Speaker 1: Hello everyone, It's me James, and if you're hearing this,
Speaker 1: it's because I am on holiday along with all my colleagues.
Speaker 1: But in order to help you as you wander lonely
Speaker 1: as a cloud through the contentless abyss of our one
Speaker 1: week of holiday, we are re releasing some episodes of
Speaker 1: the show that we like and that you may also like.
Speaker 1: Avid listeners would have probably listened to them before, but
Speaker 1: I picked one from a little while ago, March of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two, so it's when you can revisit and
Speaker 1: hopefully enjoy. It's the culmination of our first series on Myanmar,
Speaker 1: called Printing the Revolution, and I like this one because
Speaker 1: it was the first thing I did for it could
Speaker 1: happen here. And I was really happy to have a
Speaker 1: home for this story because I've been pitching it for
Speaker 1: months and just getting a fuck all response from editors
Speaker 1: because they have no reason to care about me andmar
Speaker 1: because there's no money in it for global capital, and
Speaker 1: therefore it seems like people in the US don't care
Speaker 1: to include or your non left its publications, and so
Speaker 1: I was really happy to have a home for this story.
Speaker 1: And obviously it's not one with a particularly happy ending.
Speaker 1: I won't spoil it, I guess, but yes, it's rough
Speaker 1: one and that is something that like I still think
Speaker 1: about and it still upsets me. And it's also I think,
Speaker 1: a perspective on the reality of conflict coverage. It doesn't
Speaker 1: get shard enough. I think for twenty years this country
Speaker 1: has been at war, and the media has for a
Speaker 1: large part participated in the sort of propaganda that makes
Speaker 1: conflict seem other than what is, which is the worst
Speaker 1: thing that humans do to each other, and it did.
Speaker 1: Good guys don't always win, and sometimes the good guys die,
Speaker 1: and whilst that's something that I wish didn't happen, it does.
Speaker 1: And I'm happy that we were able to in that moment,
Speaker 1: which was a very sad moment, difficult moment for both
Speaker 1: Robert myself, especially myself. I think I just think quite
Speaker 1: a long time before I met Robert talking to Zora
Speaker 1: and working on this story, and we were able to
Speaker 1: share that with you and share the realities of like
Speaker 1: we're not kind of unfeeling automaton side that like this
Speaker 1: this shit is difficult for us and it affects us,
Speaker 1: and I know a lot of people felt that affected
Speaker 1: them as well. And this episode stuck a cold with
Speaker 1: a lot of people. So yeah, I hope that you
Speaker 1: enjoy it. I'm Robert Evans and this is part four
Speaker 1: of me and mar printing the revolution.
Speaker 2: And then once we got there we could in rest,
Speaker 2: you know, rain, sun whatever. Women as well, we were
Speaker 2: all like try it when they came when we were leaving,
Speaker 2: they were all like, very fair skin and beautiful. And
Speaker 2: then we went in and then everyone got tanned. In
Speaker 2: the jungle, we're training all the time, you know, people
Speaker 2: in training camp.
Speaker 3: We were driven apart.
Speaker 2: And the reason that we were all doing this is
Speaker 2: because from an online coup as students and how much
Speaker 2: he has terrorized the public and the people.
Speaker 3: And that's why were we.
Speaker 2: Have this morale and the ability to get through the
Speaker 2: trading and be able to wield weapons.
Speaker 1: Zora and his friends went into the junglist students, programmers
Speaker 1: and kids. Now they're fighters. They were tech savvy young people,
Speaker 1: he says, they grew up online and that generational divide
Speaker 1: which the Internet brought here came much later in Miamar.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until twenty eleven that people really gained access
Speaker 1: to the internet and with it the new ideas and
Speaker 1: identities that it brought. Soul's generation are among the first
Speaker 1: to embrace global connectivity, and now after having it taken away,
Speaker 1: they're refusing to give it up.
Speaker 2: The start of the coup in February, the military, well,
Speaker 2: gen Z was organizing online, social media and all that,
Speaker 2: and they were kind of I think this is from
Speaker 2: my experience kind of organizing around like gen Z is
Speaker 2: going to be different than the Ada generation because we
Speaker 2: have the Internet, and also we know more about the
Speaker 2: world and can come communicate.
Speaker 3: To the rest of the world.
Speaker 2: I think one thing that was being was that in
Speaker 2: two thousand and eight, it just took one video leaking
Speaker 2: out of the country for there to be big international repercussions.
Speaker 1: It's worth noting that when people in Burma talk about
Speaker 1: the Internet, they mean Facebook. Phones come with the Facebook
Speaker 1: app installed and it's sometimes exempt from data charges. For
Speaker 1: many people in Burma, using the internet means using Facebook.
Speaker 1: Zora and his friends are different from their parents in
Speaker 1: many ways, not at least in their perceptions of authority.
Speaker 1: This has led to a situation where the PDF People's
Speaker 1: defense force units are much less hierarchical than units of
Speaker 1: the Tamador.
Speaker 2: So when we make decisions in our group. There's no
Speaker 2: master in student, there's no teacher student. But you know
Speaker 2: the way that it works, there are people who are good,
Speaker 2: they're older, people who are more trained, and then there
Speaker 2: are new recruits, new people who just came in. So
Speaker 2: of course the people who are there for longer and
Speaker 2: know more about the situation have more voice and when
Speaker 2: we discuss so especially people who were there.
Speaker 3: When we founded this group.
Speaker 2: There were only really eight people from when we grouped,
Speaker 2: so those eight people kind of discussed on the bigger strategy.
Speaker 3: You know, we don't really vote there. He says he
Speaker 3: wants to do it, he thinks is good.
Speaker 2: We are there's the seven of us we think is good,
Speaker 2: or we support him, or someone says we don't really
Speaker 2: like that idea, then we don't do it.
Speaker 1: They try to achieve more gender quality as well. Those
Speaker 1: are explained that in his unit, the women are not
Speaker 1: always the frontline fighters.
Speaker 2: That's the place there's no discrimination. You know, women can
Speaker 2: women and men were training whoever could come. But like
Speaker 2: on the battlefield, people, we don't use women that much
Speaker 2: on the battlefield. That's one thing that we do know
Speaker 2: is that it's not it's not really discrimination. But if
Speaker 2: women are with us together, we have confusion about whether
Speaker 2: we need to protect them or we're just fighting with
Speaker 2: with them, or they're fighting in front of us. And
Speaker 2: that there's one thing that is very different is that
Speaker 2: in terms of mentality, we can't. We never take the
Speaker 2: women out really far into very dangerous fights. So often
Speaker 2: they're in the back as backup or supplies or things
Speaker 2: like that. But as you know, the military government, the
Speaker 2: military terrorists are very very they're very unethical. They don't
Speaker 2: follow the rules, so you know they're going to shoot
Speaker 2: whoever they see. So even if they're hanging back and
Speaker 2: they're sending medical supplies, they can still get hit.
Speaker 1: For Zora in particular, there's a lot at stake. After
Speaker 1: almost an hour and a half of talking, I asked
Speaker 1: about his parents. I'd heard of retribution attacks against families
Speaker 1: of fighters and wondered if he was worried about that.
Speaker 2: So mom and dad are both they support me fighting
Speaker 2: them against the military.
Speaker 3: They're very happy. His dad really wants to.
Speaker 2: Do CDM, but he can't run away because the military
Speaker 2: has taken his mother and his sisters. He still has
Speaker 2: five sisters, they're all still in that military command the work.
Speaker 2: They're in the military school schools, so it's very hard
Speaker 2: for them to run away rightact.
Speaker 3: So he really wants to leave the military, but he can't.
Speaker 2: Though, while so that the fact that I am there
Speaker 2: trying to fight against the military, see is very happy,
Speaker 2: but he tells me to be careful about my own life.
Speaker 2: They're supportive and they really want to come fight themselves,
Speaker 2: but they can't because of my sisters and my mother.
Speaker 2: So him seeing that I can do it, it's really
Speaker 2: wonderful for them. So his father, his other brother and
Speaker 2: other people, three of them below him. They've all usually
Speaker 2: just lived together with his grandfather and stuff in the
Speaker 2: military Trump Pounds or near the military. So he really
Speaker 2: wants to call all the people that are still there,
Speaker 2: but they can't leave.
Speaker 1: This is what civil wood does. Traps us in a
Speaker 1: situation where we can't make the right choice even when
Speaker 1: we know what it is, and in many situations it's
Speaker 1: pretty hard to discern right from wrong. In the midst
Speaker 1: of so much violence, Seel has been able to fight,
Speaker 1: but his dad is stuck fighting against people like his
Speaker 1: son in order to protect his daughters. Thousands of families
Speaker 1: across the country divided in the same way by circumstance
Speaker 1: or ideology. The military is something of a separate society.
Speaker 1: It has its own schools and its own culture. But
Speaker 1: ethnic armed organizations have not been close to urban populations either,
Speaker 1: and so whole new identities have been forged by Generation
Speaker 1: z while their families often struggle to abandon all certainties.
Speaker 4: As we record this, Zaw is still fighting, his girlfriend
Speaker 4: is still healing. Every few weeks a video of him
Speaker 4: and his friends pops up on Reddit or Facebook. They
Speaker 4: have optics on their rifles now and are taking long
Speaker 4: range shots at the top Madar, who rely on iron sights.
Speaker 4: They shoot and reload like soldiers, and they laugh like kids.
Speaker 4: The top Madara still controls the cities, but to move
Speaker 4: between them they have to travel in convoys at breakneck speeds,
Speaker 4: using ambushes, mines and knowledge of the terrain. EAOs and
Speaker 4: the PDF are able to deny the military access to
Speaker 4: large portions of the countryside. Without a serious change in
Speaker 4: the conflict, it might stay like this for years. A
Speaker 4: report published this month detailed the attacks in the Karini
Speaker 4: State by the tout Madaw on churches, residential homes, camps
Speaker 4: for displaced people, which killed sixty one in the months
Speaker 4: since Zau left the city On Christmas Eve. In Upruso's township,
Speaker 4: they killed at least forty civilians. Autopsies show some were
Speaker 4: gagged and burned alive. In recent months, the tot MADA
Speaker 4: has increased its use of air strikes against targets that
Speaker 4: it deems legitimate. Ming An Hlang, the junta's leader, flew
Speaker 4: to Russia twice. In twenty twenty one, he was proclaimed
Speaker 4: an honorary professor of the Military University of the Russian
Speaker 4: Armed Forces. Quote. We are determined to continue our efforts
Speaker 4: to strengthen bilateral ties based on the mutual understanding, respect
Speaker 4: and trust that have been established between US two countries,
Speaker 4: Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said at a meeting with
Speaker 4: the coup leader on June twenty second. We pay special
Speaker 4: attention to this meeting as we see Myanmar as a
Speaker 4: time tested strategic partner and a reliable ally in Southeast
Speaker 4: Asia and the Asia Pacific region.
Speaker 3: He went on.
Speaker 4: Min On Hlang was equally lavish with his praise, saying
Speaker 4: that he saw Russia as a friend forever. Myanmar relies
Speaker 4: heavily on Russian hind Mi I thirty five helicopter gunships,
Speaker 4: transport helicopters Mid twenty nine and SU thirty fighter jets
Speaker 4: and Yak one thirty ground attack aircraft to carry out
Speaker 4: bombing raids and straight civilians. All of these weapons systems
Speaker 4: have been seen more recently in the fighting in Ukraine.
Speaker 4: One prominent Burmese Irish family, the kiah Toongs, has helped
Speaker 4: the junta avoid an international arms embargo using their global
Speaker 4: connections and a network of shady shadow companies. They have
Speaker 4: purchased helicopters under the pretense of using them for tourism
Speaker 4: and the oil and gas industry, and handed them over
Speaker 4: to the Tautmadau. They've also helped shuttle coastal race to Meanmar,
Speaker 4: which the Top Medal used to track Rohinga refugees and
Speaker 4: provide cover for several aircraft purchases. To fund these armed purchases,
Speaker 4: the top Meda has found willing markets for luxury goods abroad.
Speaker 4: According to Justice for Meanmar, since the coup in February
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one, the United States has imported fifteen hundred
Speaker 4: and sixty five metric tons of teak from Myanmar using
Speaker 4: intermediaries to avoid sanctions. In the twenty seventeen twenty eighteen
Speaker 4: financial year, the last year for which data is available,
Speaker 4: the government received one hundred million US dollars in revenue
Speaker 4: from taxes and royalties applied to the timber trade. In
Speaker 4: twenty twenty one, there were more shipments than twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: offering the top Madal the chance to make enough money
Speaker 4: to continue purchasing weapons to use against their population. The
Speaker 4: conflict in Myanmar remains complicated. It's easy to reduce the
Speaker 4: alphabet soup of revel groups to EAOs and the PDF,
Speaker 4: but these groups and their motivations are diverse. Pierre explained
Speaker 4: to us that even within the Koran there are deep divisions.
Speaker 5: Well, trust, you have to know that historically the Karen
Speaker 5: Rebellion that started in nineteen forty eight, nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 5: so quite a long time ago, was led by Christian
Speaker 5: by the Christian minority, okay of the current people, because
Speaker 5: obviously that was the most Western educated people at the time.
Speaker 5: And so this Elits kind of reproduced itself in the
Speaker 5: New without being the can new is the current National
Speaker 5: Union is a democratic movement, but you know elits tend
Speaker 5: to reproduce themselves. And so most of the leadership, let's say,
Speaker 5: of the current National Union and the current National Liberation
Speaker 5: Army was Christian.
Speaker 3: Like.
Speaker 5: And so the Burmese Junta, the Burmese military government, decided
Speaker 5: to use this to create a wedge between between the
Speaker 5: Karen Christians and the Karen Buddhists uh, and sent monks
Speaker 5: to say, agitate and try to cause this split on
Speaker 5: religious grounds no uh. And they succeeded in parts, and
Speaker 5: succeeded to to separate part of of Karent Buddhists. That
Speaker 5: created the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army d k B, which
Speaker 5: then allied themselves of course, to the to the junta
Speaker 5: and to to attack the to attack the kind the
Speaker 5: Manor Plow which of course they knew all the roads
Speaker 5: there and the defenses and where was the defense is situated,
Speaker 5: et cetera, and succeeded in destroying the capital of the
Speaker 5: Karen National Union in Manorplo in ninety five. So that
Speaker 5: was the situation pretty much when I arrived, it was
Speaker 5: pretty hard like there was not so much territory anymore
Speaker 5: held by the Karen and more importantly, they lost a
Speaker 5: lot of income because a lot of their income come
Speaker 5: from tax at the border that they can control, you know.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that was the situation.
Speaker 4: Not every EEO has embraced the National Unity Government directly,
Speaker 4: after all, many of its members were enthusiastically running cover
Speaker 4: for the Rohinga genocide a few years ago. Many of
Speaker 4: the EAOs remained technically under a ceasefire with the Top MADA,
Speaker 4: and the Top MADA knows that if it pushes too
Speaker 4: far into EAO territory, it risks provoking a full blown response.
Speaker 4: The EAOs, meanwhile, have been aiding and training the PDF
Speaker 4: and still maintaining enough deniability that the Top MADA has
Speaker 4: not been forced into a confrontation. EAO PDF alliances look
Speaker 4: different in different regions, and often realities on the ground
Speaker 4: bear little relationship to the back door diplomacy and official
Speaker 4: stances embraced by leadership and public.
Speaker 1: The war continues to have a huge toll on civilians.
Speaker 1: According to United Nations, in total, some four hundred and
Speaker 1: forty thousand people have been newly displaced since the coup
Speaker 1: happened in February twenty twenty one, adding to an existing
Speaker 1: three hundred and seventy thousand who had fled their homes
Speaker 1: from earlier waves of violence, and over a million people
Speaker 1: who had fled the Hingia genocide. More than half the
Speaker 1: population of Kreni State has fled. Humanitarian access is hard.
Speaker 1: Much of the relief effort for displaced people occur within
Speaker 1: local communities. Thousands of refugees a camp along the border
Speaker 1: with Thailand, which is defined by rivers. Initially, many people
Speaker 1: fled into Thailand, but terrible conditions in refugee camps led
Speaker 1: some of them to return to Me and Ma. Now
Speaker 1: they weighed across the river for international aid donations of
Speaker 1: food and water, but they can't bring themselves to stay
Speaker 1: in the crowded camps overnight, so they wighed back to
Speaker 1: sleep on the Burmese side of the bank. The UNHCR,
Speaker 1: the High Commission on Refugees, has been unable to access
Speaker 1: camps in Thailand or Me and Mah to check on
Speaker 1: the conditions, but it has urged a Thai government, which
Speaker 1: has been credibly accused of forcing people back across the border,
Speaker 1: to move people to better conditions further into Thailand instead
Speaker 1: of keeping them in camps near the border. And here
Speaker 1: we find the unfortunate, unavoidable reality of the civil war
Speaker 1: in Me and Mah. For all the uniqueness of aspects
Speaker 1: of the conflict, the innovative ways gen Z militias have
Speaker 1: interfaced with older ethnic military forces, the three D intoed arms, etc.
Speaker 1: At the end of the day, this is another brutal,
Speaker 1: horrific conflict between large numbers of people who want to
Speaker 1: be free and a small number of people who want
Speaker 1: to control them. From mir Mar to Armenia, Ukraine to Syria,
Speaker 1: Ethiopia to Iraq and beyond. The novelties of twenty first
Speaker 1: century conflict don't change the fact that, at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, each war brings with it what might
Speaker 1: be the truest symbol of our current age, parents saying
Speaker 1: goodbye to their kids, camps filled with desperate people fleeing violence,
Speaker 1: and governments all over the world willing to send nothing
Speaker 1: more than kind words and stern warnings. This is a
Speaker 1: PostScript to episode four. It's not one that we'd been
Speaker 1: intending to record, because it's not news that we'd ever
Speaker 1: hoped to have to share, but.
Speaker 3: Here we are.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately, we found out that about ten days after we
Speaker 1: last spoken, a couple of weeks before we released our podcast,
Speaker 1: Zor died and he died in battle fighting with the topmador.
Speaker 1: He's really was, I suppose, an amazingly brave and courageous
Speaker 1: young man, and I think that his loss is one
Speaker 1: that reflects the realities of what war is, which is
Speaker 1: not great and glorious and exciting. It's young men and
Speaker 1: sometimes young women, young non binary folks. I imagine too,
Speaker 1: dying when they had no quarrel with anyone, when they
Speaker 1: just wanted to live their lives. Two years ago, a
Speaker 1: year and a half ago, even he was just loving
Speaker 1: the people he loved, having fun, being a kid, riding
Speaker 1: his motorcycle, speaking to his girlfriend on his phone, living
Speaker 1: a happy life. And then someone who had Howard, decided
Speaker 1: that they wanted to have more power, and they decided
Speaker 1: that it didn't matter how many kids had to die
Speaker 1: so they could have what they want. And he decided
Speaker 1: to say no to that, And that's brave, and I
Speaker 1: think all of us would agree that what he did
Speaker 1: was right and morally courageous, and that we would hope
Speaker 1: to be brave enough to do the same if the
Speaker 1: same thing happened to us. This one's hit me quite hard. Honestly.
Speaker 1: I know this is my job and this happens, that
Speaker 1: it's happened before and it will happen again. But he
Speaker 1: was such a happy, polite, kind young man. He never
Speaker 1: didn't pick up the phone, He never got tired of
Speaker 1: explaining stuff that we didn't understand, and he always answered
Speaker 1: our questions. It was nothing that was off the table.
Speaker 1: There was nothing that he wouldn't talk about with us.
Speaker 1: He was completely open, And Yeah, we will miss him greatly.
Speaker 1: He died fighting the thing that we all have to
Speaker 1: fight right, fascism, dictatorship, totalitarianism, militarization, and yeah, will grieve
Speaker 1: his loss. Both Robert and I. We've just spoken on
Speaker 1: the phone, and we found out because the contact of
Speaker 1: mine on the ground sent me a Reddit message with
Speaker 1: a link to a Facebook post and it's very clearly
Speaker 1: zorin no doubt about that it names him, and unfortunately
Speaker 1: it also shows him dead. So we're not in any
Speaker 1: doubt that it was him who died, and we're not
Speaker 1: in any doubt that we will gravely miss him either.
Speaker 1: We both hoped to go over and record with him,
Speaker 1: to speak with him, to meet him. I'd spoken to
Speaker 1: him several times on video, sometimes just to chat, not
Speaker 1: even to record anything, just just to chat, just to
Speaker 1: catch up and and look at what each of us
Speaker 1: was doing that day. So it's a hard loss for
Speaker 1: me and for Robert two. As I said, we've just spoken,
Speaker 1: so yeah, that's the news that we hadn't hoped to
Speaker 1: end on. Obviously, though, this is the reality of war.
Speaker 1: And as the world is looking at the conflict in
Speaker 1: Ukraine now, i'd urge you to look at the conflict
Speaker 1: in Myanmar to another Russian bomb killed another nice kid
Speaker 1: who never had any quarrel with anyone, who just wanted
Speaker 1: to live his life and didn't want to live the
Speaker 1: rest of his life with a boot on his neck,
Speaker 1: and so he decided to stand up against it. As
Speaker 1: you can probably hear in my voice, I'm quite upset
Speaker 1: by his loss and will be probably for a few days.
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry to have to end this podcast on
Speaker 1: such a sad note. I'm sorry for his family who
Speaker 1: are now caught between the loss of their son and
Speaker 1: trying to protect their daughters. I'm sorry for his girlfriend
Speaker 1: who's dealing with shrapnel in her own leg and now
Speaker 1: the loss of the person she loved. And I'm sorry
Speaker 1: for his comrades. And they've said they'll go on fighting,
Speaker 1: and I hope they do, and I don't think there's
Speaker 1: any point really pretending to be objective at this stage
Speaker 1: in the games, and I hope they win, but I
Speaker 1: mostly just hope that one day, young men and women
Speaker 1: and everyone else just gets to live their lives without
Speaker 1: having to kill and die, because ultimately, no one should
Speaker 1: have to and no parents should have to bury their kids.
Speaker 1: So yeah, as much as we're all focusing on Ukraine
Speaker 1: and what's happening there is terrible, Please don't forget Zora's comrades,
Speaker 1: Please don't forget his legacy, and please don't forget him.
Speaker 1: We won't and we obviously want to dedicate this podcast
Speaker 1: to him and what he stood for. So yeah, thanks.
Speaker 4: It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 5: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 5: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 5: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 4: You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
Speaker 4: monthly at cool zonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening,