Myanmar: Printing the Revolution, Part 3

We follow Zaw, a gen Z militant fighting with improvised weapons in Myanmar.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey everyone, I'm Robert Evans and welcome to episode three
of Printing the Revolution. Here's my partner, James Stout. In
the spring and summer of millions of Americans had versions
of the same experience. State forces killed the helpless man,
Protesters took to the streets in anger, and armed agents

(00:24):
of the state responded with mass violence. A lot of
people's lives changed for ever and fairly short order. What
happened in Me and Mara after the military coup was
that story turned up to eleven within days. The military
had used live fire and demonstrators or a source for
today's episode, were twenty two years old at the time.

(00:45):
He spend his days working as delivery driver, hang out
with his girlfriend playing video games. On the day the
coup started, he was playing pub g after a long shift.
Soon he and his girlfriend took to the streets with
thousands of other gen z Burmese kids. The state responded
with massacres, often firing automatic weapons into the crowds. So

(01:08):
I hadn't been particularly politically active before this moment. In fact,
he felt pretty poorly towards revolutionary supposing the government in
the jungle, seeing them as rebellious troublemakers. Um in the past,
we thought that the military is a group that loves
all the people and all the different groups in the
in the country, and then there's just a few people

(01:30):
who really hate the military. But especially after the who
we face it with our own foreheads, with the guns.
We can face the evil the military and all the
human rights and things that people who hated the military

(01:51):
before we're talking about. We understand it now because we
had to face it ourselves. And then they're gonna tell
us terrorists and how we must pick fall us. We
know that we're finding for human rights and we know
that each person deserves these basic things, you know. So
so even when we capture a soldier, we don't kill

(02:15):
them immediately. That's they're unarmed, you know. When they have
sure PDF, they torture and kill them very very horrifically
or horrendously, and they kill and to hurt all the
citizens and ordinary bystanders. So for us, what they're calling
at rebels before, we're not rebels. They're the ones that

(02:38):
are rebels, So we have to call down rebels. They're
the terrorists. But as violence against protesters escalated, the will
began to see through the lives. He'd been told by
the military of his life. What we were calling as
rebels are what we kind of become. But we know
why we are now rebels. That's because of their terrorism, there,

(03:03):
oppressive reviews, and their violation of human rights. That's why
we have to revolt against them. For a time, protesters
responded creatively with giant potato guns meant to fire less
lethal protect ours long distances. These homemade guns will be
fired in volleys well. Other protests protected them with shields.

(03:23):
Some of these tactics are effective a points, but it
quickly became clear that the government was willing to massacre
everyone is standing up to them. So his girlfriend and
their friends quickly decided that non violent resistance wasn't going
to work, but they didn't give up. As we get
onto into June, there's two paths, right. We can be normal,

(03:44):
we can go on the streets, we can ask for
the people's power back, and since that's not working, we
know that what we have to do is we need
to hold these buns, get these guns. And on the
military side, all they know is that they will solve
this by holding guns. So the only thing, the only

(04:04):
path that's left for us is to take those guns
for ourselves. So around the end of May, we started
entering training school. So the downtour is what the word
he used, and it's something like this corner part um,
so one corner part one to two. So talking, what

(04:27):
that means is that in the funtings hunt things that
we were doing, hunting rifles that we were using for that.
So we kind of start started and we fought first
in Dimoso. If we can ask the military nicely, then
there's no reason for us to be using guns. But
since they don't listen to our demands or our requests

(04:50):
at all, then the and since all we can do
and all they are saying, all they're doing is using
the guns and being terrorists trying to shoot us, so
the only things that we can do to get what
we need and what we want is to take the
concepts for ourselves. And so, like hundreds of people his age,
it's all headed into the jungle in May of one.

(05:12):
The decision wasn't an overnight one or an easy one.
But after protesting non violently, then meeting state violence with
community defense, then seeing his peers gunned down in the street,
he didn't have many other choices. He'd picked up a megaphone,
then a shield, and now he was heading in the
jungle to pick up a rifle. The only problem was

(05:34):
that there weren't any rifles. He left with his girlfriend
and quote with the blessing of his parents. Keep that
in mind for later. When he first went to the jungle,
Zall went to a two week training camp where the

(05:55):
Karini People's Defense Force taught him the basics of guerrilla warfare.
But they did have enough weapons to arm him and
his friends. So these gen Z militants began their fighting
careers with twenty two caliber rifles. If you aren't a
gun person, the twenty two was one of the smallest
widely available bullets. Like any bullet, it can kill, but
as a caliber it's better suited for shooting rabbits than soldiers.

(06:19):
These twenty two rifles were handmade locally and only fired
one shot at a time. But it was those rifles
that saw his girlfriend and their friends carried into their
first gunfight with the Totmadaw. After battling like that for
about three weeks, the shooting stopped, he said in an
interview we conducted over signal after the shooting stopped. We
grouped together money to buy arms by asking for donations.

(06:42):
They were massively outgunned, but determined to fight on with
the weapons they could make and buy on the black
market until they could find something better, even if that
meant taking guns from dead soldiers. The military's guns are
extremely good, of course, compared to point two two's, he said,
We fight with the mindset that we must in our
minds are always prepared to take their guns when a
soldier falls. It's a mindset to want the enemy's arms

(07:05):
to beat your own arms. You need to want to
resist injustice because we are fighting for what is right.
We do not get sad even if we die. We
are happy even when wounded. We no longer care if
our arms are matched unevenly. Now, despite their enthusiasm PDF
units all over the country, we're finding themselves in the
same desperate situation. When thousands of young people in Mianmar

(07:27):
decided to take up arms against the government, they're just
weren't enough guns to go around. A K pattern rifles
sell for three thousand dollars on the black market, and
a RS sell for up to seven thousand dollars. The
g d P per capita in was just twelve hundred
and eighteen dollars and thirty five cents per person, and
unlike militias in Syria and Iraq, the pro democracy e

(07:49):
a O s and Myanmar don't have the benefit questionable
benefit of the US flooding the region with its fire
hose of guns and money. Undeterred, Zaw and his squad
took to YouTube, where they found videos explaining how to
make two to three caliber bolt action rifles. Again, if
you're not a gun person, two to three may not
sound very different than twenty two, But whereas twenty two

(08:10):
is commonly used to shoot squirrels, two to three is
the standard rifle round more or less for the US military.
These new bolt action two two three's All and his
friends were making could not match the rate of fire
of a modern rifle, but they could at least match
those rifles in stopping power. Once these gen z insurgents
had the technique down, they created a detailed album on

(08:31):
Facebook showing how everything from the stock to the barrel
could be made with pipes, lumber, and hours and hours
of detailed hard work. Unlike their guerrilla warfare instructors, these
kids had grown up on the Internet rather than the jungle,
so they knew that if it exists, there's a subreddit
for it. It was the Internet that came to their rescue.
Three D printed guns have been around for a decade,

(08:52):
but the early models didn't work well and suffered from
a pretty bad reputation due in part to Cody Wilson,
the pedophile Terrian activists we discussed last episode. Jake Hanrahan
of Popular Front has covered the printed gun movement extensively.
Cody Wilson made his whole thing like, I'm the guy
with the three D printy guns, and he was on
this moral cru side. The three D printed gun lads,

(09:14):
particularly Deterrence Dispense, we're like, yeah, we don't. We don't
give a ship about that. We're just putting our stuff
out into the world. Obviously they got the ideas, but
they weren't really wedded to this idea of it being
one person. Deterrence Dispensed was a group of anonymous activists
who were more concerned with making printed guns that worked
than making a name for themselves. Hanrahan was connected to
one activist who used the pseudonym Jay Stark through the group,

(09:37):
and after three years of conversing online. Hanrahan met Stark
in Germany to produce a documentary. Jay Stark died of
a heart attack following a police raid last year, so
we spoke to Hanrahan about Stark's worldview. His whole worldview
comes from this idea that you know, it's everybody should
have the right to be able to fight tyranny. And

(09:58):
if you can't fight ir any, like you're fucked. And
the way to fight tyranny in the modern era is firearms.
We know that, you know, there's there's no you can't argue.
It's that no peaceful march gets rid of a fascist
dictatorship or whatever. But he he was, he he was
you know, there's some people would say he was far right.
Some people say it was an anakir. Some people say

(10:19):
he was a US patriot. I mean, first, he wasn't
even from America, and he had a lot of he
liked the laws in America, but he wasn't like some
of the American kind of fan boy or anything in
that sense. He liked the gun lads, he liked the
freedom of speech lords, which I do as well. You
know that personally, I in this country, you know, if
you tweet the wrong thing, even in jest, like police

(10:40):
will literally come to your house in Britain, like it's happened,
it's fucking mental um. So yeah, he liked that kind
of thing, um. And I think I think for him
it was he was very tunnel vision, you know, he
was very tunnel vision. It was just freedom, freedom, freedom,
and if you said, well what about this, what about that?
He was like, I don't care about that Until the
freedom is there, there's no point looking at anything else.

(11:02):
And so his brain was always on people that are
living on the tyranny, you know, and it genuinely would.
I know, there's a lot of people, even leftist particularly leftists,
have tried to completely smear him as a white supremacist.
They were saying, oh, everything he said in that dog
that I made was really it was secret um, anti
Jewish white supremacy. And then it came out that he
wasn't even white. You know. It's like very good, very good,

(11:25):
you fucking idiots. So there was a lot of that
going around. But I honestly believe that deep down he
was just tunnel vision, focused on this idea of every
until everybody is not living under tyranny. I must go
on this mission, and Okay, if if someone shoots up
at school with what I've invented, so be it. You know,
which I'm not saying that's good, but that was just
his idea. You know, he was like, so be it.

(11:46):
Fuck it if I can. You know, he was very
genuine when he was on about the Wagers, or he
was on about the mistreatment of Kurds from Turkey, and
you know, he was like, look, if we can build
something that can help them, well, sorry that the West
might get funked up because of it, but I'm focused
on this now. Obviously, in in practice that would be
chaos probably, but you know, he just saw it the

(12:07):
way he saw it, and that was the the cavalier
attitude Stark seems to have had to how his invention
might be used is of course worthy of criticism, but
the revolutionaries on the ground in Myanmar were not concerned
with ideological debates over the ethics of homemade firearms. They
needed guns, and they needed them now. J. Starks. F
GC nine, which stands for Fuck Gun Control. Nine millimeter,

(12:30):
was simple to make, easy to use, and relied entirely
on parts you could print or buy in any hardware store.
In September, a post popped up on the fosse cad subreddit,
which is dedicated to the manufacturing of three D printed guns.
Stark is a hero there. The post said, I wanted
to say thanks to this community, the creators of f
GC nine and the various mods when we could you

(12:53):
guys are literally empowering the armed revolution against dictators and
one of the most underdeveloped countries. We are now equipped
with f GC nine and starting the armed revolution to
the cool leader dictator. As one poster comments, the account
quote went from posting about mobile games to how do
three D print SMG S two? Desperately asking people to
pay attention what was happening in Myanmar. Then after the

(13:15):
f GC nine post, it was deleted entirely. J Stark
never lived to see this. He would have loved it.
What everything that he was doing. That was the main
focus in my opinion, that like it couldn't be a
more perfect, like practical actual realization of his project. You

(13:37):
couldn't pick a more perfect version of it to happen
like that, you know. And there's a lot of talk
of oh where there's a lot of drug dealers in
Amsterdam have FCC nines. There was a Nazi recently arrested
with one. You know, these people are awful, of course,
but the most prevalent use of the f GC nine,
at least from what I've observed, has been from the

(13:59):
Red was in myr mom making them. I think that
I've seen like thirty of them so far. You know,
that's a lot of them, and there was one was
found stashed in a bush. My theory is they're left
the round for ambush attacks and areas that are not
as fully controlled by the rebels. First CAD, a community

(14:25):
of mostly US based gun printers, lost its collective mind,
and it didn't take long for people to make the
connection between the post and a desperate plight of me
and my spring revolution. Soon after the post, the tap
the Door started posting pictures of f GC nins, often
without sights, captured from fighters in Yangon, and the twenty

(14:46):
one September, the Tapmodor's Ministry of Information released a statement,
I'm thea th way yea mint. We're found with an
f GC nine Mark two pistol five round ounds of
nine millimeter ammunition. They were arrested along with their drone.
The military alleged they were an urban unit from the

(15:09):
same generation Z Freedom Army that's all was a part of.
That same month, the military posted pictures of three more
captured FGC nines, suggesting that at least five have been
captured by late September. Then two months later, a new
post popped up in the Fosse cat sebredit. Hey, I'm

(15:30):
back and the guy who posted a thank you note
back in September here. Now that the FGC nines are
ready known by the dictator, I can proudly announce that
we're from me and Mar. Yes, we are mass producing
FGC nine to fight back against the Dictator. More intfo
about our production will be published later this time. The
user you slash daddy u m c D hung around

(15:54):
to answer questions. Those bastards didn't know we had the
tech back then. Now that everything is in public, we
can proudly say we're from me and Mar. We are
mostly responsible for production in R and D, even though
we also involved in other ground missions. We distribute the
FDC nine to a lot of different urban guerrillas in
urban and rural areas. Some of the units got arrested

(16:16):
a few weeks ago, which you might have already seen
on the subredit. Apart from the FTC nine, there are
other equipments and weapons that are being produced with three
D printers, he wrote. He said his team were residing
in ethnic armed organization areas, mainly the Kurreen National Union
and the Kachin Independence Army controlled zones. He posted that

(16:38):
they tried other three D printed designs, such as the
plastic of which is a printed a K forty seven receiver,
but getting the other parts made it impractical. By contrast,
the FTC nine can be made entirely using a three
D printer and some hardware store parts. According to another source,
Mere Must small motorcycle repair shops made quick work the

(17:00):
metal barrels and bolts. Electro Chemical machining was used to
make more barrels. They also had the chance to buy
a few glock barrels from Thailand, Daddy U m c
d said, but those cost a lot more than the
FDC nine barrels. While his account continued to post, the
military continued to share photos of captured FCC nines. Three

(17:22):
workshops that have been using lathes to make the barrels
were raided. The photos of three more captured guns popped
up in November alongside bolt action rifles. It still had
stickers on their stocks from what looked like US gun shops.
Production and decentralized locations continued despite the raids, while other
groups fought on with homemade revolving rifles, crude homemade wooden stocks,

(17:48):
another improvised weapons. A telegram channel with instructions in Burmese
on how to make the guns made sure that even
when one shop or gunsmith was taken out of the fight,
the knowledge wasn't lost. Although filament for their three D
printers were becoming harder to get, they'd stock powered a
lot in advance. Daddy U m C D try to

(18:09):
manufacture automatic f GC nights and another printiple model called
Professor Parabellum square tubes of machine gun, but nothing else
seemed as easier as reliable as the FDC NIE. Of course,
read it. Being read it, people questioned the veracity and
utility of his posts. He responded, FDC nines are just

(18:30):
part of the game because they could be produced with
what we have at the lowest cost. Available rifles of
four thousand to seven thousand U S dollars at our border.
F gcs are under one hundred dollars. Rifle parts are
ten times more expensive than lock parts. To all those
who are saying these photos are suss, we don't want
to blame the suspicion. If any of you remember the

(18:53):
thread I posted in September, you will remember that we
are mass producing FDC nights. The ones in the photos
you've seen were supplied by us. There are many groups
like this now, we do the main production, just like
I explained in September. Then, Daddy um c D went
on to thank the other members of the subreddit, claiming
their active help with the only reason he and other

(19:13):
revolutionaries have been able to overcome certain technical issues. We
wouldn't be here without you guys, especially someone who shared
with me the buffer spring and fire control groups bring
the measurements, he said. By late November, photos of FGC
nines in the hands of fighters emerged, and they showed sites.
This time they had longer barrels and home made suppresses too.

(19:37):
The FTC nines were apparently used by urban units for
close up fighting and for the training of new fighters,
since they have essentially the same controls and they are
fifteen or M sixteen rifle, both of which are common
in ME and Mars rebel units. We have successfully streamlined
variety of techniques to produce f GC nine one thousand
plus efficiently. Our primary forces arequipped with proper rifles. FGC

(20:03):
nines are a guerrilla warfare. We started using those in
Hit and Run and Special Task Force missions too. We
don't share much about the missions to the public yet.
It will definitely come, and when it does, are updated
here if I'm still alive, ha ha, wrote Daddy U
m c D on the false Cat subreddit. Even with
production in False Wing, ammunition remained a problem. Although some

(20:28):
regions can produce twenty two and nine millimeter at home.
According to Daddy U m c D five six can
be purchased in large quantities at the border with Thailand,
but it isn't cheap. Instead, the PDF alide and raiding
police and military outposts in the same way the e
O has had for years. Nine millimeter is the most
common center fire pistol around in the world. That's why

(20:51):
the Turrents Dispense picked it for the FDC nine sees
weapons often only have a handful of rounds, but that's
enough to kill a soul drew and take his weapon.
Jay Stock might not have been around to see his
invantion used to fight tyranny, but Hammerhan thinks he would
have been happier with the results he would have been
made up. I think that's everything he wanted to achieve,

(21:13):
you know what I'm saying, That really is everything you
wanted to do. Even the National Unity government me and
muss government in exile has come around to at least
some of jay Stock's ways of thinking. According to Daddy
U m c D Ministry of Defense Minister already promised
about the right to bear arms at the first day
of the revolution. Promises made by revolutionary governments are not

(21:35):
exactly solid commitments, but it's not hard to see why
a generation of kids like Zaw, forged by an asymmetrical
conflict with a government that possessed a near absolute advantage
in armaments, might be committed to staying armed even if
they win. At the moment, the future of their struggle
is very much end doubt. Scrolling through Facebook photos of
Zoll and his comrades is a surreal experience. They look

(21:57):
not just young soldiers mostly look young, but they look
like students, kids from some weirdly militarized university. Photos on
Facebook show them sprawled out together in the grass and
camo fatigues bearing rifles, but each glued to their phones
as they cuddle in together. Za and his girlfriend, who
he described to us as the girl I love, fought

(22:18):
alongside each other until January seven of this year. The
battle that we started, she was coming within and you
know as epa. Since weapons landed near her and hit
her like so their bone broke so so she had
to go to hospital. Three D printed and homemade guns

(22:39):
have helped, but Zoll and his friends are still fighting
against a modern military with planes, night vision goggles, and tanks.
Despite this, more than a year after the coup, they're
still fighting, and more soldiers deffect to join them weekly.
It's hard to see what victory looks like. The cities
will be another battle altogether, but in the jungle camp
where Zoll video calls us from, it's impossible to see

(23:01):
what giving up might look like. Either he's still fighting,
his girlfriend is healing, and they're both committed to staying
out in the jungle until they are in their freedom
back or die trying. It could happen here as a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Zone Media. Visit our website cool zone media dot com,

(23:22):
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.