Speaker 1: Sitting at a pool bar in Masack, listening to covers
Speaker 1: of Credence songs by the house band and losing at
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 faced 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 2: But I think the most fucked up thing that we
Speaker 2: had to plan was what if someone get shot one
Speaker 2: of us and the other person have to go carry.
Speaker 3: Who do you go?
Speaker 2: Who gets hit?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: And we had to kind of like what we did
Speaker 2: just now, but like, okay, if I get hit, you know,
Speaker 2: two of you, this, this, and this person will come
Speaker 2: out and you know, do this to me because it's
Speaker 2: I don't know. I think we were planning because it's
Speaker 2: just good to have that, you know, because if someone
Speaker 2: gets shot and if all of five of us go
Speaker 2: ran in there, there's more targets, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: So then like if someone would wait, lass weight get shots,
Speaker 2: then you know this person go, if someone heavier get shot,
Speaker 2: this two person go. Something like that.
Speaker 1: When Andy says like we did earlier. He's talking about
Speaker 1: a small stop the bleed type course that we had
Speaker 1: given the boys. Most journalists operating in war zones will
Speaker 1: take at minimum a week long Hostile Environment and First
Speaker 1: Aid training or he FAT course. Many of us will
Speaker 1: take extra courses. James and I both refreshed our Wilderness
Speaker 1: first Responder certificates once we had this trip planned. Andy
Speaker 1: 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 airsoft store. The afternoon we
Speaker 1: spent practicing skills. Wasn't nearly enough, but until they can
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So our plan was literally just to burn that
Speaker 2: fucking door down so then it would be difficult for
Speaker 2: them to come in. And then you know, we'll do
Speaker 2: I don't know, whatever we can with the weapon we have,
Speaker 2: but we weren't going to make it out, you know,
Speaker 2: And how to do plan all that with these kids,
Speaker 2: like it's like fucked up. There were times that like
Speaker 2: they wake up a nice greaming like they you know
Speaker 2: they I think now it's better, Right, it's been a
Speaker 2: year and a half and we are like we're better
Speaker 2: at coping with it. But at that time it was very,
Speaker 2: 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 now for a very old land. Over
Speaker 1: the centuries, it's been ruled by a series of empires
Speaker 1: and dynasties. The Mongols took over for a while in
Speaker 1: the twelve hundreds and thirteen hundreds, and when they left
Speaker 1: 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 Bagidah gave
Speaker 1: his generals the order to attack a pair of brutal
Speaker 1: jungle wars. Wars followed, and despite winning several victories early on,
Speaker 1: Burmese troops 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 kirn 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 and oppresses, confers,
Speaker 1: takes away honor and rank, and without any process of law,
Speaker 1: can put to death not only criminals guilty of capital offenses,
Speaker 1: but any individual who happens to incur his displeasure. It
Speaker 1: is here a perilous thing for a person to become
Speaker 1: distinguished for wealth and possessions, for the day may easily
Speaker 1: come when he will be charged with some supposed crime
Speaker 1: and so put to death in order that his property
Speaker 1: may be confiscated. Every subject is the Emperor's born slave,
Speaker 1: and when he calls anyone his slave, he thinks thereby
Speaker 1: to do him honor. Hence, also he considers himself entitled
Speaker 1: to employ his subjects in any work of service without
Speaker 1: salary or pay, and if he makes them any recompense,
Speaker 1: it is done not from a sense of justice, but
Speaker 1: as an act of bounty. And while Bagidah was a
Speaker 1: fairly modern king, brutality like this went back hundreds of
Speaker 1: years in the region. Most of the kings and princes
Speaker 1: and other people who ruled the land we now call
Speaker 1: me Anmar did so with brutal force and an awful
Speaker 1: lot of conscription. This is broadly true of much of
Speaker 1: Southeast Asia. Western histories of this region tend to flatten
Speaker 1: life into kingdoms and empires and assume life in the
Speaker 1: region coincided politically with the lines drawn on maps. This
Speaker 1: was never the case. Much of mainland Southeast Asia, from
Speaker 1: the central highlands of Vietnam through Myanmar, northeast India, and
Speaker 1: several southern Chinese provinces, is filled with terrifying mountains and
Speaker 1: brutal hills covered with the densest jungle imaginable standing in
Speaker 1: Maysot and staring across the border into Myanmar, all you
Speaker 1: see is a vast expanse of jagged, deep green peaks
Speaker 1: 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 of four plains, helicopters, or satellite communications,
Speaker 1: this area was practically ungovernable. People were aware of this
Speaker 1: at 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 Zomia, has been a refuge for people pushed out
Speaker 1: and put down by the great state powers of the
Speaker 1: air area. Empires and kings would stick to the coasts
Speaker 1: and the flat plains, perfect for cultivating rice. When they
Speaker 1: taxed their subjects too hard or conscripted too many of
Speaker 1: them into the military, some would flee to the hills
Speaker 1: to take their freedom. As James C. Scott, a Yale
Speaker 1: polysci professor, writes, the frontier operated as a rough and
Speaker 1: ready homeostatic device. The more estate pressed its subjects, the
Speaker 1: fewer subjects it had. The Frontier under rote freedom. He
Speaker 1: calls the people who chose to inhabit this stateless zone
Speaker 1: barbarians by choice. While many of these ethnic groups were
Speaker 1: mocked for their lack of so called civilized values like
Speaker 1: widespread literacy, Scott argues that this lack was actually a
Speaker 1: conscious rejection. Their refusal to educate themselves in a manner
Speaker 1: acceptable to the powers of the day was a rebellion
Speaker 1: against the legitimacy of those powers and their standards. Human
Speaker 1: history in our modern globe is filled with places like this,
Speaker 1: muddied areas at the borders of great powers, where the
Speaker 1: detritus of war, refugees and beaten soldiers can congregate without
Speaker 1: fear of the state. The term for these places is
Speaker 1: shatter zones. Rojava, the radical feminist enclave in northeast Syria,
Speaker 1: would be one example of a shatter zone and the
Speaker 1: unique political potential such places have. Myanmar is by land mass,
Speaker 1: mostly shatter zones, and since nineteen forty nine, different ethnic
Speaker 1: armed organizations have existed in a more or less constant
Speaker 1: conflict with the state. This includes the Karin people, whose
Speaker 1: territory borders Thailand. When the young millennial and Zoomer protesters
Speaker 1: in the cities realized they were going to have to
Speaker 1: flee their homes to continue the fight. Korin territory was
Speaker 1: a natural place to retreat to. People had been making
Speaker 1: versions of the same decision for two thousand years. The
Speaker 1: current situation between the Koran and Mianmar's military junta actually
Speaker 1: owes a lot to the British Empire. When they took
Speaker 1: over in Myanmar, they had to figure out how to
Speaker 1: govern it, and they went with the tactic that had
Speaker 1: served them well all across India and Africaica. They picked
Speaker 1: a minority ethnic group to act as their colonial shock troops.
Speaker 1: In Uganda, their preferred warrior race were the Kokwa people,
Speaker 1: from whom future dictator Idiamine descended. For their colonial troops
Speaker 1: in India, the Brits used Sikhs and Gurkhas, and in
Speaker 1: colonial Burma they used the Karin. Ever since the British left,
Speaker 1: the Karin have wanted as little as possible to do
Speaker 1: with the central government in Napiadah. Instead, they fought to
Speaker 1: maintain Kadulay, a land without darkness, as they were promised
Speaker 1: in Burma's nineteen forty eight constitution. Today, they might not
Speaker 1: be recognized by the UN or the US, but the
Speaker 1: Korin have their own schools, hospitals, and army. They have
Speaker 1: been at war since nineteen forty nine. Andy, whose father
Speaker 1: is Karin, only really found out about the struggle for Quadulay,
Speaker 1: a home for the Karin language peoples, when he became
Speaker 1: a refugee. He moved into the camps along the border
Speaker 1: after the Saffron Revolution. He was only eight years old.
Speaker 1: The border is dotted with camps, some of them more
Speaker 1: like towns, but they're always timber. And while the Thai
Speaker 1: government tolerates the Karin presence, people there are seen as
Speaker 1: temporarily displaced. They can't build solid homes and don't have
Speaker 1: the identity documents they need to travel even internally in Thailand.
Speaker 1: Despite not growing up there. Andy's identity cards, says Karin,
Speaker 1: It doesn't take a PhD in history to know that
Speaker 1: ethnic identity cards issued by imperial and formerly postcolonial governments
Speaker 1: are bad news. But if you need more information about that,
Speaker 1: maybe google ID cards Comma, Rwanda.
Speaker 4: Like most people in most places, the young people from
Speaker 4: Miamma we talked to had thought relatively little about the
Speaker 4: injustices on the edge of their world. They tend to
Speaker 4: think of the Koran as terrorist up in the hills
Speaker 4: rather than freedom fighters. But once a topmodor started unloading
Speaker 4: machine guns into crowds, people were confronted with the reality
Speaker 4: of a situation that they'd been able to ignore before.
Speaker 4: Suddenly they saw that the Koran and other marginalized ethnic
Speaker 4: groups were victims of the same gun violence that they
Speaker 4: now faced. But now that the scales had fallen from
Speaker 4: their eyes, they were going to do something about it.
Speaker 2: The main majority of groups people there are current people,
Speaker 2: which is another ethnic groups from Memoir, and they they
Speaker 2: had a different view, right because obviously the military. While
Speaker 2: we were like because we were born in the city,
Speaker 2: we were more like you know, like we didn't suffer
Speaker 2: that much, even though it wasn't that great, you know.
Speaker 2: But then for them, the military come to their states,
Speaker 2: the military come to their villages, they burned the villages,
Speaker 2: they kill the people, they read the people, you know,
Speaker 2: they do all these atrocities. So then they have a
Speaker 2: very different view on the Memar military and how the
Speaker 2: country is you know, working doing. And so that's when
Speaker 2: I started learning, oh shit, like there is some other
Speaker 2: stuff going on in the country, but you know, like
Speaker 2: you kind of just like you kind of just live
Speaker 2: with your life. You know, your kid, You're trying to
Speaker 2: get by day to day, so you didn't really think
Speaker 2: about it. And for me that going on, that went
Speaker 2: on for a long time until the military could happen
Speaker 2: in Ya.
Speaker 4: Mic the present revolution is not the only flare up
Speaker 4: of inter ethnic violence in the country. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 4: the Tatmodor under ming An Klan began a conservative campaign
Speaker 4: of genocidal ethnic cleansing against the Rhinia people, a largely
Speaker 4: Muslim ethnic group who live in the country's were a
Speaker 4: kind state. The Tatmodor, claiming the Rhinia were variously terrorists
Speaker 4: or illegal immigrants native to modern day Bangladesh and hence
Speaker 4: not native to mih and Mar, spent months raping, killing,
Speaker 4: and burning the villages of the Rhininggia people. While the world,
Speaker 4: perhaps distracted by a neoliberal consensus which demonizes both migrants
Speaker 4: and Muslims, did fuck all to stop them. In Myanmar,
Speaker 4: nobody spoke about the genocide, at least not in those terms.
Speaker 4: Most people didn't even speak about the Rhindia in those terms.
Speaker 4: Because Tatmodor propaganda was so effect that citizens in Yangon
Speaker 4: really believed that their Hingia were migrants and terrorists coming
Speaker 4: from Bangladesh. Government newspapers like The New Light of Myanmar
Speaker 4: published daily stories linking them to groups like ISIS or Arkaeda, who,
Speaker 4: despite their best efforts, remained totally irrelevant in this story.
Speaker 4: Bots popped up on Facebook, which is basically synonymous with
Speaker 4: the Internet for many people living in Myanmar, and fed
Speaker 4: a steady diet of anti Rehingia hate speech into political discourse,
Speaker 4: gradually shifting the Overton window towards genocide. And without better information,
Speaker 4: most people believe them, and these Western friends, probably weirdos
Speaker 4: like me who had crept into his DMS at some point,
Speaker 4: started to ask him questions.
Speaker 2: So the Rundan thing happened in two thousand and seventeen.
Speaker 2: I was seventeen, and you know, we started hearing it.
Speaker 2: I started getting phone calls from my friend in the
Speaker 2: western countries, like Westerners. They would be like, Hey, what's
Speaker 2: happening in your country? Why are you killing like all
Speaker 2: the Muslims? And I'm like, mess out Tiler, and I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard
Speaker 2: anything like that, right, and so yeah, and then like
Speaker 2: I try to learn a little bit more. But everyone
Speaker 2: had so intense opinions about it that at some point
Speaker 2: I'm like, ah, fuck, I don't know anymore, you know,
Speaker 2: because the military was in control at that time, still
Speaker 2: kind of so they control the news, they control the media,
Speaker 2: they control it's the same thing, you know, like they
Speaker 2: control who were saying what, and so we never hear
Speaker 2: about it that much. If you only, if only you
Speaker 2: care so much and you're following everyone that is saying
Speaker 2: you know the truth, then you know. But otherwise you
Speaker 2: didn't know. It was all very blurry, very So that's
Speaker 2: another time when I'm like, oh fuck, like I don't
Speaker 2: know what to do. I'm just gonna you know, and
Speaker 2: then one on with my life. And yeah, I never
Speaker 2: I never realized how much, like how much they had
Speaker 2: to suffer, and they are still suffering, right.
Speaker 4: No number of international protests stop the ethnic cleanding of
Speaker 4: the Rainie. As they huddled hidden in their apartment, Andy
Speaker 4: and his brothers began to embrace the need deadly violence
Speaker 4: against their oppressors.
Speaker 2: We never had any plans, actually, we were just like no,
Speaker 2: I think I remember, it's like that was not really planned.
Speaker 2: It was like they killed our people who were fucking
Speaker 2: hurt them back.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: It wasn't to get their guns or shoot them back,
Speaker 2: like we didn't even know how to use any of that,
Speaker 2: you know, And honestly, we didn't even want to kill them.
Speaker 2: We just want to be like, you can't do these
Speaker 2: things and not feel, not feel any anything, you know,
Speaker 2: not not feel any consequences of that. Like we're not
Speaker 2: fucking We're not animals. You know. You can't just come
Speaker 2: in and killed one of our friends and think that
Speaker 2: we're not going to do anything back, you know, Like
Speaker 2: and if we let that happen, then they're never going
Speaker 2: to stop, you know. You they were trying to scare us,
Speaker 2: and we were trying to scare them back, but they
Speaker 2: actually kill people. We didn't. We never wanted to kill anyone.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: Andy's situation felt hopeless at this stage. Trapped at the
Speaker 1: capitol and watching his friends disappear one by one. It
Speaker 1: seemed like he was running out of options. Thousands of
Speaker 1: young people and me and mar felt the same, and
Speaker 1: some of them decided to take an option they hadn't
Speaker 1: even known existed. A few weeks earlier, while we were
Speaker 1: in Massat we conducted a phone interview with a former
Speaker 1: rebel fighter named Alex. Like everyone else we talked to,
Speaker 1: he woke up on the first to February to find
Speaker 1: out that his phone didn't work and the internet was out.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I thought like it was just you know, like
Speaker 5: something wrong with my phone. And then like I started
Speaker 5: talking to my friends, and all my friends are having
Speaker 5: the same problem. So we looked down and everybody is
Speaker 5: like watching down to the market because we live close
Speaker 5: to the market, and like they were like you know,
Speaker 5: like doing like like buy and lots of rise and
Speaker 5: like food too. I stole because no one know what's
Speaker 5: going to happen.
Speaker 4: Like everyone else, he wasn't that into politics, but he
Speaker 4: was absolutely not into having the military fuck with every
Speaker 4: aspect of his life. So he got into the streets first.
Speaker 5: Like we are not like that into the politics and stuff,
Speaker 5: so we didn't know. But the you know, like they
Speaker 5: can even like shut down the Internet is kind of
Speaker 5: like controlling our life, right, so like if they can
Speaker 5: even do that, like you know, like we can only
Speaker 5: imagine like what other things they can do and which
Speaker 5: they did like killing the Inno civilians and stuff. So yeah,
Speaker 5: at first we're just like, oh, yeah, we need to
Speaker 5: do something about this and then join the protests.
Speaker 4: He and his friends later found a shop to buy
Speaker 4: gas masks, tasers, and goggles, but even with all the gear,
Speaker 4: they were powerless against soldiers with guns and tear gas.
Speaker 4: He said that the next few weeks were hard. Protests
Speaker 4: were less and less safe, but nobody dared to talk
Speaker 4: about their plans to take the fight to the military.
Speaker 4: Everyone was worried about informants and snitches.
Speaker 5: We didn't really like actually talk about those stuff. Like
Speaker 5: we're only like discussing about you know, like a protests
Speaker 5: and also like how to get attention from the like
Speaker 5: embassies and stuff. But for like fight fighting back and
Speaker 5: you know, like going on the wars or like I think,
Speaker 5: like almost everyone they just decide on their own unless
Speaker 5: they have super like trust deference.
Speaker 4: By April, he says he'd seen people die in the streets.
Speaker 4: He decided the protesting wasn't working and he needed to
Speaker 4: pick up a gun. The only problem was he didn't
Speaker 4: have one, nor did his friends. He knew some people
Speaker 4: who had guns and hated the top of the door, but
Speaker 4: he'd been raised his whole life to think of them
Speaker 4: as terrorists.
Speaker 5: Before this web you know, like brainwashed by the military
Speaker 5: like pretty much our whole life. So you know, we
Speaker 5: always think, oh, ethnic groups are like like you know,
Speaker 5: they were okay, like whoever they see or and he
Speaker 5: didn't like it. Just terrorsts, terrorists, right, that's what like
Speaker 5: the military like make us believe our whole life. And
Speaker 5: I was kind of scared of like joining them because yeah,
Speaker 5: I didn't know like you know, how to live there
Speaker 5: or like if they're gonna came in just because like
Speaker 5: I don't speak Karen.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it was bizarrely his boss who hooked him
Speaker 4: up with the rebels in the hills, but he couldn't
Speaker 4: tell anyone he was going in case they got captured
Speaker 4: or turned out to be a snitch. Instead, he packed
Speaker 4: his bag with some of his old clothes, didn't even
Speaker 4: say goodbye to his family, and took a bus. He
Speaker 4: got off that bus waited intil a man in the
Speaker 4: car picked him up. By that night, he was in
Speaker 4: the jungle.
Speaker 5: Doing the first night there, like you know, we have
Speaker 5: to go guard like one or the leader from the jungle,
Speaker 5: like you know, like trainers by you like walking in
Speaker 5: the dark in the forest. So we had to walk
Speaker 5: to like somewhere we don't even know, and we have
Speaker 5: to sleep in the like deep jungle.
Speaker 4: He'd read about the PDF on Facebook, but suddenly he
Speaker 4: found himself among them. Technically they were distinct unit fighting
Speaker 4: for return to democracy, but in practice there and equipped
Speaker 4: by the Karrent National Liberation Army who have been fighting
Speaker 4: for federal democracy for decades. Pretty soon his opinion of
Speaker 4: the Karent had changed.
Speaker 5: But like during my time, I did some observation about them. Yeah,
Speaker 5: it was like obviously, like the government, it's not the
Speaker 5: current people fighting the cup are the military. The military
Speaker 5: has been like you know, like invading the Karrent villagers
Speaker 5: like karen Land. And yeah, they did like banning down
Speaker 5: the like villagers, like raving the Woomors, you know, like
Speaker 5: killing the people for like many years. So they cannot
Speaker 5: do anything but to fight back, you know, they have
Speaker 5: to fight back to prota their.
Speaker 4: Land, just like Zo, the now deceased rebel soldier who
Speaker 4: interviewed for our last series. Alex receive rudimentary training. He
Speaker 4: never fired a gun before, and supplies are very limited,
Speaker 4: but he's still got a kick out of sending a
Speaker 4: few rounds down range, like not even in.
Speaker 5: My dream, like I never do, like I will be
Speaker 5: like houlting it again, or I shouldn't.
Speaker 1: Should it so.
Speaker 3: Pretty good?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Do you were what kind of gun was it? Was
Speaker 1: it a point two too or was it?
Speaker 5: Yes, the first one was point to two?
Speaker 1: Was it hand homemade?
Speaker 3: Handmade?
Speaker 2: Or was it you know.
Speaker 5: Uh no, it's not a hard made but it's kind
Speaker 5: of pretty old.
Speaker 4: Even in the jungle, they were worried about moles. It
Speaker 4: took a while to make friends, he says, but eventually
Speaker 4: he fell in with a cop who had defected, a photographer,
Speaker 4: and a construction worker. Their plan, he says, was to
Speaker 4: train up in the jungle and then go home and
Speaker 4: find the cities.
Speaker 5: Like our idea was, you know, like we one day
Speaker 5: and train for a few months and then go back
Speaker 5: to the city. And like we thought, like it's gonna
Speaker 5: be like a huge wars in the cities like in
Speaker 5: Yango or Menoy and also like everywhere in Yama. But yeah,
Speaker 5: it didn't turns sound like that.
Speaker 4: But instead he found himself pulling sentry duty in the
Speaker 4: jungle for city Kit. It was scary alone out there
Speaker 4: in the night with a gun, surrounded by potential threats.
Speaker 5: I felt like, you know, like okay, like it's gonna
Speaker 5: happen tonight, Like they're gonna come to our base tonight.
Speaker 5: A week I'm gonna have to shoot that. I have
Speaker 5: to product my people, funny, but it didn't happen.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've spent eight months in the field pulling sentry
Speaker 4: duty and learning the skills of a soldier, but without
Speaker 4: arms and ammunition, there wasn't much he could do, and
Speaker 4: his whole time training, he says, he only fired five shots.
Speaker 5: I felt kind of useless because we don't have like
Speaker 5: enough guns, you know. Like so by the time, like
Speaker 5: there was like steroid happening in uh Laky, I thought like, oh,
Speaker 5: we're gonna have to like go and you know, like
Speaker 5: fight them now. But instay, like we have to pack
Speaker 5: our staff and move to a deeper jungle. So we
Speaker 5: were like kind of like reputees with uniforms. But yeah,
Speaker 5: you know, if I just keep staying there, like we
Speaker 5: if we are just going to keep running away like this,
Speaker 5: Like I don't want to stay there. I want to
Speaker 5: do something about the needs, like the main needs in
Speaker 5: our canvas, the webbons against So I want to like
Speaker 5: come here and like work for that.
Speaker 4: The transition was hard. For eight months, you haven't seen
Speaker 4: a light bulb or a flashing toilet. Now he crossed
Speaker 4: the river, and everything seemed normal, every kind.
Speaker 5: Of weird, like you know from the jungle a metal
Speaker 5: It's just a small river across. And then like the
Speaker 5: life here is totally different, Like peoples are living their
Speaker 5: normal life and not having to like worry for like
Speaker 5: any things, or like there's like the whole time I
Speaker 5: was in younger, you know, like we have to worry
Speaker 5: about our country, and like we don't want to live
Speaker 5: a normal life. And they that made you like the
Speaker 5: military's gold so like. But then like here everyone is
Speaker 5: living in normal and it just only a way across.
Speaker 4: Now that he's across the river, we won't say where.
Speaker 4: He's still part of the revolution. He's raising money and
Speaker 4: doing interviews like this, trying to organize medical supplies, and
Speaker 4: hoping that one day he can return to his country,
Speaker 4: not as a refugee with a uniform, but perhaps as
Speaker 4: a soldier liberating his people, or better yet, as a
Speaker 4: citizen in a free democracy.
Speaker 1: York wasn't ready to be a refugee quite yet. He
Speaker 1: quickly found a role for himself in 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, Yaq didn't only
Speaker 1: make guns at first. He made bombs too, using knowledge
Speaker 1: that he'd gained after traveling into the jungle, getting training
Speaker 1: from Korean experts, and explosives and as he told us,
Speaker 1: they were very effective. Do you think the explosives took
Speaker 1: out any soldiers?
Speaker 3: Of course, Sam explosives is out for the bathing sat
Speaker 3: explosive for their base. Some are the trouble so you
Speaker 3: know they they camp and pit the ball and trying
Speaker 3: to cut off the ball and just explode. So they die.
Speaker 3: So my cut cut off the wire bone wires. Okay, yes,
Speaker 3: but they died anyway. So it's like, oh, my best
Speaker 3: memory is that we are using and the very first
Speaker 3: et M E T and in in in Tanangel. Now
Speaker 3: this revolutionary thing is the wholdings that arrested hold. It's
Speaker 3: very sad uh when they made made the idim bawl
Speaker 3: uh we we had that the ambas ambulas Abu less
Speaker 3: white and less Land un blessed Land. It's like fight
Speaker 3: Fi ambula track is coming here. Oh wow, okay this
Speaker 3: is I think this is my best movie.
Speaker 1: Yes, wow, okay wow. So like the bomb goes off
Speaker 1: and they have to send in five ambulance yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: was it soldiers or police soldiers?
Speaker 2: Soldiers?
Speaker 3: Yes, the soldier who checked the robe.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was just bombs that the young rebels learned about.
Speaker 4: They also shattered many of their misconceptions about the roles
Speaker 4: of men and women.
Speaker 3: M m HM.
Speaker 4: As women like a mirror stepped up to the front
Speaker 4: lines and fought alongside their male comrades, it became hard
Speaker 4: to ignore the sexism which underpinned much of traditional Burmese culture.
Speaker 4: The music you just heard from a Yangon punk band
Speaker 4: called Rebel Riot. They gave us permission to use it here.
Speaker 4: They have some great songs about the Spring Revolution, and
Speaker 4: this one focuses on the role of women. In a video.
Speaker 4: You see young women in the streets and then you
Speaker 4: see them in the jungles carrying m sixteens. Me and
Speaker 4: Maa might previously have had a woman leader, but gender
Speaker 4: equality had been far from universal. And he told us
Speaker 4: the story about this and we recorded it. But it
Speaker 4: was our last night in the country and we were
Speaker 4: on our way to another spectacular hangover, one that would
Speaker 4: see me vomiting with such ferocity on a flight that
Speaker 4: an elderly tie lady took pity on me and gave
Speaker 4: me her shopping bag once I filled up my sick bag.
Speaker 4: In the second month at a revolution, Andy said, when
Speaker 4: they were in Yangon, the protesters would build giant barricades
Speaker 4: to keep the police back. We've seen videos of these.
Speaker 4: They're pretty impressive, huge amounts of palettes, boxes and burning tires.
Speaker 4: We got some other audio of him describing them.
Speaker 2: No, we could never get close to the military. It
Speaker 2: was never it was never attack. It was always defense.
Speaker 2: So later on, when we started seeing how military crack
Speaker 2: down these protesters, we started building these gates and like
Speaker 2: sand bags in our every base in the in the
Speaker 2: Janga and Melody, whatever across the country. We started building
Speaker 2: these barriers so that the military trucks kind of just
Speaker 2: come in. And it's actually crazy because sometimes to build
Speaker 2: these things, you have to take over the road first,
Speaker 2: so like like a main road or a highway. So
Speaker 2: then what we do is all these little groups will
Speaker 2: gather so one street, two street, three street, you know,
Speaker 2: and then we would go to that street, or we
Speaker 2: would walk down the street saying we're going to try
Speaker 2: to take over the street. Please come join. People will
Speaker 2: come down, people come down from the street, from the buildings,
Speaker 2: and then we go to the next street. We say
Speaker 2: the same thing, and then people would join.
Speaker 1: Nothing they did could stand up to a tank, though,
Speaker 1: just as that shopping bag couldn't stand up to James's vomit.
Speaker 1: The military started using human shields to get through the
Speaker 1: barricades and the groups of people throwing molotovs.
Speaker 2: Usually we would defend our places, right, We would use
Speaker 2: molotov slingshots, and we would resist like we were attacked,
Speaker 2: Like we will be in the behind the gate, but
Speaker 2: we will kind of make them cannot come too forward,
Speaker 2: you know. But when the military have someone that they're gunpointing,
Speaker 2: just an almost civilian and making him move, we can't
Speaker 2: do anything, man like, we can't go through a molotov like,
Speaker 2: you know. So that's when the military clean out all
Speaker 2: of that. In Yangon, I think there was a time
Speaker 2: when it was packed. It was every road had it,
Speaker 2: every street had it, and everyone was guarding that right.
Speaker 2: But then when the military started and they said it
Speaker 2: in the statements, they were saying, if that's neither your house, your.
Speaker 1: Responsible, then they came up with a better idea. In
Speaker 1: Burmese culture, men fear passing under women's clothing. If it's
Speaker 1: hanging on a washing line, they'll go around rather than
Speaker 1: under it. It is, as Andy told us, bullshit. So
Speaker 1: they decided to turn that bullshit back on the troops
Speaker 1: and they grabbed as many women's lon chees, a traditional
Speaker 1: garment worn 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 fiancee, 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
Speaker 1: bravery and she risked her life carrying weapons in her
Speaker 1: bags on inner city buses. We'll let him tell you
Speaker 1: how they met.
Speaker 3: It's like we we met on the meeting, like I,
Speaker 3: you know, we started making. Maybe it is in the
Speaker 3: very first week, first week of match making, very very
Speaker 3: very very respective memories. The name of the meeting is
Speaker 3: prayce tell me, okay, pray staw me. The name of
Speaker 3: the meeting is brainstorm me. I those time, she she
Speaker 3: she is very you know, respire day. She said the
Speaker 3: very thoughtful things.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Oh she is, you know, so so thoughtful. I don't
Speaker 3: even think, you know, in the memoir culture is there
Speaker 3: is a channe, you know, so why is it always
Speaker 3: good like people? It's Channa, you know, something like this.
Speaker 3: So I thought, oh she's really good, or that she
Speaker 3: is a kid. That's my bad, some Joanna, I do die.
Speaker 3: But later I'm met with her on on the product,
Speaker 3: so I saw, oh she is so beautiful. I thought
Speaker 3: she's just study twenty years a day. But that we
Speaker 3: know lady. So we keep doing together the things and
Speaker 3: she she is my backyard. I was ground like this
Speaker 3: and whatever I have I have endangers I all the
Speaker 3: contact her.
Speaker 4: We asked him if you worried she get arrested while
Speaker 4: she was making trips into the mountains with guns and bombs,
Speaker 4: but he said no.
Speaker 1: Was it hard to leave her to go to the
Speaker 1: jungle because she could get arrested, you could get no.
Speaker 3: No, she is very clever, so I never worry about her.
Speaker 3: I just worry about mindset we go. She is more
Speaker 3: you know, secret, and she is more clever than me,
Speaker 3: so she only teaches me how to be clever.
Speaker 4: Much like me. Amiria was falling in love as well.
Speaker 4: Her relationship was a bit different though.
Speaker 6: At first we were in the group chat.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but then did you make the private Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 4: he started the private chat.
Speaker 2: I think I did.
Speaker 6: Because at that time I feel like, oh, she is
Speaker 6: so young at time, she's not even eighteen, she's seventeen
Speaker 6: years old, and she's leading the one of the forecasts team.
Speaker 6: So I'm like, wow, this girl is like amazing, right, Yeah,
Speaker 6: So that that's how I mad her, and then that's
Speaker 6: how I you know, try to hit her.
Speaker 4: Now. Admittedly, TK, a security guy is translating here. He's
Speaker 4: also her boyfriend and for now he's here with her
Speaker 4: to make sure she's okay. When we met them both.
Speaker 4: It was just weeks after he'd arrived in Thailand and
Speaker 4: the two had met in person for the very first time.
Speaker 4: It's a kind of story you can't help a fine
Speaker 4: touching two people in opposite sides of the world, united
Speaker 4: by a fight for justice and the bonds of revolutionary care.
Speaker 4: At least, it's a nice countweait to all the stories
Speaker 4: of death and violence, which will have more of you
Speaker 4: tomorrow on part four of this series.
Speaker 5: It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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