Episode #96: Resistance and Transformation
“Do they think like it is cheap for us? Day by day, our people are dying, day by day the people are suffering, and day by day all the people are troubled!”
So states Chit Tun, a nonviolent protest leader who barely escaped a police manhunt, only to find himself in an ethnic training camp where he became a leader in the resistance movement. His words, however, are not directed at the cruelty of the Tatmadaw or the cold detachment of international organizations: he is expressing his frustration at the lack of support his defense team has received from the NUG’s Ministry of Defense.
“We don't blame them because we understand this is the first such experience for them,” Chit Tun continues. “But they have this old habit and are acting like it is 2015 to 2020. But no, this is a completely different role [for them]!”
The last year has been a time of tremendous growth for Chit Tun. In this wide-ranging interview, he reflects on his experiences, and the insights he gained, in resisting the military takeover.
Some listeners may recall Chit Tun’s first interview just weeks after the coup was launched. At that time, he was leading nonviolent protests throughout Yangon. That discussion certainly reflected that context: he was hiding out at a monastery, his voice hoarse from the speeches he’d been giving, and the internet was cut in the middle of our talk. Now, one year leader, Chit Tun updates us about what has happened to him since.
Shortly after that interview, Chit Tun attended a meeting of fellow organizers to discuss how the protest movement should proceed in the wake of growing crackdowns. He suddenly received an alert from a trusted contact that soldiers were on their way to arrest them all at that very moment! Sure enough, five military trucks pulled up, and Chit Tun ran for his life, sleeping in an old tunnel that night before street dogs found him, and began barking. On the run again, Chit Tun found refuge in Karen state, where he began his combat training.
Chit Tun spent the better part of the next year there, first undergoing training, then asked to take a leadership position with new recruits, and finally receiving orders to defend against incoming military assaults. The year proved to be the longest one of his life, and challenging in more ways than he could have imagined.
Back home, his pregnant wife was in CDM and in hiding, during which time she contracted COVID. But she gave birth successfully to a son, although Chit Tun could only see him in pictures. In the meantime, his mother was harassed by soldiers and eventually arrested.
Chit Tun had never spent so much time outside of Bamar communities, and he was appalled to discover the conditions that the Karen had to live under. When he asked a Karen villager why no one built bigger homes or planted more vegetables, he was told that if they sought greater sustainability or prosperity, soldiers would just immediately invade their community and burn it to the ground. Children were trained to run for cover the minute planes approached, a stark contrast to his own childhood when and his friends would chase and wave at planes.
Reflecting on the initial months he spent protesting, Chit Tun questioned the limited nature of his perspective and goals. “Of course, I was naïve,” he admits. “I was naive about the conflict between nationalities and I was quite immature about the religion. Kind of stupid, you know?”
In the early days of the protests, his vision was narrow and local, focused mainly on the loss of freedom within his own community. But over time, he realized that he was not fighting merely for the rights of his own group, but for everyone living in the country… even those different to him. “They [the Bamar population] believe in Buddhism, but they don't have space for other religions. Yet they want democracy!”
This jarring contradiction was a new realization for him. Having grown up in a dictatorship aside from the recent but brief transition period, Chit Tun hadn’t really thought much about different political systems before the coup. His biggest insight came in the form of this simple thought: “If you support the dictator, you are also a kind of dictator!”
Religion was also front and center in Chit Tun’s thinking. He was resisting the coup to support democracy on one hand, yet concerned with Buddhism’s continuing ability to flourish in Myanmar on the other. This forced him to look deeply and honestly at where these two desires intersected, and might even possibly be in conflict. Did he want to see Myanmar as a Buddhist state that provided overt support to monasteries and pagodas? Or did he want a kind of Federalism, founded on principles of equality and democracy?
And as he looked deeper into his own, personal, Buddhist faith, he came to understand how the military had deftly used religion to fan the flames of distrust between Bamar Buddhists and other of the country’s ethnicities, particularly by stoking fears of a Muslim invasion. Chit Tun now recognizes how he was one of many who were manipulated by this propaganda. “The dictator used religion. They used famous monks for their power, they used the pagodas for their power, and they used the Buddha teaching’s themselves for their power!” It was clear to him that the junta had been promoting a false dichotomy, pitting the protection of Buddhism against a free and fair society for all. If he had to choose, there was no question where Chit Tun would stand.
“If the Dhamma means truth, and loving the truth in your heart, there is the Buddhism. That’s the place for the Buddha, in your heart. If you follow the Buddha’s rules, if you believe in Buddha’s rules, this is having a place for Buddhism. So you don't need to get a kind of special place,” he adds, inferring state support that prioritizes Buddhism over other religions.
This concern also generated a deeper scrutiny into his own faith, exposing previously unquestioned assumptions that he harbored about his religion’s superiority. “I realized that there's a lot of pages that I didn't read, that I didn't want to read! There's a lot of pages in Buddhism that are kind of that way. So like, are we perfect?”
For Chit Tun, however, the issue was not in what the historical Buddha taught, in which his faith still does not wave. Rather, it was in how people in powerful positions in Burmese society were interpreting and manipulating those teachings. “He never taught to separate other religions and to look down other nationalities. He never taught us that way.” Where his own interest in Buddhism stemmed from being a better person in the world, he saw it was being used by a select group of generals, crony businessmen, and monks as a means of increasing their own power, wealth and prestige, while creating divisions amongst other groups.
Of course, Chit Tun’s own inner journey of transformation was taking place alongside strenuous and challenging external conditions, where even basic survival was a concern. There are incidents from this year that remain so painful and traumatic for him that he still cannot bring himself to talk about them, and doesn’t know if he ever will. There were also serious issues with leadership, which left those on the ground feeling unsupported and often at risk.
But he also recounts harmonious relations bordering on feelings of brotherhood with his colleagues, and impactful, positive experiences with villagers. And surprisingly, he speaks of good memories where his Buddhist faith and combat experience intersect. “When you are faced with death, when you realize that you’re dying, you will know how precious the present is. This experience makes me closer with the Buddha’s teaching. Because nothing is important more than the present. The present moment is the most important one.”