Episode #130: Igor Blaževič on the Spring Revolution
Igor Blaževič witnessed the very fabric of society being ripped apart before his eyes.
Born in Sarajevo, Igor was a philosophy and literature student in Zagreb when the Bosnian War started in 1992. Living through all that chaos and violence, what he calls “a terrifying experience,” he understands what so many in Myanmar are facing now. “That profoundly changed me from being a social zombie,” he remembers. “I started to be active and looking how as an individual, and as group with the people, can respond… to the evil, to the end of everything of what you believe is humanity.”
He continues, “Basically, your whole life and everything around you, it is falling apart! Everything you believed in: humanity, its values, is disappearing, and you are looking at the worst of what humans can produce.” Yet that social upheaval also provided him with a glimpse into the better angels of human nature. He witnessed how many chose to respond with courage, selflessness, and sacrifice instead of violence, anger and fear. “I do think that people who face these things have in a certain kind of extraordinary opportunity in their life, to accept the challenge of responding in a right way.”
At the start of the war, Igor had initially retreated to the safety of the Czech Republic, paralyzed by fear and powerlessness. But eventually he found a way to rise to the challenge of responding to the crisis, engaging in advocacy around the world, collecting donations, and then personally distributing aid to those still caught in the conflict.
After the war ended, Igor found himself emotionally and physically exhausted, and clearly still traumatized. He tried to get as far away as he could, settling in Hong Kong and traveling across Southeast Asia, making documentary films. Eventually he realized that he had a larger role to play on the world stage, with many people around the world still not enjoying the freedom and safety that had returned at least in some measure to Bosnian society. “I transformed my experience from Bosnia into a conscious decision that I will continue to help people who are going through similar experiences,” he says.
This led to a close friendship with Czech President Václav Havel, whose country had also been traumatized, in Czechoslovakia’s case by the successive totalitarian regimes of Nazi and Soviet occupation. Like Igor, Havel had dedicated himself to a larger mission, which Igor describes as: “So now when we got free, it's our obligation to help others who are still living in a dictatorship.”
Igor traveled to such hotspots as Kosovo, Chechnya, Cuba, Belarus, and eventually to Myanmar, where he met with dissidents and families of political prisoners, and supported their struggle in any way possible. He also sponsored a variety of various speakers as well as art and cultural events from places experiencing a lack of freedom and state repression. Much of his work was made possible by Havel’s support, who was at that time enjoying worldwide celebrity, and would sometimes attend Igor’s events. By virtue of Havel’s presence, they garnered far more attention and support than they otherwise would.
“He was an extraordinarily modest person,” Igor recalls. “A very, very special person. He never liked to be in the spotlight he had in that moment. But he had this approach, like ‘Oh, now I'm in a spotlight, so I will invite these poor dissidents around the world.’ Because he knows this experience of being a dissident, of being under threat, being rejected. ‘And then the spotlight will come on me, and I move into shadows, and let the dissidents come into the spotlight so that world sees them!’”
In Myanmar, Igor met with democracy activists from the 1988 generation, while also secretly filming in Burmese cities and along the border. He found the oppression he observed in Myanmar similar to what he had seen elsewhere. “It was more kind of striking how these things are similar! Pretty much everywhere, people feel fear in the same way. The police states can be packaged in this way or another way, but at the end of the day, they in a very banal, simple way, in how they introduce fear in the people.”
Wanting to live in the region for a more sustained period of time, Igor initially settled in Chiang Mai, then eventually made his way to Yangon where he lived and worked for five years. Despite all the optimism that the new government was delivering, Igor saw red flags from the start of the so-called democratic opening. “Hey, guys, this is not a transition to democracy you are going through!” he recalls warning his friends. Rather, it was a “transition to the regime in which the military remains the dominant power in the country and allowed a certain democratic facade… So I have been the voice of warning about a deeper understanding of what's going on. And I think for that reason, I have really gained a certain amount of respect, because the people in Myanmar have instinctively felt that something was wrong.”
Things came to a head for Igor when he found himself confronted with an acute tension playing out between the two main groups he was working with, former political prisoners on one side and ethnic activists on the other. While ethnic activists blamed Bamar former prisoners for being a part of the oppressors, the latter responded that they too had suffered greatly, adding that they had no role in the military’s atrocities. This experience gave him a crash course in the political, cultural and demographic complexities of the Golden Land.
The situation only deteriorated further when the Rohingya crisis hit. To Igor’s horror, 90% of the participants in his group demanded that a Rohingya participant be kicked out. He responded forcefully that if she had to leave, he would disband the entire program, so they ultimately found a way to remain together.
As the Rohingya crisis continued to worsen, things began to play out in a way that was eerily familiar to Igor from his time in Bosnia. “Hey, guys, this is not communal violence!” he exclaimed to anyone listening. “I have seen this also in Chechnya. This is the military intelligence starting to instigate fear into the majority population through hand-picking the smallest and most vulnerable group in a society, to blame them as a source of the threat and anger. This is manipulation!”
But although Igor’s cautionary perspective on the situation in Myanmar had previously been respected, now he was being called out as a foreigner who simply didn’t understand the country, a common response at the time to those bringing attention to the atrocities taking place in Rahkine state, as well as the culture’s general anti-Muslim attitudes. In turn, he tried to explain how military intelligence was infiltrating and radicalizing parts of the Saṅgha, using the highly respected clergy to advance its own fear tactics under the guise of Buddhism, spreading the poison of ethnocentrism and xenophobia. To him, this was the same playbook he had seen many times before, in Bosnia and other conflicts, but simply used different symbols and terms. “So you have the most respected institution in a country which has been terribly misused by the military in order to spread fear and in an anger into society,” he summarizes.
Igor called on the Burmese people to engage in a critical dialogue to counter the discrimination and bias being incited by the military, but to his dismay, he could not find an audience ready to engage. In other words, the collective brainwashing was too far advanced within Burmese society to allow for an open dialogue. And what was worse, Aung San Suu Kyi and the ruling NLD did little to combat this rising tide of ethnic and religious tension. “She believed that people wanted her, and that she alone was able to deal with the military, which has been a big strategic miscalculation,” Igor explains.
Like so many others, Igor was totally taken by surprise when the military coup was launched last year, and he quickly knew he had to drop everything and once again put all his efforts into the Myanmar cause. Unlike during the transition period, he found that diverse groups in Myanmar were now quite clear that they faced a common enemy, and so he saw a chance for building solidarity that had not been possible before.
Overall, Myanmar’s resistance movement has been inspiring to Igor. “I'm really impressed!” he admits. “I’m quite a long time involved in in the struggles of the people for freedom in many places around the world.” He goes on to explain how people are usually unable to continue to resist oppression once it turns violent. However, something very different happened as the conflict unfolded in Myanmar. “What really struck and surprised me, and what inspires me, and what creates adoration in me, is the internal strength and internal courage of the people of Myanmar to not to give up this time, and to fight back!”
This is all the more amazing since many of those now resisting are essentially on their own, and are not benefiting from any of the support now being shown to the Ukraine. This may be because of their different geopolitical situations, but Igor is blunt: “I think that the West and all others should do much, much more. Everyday I’m trying to persuade everybody I can! But you can send weapons to Ukraine because we have direct borders between the Western democracies and Ukraine, and there is no border around Myanmar through which you can get the Western weapons to the democratic movement.”
Igor has nothing but praise for the PDFs (People’s Defense Forces) and how they have been able to perform against a professional and brutal military, and dismisses Western criticism about their perceived imperfections. Calling this out the West’s shortsightedness, Igor notes critically that the US continues to freeze one billion dollars belonging to the NUG, sorely needed money that could fund the strengthening of democratic institutions and provide much-needed humanitarian relief. “If we put resources into the hands of the genuine democratic and federal political force in a country, which is not perfect, which is fragile and vulnerable, but it's the best hope for the country to succeed in consolidating the chain of command, and consolidating the proper behavior of the of the soldiers on the ground.”
In Igor’s view, the main danger at this time is that while “the resistance can block junta from consolidated power, it cannot properly take it down anytime soon,” especially if the international community continues to turn its back during Myanmar’s time of need. “We are more and more moving in the direction of Myanmar de facto starting to break into the different fragments of the territory, controlled by the different armed forces, which is a very, very dark development.” He exclaims that he is “extraordinary angry” that Myanmar’s neighbors and the international community, who don't want to see that reality come to pass, are nonetheless “sitting and waiting for something to happen internally!”
For Igor, the course is clear: recognize that the Tatmadaw is the common enemy, unite to destroy it, and then work together to build a better future after it is defeated. “If we remove the junta, we can set the country on another trajectory, in which it will be possible to find a consensus as to how the country should look like and also to reform the law.” This is the only viable option that Igor can see, while fearing that a military victory would in effect enslave the entire population for at least another generation.
“That public space needs to be filled with really charismatic, brave visions of the future of the country, and [present] really credible promises of how the country can come and live together as a united nation.”