Episode 35: Facing Darkness with Light
“We are already in the danger. So we don’t care anymore. The dawn won’t be that much darker than the midnight. And we are already in the midnight, so the darkness can’t be much worse. We are at the peak of the darkness.”
These were the words of Inda Aung Soe as military tanks rolled past at the start of our free-flowing and open interview, when asked if he felt safe talking to us from the chaotic streets of Yangon. Inda’s brave response echoes a resilience exemplified by the Burmese people during the shocking events of this month, and kicked off his description of the growing protest movement taking shape across the country. Having been a Buddhist monk himself for many years, Inda is able to reflect not just on the mood of lay protesters, but also at monasteries and among his monastic friends.
Since disrobing, Inda formed Bokashi Myanmar, an organization that processes and composts kitchen waste. With this background, he has taken over the role of organizing daily trash collection on Yangon’s city streets following the mass protests. Inda is not only busy during the daytime, however, as he and others must stay awake throughout the night as well, defending themselves against the recently released criminals that the military is injecting with morphine and sending into neighborhoods to do harm.
Despite these harrowing experiences, Inda affirms a strong set of values that protesters have committed themselves to. First and foremost is non-violence, refusing to cause harm to other beings even in the face of the military’s and their proxies’ aggressions. Inda notes that it is a value perhaps not totally understood by the military, and goes on to describe how some of the criminals who were sent to attack were dressed as monks. In Inda’s estimation, this was a trap: the military thought that residents would surely capture and beat these intruders, after which videos would be released depicting lay Burmese beating apparent Buddhist monks, which would serve to cause dissension among the Burmese people and diminish their feeling of solidarity against the attempted coup. Instead, the fake monks were detained without being harmed, and then given food and a place to sleep.
And according to Inda, commitment to non-violence is not the only thing the military has not understood about the current moment. He shares there is no single leader organizing the movement, so the military can’t stop it by hunting down specific activists, as they have done in the past. Instead, Inda describes an entire population that has stepped up as one to claim its basic freedoms and human rights. He and Zach share a laugh that the usually chaotic and disorganized Burmese society has somehow, overnight, formed itself into a plastic, integrated structure capable of quickly responding as a whole to the most sophisticated attacks—physical as well as psychological—from a professionally trained military.
Inda closes by thanking the foreign community for its generosity and support during these difficult times, from both inside and outside the country. Along with Inda, we also would like to take this time to thank you for listening to this important interview, and encourage you to share it widely if you find it of value. The light in the Golden Land is still on, but faint and in danger of flaming out; it is happening in real time, before our eyes (at least when the internet is on). Any support, of any kind, that you can give is critical at this time, through donation or service.
It's been a long, brutal and bloody period since the violent coup initiated by the military in Myanmar, and it can be helpful to remember the various stages of this crisis. Just weeks into the protest movement, we spoke to Inda Aung Soe about his feelings on witnessing this illegal takeover. His answer: a sense of being bullied. But beyond his mere words, the emotions in his voice do even more to illustrate the underlying feelings and emotions that are animating and sustaining the strength of the resistance movement.