Dime, no.
Demo crazy, I wordam my josh Oa.
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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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. 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.
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.
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. 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
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 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. 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.
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, and we were one of the families that came to the refugee camps. And yeah, in mess out Thailand.
Yeah.
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, 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.
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 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 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. Here there's no future, so she said, So we went back and I stayed in yourmar for like four years.
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.
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 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.
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 over the government.
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.
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 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.
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 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 then for the ethnic groups, what's the difference?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 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 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.
Because of her voice, and then she became the leader, you know, with the the bullhorn.
Yeah, what kind of stuff would you say to the boat through the bullhorn?
Hello, you don't want you She's saying, uh, this is anfeil and then uh, this is uh that the arresting that SUCHI is a anfel not fair?
Okay, yeah, okay yeah.
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 believe in. So she went on the road and then she brought us.
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 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.
Actually, I would just like our tailing with my a scare for you know.
Our tailor.
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.
If you didn't catch that, there were Netflix and chilling.
You know.
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 of I didn't you know I don't believe it.
I believe it.
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.
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
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.
At the morning, I saw the news that bad news, really really bad news for us.
It was how would I say that they bro you know, yeah, they broke our future.
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.
We go back to our our society, our hospital.
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 for our department pool us like that.
But we reply him, no, it should be the last time.
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.
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.
Before save a disagreement.
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 accept our propose there, Yes, because our generation has already passed that difficulties before, but not your generation shouldn't accept that.
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.
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, you know.
So that's all I can.
Do for now.
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.
I was a keyboard fighter.
I have no idea about a politic I have no idea about the military stuff.
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, all of whom were living in Napo door when the
coup kicked off. It didn't take him long to try and join them.
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 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 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.
Now.
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.
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 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.
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 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.
Oh yeah, demo crazy word.
Oh do.
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.
Can you tell us what that song's about? Like, do you know what the lyrics are and stuff?
And yeah, we can try.
I heard the word democracy in there.
I'm pretty sure. Yeah, it's like all the lives that we democracy.
Yeah.
Do people use it for the Spring Revolution as well as eighty eight?
Yeah, because it is the same thing, Tell the world, and that's the name of the song, tell the world.
It is cool, Yeah, I tell the world.
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 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, 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, for fighting for democracy, for the sake of them, we have.
To keep fighting basically.
Yeah.
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.
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.
The protest, friends were just talking about occurred in reality, but the song popped up all across the country.
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.
There's like words that we would say.
And yeah, like yeah, I beam gown and you'll see from the footage how it's.
Yeah, how does it make you feel singing it?
Now?
It's scary, you know, it's like.
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.
It's not like the levers are there like you can see it.
You know.
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.
Yeah, bebi album, Oh God, Bedia.
De more Crazy.
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, 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 for doing so.
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
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