Episode #209: You Say You Want A Revolution
Susan Zaw didn't immediately become an activist.
Her beloved father and grandfather were both military men, and truth be told, she had never really been a real fan of the National League for Democracy (NLD). On February 7, shortly after the coup, she joined friends who were going out to protest the military coup, but it wasn’t so much political activism as much as “just for fun, and to gather new experiences.” But events soon turned tragic, and things were no longer the same for her.
Susan’s neighbor, a taxi driver, was respected by everyone in the neighborhood. Although he did not take part in the protests himself, he provided free transportation to people taking to the streets. On February 28, while he was dropping some activists off, a soldier’s stray bullet struck him in the neck. He was immediately rushed to the hospital with what seemed to be a mortal wound, but miraculously, surgery saved his life. However, soldiers stormed into the hospital demanding that the patient be transferred to a military hospital. Susan explains that since the coup, it is common practice for the military to apprehend those who have been injured by soldiers, and then fraudulently charge them with assault. In this way, the military can maintain its fiction of maintaining law and order, and claim that their attack was justifiable in self-defense. So victims suffer doubly, having been injured by the military and then basically arrested because of it. Once soldiers took Susan’s neighbor from the hospital, he died shortly after, the cause of death never being revealed.
Then on March 27, Armed Forces Day, Susan found herself in a large protest. At this point the movement was still largely non-violent, just thousands of young people peacefully taking to the streets to make their voices heard. Nonetheless, on that day, the military responded with force, killing 30 people. Some of Susan’s friends were arrested, and she, herself, barely escaped to safety. The military claimed that the soldiers had acted in self-defense against a violent mob. It was a blatant lie, and Susan was disgusted.
The trauma of that experience left a deep mark on Susan, and although she still obviously loves her father and grandfather, she realizes she really doesn’t know what they might have done during their time in the military. These experiences led her to throw her full support behind the democracy movement, and she soon became active in raising funds for CDM and PDF groups. Her family initially had reservations, but Susan was determined. “Actually, I don't even know why I'm not scared of even those who are killing and torturing,” she says. “I don't know that. I just knew I had to do it!” But her family relented, and her father even gave her a quick tutorial on identifying the kind of ammunition the military could be using based on the sounds it makes.
Eventually, Susan was invited to join a group attempting to reach out to soldiers, in the hope of finding some common ground and encouraging them to adhere to their basic obligation not to harm civilians, and also reminding them of their empathy. This led to an invitation for her to teach English to defectors, and reach out to their wives as well.
“[Those defectors] are all sick of killing people,” Susan relates. “And their wives don't want their husbands to be killers. They have no regret of joining CDM because we care about them so much. And there are other groups that support their phone bills, their food, and their children. So they don't need to worry about that.”
Those connections have been so successful that Susan’s group has been tasked with working with the defectors’ wives to make contact with the spouses of those who are still deployed, and convincing them to be on the right side of history.
“We plan to attract the wives and the children by giving them classes like knitting and crocheting, or teaching them languages like Spanish or Chinese. So even though they would no longer be in the military, they would have some work and they earn money.”
Providing these kinds of opportunities is no small thing for soldiers and their wives, who operate within a rigid hierarchy that is less a meritocracy than it is "friends the right places”. Creating a support network encourages those soldiers and their families who are so inclined to take the dangerous decision to defect from the military and join the resistance.”
“We are trying to try to remind them of their sympathy and empathy. Remember, they are also humans like us! They should know that they should take my mercy on the civilians. Their duty is to protect us not to kill us.”