Episode #86: Portrait of an Activist
“I'm feeling guilty all the time. And I'm feeling afraid all the time,” Little T confesses in an extraordinarily vulnerable and emotional interview. "I feel like I’m a coward. I just started to have a mental breakdown. So last month, one of my friends helped me to connect to a psychologist so that I could calm down a bit, fall asleep, and be healthy… and continue to work. At a personal level, this affects you in such a tremendous way that I don't know how to even describe it. I don't see any future.”
Little T’s ongoing nightmare started, as it did for so many Burmese people, with the violent coup launched last year by the military. For her, it came in the form of a phone call one early morning, with a shaky voice on the other end telling her, “It happened.” Little T had no idea what her friend meant, but soon realized the military had done the unthinkable. She tried to call her family in Mawlamyine, Magway and Shan State, but the phone lines there were already cut. Concerned that she was living alone, Little T’s friend insisted that he come over that morning to pick her up, and the two wended their way through pro-military celebrations to find long lines already forming at ATM machines and markets. Not twenty-four hours into the new reality, it was already too much. “At that moment, I think it was the first time in that day I was completely consumed by sadness. I felt really angry, and tears just burst into my eyes.”
Before the coup, Little T’s passion was her nonprofit work that sought to empower young people and to promote sustainable livelihoods, particularly women. But with little experience in politics or even human rights, she initially had no clue how to respond to the military takeover. She describes the debates that soon broke out among activists, about whether they should take to the streets or stay indoors and work behind the scenes. For Little T, the choice was clear. “I was on the side that we need to do a peaceful protest and demand to get back our democratically elected government,” she recalls. “But I didn't know how to start! And honestly, I was also very scared to do it alone.”
Fortunately, she soon made contact with a protest leader and volunteered her services. Then just three days later, the first mass protests hit the streets. Little T saw this, and joined just herself just several days later. Her early thinking was something of a contrast to many other Burmese at the time, who still held hope that the UN or US would help them. But for her, the reality was clear: “A coup happened. And it is our responsibility, the people of Myanmar, to fight for it. And to restore the democracy and human rights, I think we need to do it by ourselves.”
The cadre of protesters that Little T joined up with not only protested in the streets, but were also organizing in other important ways as well. They prepared stories and released statements in both Burmese and English for various media outlets, encouraged more people to join the protests through social media, ensured cybersecurity, provided medical support, established safe houses, and identified key allies and stakeholders.
The peaceful mass protests continued for several weeks, and were gradually gaining steam when the military chose to crack down, violently. Little T’s description of what happened in the moments following the initial assault is especially vivid and haunting. “People got really scared. They were screaming, and the organizers of this protest movement, they used the loudspeaker, trying to calm down the the masses of people, saying, ‘It is okay, we already prepared for this, right?’ So we all just held our hands together and continued marching. And then after about one minute, we calmed down and made a line, row by row again. We just held the hands of whoever was next to us, and we started to march again. I think after three steps, there was a gunfire. At that time, the organizers could not calm down the audience anymore. People started running. I remember someone just falling on the street.”
Little T was shocked that the soldiers responded with live ammunition, not rubber bullets; protesters went scattering in all directions, running for their lives, taking cover or shelter wherever it could be found. Some of Little T’s fellow protesters were beaten and arrested, but she fortunately found shelter in a stranger’s home, along with some others. She notes that one of the positive side effects of the coup was the development of greater sense of social cohesion and unity in the country; as Little T herself experienced, complete strangers would open their homes to those going into hiding, offering them food and shelter.
But as for the military response, things only got worse. Soldiers began to search the homes of suspected organizers in earnest. Little T explains the new rules they all had to quickly understand: “They will arrest you if you organize this peaceful protest movement, because they think you are persuading other people to do this unlawful protest. For them, it is unlawful to protest on the street… And if you are on the civil disobedience movement, you will also get arrested. And if you are also a journalist, you're trying to write the real information from the ground and informing the general public, you will also get arrested… You will become a criminal, and it is treason.”
Somehow they learned of the apartment where Little T and her colleagues were attending meetings, and came to raid it. Luckily, no one was there at the time, so the soldiers sought out the landlord. Unable to locate him, they found the home of his parents, which they promptly burned to the ground. This raised the stakes even further for Little T’s activism. “What if they arrest my mom or my dad or my sister?” she began to ask herself. “It is not only you who will get arrested or tortured, it could be your family. If they don't like to you, they will do anything to harm you. It's really scary.”
With the streets becoming so dangerous, and even one’s own home providing little safety, Little T’s group has had to find innovative ways to adjust as the conflict continues to escalate. One of their main tasks has become supporting undercover journalists in their reporting. They have also begun to take care of the families of “fallen heroes,” the honorific term that has come to be used to describe those murdered by the military. They have been helping at IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps, which have grown exponentially with so many forced to flee their homes. Finally, they are aiding government workers who have joined the Civil Disobedience Movement; Little T wryly notes that the military has made it illegal to not report to one’s office, let alone resign. This latter activity is particularly personal for her, as her cousin, a doctor, is with the CDM and helping those who are wounded even while he himself is in deep hiding, a wanted man for refusing to serve the soldiers’ whims.
Little T says about her group, “[We are] not an organization, but an anti-coup protest network and all the executive members like me are working as a volunteer. I think this part is important because we want to be very clear that we don’t take any money or benefit out of this revolution; we work to have an income so that it can sustain ourselves and we use our own money for communication, transportation and other stuff. All the funding we receive goes to the end user.”
As she had already been suffering from sleep problems, the constant movement and need to stay in unfamiliar places have put an even greater strain on her mental well being. At one point, soldiers arrived at her location in the early morning. She quickly turned off all the lights and the air conditioning, and she and her friends waited with bated breath in the dark silence. The situation was tense; soldiers were screaming and storming up the stairwells. They waited for what seemed to be the inevitable… until they realized that unlucky moment was meant for a neighbor, who was promptly whisked away.
This situation further highlighted the danger that Little T was facing, and it hit her that every phone conversation she has with her parents could turn out to be the last. Sometimes she feels a sense of unfairness that she is in this situation, risking so much when others can continue living a normal life. In fact, many members of her team have dispersed in all directions by this point; some remain undercover like Little T, and continue to work behind the scenes, while some have escaped abroad, and others have joined various defense forces and the armed resistance.
“But then I asked myself the question,” she recalls, “‘Who asked you to join this movement? Who would blame you if you didn’t join the movement?’ The answer is so clear. I joined the movement because I think it is the right thing to do. I joined the movement because I want to contribute something and restore the human life. To build a more prosperous country, I aim to see the country transformed into a federal democratic country. So this is my decision, my choice. So I don’t need to feel bitter about anything, or who is involved and who isn’t involved, who has done what… I just need to pep-talk myself, not have those negative feelings, and do as much as I can. This is the reality.”