Degrees of Resistance
Coming Soon…
This is the second installment of a three-part series of interviews Insight Myanmar Podcast conducted with participants of a 2-day seminar titled “Fostering Sustainable Peace and Security: Thailand and ASEAN’s Path towards Border Stability and Democracy,” held on March 22-25 in Bangkok, Thailand, and hosted by the Asean Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR). The seminar was framed by the following sentiment, taken from the APHR website: “In a time where the crisis in Myanmar has escalated on multiple fronts, including mass displacement, destructive environmental impacts of militarization, human trafficking orchestrated through scam centers, the inhumane treatment of political prisoners including women and children and the deadly decline in humanitarian assistance—the seminar shed light on the devastating human cost of the crisis.”
In this episode, we speak with Raoul Manuel, the first elected youth sector representative in the Philippine Congress, and Han Htoo Khant Paing, a former student union leader and now an advocate for Myanmar’s youth and displaced communities.
First up is Raoul Manuel, who combines parliamentary advocacy with grassroots organizing. His voice reflects a generation unwilling to accept authoritarianism, disillusionment, or delay. In this conversation, he discusses his work on behalf of Filipino youth, the threats posed by authoritarianism across Southeast Asia, and the interconnected struggles for justice both locally and globally.
Manuel began his career as a student activist before entering politics through Kabataan Partylist, a youth-oriented, progressive, political party. In Congress, he has championed education reform, including legislation to eliminate tuition fees in public universities, and has pushed for decent job opportunities for young people. These priorities, he explains, are not siloed issues, and because of their interconnection, he has not limited himself to youth-related issues in the Philippines. Manuel identifies the shared challenges in the region, including climate change, job precarity, and state-sponsored violence, such as in Myanmar.
Manuel emphasizes that progressive parliamentary action must be backed by grassroots movements. His office regularly consults with farmers, students, and labor groups to ensure their voices reach the halls of Congress. This is not just strategic, but necessary for an opposition that finds itself in a legislature dominated by pro-administration forces.
He finds hope in a new generation of Filipino youth who are increasingly politically engaged. Even under the shadow of state surveillance and harassment—including cyber libel cases used to silence online dissent—young people are organizing, running for office, and demanding systemic change. “Eventually, even young people get fed up,” he says. “They see the need to take bolder steps to initiate change.”
While Manual does recognize a number of shared, regional issues, he acknowledges that the crisis in Myanmar is certainly a challenge “in a category of its own.” While Filipino citizens may not feel a geographic connection to Myanmar, Manuel and his fellow parliamentarians work to raise awareness of the junta’s brutality and to connect its human rights abuses to the Philippine experience. “Striking similarities would really be when the military uses its power and its violence against the people whom they are supposed to protect.” He draws distinct parallels between the Philippines’ own experience under Rodrigo Duterte’s bloody war on drugs and the use of state violence in countries like Myanmar.
Concerning how the current administration has responded through more formal channels, Manuel recounts a committee hearing in which the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs expressed a “limited approach” to the Myanmar crisis, defaulting to ASEAN’s non-interventionist, Five-Point Consensus. Manuel suspects that realpolitik—specifically the Philippines’ reliance on Myanmar for rice imports—is influencing the government’s passive stance. To address this, he and other progressives advocate for food self-sufficiency as both an economic and ethical necessity.
Looking ahead, Manuel is cautious about the Philippines assuming the ASEAN chair in 2026. Despite hopeful language from the government, he says it will be up to progressive lawmakers and civil society to pressure the executive branch to act in line with ASEAN’s democratic and human rights obligations.
In closing, Manuel says he believes in the value of democratic structures, but not in their sufficiency. The real driver of social change, he insists, is the power of collective action and solidarity across borders and sectors. “We have nothing to rely on but our joint efforts,” he says in closing. “At the end of the day, we’re all humans here. And if any person in any part of the globe or in any region is suffering, then you really have to act and not prolong the suffering of those people.”
Next up is Han Htoo Khant Paing, who offers a sobering and deeply personal assessment of the country’s ongoing crisis. He reflects on the unrelenting toll of the coup, the limits of international diplomacy, and the responsibilities of Myanmar’s own resistance movement.
Since fleeing Myanmar after the 2021 coup, Han Htoo has shifted from overt political activism to supporting higher education for Myanmar students—an effort to salvage futures interrupted by military rule. “The human cost has always been devastating, and it is more so, both extensively and intensively. We’re talking about lives and wealth and freedom of millions of people,” he says.
Despite hopes that regional bodies like ASEAN might offer solutions, Han Htoo believes the diplomatic response has remained profoundly disconnected from the reality on the ground. The Five-Point Consensus, ASEAN’s guiding framework, has been irrelevant from the beginning, in his opinion. Both the junta and resistance groups, he argues, are far removed from the kind of dialogue ASEAN envisions. “It is still unthinkable,” he says, to imagine meaningful negotiations, given the brutality and distrust between parties. He is further dismayed that even sympathetic policymakers from the region are advocating for consensus and reconciliation, seemingly unmoored from the lived reality of a country in civil war.
Rather than fixate on diplomatic frameworks, Han Htoo argues for more pragmatic and human-centered strategies. He praises Malaysian MP Wong Chen’s recent suggestions, such as cutting off the arms flow to the junta and documenting war crimes. Most crucial, however, is the need to reduce human suffering wherever possible.
At the same time, he calls for the resistance movement to critically assess its own path forward. The “radical narrative” that fueled the Spring Revolution may have galvanized action in 2021, but he suggests it is time to separate radical goals from radical means. Myanmar’s children, he notes, are falling years behind in education, and he believes that the long-term impact of the conflict on civilians must now shape strategy. “The fifth grader when the coup happened, now they will be the age of a 10th grader, but with the education of a fifth grader! It’s heartbreaking for me,” he says sadly.
Han Htoo sees the brutal logic of the conflict and understands the limitations of outside help. Yet he also feels the pain of every loss, the weight of a generation forced to grow up in fear and displacement. Nonetheless, Han Htoo remains committed to the cause. “To give up to this military dictatorship… it is unthinkable, unthinkable.”
Still, his reflections are laced with sorrow, particularly when he revisits comments he made early in the coup. Back then, he controversially stated that he was “kind of happy that the coup happened” because it exposed the illusion of Myanmar’s so-called democratic transition. That view, he now admits, has changed. While still critical of Aung San Suu Kyi’s government and its compromises with the military, the scale of violence and trauma since the coup has reframed his perspective. “I’m safe now, but I know hundreds of thousands of people are dying each month… It makes me sorry,” he says, choking up.