The Train Wreck Ahead
Coming Soon…
“There were events going on in the world that I really cared about,” says investigative journalist Emanuel Stoakes. He enters the discussion, speaking as a reporter who has spent more than a decade trying to understand and expose the political, humanitarian, and moral fault lines that shape Myanmar’s modern crises. In this interview, he reflects on his path into journalism and the years he devoted to covering conflicts across Asia, as well as the uncomfortable truths he uncovered about the Burmese military, the failures of the international system, and the narratives that drove the Rohingya crisis and allowed it to spread almost unchecked.
He explains that he begins his career almost by accident. Stoakes abandoed what he describes as a superficial pursuit of authenticity in drama when he decided that global crises require a different kind of attention. He became interested in places where neglected minorities suffer in silence, which led him first to learning about events in Palestine, Sri Lanka, and Western Sahara. But his first, real scoop happened when he was able to verify a leaked document from a senior Sri Lankan military officer, who admitted to atrocities against the Tamils in 2008-9, the final phase of that country’s sectarian violence. Stoakes realized that he was particularly drawn to fact-driven investigative work.
In 2012, he began investigating Myanmar’s unfolding conflicts, starting with the renewed Kachin war. It quickly became clear to him that the military remained the central engine of violence—its default response to dissent was overwhelming force. When he traveled to Rakhine State, he saw early signs of a political and social storm taking shape beneath the optimism of Myanmar’s democratic transition. That optimism, he realized, had masked profound structural dangers. His first visit to the Rohingya camps in 2013 left him shaken. More than 100,000 people were confined to overcrowded settlements, with almost no freedom of movement and minimal access to healthcare or basic services. The human cost of the conflict—especially for children—was impossible to ignore, made worse by a system designed to marginalize and control this Muslim minority.
He recalled seeing a baby lying in a stifling tent, suffering from severe burns that should have been treatable but went unattended because no Burmese hospital would admit Rohingya patients. He met a boy permanently disabled after a bicycle accident—an injury that could have been addressed early, but instead left him forced to drag himself across the ground with his hands after hospitals refused care. He saw children showing signs of polio, a disease nearly eliminated everywhere else in the world. Scenes like these made clear that this was not simply the by-product of communal tension—it was the predictable result of policies and structures built to isolate, restrict, and ultimately break a vulnerable population.
While the physical conditions of the camps unsettled him, it was the toxic political atmosphere outside the camps that drove home to Stoakes just how deeply anti-Rohingya sentiment had taken root in Burmese society. Like during short visits outside the camps, he would hear slurs hurled at foreigners who appeared sympathetic to the Rohingya. He says that many in Myanmar, particularly among the Bamar majority, have inherited narratives that frame the Rohingya as intruders, a belief strengthened by decades of propaganda, noting that even some Muslims in Mandalay expressed negative views toward the Rohingya, a sign of how thoroughly the logic of exclusion pervaded everyday thinking.
While working in Rakhine, he met a Rakhine intermediary who helped him pass military checkpoints, sometimes by bribing soldiers, to enter restricted areas. He remembers seeing a large statue of Maha Bandula—a Burmese general associated with the conquest of Arakan—standing near the military’s encampment, a symbol he interpreted as an intentional provocation. For Stoakes, that experience was just one more reminder of how the state uses history and symbolism to legitimize its cultural and military hegemony.
He also spent time with non-Rohingya, including Rakhine political leaders, some of whom were from the nationalist party headquartered in Sittwe… and the encounters more than shocked him. For example, one of the representatives explained that rape allegations reported by Rohingya women must be false because, as he put it, “these are very dirty, smelly women,” a remark that left Stoakes momentarily speechless and demonstrates how normalization of dehumanization enables further abuse. He encountered similar attitudes from others, including officials who simply repeated, “It’s lies!” even when confronted with satellite imagery and eyewitness reports documenting burned villages.
Stoakes also examines the role of religious nationalism in shaping and perpetuating these narratives. He recalls coincidentally bumping into the infamous monk, Wirathu, in Mandalay. Stoakes initiated a conversation, which grew tense when he asked about the political backing that allowed the monk to travel freely even as other monks faced surveillance. “You’re asking very dangerous questions!” Wirathu replied, sidestepping any denial while intimating the network of protection that sustained him. Stoakes later reviewed footage of some of Wirathu’s harsh sermons, during which the monk got his audience—which included children—to repeat hostile slogans about Muslims. Stoakes stresses that such behavior contradicts Buddhist principles; it has a purely political purpose, to inflame fear, divide communities, and position the miiltary as guardians of race and religion.
Leaked documents that came into his possession further deepened his understanding of this dynamic. For example, he saw materials from the military’s psychological warfare unit that described Muslims as a demographic threat, likening Myanmar to Indonesia, which they portray as a Buddhist country that ultimately was “lost” to Islam. Other documents outlined plans to circulate fabricated rumors about the Rohingya rape of Rakhine women in order to provoke retaliatory violence. He concludes that although communal mistrust in Myanmar has deep roots, the scale and intensity of violence between 2012 and 2017 was deliberately manipulated by the military.
As the violence spread, he traveled to Meiktila shortly after the 2013 riots, and watched videos filmed during the attacks. In one clip, a man rode a motorcycle dragging the corpse of a dead Muslim behind him. In another, victims were burned alive; children were among the dead. These scenes of organized brutality continue to haunt him. Although some events ignited unpredictably, the movements of mobs and reinforcements otherwise suggest a coordinated campaign. Even the 2012 October attacks, he argues, show unmistakable signs of synchronized targeting across multiple locations on the same day.
Stoakes notes that many people in Myanmar rejected Rohingya testimony about the attacks because they rarely meet Rohingya in daily life. Their knowledge of those events was formed almost entirely from rumor and political rhetoric. He explains that people even accuse Rohingya of burning their own houses for international sympathy, a claim disproven by eyewitness accounts and satellite analysis but repeated because it carries emotional appeal. In his view, these forms of denial mirror dynamics seen in other historical atrocities: when a group is marginalized, the dominant population becomes more susceptible to narratives portraying the victims as manipulative.
The conversation shifts toward the complicated role of Aung San Suu Kyi. He recalls the shock many in the international community expressed when she refused to condemn the military’s actions, and even publicly dismissed the well-documented reports of rape. During her visit to Rakhine, he was disappointed that her speech amounted to little more than her instructing, “Don’t quarrel,” a statement he considers painfully insufficient (and slightly patronizing) given the gravity of the violence that befell the region. Yet at the same time, Stoakes cautions against simplifying her motives, arguing that she operated under intense institutional constraint. The military retained constitutional autonomy, controlled its own budget, and answered to no civilian authority. Advisors within Naypyidaw, including holdovers from the old regime, likely insulated her from accurate information. He sees her as a leader who wanted to preserve political stability but became trapped between global expectations, domestic popular sentiment, and the military.
He also addresses the actions of ARSA, the Rohingya militant group whose attacks on border posts in 2016 and 2017 give the military the pretext it needed to launch its campaign of atrocities and mass violence. He compares ARSA’s miscalculations to Hamas’s 2023 attack inside Israel, pointing out that armed resistance intentionally targeting innocent civilians often leads to catastrophic retaliation. He notes hearing accounts from Bangladesh of certain ARSA members intimidating refugees, behavior some described as resembling a small mafia. These complexities, he emphasizes, do not in any way lessen the responsibility for the state-sanctioned atrocities that followed.
Stoakes then turns to the failures of the United Nations. He explains that after widespread criticism of the UN’s inadequate response to the final stages of the Sri Lankan civil war, the organization commissioned the Charles Petrie report in 2012. That review led to a new initiative intended to ensure that UN agencies would respond coherently to early warning signs of atrocity in any country. In Myanmar, however, the effort unraveled under the weight of the UN’s structural limitations, geopolitical pressures, and the constraints imposed by the host government. Different branches of the UN were effectively working at cross-purposes: development-oriented offices prioritized access and cooperation with authorities, while human-rights personnel were issuing increasingly urgent warnings. Internal UN memos cautioned that “the same signs [that had led to sectarian violence in Sri Lanka] are unfolding before us now” in Myanmar—written a full year before the 2017 operations against the Rohingya. The military skillfully exploited this fragmentation, engaging only with agencies it favored and sidelining others. Humanitarian groups that challenged official narratives risked expulsion, and critical medical and protection needs were left unmet.
The conversation concludes with reflections on the post-2021 coup environment. Stoakes notes that many Bamar Buddhists are now experiencing the state’s violence firsthand, and have begun reexamining their earlier prejudices. The concept of “national awakening” has emerged among democracy activists who are reconsidering their silence about abuses committed against ethnic minorities. But he warns that lasting reconciliation requires more than just sympathy, it requires action: institutional reconstruction, sustained documentation, and political models that prevent the military from ever reclaiming unilateral power. As far as the international media is concerned, Stoakes argues that the most important work they could do now would be supporting Myanmar-based journalists, who understand the cultural and political terrain and can create more insightful and accurate storytelling if given the resources.
Although he expresses regret that some of his early writings feel overly polemical to him now, Stoakes remains committed to the principle that animates all investigative work: exposing abuses so they cannot be buried. “I just have complete sympathy with the people in Myanmar,” he says. “My appreciation for Myanmar never left me.”