: sure who set off the car bomb or if anyone died.
Speaker 1: In a conflict like the one in Myanmar, it's sometimes
Speaker 1: as confusing as it is scary. The military are more
Speaker 1: than capable of a false flag style attack, killing civilians
Speaker 1: and then blaming the PDF, and it has done this before.
Speaker 1: That's what totalitarianism does. It aims to control every aspect
Speaker 1: of every day life, even the truth. The jungle haunted
Speaker 1: us the whole time we were there, unattainable. But right
Speaker 1: next door, just a few miles away, and Locke Caw
Speaker 1: the fight was raging. Lucky caused what's called a friendship town.
Speaker 1: It was built with Japanese money as a place for
Speaker 1: k and new fighters to live after they put down
Speaker 1: their arms. It was supposed to be a symbol of
Speaker 1: hope and a new, peaceful and democratic Mi'anmar. Now it's
Speaker 1: a battlefield. But while we couldn't get there, we could
Speaker 1: walk along the river bank and look at the jungle
Speaker 1: and imagine what it must be like up in those mountains,
Speaker 1: which we did almost every day. Myanmar itself looms like
Speaker 1: a mountain over the town of Masot. It's a border
Speaker 1: town without a border, but the city is surrounded by
Speaker 1: refugee camps, nonprofit offices, and even museums for political prisoners
Speaker 1: that can't exist on the other side of the river.
Speaker 1: One day, we took a cab to see a monastery
Speaker 1: on a bluff overlooking the river down into My'anmar. We
Speaker 1: could see a casino still doing business with Chinese tourists,
Speaker 1: despite the bombing nearby. On the walls of the mono
Speaker 1: sterry were a colorful but horrific scenes of rape and
Speaker 1: murder Buddhist stages of Hell, a reminder that, according to
Speaker 1: the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism, all life is suffering
Speaker 1: and greed is the cause of suffering. The same thing
Speaker 1: could be said for the refugees and fighters forced to
Speaker 1: hide in the endless green of the jungle, driven away
Speaker 1: from their homes by the greed of men who worship power,
Speaker 1: all demo, crazy dye wordering my doing. It's not easy
Speaker 1: to leave your home, even when people there are trying
Speaker 1: to kill you. Doctor Wonder, like everyone else, struggled with
Speaker 1: the choice. His hospital had next to no supplies. COVID's
Speaker 1: third wave was ravaging the population, and he couldn't even
Speaker 1: get oxygen to treat sick patients. All around him was
Speaker 1: death and fear, but he still wanted to stay. Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't want to live my country because if we
Speaker 1: just live like that, our country will be We'll go
Speaker 1: back to yes before century. You know, you know, they
Speaker 1: control everything. We have to just cue to where we
Speaker 1: have to just make it cue to get a patrolium petroleum.
Speaker 1: We have faced in our young age. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't want to feel that feeling again, not for me,
Speaker 1: not just for me, enough of for our people, for
Speaker 1: our new generation. I've got two young accents. Yes, one
Speaker 1: is a five year one is an idea. So I
Speaker 1: just want to fight until my last friend. But I
Speaker 1: can't tolerate because they are trying, because you know, a
Speaker 1: ground movement. I'm trying my best. The decision to go
Speaker 1: was made for him by the topal. We are making
Speaker 1: the meeting with him. He is anc control a control
Speaker 1: yes at those times. So we're making a meeting then
Speaker 1: asking him did he saved or not? You know adust
Speaker 1: And at the end of the meeting, he he told
Speaker 1: me that him he was going to the in saying oh,
Speaker 1: I say, oh shit, holy ship. He was arrested. So
Speaker 1: I was living the young ol and you know, the
Speaker 1: government sorry that. The military also announced that the remain
Speaker 1: to arrest remaining arrested. I think all of my things
Speaker 1: that you have to go because you have all of
Speaker 1: the data, so you have to go. So I decided
Speaker 1: to go. Okay, Andy and the boys made the decision
Speaker 1: to abandon their apartment and head for current territory and
Speaker 1: eventually Thailand. Once one of their protest friends was arrested
Speaker 1: by the government, his phone was on him when he
Speaker 1: got caught, potentially exposing all of them. After a harrowing
Speaker 1: drive into the jungle and several days among the Kuran,
Speaker 1: they succeeded in finding a people smuggler to get them
Speaker 1: across the border without getting stuck in one of the
Speaker 1: refugee camps operated by the Thai government. Three days later,
Speaker 1: we were trying to cross at night time, and these
Speaker 1: guys said, okay, you know you're going you cross, you
Speaker 1: get to Thailand the same night. And we thought, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, and we we streamed across the river. It
Speaker 1: was very scary, but for me, I've done it like
Speaker 1: three times, so it was a little bit. I thought
Speaker 1: it was going to be better, but it was more
Speaker 1: stressful because I had them right, So I was like,
Speaker 1: if it was me alone, maybe I could, you know,
Speaker 1: whatever happened, I would find a way out. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure if I could do that with three other people,
Speaker 1: you know, so I was quite nervous. We paid what
Speaker 1: five thouting bodies, right, it's not cheap, It is not cheaping.
Speaker 1: But because that's the thing, it's not just one person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not just one person. He the person that crossed
Speaker 1: us from the river from Noality to this side is
Speaker 1: one and then from there to the Norman's line is
Speaker 1: another one. Right, So yeah, we saw the soldier were
Speaker 1: like Alex Dayton fought or attempted to fight with the
Speaker 1: correct but most of the time only did with stamp century,
Speaker 1: we're about getting enough to eat. I wonder when he
Speaker 1: gets his hands or something better than a squirrel rifle
Speaker 1: I kind of use because we don't have like enough guns,
Speaker 1: you know. Like so by the time that there was
Speaker 1: a like straight having uh lik ago, I thought like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to like go and you know, like
Speaker 1: fight them now. But uh if they like we have
Speaker 1: to pack our staff and move to a diepa Jenko
Speaker 1: so were like kind of like reputees with uniforms. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, if I'm just keep staying there like we
Speaker 1: if we are just going to keep running away like this,
Speaker 1: like I don't want to stay there. I want to
Speaker 1: do something about the need, like you know, like the
Speaker 1: main needs in our kidis the weapons against So I
Speaker 1: want to like come here and like you know, like
Speaker 1: Wok Wok for that, he called his unit refugees with uniforms,
Speaker 1: and that's about what they were. This is why rebels
Speaker 1: like me Ak and Daddy you m c d are
Speaker 1: so motivated to find a way to reliably print functional
Speaker 1: semi automatic weapons. The Korean are desperately under armed, and
Speaker 1: yet they've been able to hold off the military for decades.
Speaker 1: If the Koran and other ethnic organizations were able to
Speaker 1: build functional arms production infrastructure alongside the new rebels with
Speaker 1: the PDF, they have a real chance at victory. If
Speaker 1: they succeed in building this, the repercussion around the world
Speaker 1: could be massive. That is, however, a story for another day.
Speaker 1: Seeing this kind of conflict isn't good for you. Nobody's
Speaker 1: supposed to live through this kind of stuff, and certainly
Speaker 1: not when they're just kids. Even in a rich country
Speaker 1: replete with therapists and VA clinics. Thousands of US veterans
Speaker 1: live every day with PTFT. The difference for them is
Speaker 1: that they went to war in Myanma what comes to you?
Speaker 1: And then there's another one which is Sada this one
Speaker 1: and I did the first part and I'm too scared
Speaker 1: to do the second part. Yeah, I mean this is
Speaker 1: fucked up. Like every time I have to do it,
Speaker 1: I get my head get funned. That's one of the
Speaker 1: guy and so that's in Yangon in the protest. That's
Speaker 1: one of the night, where that's one of the day.
Speaker 1: But the Ajouana about a hundred people would kill over
Speaker 1: a hundred people. You can see in the video they
Speaker 1: come in um and you will see that the military,
Speaker 1: how the military came in and how they were trying
Speaker 1: to I'm not sure if I have it any more,
Speaker 1: maybe here delop. They surrounded and they killed everybody. What
Speaker 1: they've seen is bonded the boys. They do anything for
Speaker 1: each other, and they've already done things that most of
Speaker 1: us can't imagine. When one of their mothers wanted to
Speaker 1: take him home, he felt helpless without them. When the
Speaker 1: rest of them crossed. One of their moms came back
Speaker 1: to get him without them, and stuck in the country
Speaker 1: following apart, he didn't want to keep going. Every day
Speaker 1: he watched soldiers outside himself popping Yabba pills yabas, a
Speaker 1: meth based drug that soldiers are often given by the military.
Speaker 1: He worried they kill him. His brother in law was
Speaker 1: arrested and tortured just to having a lighter. Can you
Speaker 1: remember what it felt like when your mom came taking him.
Speaker 1: He kept saying, he's gonna kill himself for a long time,
Speaker 1: for a long time. I will come through, okay, Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He wasn't in a good space. Yeah, that's very space. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I didn't that. So he was saying that if
Speaker 1: he has to go back, he was telling us like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, now he's alone, Like he doesn't even have
Speaker 1: us anymore. And so he was saying, like he's going
Speaker 1: to go out to the protests and he's going to
Speaker 1: try to kill the cops, right, the soldiers, the police.
Speaker 1: And it was very difficult like for us to like
Speaker 1: because we know his mom can't really like help him
Speaker 1: with that stuff. You know we can, but she really
Speaker 1: wanted to take him. So over time they chatted on
Speaker 1: the phone and he felt it. But now he's here
Speaker 1: with the boys. It's him playing his guitar and the
Speaker 1: music you heard. Um, he got a little better. Um
Speaker 1: coping with this in a good life, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. I mean, if you're young and you see
Speaker 1: people killing people like this terribly, you have some drug
Speaker 1: fucked up thoughts yourself too, write like well I could
Speaker 1: do this to someone too, and stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: he's struggled a lot with that for a long time.
Speaker 1: And um, I think the worst thing was being alone.
Speaker 1: He was alone. He couldn't talk to his mom about
Speaker 1: all these things, right. He was paranoid, he was scary,
Speaker 1: he was traumatized. So I mean you should see like
Speaker 1: the first time he canalize. It's been five months since
Speaker 1: he was he's here, but the first few months it
Speaker 1: was very difficult. Yeah, I'm kind of like I talked
Speaker 1: to them all the time about this, because I know
Speaker 1: talking helps with these stuffs, like especially when you all
Speaker 1: feel in the same It's like, you know, and I
Speaker 1: think our ways of coping with this is like we
Speaker 1: talked about it about like kind of like a joking way,
Speaker 1: like people hearing it. That's the best way to deal
Speaker 1: with it, Like to get through those hard days on
Speaker 1: his own looking down at men who wanted him dead.
Speaker 1: He picked up a cheap acoustic guitar. When he got back,
Speaker 1: he began teaching the others he hadn't picked it up.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good. When we went out to the pool
Speaker 1: bar at night, in between kicking herrasses, the boys would
Speaker 1: look up at the stage. It was occupied by a
Speaker 1: pretty second rate cover band for whatever reason, probably not
Speaker 1: helped by the incredibly rough Tige, and we've been smashing back.
Speaker 1: I looked at them looking at the stage on our
Speaker 1: last night, and I wanted to cry. Teenage kids shouldn't
Speaker 1: be caught picking up guns to fight or picking up
Speaker 1: cameras to film their friends dying. They should be doing
Speaker 1: what I was doing when I was a teenager, which
Speaker 1: is making a complete prick of myself on a stage
Speaker 1: with a guitar. One day, hopefully soon they'll be able
Speaker 1: to sing happy songs again and the war will just
Speaker 1: be a memory, my stuff. Then when you write it before, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't have from Paul. Yeah, I don't talk like stood.
Speaker 1: Their bond is so close now, they're barely ever apart.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of responsibility for Andy, who's just twenty
Speaker 1: two himself, but he wouldn't want it any other way,
Speaker 1: and neither would they. One night and you and Sarah
Speaker 1: have appointments, and so Robert and I take the boys
Speaker 1: for dinner. It's a lot of fun and actually a
Speaker 1: lot of food. But when we talked to him about
Speaker 1: their options as refugees who might be able to come
Speaker 1: to the US, one thing is clear. They don't want
Speaker 1: to be a part. For me, it's like I'd rather
Speaker 1: fucking take bullet than any of them, because if they
Speaker 1: die or if something happened to them, I am in
Speaker 1: so much trouble, you know what I mean. But I
Speaker 1: know that that's what they want to do. Like if
Speaker 1: the mom trud him and yangon and he doesn't do
Speaker 1: anything and the revolution is over, he's going to feel
Speaker 1: so much regret, you know, like for not being involved
Speaker 1: in this, and that's for me. It's like people if
Speaker 1: if people want to fight, like, you know, like we
Speaker 1: shouldn't keep them. We shouldn't just say yeah. It's been
Speaker 1: a few months since we got back from Masont. It's
Speaker 1: the rainy season there now, and that makes fighting and
Speaker 1: reporting harder. Amira is still stuck in Mason. It it's
Speaker 1: not safe for her to go back to a country
Speaker 1: where her family wants her dead, but it's not possible
Speaker 1: for her to leave Masat either without travel documents, something
Speaker 1: the u N h c R would have to issue.
Speaker 1: She's stuck in a little room in a hotel. It's
Speaker 1: not a great place for a young woman, and it's
Speaker 1: even worse when she has to watch her friends continue
Speaker 1: to struggle without her. We both wrote to the U
Speaker 1: N and the various embassies on her behalf, but months
Speaker 1: later we've heard nothing. This is typical of a lot
Speaker 1: of refugees. They're often presented as a faceless mass of humanity,
Speaker 1: bereft of hope, but each of them has a story,
Speaker 1: and those refugee camps along the border between Thailand and
Speaker 1: Myanmar are full of stories. Some of those are stories
Speaker 1: of fear, some of heroism, and some of tragedy, But
Speaker 1: until things change at the u N, all of those
Speaker 1: stories aren't being told. The three D printed firearms Mawk
Speaker 1: and his colleagues are working on have made massive progress
Speaker 1: over the last few months. But even though three D
Speaker 1: printed guns cost a small fraction of the price of
Speaker 1: an M sixteen or an a K forty seven, the
Speaker 1: pro democracy forces are still desperately underfunded. They're at war
Speaker 1: with the state, but they don't have any of the
Speaker 1: apparatus of the state with which to fight back. Instead,
Speaker 1: the gen Z rebels have turned once again to the Internet.
Speaker 1: Alongside crowdfunding campaigns that liberate, they've developed a more innovative
Speaker 1: fundraising method that allows for donations even from people who
Speaker 1: don't have any money. Instead of soliciting cash donations risking
Speaker 1: exposing their donors, they began using a method that they
Speaker 1: call click to Donate, where supporters could help the rebels
Speaker 1: by clicking on adverts on certain videos and websites in
Speaker 1: order to generate advertising revenue. It's used to find everything
Speaker 1: from weapons purchases to shelter for the ten four thousand
Speaker 1: eternally displaced people in Myanmar. I spoke to several people
Speaker 1: in Myanmar who asked not to be named for their
Speaker 1: own safety, but are very familiar with the funding of
Speaker 1: the PDF. One of them told me click to donate
Speaker 1: started to support government staff who had decided to join
Speaker 1: a civil disobedience movement. Government staff are always low paid,
Speaker 1: and so they were not very financially stable. In the beginning,
Speaker 1: the function click to tommy allow these workers to strike
Speaker 1: without pay. After a few weeks of being on strike,
Speaker 1: financial concerns were weakening the movement and people were being
Speaker 1: forced to work or starve. Younger protomocracy activists responded by
Speaker 1: setting up YouTube channels and then using the anti coup
Speaker 1: telegram channels to direct millions of views and a cliques
Speaker 1: to them from across the country and from supporters abroad.
Speaker 1: The resulting advertising revenue allowed them to fund the civil
Speaker 1: disobedience movement and later to equip the PDF. By December,
Speaker 1: these clicks were yielding an income of about five hundred
Speaker 1: million kiyats about twenty eight thousand dollars every day. The
Speaker 1: military junta responded to this and international indignation at videos
Speaker 1: of protesters being massacred in the street by tripling data
Speaker 1: prizes and throttling internet connection speeds. Pro democracy keyboard warriors
Speaker 1: responded with viral content that required less bandwidth, including writing
Speaker 1: personal finance blogs to attract the u S audience that
Speaker 1: was unknowingly supporting a revolution with its clicks. People in
Speaker 1: 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 gen Z 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 cool 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: the games earned the money, and that money went to
Speaker 1: fund the PDF. The most impressive of these games is
Speaker 1: a recently launched War of Heroes, which you can buy
Speaker 1: for just a dollar on the Apple and Google app
Speaker 1: stores if you want to check it out. In the game,
Speaker 1: which is available in Burmese or English, a player can
Speaker 1: fight as a man or a woman and take on
Speaker 1: government troops and even zombies. The money donated by these
Speaker 1: games and adverts doesn't just go into a black hole,
Speaker 1: according to the sources I spoke to. We have a
Speaker 1: click to donate Facebook page, they said, and regularly we
Speaker 1: release financial statements on a Facebook page saying like this
Speaker 1: month we gave ten million caaps to that group. I
Speaker 1: spoke to Billy Ford, a program officer for the Burma
Speaker 1: team at US Institute of Peace. He says this kind
Speaker 1: of innovation is what's allowed the protomocracy movement to survive
Speaker 1: in Miama since it was last violently suppressed in ATPs,
Speaker 1: and resistance movements in Myanmar have historically been an example
Speaker 1: to the world of creative, strategic and resilient models of activism,
Speaker 1: he said. This poste movement has taken that to a
Speaker 1: new level, enabling it to defy all historical precedent and
Speaker 1: sustain an anti coup movement for more than eighteen months,
Speaker 1: now actually gaining ground against a regime with an enormous
Speaker 1: structural advantage, rather than seeing their lack of weapons and
Speaker 1: funds of the fatal flaw. Ford says that the highly
Speaker 1: unlined rebels have looked for areas where they can outflank
Speaker 1: the aging generals who stole their futures from them. The
Speaker 1: movement has leveraged comparative advantages large numbers of people with
Speaker 1: time and tech savvy to raise money. He says. This tactic,
Speaker 1: although unusual, has been a great success. According to Ford,
Speaker 1: the approach has grown enormously, with one of the video games,
Speaker 1: for example, rising to become a number two paid app
Speaker 1: on the App Store at one point. However, all the
Speaker 1: cliques in the world might not be enough to sweep
Speaker 1: the rebels into Mandalay and return the country on its
Speaker 1: path towards democracy. Sources inside ME and MAR say that
Speaker 1: less and less revenue is generated by a ME and
Speaker 1: Mari ip address, and that they have had to encourage
Speaker 1: members of the People's Clique force to install vp ns
Speaker 1: to make their clicks appear to come from the U
Speaker 1: S or Europe. Sometimes the traffic is so massive that
Speaker 1: YouTube's algorithm mistakes it for an artificial intelligence bot net.
Speaker 1: They're looking, they tell me, it pivoting towards affiliate links
Speaker 1: and the sort of content driven commerce that has swept
Speaker 1: the U S media thanks to the success of sites
Speaker 1: like The wire Cutter. Meanwhile, on the ground, PDF forces
Speaker 1: are regularly getting the better of the toutmadaw and small
Speaker 1: arms conflict, but coming off worse when they can't defend
Speaker 1: themselves against the Russian jets, which the Hunter uses to
Speaker 1: bomb civilian and military targets. Without man portable anti aircraft systems,
Speaker 1: the rebels are sitting ducks. The world is sent thou
Speaker 1: of these to Ukraine and none to people in Myanmar
Speaker 1: fighting 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 in eighteen months of revolution. De crazy,
Speaker 1: I word oh do dying? YEA yeah? Oh my really
Speaker 1: young age boy nine? I know it. Hi everyone, it's
Speaker 1: me again, James. Don't worry. I'm not coming to you
Speaker 1: at the end of the series to report something tragic
Speaker 1: like I did. And I'll last me. I'm a series
Speaker 1: and I'm just recording this little message at the end
Speaker 1: to say that we're very grateful to Daniel, Andy and
Speaker 1: for all their hard work on this, and we've gone
Speaker 1: through countless edits for this particular project, and they've done
Speaker 1: a lot of hard work to get it to you
Speaker 1: in the form that you listen to it today and
Speaker 1: for the last week. We also want to say that
Speaker 1: although this appears to be a podcast written and recorded
Speaker 1: by Robert and I, that Andy is very much a
Speaker 1: co author and that none of this would have been
Speaker 1: possible without him. As we said, and he's not his
Speaker 1: real name, and we can't put his real name in
Speaker 1: the credits because we're worried for his safety, but his
Speaker 1: work has been invaluable and without him, none of what
Speaker 1: you've heard would be possible. Hey, We'll be back Monday
Speaker 1: with more episodes every week from now until the heat
Speaker 1: death of the Universe. It could happen. Here is a
Speaker 1: production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
Speaker 1: or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
Speaker 1: find sources for It could happen here, Updated monthly at
Speaker 1: cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.