Sitting at a pool bar in Masack, listening to covers of Credence songs by the house band and losing at pool against Andy and the boys. It's hard to think of them hold up behind a barricade clutching molotovs. But not so long ago, the choices the boys faced were pretty stark. Every day, every time they went out from their little apartment, they knew they might not come back.
But I think the most fucked up thing that we had to plan was what if someone get shot one of us and the other person have to go carry.
Who do you go?
Who gets hit?
You know?
And we had to kind of like what we did just now, but like, okay, if I get hit, you know, two of you, this, this, and this person will come out and you know, do this to me because it's I don't know. I think we were planning because it's just good to have that, you know, because if someone gets shot and if all of five of us go ran in there, there's more targets, you know what I mean.
So then like if someone would wait, lass weight get shots, then you know this person go, if someone heavier get shot, this two person go. Something like that.
When Andy says like we did earlier. He's talking about a small stop the bleed type course that we had given the boys. Most journalists operating in war zones will take at minimum a week long Hostile Environment and First Aid training or he FAT course. Many of us will take extra courses. James and I both refreshed our Wilderness first Responder certificates once we had this trip planned. Andy and his brothers didn't have access to any of this.
They learned what they could off the internet and tried to protect themselves as best as they were able with gear they purchased from an airsoft store. The afternoon we spent practicing skills. Wasn't nearly enough, but until they can travel safely more than a few miles from the border, it was better than nothing. Their little apartment had one way in and one way out. If the cops came, there was no escape. They had a plan for that too.
Yeah, So our plan was literally just to burn that fucking door down so then it would be difficult for them to come in. And then you know, we'll do I don't know, whatever we can with the weapon we have, but we weren't going to make it out, you know, And how to do plan all that with these kids, like it's like fucked up. There were times that like they wake up a nice greaming like they you know they I think now it's better, Right, it's been a year and a half and we are like we're better
at coping with it. But at that time it was very, very scary.
So that they'd be prepared to burn their door and the rest of their apartment down around themselves. The boys kept a stockpile of molotovs mixed and ready by the front door at all times. They lived in a state of permanent readiness to commit revolutionary suicide for weeks on end. Eventually they decided they had to flee. We should probably talk history here for just a little bit. Me and mar is a now for a very old land. Over the centuries, it's been ruled by a series of empires
and dynasties. The Mongols took over for a while in the twelve hundreds and thirteen hundreds, and when they left Lower Burma had a warring states period of its own. The modern nation of Burma didn't start to come together until the sixteen hundreds and seventeen hundreds, and things didn't really congeal into a state until the reign of the last two Burmese kings, who industrialized the country and reformed its military enough to win a series of wars against
neighboring groups like the Irakan. This is what brought them into conflict with the British Raj right at the turn of the nineteenth century. Their wars were sending refugees into India, and the Burmese king's designs on Thailand and British controlled Bangladesh led to a policy wherein the Bridge supported insurgent
fighters who struck out at Burmese positions. A series of near clashes between British and Burmese forces followed, and in January of eighteen twenty four, the Burmese king Bagidah gave his generals the order to attack a pair of brutal jungle wars. Wars followed, and despite winning several victories early on, Burmese troops were crushed comprehensively whenever they engaged British forces
in conventional battles. In January of eighteen eighty six, British forces entered the capital, Mandalay and brought an end to Burmese independence for almost sixty years. These are the broad strokes of the story, as you'll find them summed up in almost any history book. As with most colonial history, the reality is somewhat messier than that. The Burmese Empire the British destroyed was dominated heavily by the Bumah people, who gave the colony its name, but there were other
peoples in the territory. They claimed the Shin, the kirn Urakan, the Rohinga, and dozens. More Like most empires dominated by a single ethnicity, they were brutal. Father San Germano, who lived in pre Raj Burma, wrote of the king, he is considered by himself and others absolute lord of the lives, properties,
and personal services of his subjects. He exalts and oppresses, confers, takes away honor and rank, and without any process of law, can put to death not only criminals guilty of capital offenses, but any individual who happens to incur his displeasure. It is here a perilous thing for a person to become distinguished for wealth and possessions, for the day may easily come when he will be charged with some supposed crime and so put to death in order that his property
may be confiscated. Every subject is the Emperor's born slave, and when he calls anyone his slave, he thinks thereby to do him honor. Hence, also he considers himself entitled to employ his subjects in any work of service without salary or pay, and if he makes them any recompense, it is done not from a sense of justice, but as an act of bounty. And while Bagidah was a fairly modern king, brutality like this went back hundreds of
years in the region. Most of the kings and princes and other people who ruled the land we now call me Anmar did so with brutal force and an awful lot of conscription. This is broadly true of much of Southeast Asia. Western histories of this region tend to flatten life into kingdoms and empires and assume life in the region coincided politically with the lines drawn on maps. This
was never the case. Much of mainland Southeast Asia, from the central highlands of Vietnam through Myanmar, northeast India, and several southern Chinese provinces, is filled with terrifying mountains and brutal hills covered with the densest jungle imaginable standing in Maysot and staring across the border into Myanmar, all you see is a vast expanse of jagged, deep green peaks
rolling endlessly on. James and I are both experienced backpackers, and neither of us would have wanted to take on that terrain without quality gear and weeks of endurance training. In an era of four plains, helicopters, or satellite communications,
this area was practically ungovernable. People were aware of this at the time, and for roughly the last two thousand years, this chunk of highland Southeast Asia, known to political scientists as Zomia, has been a refuge for people pushed out and put down by the great state powers of the air area. Empires and kings would stick to the coasts
and the flat plains, perfect for cultivating rice. When they taxed their subjects too hard or conscripted too many of them into the military, some would flee to the hills to take their freedom. As James C. Scott, a Yale polysci professor, writes, the frontier operated as a rough and ready homeostatic device. The more estate pressed its subjects, the fewer subjects it had. The Frontier under rote freedom. He calls the people who chose to inhabit this stateless zone
barbarians by choice. While many of these ethnic groups were mocked for their lack of so called civilized values like widespread literacy, Scott argues that this lack was actually a conscious rejection. Their refusal to educate themselves in a manner acceptable to the powers of the day was a rebellion
against the legitimacy of those powers and their standards. Human history in our modern globe is filled with places like this, muddied areas at the borders of great powers, where the detritus of war, refugees and beaten soldiers can congregate without fear of the state. The term for these places is shatter zones. Rojava, the radical feminist enclave in northeast Syria, would be one example of a shatter zone and the
unique political potential such places have. Myanmar is by land mass, mostly shatter zones, and since nineteen forty nine, different ethnic armed organizations have existed in a more or less constant conflict with the state. This includes the Karin people, whose territory borders Thailand. When the young millennial and Zoomer protesters in the cities realized they were going to have to flee their homes to continue the fight. Korin territory was
a natural place to retreat to. People had been making versions of the same decision for two thousand years. The current situation between the Koran and Mianmar's military junta actually owes a lot to the British Empire. When they took over in Myanmar, they had to figure out how to govern it, and they went with the tactic that had served them well all across India and Africaica. They picked a minority ethnic group to act as their colonial shock troops.
In Uganda, their preferred warrior race were the Kokwa people, from whom future dictator Idiamine descended. For their colonial troops in India, the Brits used Sikhs and Gurkhas, and in colonial Burma they used the Karin. Ever since the British left, the Karin have wanted as little as possible to do with the central government in Napiadah. Instead, they fought to maintain Kadulay, a land without darkness, as they were promised
in Burma's nineteen forty eight constitution. Today, they might not be recognized by the UN or the US, but the Korin have their own schools, hospitals, and army. They have been at war since nineteen forty nine. Andy, whose father is Karin, only really found out about the struggle for Quadulay, a home for the Karin language peoples, when he became a refugee. He moved into the camps along the border after the Saffron Revolution. He was only eight years old.
The border is dotted with camps, some of them more like towns, but they're always timber. And while the Thai government tolerates the Karin presence, people there are seen as temporarily displaced. They can't build solid homes and don't have the identity documents they need to travel even internally in Thailand.
Despite not growing up there. Andy's identity cards, says Karin, It doesn't take a PhD in history to know that ethnic identity cards issued by imperial and formerly postcolonial governments are bad news. But if you need more information about that, maybe google ID cards Comma, Rwanda.
Like most people in most places, the young people from Miamma we talked to had thought relatively little about the injustices on the edge of their world. They tend to think of the Koran as terrorist up in the hills rather than freedom fighters. But once a topmodor started unloading machine guns into crowds, people were confronted with the reality of a situation that they'd been able to ignore before.
Suddenly they saw that the Koran and other marginalized ethnic groups were victims of the same gun violence that they now faced. But now that the scales had fallen from their eyes, they were going to do something about it.
The main majority of groups people there are current people, which is another ethnic groups from Memoir, and they they had a different view, right because obviously the military. While we were like because we were born in the city, we were more like you know, like we didn't suffer that much, even though it wasn't that great, you know.
But then for them, the military come to their states, the military come to their villages, they burned the villages, they kill the people, they read the people, you know, they do all these atrocities. So then they have a very different view on the Memar military and how the country is you know, working doing. And so that's when I started learning, oh shit, like there is some other stuff going on in the country, but you know, like you kind of just like you kind of just live
with your life. You know, your kid, You're trying to get by day to day, so you didn't really think about it. And for me that going on, that went on for a long time until the military could happen in Ya.
Mic the present revolution is not the only flare up of inter ethnic violence in the country. In twenty seventeen, the Tatmodor under ming An Klan began a conservative campaign of genocidal ethnic cleansing against the Rhinia people, a largely Muslim ethnic group who live in the country's were a kind state. The Tatmodor, claiming the Rhinia were variously terrorists or illegal immigrants native to modern day Bangladesh and hence not native to mih and Mar, spent months raping, killing,
and burning the villages of the Rhininggia people. While the world, perhaps distracted by a neoliberal consensus which demonizes both migrants and Muslims, did fuck all to stop them. In Myanmar, nobody spoke about the genocide, at least not in those terms. Most people didn't even speak about the Rhindia in those terms. Because Tatmodor propaganda was so effect that citizens in Yangon really believed that their Hingia were migrants and terrorists coming
from Bangladesh. Government newspapers like The New Light of Myanmar published daily stories linking them to groups like ISIS or Arkaeda, who, despite their best efforts, remained totally irrelevant in this story. Bots popped up on Facebook, which is basically synonymous with the Internet for many people living in Myanmar, and fed a steady diet of anti Rehingia hate speech into political discourse,
gradually shifting the Overton window towards genocide. And without better information, most people believe them, and these Western friends, probably weirdos like me who had crept into his DMS at some point, started to ask him questions.
So the Rundan thing happened in two thousand and seventeen. I was seventeen, and you know, we started hearing it. I started getting phone calls from my friend in the western countries, like Westerners. They would be like, Hey, what's happening in your country? Why are you killing like all the Muslims? And I'm like, mess out Tiler, and I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. I've never heard anything like that, right, and so yeah, and then like
I try to learn a little bit more. But everyone had so intense opinions about it that at some point I'm like, ah, fuck, I don't know anymore, you know, because the military was in control at that time, still kind of so they control the news, they control the media, they control it's the same thing, you know, like they control who were saying what, and so we never hear about it that much. If you only, if only you care so much and you're following everyone that is saying
you know the truth, then you know. But otherwise you didn't know. It was all very blurry, very So that's another time when I'm like, oh fuck, like I don't know what to do. I'm just gonna you know, and then one on with my life. And yeah, I never I never realized how much, like how much they had to suffer, and they are still suffering, right.
No number of international protests stop the ethnic cleanding of the Rainie. As they huddled hidden in their apartment, Andy and his brothers began to embrace the need deadly violence against their oppressors.
We never had any plans, actually, we were just like no, I think I remember, it's like that was not really planned. It was like they killed our people who were fucking hurt them back.
You know.
It wasn't to get their guns or shoot them back, like we didn't even know how to use any of that, you know, And honestly, we didn't even want to kill them. We just want to be like, you can't do these things and not feel, not feel any anything, you know, not not feel any consequences of that. Like we're not
fucking We're not animals. You know. You can't just come in and killed one of our friends and think that we're not going to do anything back, you know, Like and if we let that happen, then they're never going to stop, you know. You they were trying to scare us, and we were trying to scare them back, but they actually kill people. We didn't. We never wanted to kill anyone.
You know.
Andy's situation felt hopeless at this stage. Trapped at the capitol and watching his friends disappear one by one. It seemed like he was running out of options. Thousands of young people and me and mar felt the same, and some of them decided to take an option they hadn't even known existed. A few weeks earlier, while we were in Massat we conducted a phone interview with a former
rebel fighter named Alex. Like everyone else we talked to, he woke up on the first to February to find out that his phone didn't work and the internet was out.
Yeah, I thought like it was just you know, like something wrong with my phone. And then like I started talking to my friends, and all my friends are having the same problem. So we looked down and everybody is like watching down to the market because we live close to the market, and like they were like you know, like doing like like buy and lots of rise and like food too. I stole because no one know what's going to happen.
Like everyone else, he wasn't that into politics, but he was absolutely not into having the military fuck with every aspect of his life. So he got into the streets first.
Like we are not like that into the politics and stuff, so we didn't know. But the you know, like they can even like shut down the Internet is kind of like controlling our life, right, so like if they can even do that, like you know, like we can only imagine like what other things they can do and which they did like killing the Inno civilians and stuff. So yeah, at first we're just like, oh, yeah, we need to do something about this and then join the protests.
He and his friends later found a shop to buy gas masks, tasers, and goggles, but even with all the gear, they were powerless against soldiers with guns and tear gas. He said that the next few weeks were hard. Protests were less and less safe, but nobody dared to talk about their plans to take the fight to the military. Everyone was worried about informants and snitches.
We didn't really like actually talk about those stuff. Like we're only like discussing about you know, like a protests and also like how to get attention from the like embassies and stuff. But for like fight fighting back and you know, like going on the wars or like I think, like almost everyone they just decide on their own unless they have super like trust deference.
By April, he says he'd seen people die in the streets. He decided the protesting wasn't working and he needed to pick up a gun. The only problem was he didn't have one, nor did his friends. He knew some people who had guns and hated the top of the door, but he'd been raised his whole life to think of them as terrorists.
Before this web you know, like brainwashed by the military like pretty much our whole life. So you know, we always think, oh, ethnic groups are like like you know, they were okay, like whoever they see or and he didn't like it. Just terrorsts, terrorists, right, that's what like
the military like make us believe our whole life. And I was kind of scared of like joining them because yeah, I didn't know like you know, how to live there or like if they're gonna came in just because like I don't speak Karen.
So yeah, it was bizarrely his boss who hooked him up with the rebels in the hills, but he couldn't tell anyone he was going in case they got captured or turned out to be a snitch. Instead, he packed his bag with some of his old clothes, didn't even say goodbye to his family, and took a bus. He got off that bus waited intil a man in the car picked him up. By that night, he was in the jungle.
Doing the first night there, like you know, we have to go guard like one or the leader from the jungle, like you know, like trainers by you like walking in the dark in the forest. So we had to walk to like somewhere we don't even know, and we have to sleep in the like deep jungle.
He'd read about the PDF on Facebook, but suddenly he found himself among them. Technically they were distinct unit fighting for return to democracy, but in practice there and equipped by the Karrent National Liberation Army who have been fighting for federal democracy for decades. Pretty soon his opinion of the Karent had changed.
But like during my time, I did some observation about them. Yeah, it was like obviously, like the government, it's not the current people fighting the cup are the military. The military has been like you know, like invading the Karrent villagers like karen Land. And yeah, they did like banning down the like villagers, like raving the Woomors, you know, like killing the people for like many years. So they cannot do anything but to fight back, you know, they have to fight back to prota their.
Land, just like Zo, the now deceased rebel soldier who interviewed for our last series. Alex receive rudimentary training. He never fired a gun before, and supplies are very limited, but he's still got a kick out of sending a few rounds down range, like not even in.
My dream, like I never do, like I will be like houlting it again, or I shouldn't.
Should it so.
Pretty good?
Yeah?
Do you were what kind of gun was it? Was it a point two too or was it?
Yes, the first one was point to two?
Was it hand homemade?
Handmade?
Or was it you know.
Uh no, it's not a hard made but it's kind of pretty old.
Even in the jungle, they were worried about moles. It took a while to make friends, he says, but eventually he fell in with a cop who had defected, a photographer, and a construction worker. Their plan, he says, was to train up in the jungle and then go home and find the cities.
Like our idea was, you know, like we one day and train for a few months and then go back to the city. And like we thought, like it's gonna be like a huge wars in the cities like in Yango or Menoy and also like everywhere in Yama. But yeah, it didn't turns sound like that.
But instead he found himself pulling sentry duty in the jungle for city Kit. It was scary alone out there in the night with a gun, surrounded by potential threats.
I felt like, you know, like okay, like it's gonna happen tonight, Like they're gonna come to our base tonight. A week I'm gonna have to shoot that. I have to product my people, funny, but it didn't happen.
Yeah, I've spent eight months in the field pulling sentry duty and learning the skills of a soldier, but without arms and ammunition, there wasn't much he could do, and his whole time training, he says, he only fired five shots.
I felt kind of useless because we don't have like enough guns, you know. Like so by the time, like there was like steroid happening in uh Laky, I thought like, oh, we're gonna have to like go and you know, like fight them now. But instay, like we have to pack our staff and move to a deeper jungle. So we were like kind of like reputees with uniforms. But yeah, you know, if I just keep staying there, like we if we are just going to keep running away like this,
Like I don't want to stay there. I want to do something about the needs, like the main needs in our canvas, the webbons against So I want to like come here and like work for that.
The transition was hard. For eight months, you haven't seen a light bulb or a flashing toilet. Now he crossed the river, and everything seemed normal, every kind.
Of weird, like you know from the jungle a metal It's just a small river across. And then like the life here is totally different, Like peoples are living their normal life and not having to like worry for like any things, or like there's like the whole time I was in younger, you know, like we have to worry about our country, and like we don't want to live a normal life. And they that made you like the
military's gold so like. But then like here everyone is living in normal and it just only a way across.
Now that he's across the river, we won't say where. He's still part of the revolution. He's raising money and doing interviews like this, trying to organize medical supplies, and hoping that one day he can return to his country, not as a refugee with a uniform, but perhaps as a soldier liberating his people, or better yet, as a citizen in a free democracy.
York wasn't ready to be a refugee quite yet. He quickly found a role for himself in the militant side of what had become a full fledged civil war. Before the coup, he'd been studying engineering at university, and he liked to understand how things worked. Although Alex and his comrades had a critical shortage of weapons, Yaq didn't only
make guns at first. He made bombs too, using knowledge that he'd gained after traveling into the jungle, getting training from Korean experts, and explosives and as he told us, they were very effective. Do you think the explosives took out any soldiers?
Of course, Sam explosives is out for the bathing sat explosive for their base. Some are the trouble so you know they they camp and pit the ball and trying to cut off the ball and just explode. So they die. So my cut cut off the wire bone wires. Okay, yes, but they died anyway. So it's like, oh, my best memory is that we are using and the very first et M E T and in in in Tanangel. Now
this revolutionary thing is the wholdings that arrested hold. It's very sad uh when they made made the idim bawl uh we we had that the ambas ambulas Abu less white and less Land un blessed Land. It's like fight Fi ambula track is coming here. Oh wow, okay this is I think this is my best movie.
Yes, wow, okay wow. So like the bomb goes off and they have to send in five ambulance yes, yes, yes, was it soldiers or police soldiers?
Soldiers?
Yes, the soldier who checked the robe.
Yeah, it was just bombs that the young rebels learned about. They also shattered many of their misconceptions about the roles of men and women.
M m HM.
As women like a mirror stepped up to the front lines and fought alongside their male comrades, it became hard to ignore the sexism which underpinned much of traditional Burmese culture. The music you just heard from a Yangon punk band called Rebel Riot. They gave us permission to use it here. They have some great songs about the Spring Revolution, and this one focuses on the role of women. In a video. You see young women in the streets and then you
see them in the jungles carrying m sixteens. Me and Maa might previously have had a woman leader, but gender equality had been far from universal. And he told us the story about this and we recorded it. But it was our last night in the country and we were on our way to another spectacular hangover, one that would see me vomiting with such ferocity on a flight that an elderly tie lady took pity on me and gave me her shopping bag once I filled up my sick bag.
In the second month at a revolution, Andy said, when they were in Yangon, the protesters would build giant barricades to keep the police back. We've seen videos of these. They're pretty impressive, huge amounts of palettes, boxes and burning tires. We got some other audio of him describing them.
No, we could never get close to the military. It was never it was never attack. It was always defense. So later on, when we started seeing how military crack down these protesters, we started building these gates and like sand bags in our every base in the in the Janga and Melody, whatever across the country. We started building these barriers so that the military trucks kind of just come in. And it's actually crazy because sometimes to build these things, you have to take over the road first,
so like like a main road or a highway. So then what we do is all these little groups will gather so one street, two street, three street, you know, and then we would go to that street, or we would walk down the street saying we're going to try to take over the street. Please come join. People will come down, people come down from the street, from the buildings, and then we go to the next street. We say the same thing, and then people would join.
Nothing they did could stand up to a tank, though, just as that shopping bag couldn't stand up to James's vomit. The military started using human shields to get through the barricades and the groups of people throwing molotovs.
Usually we would defend our places, right, We would use molotov slingshots, and we would resist like we were attacked, Like we will be in the behind the gate, but we will kind of make them cannot come too forward, you know. But when the military have someone that they're gunpointing, just an almost civilian and making him move, we can't do anything, man like, we can't go through a molotov like, you know. So that's when the military clean out all of that. In Yangon, I think there was a time
when it was packed. It was every road had it, every street had it, and everyone was guarding that right. But then when the military started and they said it in the statements, they were saying, if that's neither your house, your.
Responsible, then they came up with a better idea. In Burmese culture, men fear passing under women's clothing. If it's hanging on a washing line, they'll go around rather than under it. It is, as Andy told us, bullshit. So they decided to turn that bullshit back on the troops and they grabbed as many women's lon chees, a traditional garment worn around the waist like a sarong, as they could and hung them up above their barricade. It worked, he said, and just like that, a generation of Burmese
kids realized that sexism hurts everyone who perpetuates it. Miak told us an interesting story about this. He said, the first time he met his fiancee, he thought that she was pretty sharp for a girl that he says now was his bad me and mar he says, has some gender hang ups, but he soon realized that she was
the bravest person he knew. They went to protest together, and when something needed moving from one town to another, they took advantage of those gender hang ups and her bravery and she risked her life carrying weapons in her bags on inner city buses. We'll let him tell you how they met.
It's like we we met on the meeting, like I, you know, we started making. Maybe it is in the very first week, first week of match making, very very very very respective memories. The name of the meeting is prayce tell me, okay, pray staw me. The name of the meeting is brainstorm me. I those time, she she she is very you know, respire day. She said the very thoughtful things.
You know.
Oh she is, you know, so so thoughtful. I don't even think, you know, in the memoir culture is there is a channe, you know, so why is it always good like people? It's Channa, you know, something like this. So I thought, oh she's really good, or that she is a kid. That's my bad, some Joanna, I do die. But later I'm met with her on on the product, so I saw, oh she is so beautiful. I thought she's just study twenty years a day. But that we know lady. So we keep doing together the things and
she she is my backyard. I was ground like this and whatever I have I have endangers I all the contact her.
We asked him if you worried she get arrested while she was making trips into the mountains with guns and bombs, but he said no.
Was it hard to leave her to go to the jungle because she could get arrested, you could get no.
No, she is very clever, so I never worry about her. I just worry about mindset we go. She is more you know, secret, and she is more clever than me, so she only teaches me how to be clever.
Much like me. Amiria was falling in love as well. Her relationship was a bit different though.
At first we were in the group chat.
Yeah, but then did you make the private Yeah? Yeah, he started the private chat.
I think I did.
Because at that time I feel like, oh, she is so young at time, she's not even eighteen, she's seventeen years old, and she's leading the one of the forecasts team. So I'm like, wow, this girl is like amazing, right, Yeah, So that that's how I mad her, and then that's how I you know, try to hit her.
Now. Admittedly, TK, a security guy is translating here. He's also her boyfriend and for now he's here with her to make sure she's okay. When we met them both. It was just weeks after he'd arrived in Thailand and the two had met in person for the very first time. It's a kind of story you can't help a fine touching two people in opposite sides of the world, united by a fight for justice and the bonds of revolutionary care.
At least, it's a nice countweait to all the stories of death and violence, which will have more of you tomorrow on part four of this series.
It Could Happen Here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at Coolzonmedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.