November 10, 2022 • 23 mins
When governments around the world abandoned the spring revolution, Myanmar’s rebels found support from people all over the world instead.
Music for this series was provided by Rebel Riot, check out their Bandcamp here https://therebelriot.bandcamp.com/album/one-day
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Through the time we're reporting this story, Robert and I
walked miles and miles around the streets masot. Being the
only two journalous in town and also both giant white guys,
we kind of stood out and taking a tack to
you to a sensitive interview isn't always the smart choice.
Even when it was, they frequently dropped us off in
a wrong place and we'd end up walking anyway. Everyone
(00:37):
in Mason rides scooters, but riding without a helmet can
get you a fine. We figured that its relative novicest
to the world of scooting. We probably sucked something up
and we probably better off walking. When the time came
to meet me out, though he offered us a ride
that was very nice, but it put us in an
interesting position. What exactly you say when a guy you've
(01:01):
never met, who's a friend of a guy you dem
on Reddit, who you know he's engaged in the illegal
production and smuggling of guns into a war zone, offers
to pick you up at the cafe so you can
go out for dinner. We decided to call our friend,
a long suffering guy we go to or we have
a security question. Paul his request, we're keeping him anonymous,
but he works in security and has an extensive professional
(01:22):
background dealing with situations just like this or maybe mostly
like this. Yes, so basically we're meeting with these people. Uh,
we don't have an established human chain with them of trust.
They're they're just a Reddit account that James has been
talking with but for like six or seven months. Um,
it doesn't really seem like there's much else we can
(01:43):
do besides keep our eyes open and try to meet
in a neuderal place. Yeah. I mean the big concern
is that would be of the government, which is not
um from what you guys have said. The government simply
(02:03):
doesn't have the wherewithal to do operations like this, and
I mean rebel groups like this, they're they're trying, they
want to get everything out there they can. So, yeah,
it is there a concerned about the fact that you
don't have a chain of people that can vouch for
each other. Yeah, but the situation there in m hmm.
(02:29):
Everything's in their favor, they are, Everything is in your favor.
Even minor cultural faux pause shouldn't be an issue. With
Paul's help, we came up with a watertight plan. I
should note here that he was at least as concerned
with our fate as he was with the fate of
the pair of pants he'd loaned James for the trip.
And I mean, yeah, it's a story that needs to
(02:50):
get out, so uh, being slightly lax on the rules
while knowing that it's an everybody's favor that it goes well.
I guess you gotta been the rules sometimes. Yeah, I
guess we'll check in. Yeah, we'll trying to approove of life. Yeah,
we'll do a proof of I will I will send
(03:12):
you a picture of James holding a piece of paper
that says big wife guy. And if if we are kidnapped,
I'll send you a picture of me that says Elon
Musk will be a good custodian of Twitter. Okay, I'll
know that that's the that's the sign, you know. I'll
get a black Yeah. Yeah, I'll figure out something. Yeah,
(03:38):
me and me and a few friends will be on
our way. That sounds awful. James has my favorite pants. Yeah, yeah,
you gotta get those pants bag. Oh yeah, this is
all about the pants. If I find change his dead body,
I'm kicking those pants off. Luckily, but I and Paul's
trousers made it back that night. Yeah, any damage was
(04:00):
too several delicious plates of food, his fiancee and their godfather.
We're the most gracious host, and we decided not to
record that first night. Instead, we met up the next day.
But there is one thing from that night that I
want to share with you. Rather than explaining it, I'll
let the song me out played for us talk to
you through the beautiful medium of punk music. Berea chow.
(04:39):
Of course it's an anti fascist anthem. Then. It's original
version tells the story of a young partisan who says
goodbye to his girlfriend before he goes off to fight
Italian fascists. If he dies, he says he wants to
be buried under a flower in the mountains so people
will see it and remember him. Oh no, no, that
(05:10):
bej co phone. But Jo Jo Jo Jo the dong
go do it to the ain't away? I fold my
rather last shot my way and bid by job by
Jo John Cho job on dat same b y all
(05:34):
follow And I don't know that job as a job
at a jo Jo John My song h jn't just
get rhead day sea robb belove shake that jo Jo
Jow John John Jo Jake jo Jo so m. After
(06:05):
a few months of revolution, all our characters found themselves
mourning their friends, and many of them were in the mountains.
Their struggle is one they see in the same vein
as the Italian partisans who fought fascism in their mountains
and the anti fascists who came from around the world
to fight the Spanish Civil War. I first heard that
song Belacho from a Spanish Civil War vectoran and it's
(06:26):
a strange closing of the loop to be here sitting
hearing it with young people who, just like the Spanish Republicans,
are fighting a coup with next to no international support
and a critical shortage of weapons. But me Out was
trying his best to fix their shortage. A month into
what would become the Spring Revolution, and the stakes have
(06:48):
become clear. When the first protester would shot and they
kept marching and people decided to go back into the streets,
They showed that the future of their country was worth
dying for. A few weeks later, some of them decided
it was also worth killing for. It was about them
that Meout's buddy and Keen Ready user Daddy u m
c D said he'd been online we reckon. They could
(07:10):
use their three D printers steel pipe and the expertise
is some strains on the internet to arm themselves. The
promise of revolutionary technology would take quite some time to
have any kind of battlefield impact in Myama, but the
effects of a different kind of revolution would be felt
immediately as the nations young activists took up arms against
the government. I was like, I'm entrusted us and how
(07:34):
worst and three D printing especially my profession is a
grand us of virtual reality and one to TEUs three
D printing is my hobby. So I just do I
just don't aload sound fine from thinking bust or other
three D three D printing criminal d and just do
it for my dus, not specially especially desk toys and stuff. Yeah,
(07:57):
just or twice yes, what do you think of guns? Then?
I have never emerging of a care because you know,
we have been living in the military booth for a
long time, so we're afraid or soldier especially not the studia,
especially the game that they hope. So we are so
afraid of that, so we never imagine like like we
had the same as in North Korea. We're so afraid
(08:17):
of that. So we never imagine of making game. But
after that the story began. At first, Meal and his
team felt safe despite the dangerous nature of their work.
He felt the top Medor was so behind the times
they wouldn't even know what a three D print. It
was like adulse side. The military didn't didn't know or
(08:38):
didn't give our funk about deferen is. So it is
okay a dose that it's really okay one one one
one day. Can we need to hide the campus if
they s three D prind that that's okay because we
were saying this is for our job or this for
some hobby that we can say I do with that,
but but not this that this time everyone doing the
(09:00):
trender Yes, camp camp go, They like yeah, yeah, Soon
that head shot became a lot closer to being a possibility.
It's like as song as we've we we finished the
second second at nine, we're trying to test that in
young and we send it to our warehouse. But unfortunately
(09:24):
this way how it exposed and uh ambushed by the
military and this guy is taken by the military and
they they announced this on the new By picture and
this uh like like hammag gas and Peter give a
funk about this just a hamma. They just at the
(09:46):
very first time, but later and later well later and
later one they were the second time they will arrest
there at this time that they arrest my revolutionary from
my team. So I'm told Handball that the efficiency and
how do you use and the history of the camp
at the time. Maybe maybe he was an investigator and
(10:09):
he told the true He says like the yeah and
now and I was then like like this before before
the at the very first anti and now the camp
from the Tagish Yeah, if you miss that, they thought
the guns were Turkish. The reason we giggled at this
is that whenever we see videos of combat in me
(10:31):
and mar James and I send them to a group
chat and try to work out what the weapons are
and where they came from. Nearly every time we're stumped.
The guns turned out to be some kind of niche
Turkish shotgun made to look like an A R fifteen.
It seems the military we're operating on the same assumption,
only this time they were very wrong. Like Alex Yak
(11:00):
started this second more deadly phase of the Spring Revolution
by taking a trip out to the jungle and he
stayed for several months to learn some of the skills
he was going to need to fight back against the
top medal. I was doing the Monday as a cuminating
data so I'm not like the I'm not have a
video training or something like that. I just going as
(11:22):
a comminator guy. So I met with some sun Gains
specially or some Fraina, and I said, I want to
know how to shoot gas, how to attis umber the gag.
So they teach me. I said, uh, say, I'm in
a Comminatnaga. I can't do the training, but I want
to lamb the books out of thing. So they sent
(11:43):
me some videos that I did to lamb by myself. Yes,
later he went back to carry prototype printed guns to
the E. A O S for testing. We asked if
it was scary being an undercover gun runner in the dictatorship.
He says it was, but he found that he had
a powerful ally in his fire. It homophobia, Yeah, Oscar,
of course, but we need to discloses, so you know, yeah,
(12:06):
disguises though. I just that I have a long hair,
so I act like a day So you know that
the military has so Channa and equality, so they hate gays.
That's why I just just our grand The military, assuming
Miak was gay and therefore incapable of fighting, let him go.
Miak kept his mouth shut and let their homophobia help
(12:27):
him smuggle the guns with which he hopes to help
topple the regime that places so much stock and values
like these. Miak said he had to go to the
jungle to prove that his guns worked because at first
the e O S didn't believe him about again, no one,
no one believes. I believed that. No one believes that,
So we have to made made it first. I showed them.
(12:49):
So we made it first. Uh we said, we got again.
It's it's a self fool. We lie, we need to lie,
and we send this to the e O. Then they
made it and it didn't walk out and to adjust
and it walk up. Okay, yeah, how do they feel amazed? Oh?
Oh my my. One of my revolutionary and he was
(13:12):
Stay said, oh, they're really really happy. There's all that,
all of the brain that and most protesting. Let's do
it right now. Yes, almost everyone we met spend time
in the jungle. Rooney, that's a normed the gear not
a given name. Started off as a protester and just
like everyone else. He fled into the jungle to avoid
being murdered by the government and to learn from the
(13:32):
ethnic armed organizations how to fight back. When when we
try and make peaceful protesting and it's really burned down,
then we he decided like he also we, so we
decided to choose to have an ass and to make
to make a revolution. So at this time he goes
to the EGO or stays and he lands the trainees,
you know, even especially the explosive trainees, and he got
(13:56):
back to the town and he started making this explosive
with the head of teachings. After learning from the e
a O S, he came back to Young Gone to
put his knowledge to use. Of course, just like myas
gunmaking team and the street protesters who learned from Hong
Konger's he took to YouTube and Google to try and
find a better way to build killing machines. So it's
like the EO teaches a very business, exploses just can
(14:19):
bound and s. Guys are like this, but after they
land a very business then and they want to improve.
So the landbine the youself. It's just like d I
Y the lambineaself with Google, with YouTube, so later and
later even they can make T N T and E
t N Y using YouTube. Of course, nearly everyone we
(14:43):
met at some point googled something like how to make
gun or how to make bomb. Now this is not
ideal ops set, but it speaks to the desperation of
the times. They used crowdfunding websites to raise money for ingredients,
and Rooney soon started putting his knowledge into practice. What
that meant was that people died. He killed human beings
(15:03):
with the explosives that he made. Now, those people would
have killed Rooney or anyone else we've spoken to in
this series. He was defending himself and others by making
killing machines. But still, if you're a decent person, it's
not easy to watch your work result in a stranger
being blown into a pink mist. He is not proud
of that, but you know, you know, he's never trying
(15:23):
to kick even a cat on any man back. He
is sad, but he had to do because of relution.
Revolution was in Rooney's blood. The military had stolen his
house as a kid, and he'd grown up with his
uncle sharing memories of the pro democracy uprising and its
violent repression. He'd seen his family, his cousin brothers and
(15:44):
their parents harassed for his whole life. Now he had
a chance to fight back. He carried out hundreds of
missions before he eventually had to flee the city when
an accident led to serious injury. Like in tones, there's
a nine mission, so he has to made nine boone
really big ball. So they did trying to assembly this bowl.
(16:08):
I was that one of his brands smoking and this
this family is called the Camphow after the blast he
had to run away from his house before the police arrived.
His friend was not so lucky, and it's in jail now.
Rooney is mostly recovered, but it's not safe for him
to go back, so he's hoping to make a new
start in Mason. The fight didn't stay in Yangon, in
(16:35):
Napid or either. For villages living outside the coupe was
just as real, but so is the desire to fight back.
People outside of town found themselves in the crosshairs to
the Topmador as well. The military employs a strategy which
they call four cuts. It's designed to alienate the rebels
from local support. It doesn't work. It's kind of scorched
(16:56):
earth stuff has never worked. Didn't work when the Nazis
tried in Europe, did to work when the US tried
in the Middle East of Vietnam. It doesn't work when
it's reel keeps doing it, and it doesn't work in Myanmar.
What it does do is drive people who lose their
families to pick up a gun and kill soldiers. And
it's not hard to see why. I just want to
play you our conversation watching one of Andy's videos about
(17:18):
one of hundreds of mascots that have happened since the
last February, and as a warning that stuff we're going
to talk about it is about as horrible and stuff
can be. But yeah, basically about I think twenty eight
people were killed that day. They just came into a
village and shot everyone. Um that's the handmade guns that
these villagers had. But it was just they weren't shooting
(17:39):
anyone though, they just h that's all the everyone died.
All these guys died. Look at that his hands tied
Yeah trash, Yeah, that's electrical game looks like. And they
burned the whole village. Now yeah they did, yeah twice,
(18:07):
you guys. Yeah, yeah. And that's why we say massacre
because it's fucking look at all the brains out, you know. Yeah, yeah,
all these kids, they weren't even eighteen. So all the
villagers that ran away, they took a photo of the
(18:28):
village from afar and they burned the relative and then left.
Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, and he says a nonprofit called
Liberate Myanmar supports the families every month, keeping them fair
and sheltered, because however hard the government tries to divide
(18:49):
the people from one another, it always seems to fail.
It's dead. It just pushes them closer and closer together.
(19:14):
While we were in Thailand having a drink on a
rooftop actually and talking about some kind of meditation retreat
that a guy we met had gone on, we got
to see some of the action for ourselves. That night
was a fun one. We were hanging out with some
nonprofit folks and we'd acquired some pretty terrible whiskey. At
various points in the evening, we would ambush one of
the boys and tell them they've been shot in the
(19:35):
arm or the leg, and have the others rush into
practice the stop the bleed skills well, and I demonstrated
some improvised carrying techniques and how to effectively turn and
drop to the floor when you're in the intimate presence
of a grenade. Everyone else at the party probably thought
we were pretty strange, but we were having fun. Then
in the distance we saw a huge yellow flash. It
(19:56):
took a few seconds of us all wondering if that
whiskey had sent us blind before the boom reached us.
The first we thought it was one of the air
strikes that have been happening in the border region. But
it was close and it was just one huge boom,
not the rockets and cluster bombs that tap the door
like to drop on civilians. Within minutes, minutes of nervously
waiting on the rooftop to see what was coming, next,
(20:16):
Andy's phone started buzzing. It was a car bomb and
it had gone off about a hundred yards to the
border where we stood earlier that day. Camera or something,
let me see, Yeah, right, Sary, how did they fucking
get it in there? Immediately we had questions, but very
(20:37):
few answers. Car bombs hadn't been the thing thus far
in the revolution. This was new. Carbons are also extremely scary.
It's hard not to be around cars in the city
and when any one of those cars might kill you,
it's hard to do anything feeling any semblance of safety.
I want to know who's did I mean, yeah, no
(21:00):
car bombs, I've never heard of it. It is it
somebody who driving it? Or kind of like I don't
think it's someone driving it? Is it? Like you don't
see anything there? Like? Uh no, I mean it could have.
Is it by the because if if there was a person,
there wouldn't be anything left. Yeah, you wouldn't se it. No, no, no,
But the thing is, Look, there's the fence like that
(21:22):
that looks like it was there one apart. Yeah it was.
It looks like right by the bridge. But then I
don't know why, what this what happened? We still aren't
sure who set off the car bomb, or if anyone died.
In a conflict like the one in Myanmar, it's sometimes
as confusing as it is scary. The military are more
than capable of a false flag style attack, killing civilians
(21:45):
and then blaming the PDF, and it has done this before.
That's what totalitarianism does. It aims to control every aspect
of everyday life, even the truth. The jungle haunted us
the whole time. We were there unattainable, but right next door,
just a few miles away, and Locke Caw the fight
was raging. Lucky caused what's called a friendship town. It
(22:05):
was built with Japanese money as a place for k
and new fighters to live after they put down their arms.
It was supposed to be a symbol of hope and
a new, peaceful and democratic Mi'anmar. Now it's a battlefield.
But while we couldn't get there, we could walk along
the river bank and look at the jungle and imagine
what it must be like up in those mountains, which
we did almost every day. Myanmar itself looms like a
(22:28):
mountain over the town of Masot. It's a border town
without a border, but the city is surrounded by refugee camps,
nonprofit offices, and even museums for political prisoners that can't
exist on the other side of the river. One day
we took a cab to see a monastery on a
bluff overlooking the river down into Myanmar. We could see
a casino still doing business with Chinese tourists, despite the
(22:50):
bombing nearby. On the walls of the monastery were a
colorful but horrific scenes of rape and murder Buddhist stages
of hell, a reminder that, according to the Four Mobile
Truths of Buddhism, all life is suffering and greed is
the cause of suffering. The same thing could be said
for the refugees and fighters forced to hide in the
endless green of the jungle, driven away from their homes
(23:11):
by the greed of men who worship power. Demo Crazy
Died word ring My So It Could Happen Here is
(23:33):
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen here, updated monthly at
cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Through the time we're reporting this story, Robert and I
walked miles and miles around the streets masot. Being the
only two journalous in town and also both giant white guys,
we kind of stood out and taking a tack to
you to a sensitive interview isn't always the smart choice.
Even when it was, they frequently dropped us off in
a wrong place and we'd end up walking anyway. Everyone
(00:37):
in Mason rides scooters, but riding without a helmet can
get you a fine. We figured that its relative novicest
to the world of scooting. We probably sucked something up
and we probably better off walking. When the time came
to meet me out, though he offered us a ride
that was very nice, but it put us in an
interesting position. What exactly you say when a guy you've
(01:01):
never met, who's a friend of a guy you dem
on Reddit, who you know he's engaged in the illegal
production and smuggling of guns into a war zone, offers
to pick you up at the cafe so you can
go out for dinner. We decided to call our friend,
a long suffering guy we go to or we have
a security question. Paul his request, we're keeping him anonymous,
but he works in security and has an extensive professional
(01:22):
background dealing with situations just like this or maybe mostly
like this. Yes, so basically we're meeting with these people. Uh,
we don't have an established human chain with them of trust.
They're they're just a Reddit account that James has been
talking with but for like six or seven months. Um,
it doesn't really seem like there's much else we can
(01:43):
do besides keep our eyes open and try to meet
in a neuderal place. Yeah. I mean the big concern
is that would be of the government, which is not
um from what you guys have said. The government simply
(02:03):
doesn't have the wherewithal to do operations like this, and
I mean rebel groups like this, they're they're trying, they
want to get everything out there they can. So, yeah,
it is there a concerned about the fact that you
don't have a chain of people that can vouch for
each other. Yeah, but the situation there in m hmm.
(02:29):
Everything's in their favor, they are, Everything is in your favor.
Even minor cultural faux pause shouldn't be an issue. With
Paul's help, we came up with a watertight plan. I
should note here that he was at least as concerned
with our fate as he was with the fate of
the pair of pants he'd loaned James for the trip.
And I mean, yeah, it's a story that needs to
(02:50):
get out, so uh, being slightly lax on the rules
while knowing that it's an everybody's favor that it goes well.
I guess you gotta been the rules sometimes. Yeah, I
guess we'll check in. Yeah, we'll trying to approove of life. Yeah,
we'll do a proof of I will I will send
(03:12):
you a picture of James holding a piece of paper
that says big wife guy. And if if we are kidnapped,
I'll send you a picture of me that says Elon
Musk will be a good custodian of Twitter. Okay, I'll
know that that's the that's the sign, you know. I'll
get a black Yeah. Yeah, I'll figure out something. Yeah,
(03:38):
me and me and a few friends will be on
our way. That sounds awful. James has my favorite pants. Yeah, yeah,
you gotta get those pants bag. Oh yeah, this is
all about the pants. If I find change his dead body,
I'm kicking those pants off. Luckily, but I and Paul's
trousers made it back that night. Yeah, any damage was
(04:00):
too several delicious plates of food, his fiancee and their godfather.
We're the most gracious host, and we decided not to
record that first night. Instead, we met up the next day.
But there is one thing from that night that I
want to share with you. Rather than explaining it, I'll
let the song me out played for us talk to
you through the beautiful medium of punk music. Berea chow.
(04:39):
Of course it's an anti fascist anthem. Then. It's original
version tells the story of a young partisan who says
goodbye to his girlfriend before he goes off to fight
Italian fascists. If he dies, he says he wants to
be buried under a flower in the mountains so people
will see it and remember him. Oh no, no, that
(05:10):
bej co phone. But Jo Jo Jo Jo the dong
go do it to the ain't away? I fold my
rather last shot my way and bid by job by
Jo John Cho job on dat same b y all
(05:34):
follow And I don't know that job as a job
at a jo Jo John My song h jn't just
get rhead day sea robb belove shake that jo Jo
Jow John John Jo Jake jo Jo so m. After
(06:05):
a few months of revolution, all our characters found themselves
mourning their friends, and many of them were in the mountains.
Their struggle is one they see in the same vein
as the Italian partisans who fought fascism in their mountains
and the anti fascists who came from around the world
to fight the Spanish Civil War. I first heard that
song Belacho from a Spanish Civil War vectoran and it's
(06:26):
a strange closing of the loop to be here sitting
hearing it with young people who, just like the Spanish Republicans,
are fighting a coup with next to no international support
and a critical shortage of weapons. But me Out was
trying his best to fix their shortage. A month into
what would become the Spring Revolution, and the stakes have
(06:48):
become clear. When the first protester would shot and they
kept marching and people decided to go back into the streets,
They showed that the future of their country was worth
dying for. A few weeks later, some of them decided
it was also worth killing for. It was about them
that Meout's buddy and Keen Ready user Daddy u m
c D said he'd been online we reckon. They could
(07:10):
use their three D printers steel pipe and the expertise
is some strains on the internet to arm themselves. The
promise of revolutionary technology would take quite some time to
have any kind of battlefield impact in Myama, but the
effects of a different kind of revolution would be felt
immediately as the nations young activists took up arms against
the government. I was like, I'm entrusted us and how
(07:34):
worst and three D printing especially my profession is a
grand us of virtual reality and one to TEUs three
D printing is my hobby. So I just do I
just don't aload sound fine from thinking bust or other
three D three D printing criminal d and just do
it for my dus, not specially especially desk toys and stuff. Yeah,
(07:57):
just or twice yes, what do you think of guns? Then?
I have never emerging of a care because you know,
we have been living in the military booth for a
long time, so we're afraid or soldier especially not the studia,
especially the game that they hope. So we are so
afraid of that, so we never imagine like like we
had the same as in North Korea. We're so afraid
(08:17):
of that. So we never imagine of making game. But
after that the story began. At first, Meal and his
team felt safe despite the dangerous nature of their work.
He felt the top Medor was so behind the times
they wouldn't even know what a three D print. It
was like adulse side. The military didn't didn't know or
(08:38):
didn't give our funk about deferen is. So it is
okay a dose that it's really okay one one one
one day. Can we need to hide the campus if
they s three D prind that that's okay because we
were saying this is for our job or this for
some hobby that we can say I do with that,
but but not this that this time everyone doing the
(09:00):
trender Yes, camp camp go, They like yeah, yeah, Soon
that head shot became a lot closer to being a possibility.
It's like as song as we've we we finished the
second second at nine, we're trying to test that in
young and we send it to our warehouse. But unfortunately
(09:24):
this way how it exposed and uh ambushed by the
military and this guy is taken by the military and
they they announced this on the new By picture and
this uh like like hammag gas and Peter give a
funk about this just a hamma. They just at the
(09:46):
very first time, but later and later well later and
later one they were the second time they will arrest
there at this time that they arrest my revolutionary from
my team. So I'm told Handball that the efficiency and
how do you use and the history of the camp
at the time. Maybe maybe he was an investigator and
(10:09):
he told the true He says like the yeah and
now and I was then like like this before before
the at the very first anti and now the camp
from the Tagish Yeah, if you miss that, they thought
the guns were Turkish. The reason we giggled at this
is that whenever we see videos of combat in me
(10:31):
and mar James and I send them to a group
chat and try to work out what the weapons are
and where they came from. Nearly every time we're stumped.
The guns turned out to be some kind of niche
Turkish shotgun made to look like an A R fifteen.
It seems the military we're operating on the same assumption,
only this time they were very wrong. Like Alex Yak
(11:00):
started this second more deadly phase of the Spring Revolution
by taking a trip out to the jungle and he
stayed for several months to learn some of the skills
he was going to need to fight back against the
top medal. I was doing the Monday as a cuminating
data so I'm not like the I'm not have a
video training or something like that. I just going as
(11:22):
a comminator guy. So I met with some sun Gains
specially or some Fraina, and I said, I want to
know how to shoot gas, how to attis umber the gag.
So they teach me. I said, uh, say, I'm in
a Comminatnaga. I can't do the training, but I want
to lamb the books out of thing. So they sent
(11:43):
me some videos that I did to lamb by myself. Yes,
later he went back to carry prototype printed guns to
the E. A O S for testing. We asked if
it was scary being an undercover gun runner in the dictatorship.
He says it was, but he found that he had
a powerful ally in his fire. It homophobia, Yeah, Oscar,
of course, but we need to discloses, so you know, yeah,
(12:06):
disguises though. I just that I have a long hair,
so I act like a day So you know that
the military has so Channa and equality, so they hate gays.
That's why I just just our grand The military, assuming
Miak was gay and therefore incapable of fighting, let him go.
Miak kept his mouth shut and let their homophobia help
(12:27):
him smuggle the guns with which he hopes to help
topple the regime that places so much stock and values
like these. Miak said he had to go to the
jungle to prove that his guns worked because at first
the e O S didn't believe him about again, no one,
no one believes. I believed that. No one believes that,
So we have to made made it first. I showed them.
(12:49):
So we made it first. Uh we said, we got again.
It's it's a self fool. We lie, we need to lie,
and we send this to the e O. Then they
made it and it didn't walk out and to adjust
and it walk up. Okay, yeah, how do they feel amazed? Oh?
Oh my my. One of my revolutionary and he was
(13:12):
Stay said, oh, they're really really happy. There's all that,
all of the brain that and most protesting. Let's do
it right now. Yes, almost everyone we met spend time
in the jungle. Rooney, that's a normed the gear not
a given name. Started off as a protester and just
like everyone else. He fled into the jungle to avoid
being murdered by the government and to learn from the
(13:32):
ethnic armed organizations how to fight back. When when we
try and make peaceful protesting and it's really burned down,
then we he decided like he also we, so we
decided to choose to have an ass and to make
to make a revolution. So at this time he goes
to the EGO or stays and he lands the trainees,
you know, even especially the explosive trainees, and he got
(13:56):
back to the town and he started making this explosive
with the head of teachings. After learning from the e
a O S, he came back to Young Gone to
put his knowledge to use. Of course, just like myas
gunmaking team and the street protesters who learned from Hong
Konger's he took to YouTube and Google to try and
find a better way to build killing machines. So it's
like the EO teaches a very business, exploses just can
(14:19):
bound and s. Guys are like this, but after they
land a very business then and they want to improve.
So the landbine the youself. It's just like d I
Y the lambineaself with Google, with YouTube, so later and
later even they can make T N T and E
t N Y using YouTube. Of course, nearly everyone we
(14:43):
met at some point googled something like how to make
gun or how to make bomb. Now this is not
ideal ops set, but it speaks to the desperation of
the times. They used crowdfunding websites to raise money for ingredients,
and Rooney soon started putting his knowledge into practice. What
that meant was that people died. He killed human beings
(15:03):
with the explosives that he made. Now, those people would
have killed Rooney or anyone else we've spoken to in
this series. He was defending himself and others by making
killing machines. But still, if you're a decent person, it's
not easy to watch your work result in a stranger
being blown into a pink mist. He is not proud
of that, but you know, you know, he's never trying
(15:23):
to kick even a cat on any man back. He
is sad, but he had to do because of relution.
Revolution was in Rooney's blood. The military had stolen his
house as a kid, and he'd grown up with his
uncle sharing memories of the pro democracy uprising and its
violent repression. He'd seen his family, his cousin brothers and
(15:44):
their parents harassed for his whole life. Now he had
a chance to fight back. He carried out hundreds of
missions before he eventually had to flee the city when
an accident led to serious injury. Like in tones, there's
a nine mission, so he has to made nine boone
really big ball. So they did trying to assembly this bowl.
(16:08):
I was that one of his brands smoking and this
this family is called the Camphow after the blast he
had to run away from his house before the police arrived.
His friend was not so lucky, and it's in jail now.
Rooney is mostly recovered, but it's not safe for him
to go back, so he's hoping to make a new
start in Mason. The fight didn't stay in Yangon, in
(16:35):
Napid or either. For villages living outside the coupe was
just as real, but so is the desire to fight back.
People outside of town found themselves in the crosshairs to
the Topmador as well. The military employs a strategy which
they call four cuts. It's designed to alienate the rebels
from local support. It doesn't work. It's kind of scorched
(16:56):
earth stuff has never worked. Didn't work when the Nazis
tried in Europe, did to work when the US tried
in the Middle East of Vietnam. It doesn't work when
it's reel keeps doing it, and it doesn't work in Myanmar.
What it does do is drive people who lose their
families to pick up a gun and kill soldiers. And
it's not hard to see why. I just want to
play you our conversation watching one of Andy's videos about
(17:18):
one of hundreds of mascots that have happened since the
last February, and as a warning that stuff we're going
to talk about it is about as horrible and stuff
can be. But yeah, basically about I think twenty eight
people were killed that day. They just came into a
village and shot everyone. Um that's the handmade guns that
these villagers had. But it was just they weren't shooting
(17:39):
anyone though, they just h that's all the everyone died.
All these guys died. Look at that his hands tied
Yeah trash, Yeah, that's electrical game looks like. And they
burned the whole village. Now yeah they did, yeah twice,
(18:07):
you guys. Yeah, yeah. And that's why we say massacre
because it's fucking look at all the brains out, you know. Yeah, yeah,
all these kids, they weren't even eighteen. So all the
villagers that ran away, they took a photo of the
(18:28):
village from afar and they burned the relative and then left.
Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, and he says a nonprofit called
Liberate Myanmar supports the families every month, keeping them fair
and sheltered, because however hard the government tries to divide
(18:49):
the people from one another, it always seems to fail.
It's dead. It just pushes them closer and closer together.
(19:14):
While we were in Thailand having a drink on a
rooftop actually and talking about some kind of meditation retreat
that a guy we met had gone on, we got
to see some of the action for ourselves. That night
was a fun one. We were hanging out with some
nonprofit folks and we'd acquired some pretty terrible whiskey. At
various points in the evening, we would ambush one of
the boys and tell them they've been shot in the
(19:35):
arm or the leg, and have the others rush into
practice the stop the bleed skills well, and I demonstrated
some improvised carrying techniques and how to effectively turn and
drop to the floor when you're in the intimate presence
of a grenade. Everyone else at the party probably thought
we were pretty strange, but we were having fun. Then
in the distance we saw a huge yellow flash. It
(19:56):
took a few seconds of us all wondering if that
whiskey had sent us blind before the boom reached us.
The first we thought it was one of the air
strikes that have been happening in the border region. But
it was close and it was just one huge boom,
not the rockets and cluster bombs that tap the door
like to drop on civilians. Within minutes, minutes of nervously
waiting on the rooftop to see what was coming, next,
(20:16):
Andy's phone started buzzing. It was a car bomb and
it had gone off about a hundred yards to the
border where we stood earlier that day. Camera or something,
let me see, Yeah, right, Sary, how did they fucking
get it in there? Immediately we had questions, but very
(20:37):
few answers. Car bombs hadn't been the thing thus far
in the revolution. This was new. Carbons are also extremely scary.
It's hard not to be around cars in the city
and when any one of those cars might kill you,
it's hard to do anything feeling any semblance of safety.
I want to know who's did I mean, yeah, no
(21:00):
car bombs, I've never heard of it. It is it
somebody who driving it? Or kind of like I don't
think it's someone driving it? Is it? Like you don't
see anything there? Like? Uh no, I mean it could have.
Is it by the because if if there was a person,
there wouldn't be anything left. Yeah, you wouldn't se it. No, no, no,
But the thing is, Look, there's the fence like that
(21:22):
that looks like it was there one apart. Yeah it was.
It looks like right by the bridge. But then I
don't know why, what this what happened? We still aren't
sure who set off the car bomb, or if anyone died.
In a conflict like the one in Myanmar, it's sometimes
as confusing as it is scary. The military are more
than capable of a false flag style attack, killing civilians
(21:45):
and then blaming the PDF, and it has done this before.
That's what totalitarianism does. It aims to control every aspect
of everyday life, even the truth. The jungle haunted us
the whole time. We were there unattainable, but right next door,
just a few miles away, and Locke Caw the fight
was raging. Lucky caused what's called a friendship town. It
(22:05):
was built with Japanese money as a place for k
and new fighters to live after they put down their arms.
It was supposed to be a symbol of hope and
a new, peaceful and democratic Mi'anmar. Now it's a battlefield.
But while we couldn't get there, we could walk along
the river bank and look at the jungle and imagine
what it must be like up in those mountains, which
we did almost every day. Myanmar itself looms like a
(22:28):
mountain over the town of Masot. It's a border town
without a border, but the city is surrounded by refugee camps,
nonprofit offices, and even museums for political prisoners that can't
exist on the other side of the river. One day
we took a cab to see a monastery on a
bluff overlooking the river down into Myanmar. We could see
a casino still doing business with Chinese tourists, despite the
(22:50):
bombing nearby. On the walls of the monastery were a
colorful but horrific scenes of rape and murder Buddhist stages
of hell, a reminder that, according to the Four Mobile
Truths of Buddhism, all life is suffering and greed is
the cause of suffering. The same thing could be said
for the refugees and fighters forced to hide in the
endless green of the jungle, driven away from their homes
(23:11):
by the greed of men who worship power. Demo Crazy
Died word ring My So It Could Happen Here is
(23:33):
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
find sources for It Could Happen here, updated monthly at
cool zone media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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