November 7, 2022 • 30 mins
Part one of a five part series on Myanmar’s spring revolution. James and Robert document the first year of Myanmar’s revolution through the stories of its participants”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Dime, no.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Demo crazy, I wordam my josh Oa.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
In twenty twenty, millions of Americans took to the streets
to protest police violence. They were met with police violence
on a massive scale. Shootings, vehicle attacks, and assassinations occurred
alongside these protests, often in defense of the police, and
in total, at least twenty five Americans died. We now
know that President Trump repeatedly urged General Mark Milly to
(00:42):
deploy US military forces to crack down violently on demonstrations.
Milly claims that Trump told him to have his soldiers
crack skulls, beat the fuck out of and just shoot protesters.
In the end, we were all lucky. Military leaders, including
General Milly, resisted to use their men to suppress domestic descent.
(01:03):
National Guard were called in to police several major cities,
but in many cases their behavior was tame compared to
the militarized police who were reliably shot and beat protesters.
For millions of Americans, twenty twenty was their first exposure
to the violence the state will do to avoid change.
And then Trump lost the election. He and his followers
(01:24):
tried to carry out a coup but failed. For now
and millions of Americans who'd taken to the streets mostly
went back to their lives. Some were satisfied justice had
been done, others were furious to have stopped short of
instituting real change. But at the end of the day,
business went on as usual. A version of normal prevailed.
In twenty twenty one, the military of Myanmar, known as
(01:47):
the Toatmadaw, overthrew the elected government in a coup. Hundreds
of thousands of citizens, most of them young, gin z
and millennial men and women, took to the streets. Police
responded with tear gas, water cannon, and eventually bullets. The
international community expressed its horror at the brutality of the Tautmda,
but that's all they did. Over the course of several months,
(02:09):
the military pushed protesters mostly out of the cities, and
a protest movement against the military coup turned into a
civil war. Now those same protesters, mostly kids who wanted
nothing more than a normal life, have become revolutionaries. With
home made guns, three D printed rockets, and stolen rifles,
they battled the tot MADA. Some of them fight in
(02:30):
the jungles, some of them fight in the cities, and
some of them fight on the internet. This is their story.
We're sitting in a large suburban home in Mysout, Thailand,
a small city on the border of Menmar. The boys
singing and playing music around us range in age from
seventeen to twenty two. Their existence in Thailand is a crime.
(02:53):
If they are caught here, they'll be forced to cross
the border into mi Anmar, whose government executed their friends
and sold the old organs for profit. But tonight they're
playing music. We're drinking beer. Later, James Stout and I
will play pool with them and get our asses just
catastrophically wrecked.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
We met Andy, aged twenty two and head of the
family for his Instagram page. That's not his real name,
but for obvious reasons, we can't identify him. We first
met when I send him a DM asking if we
could buy one of his photos for our first series
on Me and Ma. He was a bit skeptical, but
I tried my best to get him to see we
just wanted to give him money and promote his work.
(03:35):
Over the next six months or so, we weren't from
talking on the phone to messaging almost every day, to
Robert and I booking tickets to Thailand to sitting on
the top floor of their house. It used to be
his landlord's office, but now it's home to Andy and
his partner, Sarah. That's also not her real name, because
she's a citizen of a Western nation working in Thailand.
(03:56):
The boys we talk about are the brothers, his cousin
and friends. They live at a small building across the garden,
and in the daytime they sit under a gazebo and
play their guitars. The first night we met Andy and Sarah,
we sat behind a bar in an unpaved alleyway. We
drank beer out of sippy cups because selling beer is
still banned at the local COVID regulations, but apparently the
(04:17):
cops don't check sippy cups. We drank far too much,
in fact, and the next day I work up with
a headache and a blurry photo of me, Robert and
Andy engaged in a pose which was half hug and
half mutual support structure. We walked home and according to
my phone, at some point we took photos of a puppy,
and in a hopefully unrelated incident, at some point I
(04:37):
started bleeding. It was immediately obvious that Andy needed the
chance to blow off some steam over the last year.
In Change, he is chronicled every stage of the coup
in its aftermath. In early videos we see joyous protests,
moments of resistance, and splendor in the streets of cities
like Miawiti. Later we see violence, death, and guerrilla warfare.
(05:00):
And he didn't have what you would call an easy childhood,
thanks in part to me and Mau's long history of
revolutions being crushed by the army. People there, like people everywhere,
want to be free and determine their own futures. And
so each generation has its own uprising, and each generation
has its own massacre in very little progress to show
for it.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
I was born in two thousand, so when I was seven,
two thousand and seven, there was a revolution. It's called
Saffron revolution. It wasn't it wasn't like this, you know,
it wasn't like what happened now, But like, there were
a lot of people that were involved in it, a
lot of people that kill and a lot of people
left yarmar and came to the refugee camps in here,
(05:41):
and we were one of the families that came to
the refugee camps. And yeah, in mess out Thailand.
Speaker 6 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Andy's mother is Buma, the dominant ethnic group in me
and Maar due to their decades long control of the
military and government. His father is Krin, the ethnic group
once used by the British government as soldiers. Since nineteen
forty nine, the Karin have fought a war in the
mountains against the top Mada. Their name is often anglicized
to be spelled just like the English name Karen, which,
(06:09):
given present Internet trends, makes explaining the conflict sometimes awkward.
Andy primarily identifies as and was raised Bamah. His family
left after the Saffron Revolution. They did not flee to
escape political repression, but because the economy had collapsed. This
put them in an awkward position in the camps, which
were filled mostly with Karin people who had fled state violence.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
We weren't refugees, right, We were more like, how do
you say, like economic refugees. You know, we go because
not because our village has been burned down and our
family has been killed, you know. So then if we
were to go back to Yangon, we still could find
a job, we still could fine, you know. But then
for these current people, like this place is the only
(06:55):
place that they could exist at that moment, right and
probably still now too. So yeah, so they say that,
but that education wasn't very good there. The life wasn't good,
you know, it wasn't It wasn't. It was very bad. Honestly,
it was very bad. It was a lot of violence,
a lot of hate, a lot of understandable, you know,
like these people have gone through so much shit and
(07:15):
so much trauma that and nothing. No one is coming
there too, but fix that. So they had a lot
of anger. They had a lot of problems. But my
mom said, yeah, we're going back because the education he
is very bad. And if you go back to Miami,
at least, you know, if you do like the thing
that people do, maybe you'll get somewhere. Yeah, in the future.
(07:36):
Here there's no future, so she said, So we went
back and I stayed in yourmar for like four years.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Andy had never been very political. His family was more
or less neutral, tending to side with the military more
often than not. Out of a sense of inertia. Me
and Mar attended to cartwheel between attempts at democracy and
military dictatorship. So when the world media celebrated their first
democratic elections in twenty five years in twenty fifteen, Andy
was not particularly excited.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
Yeah, So, I mean we did realize that there was
a change in the country, right because we grew up
in the military to take your ship. But then one
intensity takeover took over. There were some changes, like the
phones got cheaper, the internet got cheaper, and if you
look back then you can see big, big changes. But
(08:27):
the thing is it was never real democracy, and I
think a lot of people in the Western countries thought
that it was democracy when al Sensergi took over.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Ansongsucci came to prominence during a nineteen eighty eight uprising
against the military, which ended in bloodshed in the streets
of Yangon, and she'd been a long time democratic activist.
As Andy noted, westerners celebrated her election as the first
democratic head of state for me and Maar. She even
won a Nobel Prize. But the agreement her party had
made with the military gave the generals significant permanent control
(09:01):
over the government.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
But I think most of the people in the country
knew it wasn't real democracy because you know, the military
always had twenty five percent twenty fight seats in the parliament,
right like they were always they were in charge of
electricity and all these all these big things, a weapons army,
like the military itself, they are in charge of all
these things, and they make it very clear.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And even with a Nobel prize on Soongsuchi did not
fight to stop the top Mada from pursuing their decades
long wars against the ethnic armed organizations in the Hills,
nor did she act to stop their ethnic cleansing of
the Rohinga people. In fact, she and others in her
party didn't even call them Rohinga. They called them Bengali
and insisted they were illegally residing in Myanmar, despite mountains
(09:46):
of evidence documenting a group by that name living in
what is now the Rakian State. I think most Americans
and Westerners in general can empathize with the feeling of
electing someone who promises change and then getting very little
of what you'd expected.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
I think Alsensucci used to be this hope that that
was like the opposition against the military. But I think
when she got power, she couldn't do all the things
that she promised to do, or like you know, we
looked at her before, we looked at her as something,
you know, something hope for everyone, you know, for all
(10:23):
the ethnic groups and for everyone in the country. But
then when she became empower she mainly focused all these
changes for the Bama people. Well, you know, the mainland people,
Like the military was still fucking killing people and killing
ethnic groups. Did they do something, you know, like, so
(10:44):
then for the ethnic groups, what's the difference?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
And so while Andy was hopeful that his country might
take a better path, he was not exactly convinced that
things were going to get better. Conflict within his family
eventually pushed him to make the decision to leave.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
My dad was very abusive, right, he would be the
shit out of my mouth every day like that. It
was fine, Like it was fine when we were younger.
We couldn't do anything, you know, we just kind of
watched it, right, But the older we got, the more
we involved, the more we try to stop it. But
then we were fight with him too, you know, And
so at some point it became too much, and so
(11:18):
I left my home, I think in twenty sixteen, just
by myself, and I was like, I've been to Messad,
I will go back here, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
So Andy lived across the border on his own for
more than five years. He'd fallen in love gotten a
home with his own and set himself up in the
sort of odd jobs you can do without papers or
legal residency. And that's where things were for him when
the top MA dog carried out their coup in early
twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Twenty twenty one February. First, I was a messout I
was here and yeah, in the morning, I woke up,
called me my girlfriend and as she said, the military
just did a coop in your country. You should call
your family.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
The military claimed voter fraud and used that is the
pretext to stay in power. It's a situation that should
be unsettlingly familiar to most of our audience. For a while,
Safe in Maysat, Andy watched it in horror as he
texted with friends and family across the border.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
They arrested Ansen Suji and all the big leaders right
at the top. So we were kind of like, okay,
is someone going to tell us what to do? And
especially for us, we didn't have any experiences. We didn't
know anything about any of this that I'm talking about
right now. I didn't have any knowledge of that. But yeah,
so after I think six day the most you cut
off the internet, like for like two days and I've
(12:35):
lost all contact with everyone inside, my family, my friends.
And that's the night I started playing it. Like I
started thinking, oh fuck, I should go back and like
and I saw the protest photos from Yangon. They looked amazing, right,
and I'm like, I'm a photographer. I should be there
and you know, document that.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
While Andy was staring at the protest photos from the
capital of mianmar Napodor, as well as Miawiti and the
largest city, Yangn, wondering he should take his camera and
document yet another rising for democracy in his home country,
a young woman named Amiror was in the thick of
those protests and Yangn when the coup started. A mirror
age seventeen, had just finished high school. She was looking
(13:31):
forward to university and more pressingly, looking forward to playing
futsal with her friends. She liked to spend her days crafting,
she says, making little things to gift or to keep,
Like every other day. When she woke up, she spent
ten minutes in medication before facing the world on the
first of February. Hansomsduki was her hero, she says. In
(13:52):
our interview. Her boyfriend translated for her. We'll get to
their story later. But when the coup began, they lived
a world apart. They joined the whole generation and feeling
in rage by Tatmador trying to rip the freedom their
parents would fought for from them, A mirror took her
rage into the street. Someone gave her a bullhorn.
Speaker 6 (14:11):
Because of her voice, and then she became the leader,
you know, with the the bullhorn.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
Yeah, what kind of stuff would you say to the
boat through the bullhorn?
Speaker 7 (14:21):
Hello, you don't want you She's saying, uh, this is
anfeil and then uh, this is uh that the arresting
(14:41):
that SUCHI is a anfel not fair?
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Okay, yeah, okay yeah.
Speaker 6 (14:49):
And then and then she believed that, Uh, she believed
in what San Succhi said, like everything is paused the
wall and we haven't do anything. We haven't studied yet,
and then but when we study and then we can
finish it, so everything is possible. So that's what she
(15:13):
believe in. So she went on the road and then
she brought us.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Across the city from a mirror. On coup day, Miok's
girlfriend woke him up with the news that the government
they'd voted for had been arrested. We're calling him milk
here because that's his name. In the revolution, everyone has one.
Amr's his baby because she's so young yet so fierce. Mewk,
if you're wondering, means monkey. These revolutionaries who have risked
(15:40):
life and limb for each other, didn't know the legal
names to the people. They call their revolution family because
it's safer that way, and we don't either, meowk could
spend the night well, I'll let you hear Harry phrased it.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Actually, I would just like our tailing with my a
scare for you know.
Speaker 7 (15:57):
Our tailor.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
And we were you know, Nephlis and Chae generary netflist
and I think it's a Sunday. I think it's Sunday
Nephla and ch and we we slid together.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
If you didn't catch that, there were Netflix and chilling.
Speaker 7 (16:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I was literally not wakere but any louder show. I
was so sleep but but at the full am there's
a po rings and I suddenly wake here there's phone
ring from my girlfriend, her anti call call Call, call Heart,
and she said there's a cool de feast. Oh and
she wake her and she told me there's a cool
(16:36):
of I didn't you know I don't believe it.
Speaker 5 (16:40):
I believe it.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I didn't believe it, so other than I chat the
social media, oh sh or may I actually do this?
I'm so angry and I'm so angry, you know. I
was going down downstairs and I told to my family,
there's a cool of everyone's angry and I those times
the internet they cut off.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
The next revolutionary we're going to mean is a fellow
will call doctor Wonder because that's his revolution name. When
the coups started, he was just waking up after a
twenty four hour shift at the hospital in Yangon where
he worked. Doctors were some of the earliest and most
visible dissidents in the protests. Their rarity and therefore their
relative value to the regime made them a potent symbol
(17:23):
of the pro democracy movement. But as doctor Wonder made
clear many older medical professionals, we're not at all certain
that resistance was a right move here.
Speaker 8 (17:33):
At the morning, I saw the news that bad news,
really really bad news for us.
Speaker 9 (17:39):
It was how would I say that they bro you know, yeah,
they broke our future.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Doctors were some of the earliest most visible dissidents in
the pro democracy protests. Their rarity and relative value to
the regime made them a potent symbol of the Protomok movement,
But as doctor Wonder made clear, many older medical professionals
were not at all certain that resistance was a right
move on that money.
Speaker 9 (18:11):
We go back to our our society, our hospital.
Speaker 8 (18:16):
We are shen guys, you know, all professors or concernders
did not much interest about that because they told us,
you know, whoever rules our camfe is not our business,
it is one of our seniors, doctors from our society
(18:39):
for our department pool us like that.
Speaker 9 (18:42):
But we reply him, no, it should be the last time.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
If didn't catch that, he said it should be the
last time, the last time kids had to die in
the streets. They didn't want another generation to have to
go through the same thing. So they got together a proposal,
a sort of manifesto for peaceful, nonviolent resistance, and they
submitted it to their seniors.
Speaker 8 (19:05):
We negotiated with our ship you know, young resident, our society,
and we discussed about that, and we plan to start
with one of our prior movement.
Speaker 9 (19:19):
Before save a disagreement.
Speaker 8 (19:21):
We have got our Red Ripon movement, of course, because
we want to write peacefully on the media. Okay, we
started like that, and then uh, some of our seniors
from our society, they were from Mendally Hospital. Okay, they
(19:41):
accept our propose there, Yes, because our generation has already
passed that difficulties before, but not your generation shouldn't accept that.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Three days before the queue, TK got off a plane
in San Francisco. He's from me in Ma, but he
lives in the Bay Area. Now, before you ask, he
says that the Burmese restaurant there is not as good
as stuff back home.
Speaker 10 (20:08):
It's only three days three days before, three days before
I went back to the to the United States, and
I wish I'm staying a youngle and doing the revolution
and a participate in a everywhere that I can, but
that I couldn't do from the from the long distance,
(20:29):
you know.
Speaker 6 (20:29):
So that's all I can.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Do for now.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
TK had just been in me and Ma. He had
connections to many people on the ground there, his friends
with it, his family were it. When the government cut
off into thee access, he remained able to get good
international reporting on the situation in his home country. Slowly,
he found ways to communicate with his friends and a
growing core of the protesters, taking to the streets.
Speaker 10 (20:56):
I was a keyboard fighter.
Speaker 6 (20:59):
I have no idea about a politic I have no
idea about the military stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
This is a single most common sentiment we've heard across
all the revolutionaries we've met. None of them considered themselves
to be very political. Prior to the coup. They started
marching in the street because the military coup was obviously bad,
but they stayed there because the violence dished out by
the state was so horrific. Save at their house in Maso.
We talked to the boys and these brothers and cousins,
(21:28):
all of whom were living in Napo door when the
coup kicked off. It didn't take him long to try
and join them.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
Then I went in. I went to Nyawiti, which is
across the border in your marside, and I was there
for a week and it was it was something else
like I've never been to protests now, I've never been
involved in any of this thing, and I never thought
I would be, you know, like I don't know. I
always thought like I wasn't going to be a part
(21:54):
of it. But when I went there, the first day
I arrived, there were two hundred thousand people on the street, protest.
And then it's like and this big group of people
walk in streets after street and everyone coming out of
their house and we have this symbol like three fingers
from Hangergang. I think, yeah, yeah, so that's like our
(22:14):
symbol for democracy now or our movement now. And everyone
come out of their house doing that and you know,
like giving us water, food, everything. It was beautiful, like
it was something else. It was something else. And then
from that day I was like hook. I was like, Okay,
this is what I'm going to do.
Speaker 9 (22:32):
Now.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
I'm going to be a photographer and I'm gonna in this,
you know, and I'm gonna I'm going to take photo
of these people and their stories and I'm gonna share it,
and that's my part, that's my rule.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Soon he found friends among the protesters. Within a few days,
he was feeling a feeling that so many people felt
in twenty twenty. It's a feeling you felt if you've
ever been in the thick of a crowd of people
filled with right tous anger and facing down overwhelmed police
or soldiers. It's a sensation. I can't really described you
you haven't experienced it, but I can say that there's
(23:05):
no time that I've ever felt more empowered than the
times I've been crushed, shouldered with strangers, toe to toe
with state violence and watch cops break and retreat. It's incredible.
It's addictive, and if I'm honest, it's probably why Robert
and I booked a flight to visit a stranger I've
been dming on the ground.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
I think after three days, I met this group of people,
young people like students trying to be lawyers and stuff,
and I figured out that they were the ones trying
to organize these big protests, like two hundred people, one
hundred thousand people. They were the ones that's making that happen.
So I started kind of following them, trying to get
close because I wanted to get stories from them. And
(23:46):
then they became they and they realized what I've been doing.
They've been watching like and so they were like very welcome,
and they took me to this hide out that they
go to and then we will have discussions and medians
about what we should do the next day. Da da
da da. But then kind of it's because it's a
small town, right, Slowly, I think police and military started
realizing that we are that group too.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Oh yeah, demo crazy word.
Speaker 6 (24:28):
Oh do.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
So by now you're probably wondering what that cover of dust?
And it's a song that boys learned when we first
took to the streets, but it tells the story of
a previous revelation, one that didn't succeed.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Can you tell us what that song's about? Like, do
you know what the lyrics are and stuff?
Speaker 10 (24:56):
And yeah, we can try.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I heard the word democracy in there.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it's like all the lives that
we democracy.
Speaker 9 (25:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Do people use it for the Spring Revolution as well
as eighty eight?
Speaker 5 (25:11):
Yeah, because it is the same thing, Tell the world,
and that's the name of the song, tell the world.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
It is cool, Yeah, I tell the world.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
So basically the song is like, yeah, they sang it
in the back in the eighty eight and then it's
like we used it quite a lot when when we
were in the protest to Yeah. The lyars are We'll
keep fighting until the end of the world for the
sake of history and revolution in our blood and of
the fallen heroes who fought for the democracy. Oh, our
(25:49):
dearest heroes, this is the lene of like heroes, like
yeah and yeah, it goes on and then m hm
m hmm, yeah, basically saying like something like the history
went wrong along the way, but we have to fix it. Yeah,
(26:10):
like the country has shed its blood and how could
they commit such violence to its own people, you know. Yeah,
and yeah, like they say, like the blood on the
rods and the streets are not dried yet. And for
the sake of these people who die for the democracy,
(26:31):
for fighting for democracy, for the sake of them, we have.
Speaker 9 (26:35):
To keep fighting basically.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Now in their exile, they keep singing it to remember
the first day of the revolution, when the fights were
in the street, not the jungle, before they lost so
many of their comrades.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Yeah, and then there was a night protest in front
of the police station. Oh this is they're singing the song. Yeah,
I got very very heated.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
The protest, friends were just talking about occurred in reality,
but the song popped up all across the country.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
When you played it in Yangon, you will sing it, yeah,
they and ygo. It wasn't one guitar, it was a
whole band. Well, you have like protest sitting down and
then there's a group of people who were playing this
and repeatedly there are a bunch of songs that will
play and then.
Speaker 9 (27:36):
There's like words that we would say.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
And yeah, like yeah, I beam gown and you'll see
from the footage how it's.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Yeah, how does it make you feel singing it?
Speaker 5 (27:51):
Now?
Speaker 6 (27:52):
It's scary, you know, it's like.
Speaker 11 (27:55):
The song, the song is very real. So like at
first we didn't want to play the song. It's too dark,
it's too it's too intense, right yeah, like yeah, but.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
It's not like the levers are there like you can
see it.
Speaker 10 (28:16):
You know.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
It's like because we've been through it too, so it's
very intense. And yeah, I think the first time I
heard it, like I heard the song, I remember that
we are fewing of Yeah, I still have it like
every time we're saying it now, like this is not
one of the songs that we usually sing like, it's
not a fun song.
Speaker 12 (28:37):
Yeah, bebi album, Oh God, Bedia.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
De more Crazy.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
On the next episode, which you'll be able to download tomorrow,
we'll talk about how the Hunter began to clamp down
on the protests. Now, the protesters decided this struggle was
too important to abandon and decided to fight back. Hi everyone,
(29:32):
it's James here. I just wanted to note that lots
of the words in this script are Burmese or Karen
or Thai, and we've made every effort to make sure
that we pronounce them correctly. But we're sure we've obviously
made some mistakes along the way. That's not out of
a lack of respect or out of a lack of
re recording on my part, but we did want to
note that where we've made a mistake, we're very sorry
(29:53):
for doing so.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 10 (29:57):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coozonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 10 (30:06):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at Coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
Dime, no.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Demo crazy, I wordam my josh Oa.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
In twenty twenty, millions of Americans took to the streets
to protest police violence. They were met with police violence
on a massive scale. Shootings, vehicle attacks, and assassinations occurred
alongside these protests, often in defense of the police, and
in total, at least twenty five Americans died. We now
know that President Trump repeatedly urged General Mark Milly to
(00:42):
deploy US military forces to crack down violently on demonstrations.
Milly claims that Trump told him to have his soldiers
crack skulls, beat the fuck out of and just shoot protesters.
In the end, we were all lucky. Military leaders, including
General Milly, resisted to use their men to suppress domestic descent.
(01:03):
National Guard were called in to police several major cities,
but in many cases their behavior was tame compared to
the militarized police who were reliably shot and beat protesters.
For millions of Americans, twenty twenty was their first exposure
to the violence the state will do to avoid change.
And then Trump lost the election. He and his followers
(01:24):
tried to carry out a coup but failed. For now
and millions of Americans who'd taken to the streets mostly
went back to their lives. Some were satisfied justice had
been done, others were furious to have stopped short of
instituting real change. But at the end of the day,
business went on as usual. A version of normal prevailed.
In twenty twenty one, the military of Myanmar, known as
(01:47):
the Toatmadaw, overthrew the elected government in a coup. Hundreds
of thousands of citizens, most of them young, gin z
and millennial men and women, took to the streets. Police
responded with tear gas, water cannon, and eventually bullets. The
international community expressed its horror at the brutality of the Tautmda,
but that's all they did. Over the course of several months,
(02:09):
the military pushed protesters mostly out of the cities, and
a protest movement against the military coup turned into a
civil war. Now those same protesters, mostly kids who wanted
nothing more than a normal life, have become revolutionaries. With
home made guns, three D printed rockets, and stolen rifles,
they battled the tot MADA. Some of them fight in
(02:30):
the jungles, some of them fight in the cities, and
some of them fight on the internet. This is their story.
We're sitting in a large suburban home in Mysout, Thailand,
a small city on the border of Menmar. The boys
singing and playing music around us range in age from
seventeen to twenty two. Their existence in Thailand is a crime.
(02:53):
If they are caught here, they'll be forced to cross
the border into mi Anmar, whose government executed their friends
and sold the old organs for profit. But tonight they're
playing music. We're drinking beer. Later, James Stout and I
will play pool with them and get our asses just
catastrophically wrecked.
Speaker 4 (03:14):
We met Andy, aged twenty two and head of the
family for his Instagram page. That's not his real name,
but for obvious reasons, we can't identify him. We first
met when I send him a DM asking if we
could buy one of his photos for our first series
on Me and Ma. He was a bit skeptical, but
I tried my best to get him to see we
just wanted to give him money and promote his work.
(03:35):
Over the next six months or so, we weren't from
talking on the phone to messaging almost every day, to
Robert and I booking tickets to Thailand to sitting on
the top floor of their house. It used to be
his landlord's office, but now it's home to Andy and
his partner, Sarah. That's also not her real name, because
she's a citizen of a Western nation working in Thailand.
(03:56):
The boys we talk about are the brothers, his cousin
and friends. They live at a small building across the garden,
and in the daytime they sit under a gazebo and
play their guitars. The first night we met Andy and Sarah,
we sat behind a bar in an unpaved alleyway. We
drank beer out of sippy cups because selling beer is
still banned at the local COVID regulations, but apparently the
(04:17):
cops don't check sippy cups. We drank far too much,
in fact, and the next day I work up with
a headache and a blurry photo of me, Robert and
Andy engaged in a pose which was half hug and
half mutual support structure. We walked home and according to
my phone, at some point we took photos of a puppy,
and in a hopefully unrelated incident, at some point I
(04:37):
started bleeding. It was immediately obvious that Andy needed the
chance to blow off some steam over the last year.
In Change, he is chronicled every stage of the coup
in its aftermath. In early videos we see joyous protests,
moments of resistance, and splendor in the streets of cities
like Miawiti. Later we see violence, death, and guerrilla warfare.
(05:00):
And he didn't have what you would call an easy childhood,
thanks in part to me and Mau's long history of
revolutions being crushed by the army. People there, like people everywhere,
want to be free and determine their own futures. And
so each generation has its own uprising, and each generation
has its own massacre in very little progress to show
for it.
Speaker 5 (05:21):
I was born in two thousand, so when I was seven,
two thousand and seven, there was a revolution. It's called
Saffron revolution. It wasn't it wasn't like this, you know,
it wasn't like what happened now, But like, there were
a lot of people that were involved in it, a
lot of people that kill and a lot of people
left yarmar and came to the refugee camps in here,
(05:41):
and we were one of the families that came to
the refugee camps. And yeah, in mess out Thailand.
Speaker 6 (05:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:48):
Andy's mother is Buma, the dominant ethnic group in me
and Maar due to their decades long control of the
military and government. His father is Krin, the ethnic group
once used by the British government as soldiers. Since nineteen
forty nine, the Karin have fought a war in the
mountains against the top Mada. Their name is often anglicized
to be spelled just like the English name Karen, which,
(06:09):
given present Internet trends, makes explaining the conflict sometimes awkward.
Andy primarily identifies as and was raised Bamah. His family
left after the Saffron Revolution. They did not flee to
escape political repression, but because the economy had collapsed. This
put them in an awkward position in the camps, which
were filled mostly with Karin people who had fled state violence.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
We weren't refugees, right, We were more like, how do
you say, like economic refugees. You know, we go because
not because our village has been burned down and our
family has been killed, you know. So then if we
were to go back to Yangon, we still could find
a job, we still could fine, you know. But then
for these current people, like this place is the only
(06:55):
place that they could exist at that moment, right and
probably still now too. So yeah, so they say that,
but that education wasn't very good there. The life wasn't good,
you know, it wasn't It wasn't. It was very bad. Honestly,
it was very bad. It was a lot of violence,
a lot of hate, a lot of understandable, you know,
like these people have gone through so much shit and
(07:15):
so much trauma that and nothing. No one is coming
there too, but fix that. So they had a lot
of anger. They had a lot of problems. But my
mom said, yeah, we're going back because the education he
is very bad. And if you go back to Miami,
at least, you know, if you do like the thing
that people do, maybe you'll get somewhere. Yeah, in the future.
(07:36):
Here there's no future, so she said, So we went
back and I stayed in yourmar for like four years.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Andy had never been very political. His family was more
or less neutral, tending to side with the military more
often than not. Out of a sense of inertia. Me
and Mar attended to cartwheel between attempts at democracy and
military dictatorship. So when the world media celebrated their first
democratic elections in twenty five years in twenty fifteen, Andy
was not particularly excited.
Speaker 5 (08:04):
Yeah, So, I mean we did realize that there was
a change in the country, right because we grew up
in the military to take your ship. But then one
intensity takeover took over. There were some changes, like the
phones got cheaper, the internet got cheaper, and if you
look back then you can see big, big changes. But
(08:27):
the thing is it was never real democracy, and I
think a lot of people in the Western countries thought
that it was democracy when al Sensergi took over.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
Ansongsucci came to prominence during a nineteen eighty eight uprising
against the military, which ended in bloodshed in the streets
of Yangon, and she'd been a long time democratic activist.
As Andy noted, westerners celebrated her election as the first
democratic head of state for me and Maar. She even
won a Nobel Prize. But the agreement her party had
made with the military gave the generals significant permanent control
(09:01):
over the government.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
But I think most of the people in the country
knew it wasn't real democracy because you know, the military
always had twenty five percent twenty fight seats in the parliament,
right like they were always they were in charge of
electricity and all these all these big things, a weapons army,
like the military itself, they are in charge of all
these things, and they make it very clear.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
And even with a Nobel prize on Soongsuchi did not
fight to stop the top Mada from pursuing their decades
long wars against the ethnic armed organizations in the Hills,
nor did she act to stop their ethnic cleansing of
the Rohinga people. In fact, she and others in her
party didn't even call them Rohinga. They called them Bengali
and insisted they were illegally residing in Myanmar, despite mountains
(09:46):
of evidence documenting a group by that name living in
what is now the Rakian State. I think most Americans
and Westerners in general can empathize with the feeling of
electing someone who promises change and then getting very little
of what you'd expected.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
I think Alsensucci used to be this hope that that
was like the opposition against the military. But I think
when she got power, she couldn't do all the things
that she promised to do, or like you know, we
looked at her before, we looked at her as something,
you know, something hope for everyone, you know, for all
(10:23):
the ethnic groups and for everyone in the country. But
then when she became empower she mainly focused all these
changes for the Bama people. Well, you know, the mainland people,
Like the military was still fucking killing people and killing
ethnic groups. Did they do something, you know, like, so
(10:44):
then for the ethnic groups, what's the difference?
Speaker 3 (10:47):
And so while Andy was hopeful that his country might
take a better path, he was not exactly convinced that
things were going to get better. Conflict within his family
eventually pushed him to make the decision to leave.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
My dad was very abusive, right, he would be the
shit out of my mouth every day like that. It
was fine, Like it was fine when we were younger.
We couldn't do anything, you know, we just kind of
watched it, right, But the older we got, the more
we involved, the more we try to stop it. But
then we were fight with him too, you know, And
so at some point it became too much, and so
(11:18):
I left my home, I think in twenty sixteen, just
by myself, and I was like, I've been to Messad,
I will go back here, you know.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
So Andy lived across the border on his own for
more than five years. He'd fallen in love gotten a
home with his own and set himself up in the
sort of odd jobs you can do without papers or
legal residency. And that's where things were for him when
the top MA dog carried out their coup in early
twenty twenty one.
Speaker 5 (11:43):
Twenty twenty one February. First, I was a messout I
was here and yeah, in the morning, I woke up,
called me my girlfriend and as she said, the military
just did a coop in your country. You should call
your family.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
The military claimed voter fraud and used that is the
pretext to stay in power. It's a situation that should
be unsettlingly familiar to most of our audience. For a while,
Safe in Maysat, Andy watched it in horror as he
texted with friends and family across the border.
Speaker 5 (12:12):
They arrested Ansen Suji and all the big leaders right
at the top. So we were kind of like, okay,
is someone going to tell us what to do? And
especially for us, we didn't have any experiences. We didn't
know anything about any of this that I'm talking about
right now. I didn't have any knowledge of that. But yeah,
so after I think six day the most you cut
off the internet, like for like two days and I've
(12:35):
lost all contact with everyone inside, my family, my friends.
And that's the night I started playing it. Like I
started thinking, oh fuck, I should go back and like
and I saw the protest photos from Yangon. They looked amazing, right,
and I'm like, I'm a photographer. I should be there
and you know, document that.
Speaker 4 (13:07):
While Andy was staring at the protest photos from the
capital of mianmar Napodor, as well as Miawiti and the
largest city, Yangn, wondering he should take his camera and
document yet another rising for democracy in his home country,
a young woman named Amiror was in the thick of
those protests and Yangn when the coup started. A mirror
age seventeen, had just finished high school. She was looking
(13:31):
forward to university and more pressingly, looking forward to playing
futsal with her friends. She liked to spend her days crafting,
she says, making little things to gift or to keep,
Like every other day. When she woke up, she spent
ten minutes in medication before facing the world on the
first of February. Hansomsduki was her hero, she says. In
(13:52):
our interview. Her boyfriend translated for her. We'll get to
their story later. But when the coup began, they lived
a world apart. They joined the whole generation and feeling
in rage by Tatmador trying to rip the freedom their
parents would fought for from them, A mirror took her
rage into the street. Someone gave her a bullhorn.
Speaker 6 (14:11):
Because of her voice, and then she became the leader,
you know, with the the bullhorn.
Speaker 5 (14:17):
Yeah, what kind of stuff would you say to the
boat through the bullhorn?
Speaker 7 (14:21):
Hello, you don't want you She's saying, uh, this is
anfeil and then uh, this is uh that the arresting
(14:41):
that SUCHI is a anfel not fair?
Speaker 4 (14:45):
Okay, yeah, okay yeah.
Speaker 6 (14:49):
And then and then she believed that, Uh, she believed
in what San Succhi said, like everything is paused the
wall and we haven't do anything. We haven't studied yet,
and then but when we study and then we can
finish it, so everything is possible. So that's what she
(15:13):
believe in. So she went on the road and then
she brought us.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
Across the city from a mirror. On coup day, Miok's
girlfriend woke him up with the news that the government
they'd voted for had been arrested. We're calling him milk
here because that's his name. In the revolution, everyone has one.
Amr's his baby because she's so young yet so fierce. Mewk,
if you're wondering, means monkey. These revolutionaries who have risked
(15:40):
life and limb for each other, didn't know the legal
names to the people. They call their revolution family because
it's safer that way, and we don't either, meowk could
spend the night well, I'll let you hear Harry phrased it.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Actually, I would just like our tailing with my a
scare for you know.
Speaker 7 (15:57):
Our tailor.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
And we were you know, Nephlis and Chae generary netflist
and I think it's a Sunday. I think it's Sunday
Nephla and ch and we we slid together.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
If you didn't catch that, there were Netflix and chilling.
Speaker 7 (16:13):
You know.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
I was literally not wakere but any louder show. I
was so sleep but but at the full am there's
a po rings and I suddenly wake here there's phone
ring from my girlfriend, her anti call call Call, call Heart,
and she said there's a cool de feast. Oh and
she wake her and she told me there's a cool
(16:36):
of I didn't you know I don't believe it.
Speaker 5 (16:40):
I believe it.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
I didn't believe it, so other than I chat the
social media, oh sh or may I actually do this?
I'm so angry and I'm so angry, you know. I
was going down downstairs and I told to my family,
there's a cool of everyone's angry and I those times
the internet they cut off.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
The next revolutionary we're going to mean is a fellow
will call doctor Wonder because that's his revolution name. When
the coups started, he was just waking up after a
twenty four hour shift at the hospital in Yangon where
he worked. Doctors were some of the earliest and most
visible dissidents in the protests. Their rarity and therefore their
relative value to the regime made them a potent symbol
(17:23):
of the pro democracy movement. But as doctor Wonder made
clear many older medical professionals, we're not at all certain
that resistance was a right move here.
Speaker 8 (17:33):
At the morning, I saw the news that bad news,
really really bad news for us.
Speaker 9 (17:39):
It was how would I say that they bro you know, yeah,
they broke our future.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Doctors were some of the earliest most visible dissidents in
the pro democracy protests. Their rarity and relative value to
the regime made them a potent symbol of the Protomok movement,
But as doctor Wonder made clear, many older medical professionals
were not at all certain that resistance was a right
move on that money.
Speaker 9 (18:11):
We go back to our our society, our hospital.
Speaker 8 (18:16):
We are shen guys, you know, all professors or concernders
did not much interest about that because they told us,
you know, whoever rules our camfe is not our business,
it is one of our seniors, doctors from our society
(18:39):
for our department pool us like that.
Speaker 9 (18:42):
But we reply him, no, it should be the last time.
Speaker 4 (18:47):
If didn't catch that, he said it should be the
last time, the last time kids had to die in
the streets. They didn't want another generation to have to
go through the same thing. So they got together a proposal,
a sort of manifesto for peaceful, nonviolent resistance, and they
submitted it to their seniors.
Speaker 8 (19:05):
We negotiated with our ship you know, young resident, our society,
and we discussed about that, and we plan to start
with one of our prior movement.
Speaker 9 (19:19):
Before save a disagreement.
Speaker 8 (19:21):
We have got our Red Ripon movement, of course, because
we want to write peacefully on the media. Okay, we
started like that, and then uh, some of our seniors
from our society, they were from Mendally Hospital. Okay, they
(19:41):
accept our propose there, Yes, because our generation has already
passed that difficulties before, but not your generation shouldn't accept that.
Speaker 4 (19:54):
Three days before the queue, TK got off a plane
in San Francisco. He's from me in Ma, but he
lives in the Bay Area. Now, before you ask, he
says that the Burmese restaurant there is not as good
as stuff back home.
Speaker 10 (20:08):
It's only three days three days before, three days before
I went back to the to the United States, and
I wish I'm staying a youngle and doing the revolution
and a participate in a everywhere that I can, but
that I couldn't do from the from the long distance,
(20:29):
you know.
Speaker 6 (20:29):
So that's all I can.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
Do for now.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
TK had just been in me and Ma. He had
connections to many people on the ground there, his friends
with it, his family were it. When the government cut
off into thee access, he remained able to get good
international reporting on the situation in his home country. Slowly,
he found ways to communicate with his friends and a
growing core of the protesters, taking to the streets.
Speaker 10 (20:56):
I was a keyboard fighter.
Speaker 6 (20:59):
I have no idea about a politic I have no
idea about the military stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
This is a single most common sentiment we've heard across
all the revolutionaries we've met. None of them considered themselves
to be very political. Prior to the coup. They started
marching in the street because the military coup was obviously bad,
but they stayed there because the violence dished out by
the state was so horrific. Save at their house in Maso.
We talked to the boys and these brothers and cousins,
(21:28):
all of whom were living in Napo door when the
coup kicked off. It didn't take him long to try
and join them.
Speaker 5 (21:34):
Then I went in. I went to Nyawiti, which is
across the border in your marside, and I was there
for a week and it was it was something else
like I've never been to protests now, I've never been
involved in any of this thing, and I never thought
I would be, you know, like I don't know. I
always thought like I wasn't going to be a part
(21:54):
of it. But when I went there, the first day
I arrived, there were two hundred thousand people on the street, protest.
And then it's like and this big group of people
walk in streets after street and everyone coming out of
their house and we have this symbol like three fingers
from Hangergang. I think, yeah, yeah, so that's like our
(22:14):
symbol for democracy now or our movement now. And everyone
come out of their house doing that and you know,
like giving us water, food, everything. It was beautiful, like
it was something else. It was something else. And then
from that day I was like hook. I was like, Okay,
this is what I'm going to do.
Speaker 9 (22:32):
Now.
Speaker 5 (22:32):
I'm going to be a photographer and I'm gonna in this,
you know, and I'm gonna I'm going to take photo
of these people and their stories and I'm gonna share it,
and that's my part, that's my rule.
Speaker 4 (22:43):
Soon he found friends among the protesters. Within a few days,
he was feeling a feeling that so many people felt
in twenty twenty. It's a feeling you felt if you've
ever been in the thick of a crowd of people
filled with right tous anger and facing down overwhelmed police
or soldiers. It's a sensation. I can't really described you
you haven't experienced it, but I can say that there's
(23:05):
no time that I've ever felt more empowered than the
times I've been crushed, shouldered with strangers, toe to toe
with state violence and watch cops break and retreat. It's incredible.
It's addictive, and if I'm honest, it's probably why Robert
and I booked a flight to visit a stranger I've
been dming on the ground.
Speaker 5 (23:22):
I think after three days, I met this group of people,
young people like students trying to be lawyers and stuff,
and I figured out that they were the ones trying
to organize these big protests, like two hundred people, one
hundred thousand people. They were the ones that's making that happen.
So I started kind of following them, trying to get
close because I wanted to get stories from them. And
(23:46):
then they became they and they realized what I've been doing.
They've been watching like and so they were like very welcome,
and they took me to this hide out that they
go to and then we will have discussions and medians
about what we should do the next day. Da da
da da. But then kind of it's because it's a
small town, right, Slowly, I think police and military started
realizing that we are that group too.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Oh yeah, demo crazy word.
Speaker 6 (24:28):
Oh do.
Speaker 4 (24:32):
So by now you're probably wondering what that cover of dust?
And it's a song that boys learned when we first
took to the streets, but it tells the story of
a previous revelation, one that didn't succeed.
Speaker 3 (24:52):
Can you tell us what that song's about? Like, do
you know what the lyrics are and stuff?
Speaker 10 (24:56):
And yeah, we can try.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
I heard the word democracy in there.
Speaker 5 (25:00):
I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it's like all the lives that
we democracy.
Speaker 9 (25:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:08):
Do people use it for the Spring Revolution as well
as eighty eight?
Speaker 5 (25:11):
Yeah, because it is the same thing, Tell the world,
and that's the name of the song, tell the world.
Speaker 3 (25:20):
It is cool, Yeah, I tell the world.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
So basically the song is like, yeah, they sang it
in the back in the eighty eight and then it's
like we used it quite a lot when when we
were in the protest to Yeah. The lyars are We'll
keep fighting until the end of the world for the
sake of history and revolution in our blood and of
the fallen heroes who fought for the democracy. Oh, our
(25:49):
dearest heroes, this is the lene of like heroes, like
yeah and yeah, it goes on and then m hm
m hmm, yeah, basically saying like something like the history
went wrong along the way, but we have to fix it. Yeah,
(26:10):
like the country has shed its blood and how could
they commit such violence to its own people, you know. Yeah,
and yeah, like they say, like the blood on the
rods and the streets are not dried yet. And for
the sake of these people who die for the democracy,
(26:31):
for fighting for democracy, for the sake of them, we have.
Speaker 9 (26:35):
To keep fighting basically.
Speaker 5 (26:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:39):
Now in their exile, they keep singing it to remember
the first day of the revolution, when the fights were
in the street, not the jungle, before they lost so
many of their comrades.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
Yeah, and then there was a night protest in front
of the police station. Oh this is they're singing the song. Yeah,
I got very very heated.
Speaker 4 (27:09):
The protest, friends were just talking about occurred in reality,
but the song popped up all across the country.
Speaker 5 (27:15):
When you played it in Yangon, you will sing it, yeah,
they and ygo. It wasn't one guitar, it was a
whole band. Well, you have like protest sitting down and
then there's a group of people who were playing this
and repeatedly there are a bunch of songs that will
play and then.
Speaker 9 (27:36):
There's like words that we would say.
Speaker 5 (27:38):
And yeah, like yeah, I beam gown and you'll see
from the footage how it's.
Speaker 4 (27:48):
Yeah, how does it make you feel singing it?
Speaker 5 (27:51):
Now?
Speaker 6 (27:52):
It's scary, you know, it's like.
Speaker 11 (27:55):
The song, the song is very real. So like at
first we didn't want to play the song. It's too dark,
it's too it's too intense, right yeah, like yeah, but.
Speaker 5 (28:12):
It's not like the levers are there like you can
see it.
Speaker 10 (28:16):
You know.
Speaker 5 (28:16):
It's like because we've been through it too, so it's
very intense. And yeah, I think the first time I
heard it, like I heard the song, I remember that
we are fewing of Yeah, I still have it like
every time we're saying it now, like this is not
one of the songs that we usually sing like, it's
not a fun song.
Speaker 12 (28:37):
Yeah, bebi album, Oh God, Bedia.
Speaker 2 (29:07):
De more Crazy.
Speaker 4 (29:11):
On the next episode, which you'll be able to download tomorrow,
we'll talk about how the Hunter began to clamp down
on the protests. Now, the protesters decided this struggle was
too important to abandon and decided to fight back. Hi everyone,
(29:32):
it's James here. I just wanted to note that lots
of the words in this script are Burmese or Karen
or Thai, and we've made every effort to make sure
that we pronounce them correctly. But we're sure we've obviously
made some mistakes along the way. That's not out of
a lack of respect or out of a lack of
re recording on my part, but we did want to
note that where we've made a mistake, we're very sorry
(29:53):
for doing so.
Speaker 3 (29:54):
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 10 (29:57):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coozonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 10 (30:06):
You can find sources for It could Happen Here, updated
monthly at Coolzonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.
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