Episode #206: Rebels Without A Pause
Delphine Schrank first touched down in Yangon in 2008, as a reporter for The Washington Post sent to cover the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis. She soon realized that it was impossible to report accurately on that natural disaster without learning something about life under the brutal military junta. So she began to investigate how military rule was being challenged by activists.
“I had been told that there was no democracy movement [in Myanmar],” she remembers. “The Burma Watchers and journalists [said] the political story doesn't exist!”
Describing herself as a contrarian at heart, she believed there was no way that could be true. So Delphine did some digging, and learned just how active Myanmar’s underground networks really were. Her work ultimately resulted in a book, The Rebel of Rangoon, which follows the clandestine and grassroots organizing during those years, largely through the lives of two protagonists, Nway and Nigel. “There was something was about to happen, and it wasn't at all clear,” she describes. “This underground dissident movement, they were very much trying to build and grow the idea of democracy after a very repressive period, right after the Saffron Revolution. People had been hunkered down and very much spooked by the crackdown. And yet, there was still the existence of this organization.”
Myanmar usually makes the international news only after some kind of atrocity or tragedy, like a natural disaster, genocide, or a military coup. But Delphine didn’t want to cover the same big headlines that typically attract “parachute journalists.” She hoped to understand the lives of those who were working towards change, and whose efforts went largely unnoticed by the outside world. “[My book] tries to tell the deep story of what it meant to be a dissident during that time, what it meant to be living in the street with no place to go through fear, and not being able to have a relationship or fall in love and then having to leave because you were afraid for your new love. That's the tale that I'm trying to tell: what it really takes to stand up to a brutal, repressive regime that has spies, possibly on every corner, while at the same time capturing a moment of Burmese history as I was able to witness it. I think that had not been told to this day.”
Ironically, Delphine had no way of knowing about the massive changes that were coming just around the corner. “I thought I was writing about the twilight of a real existing movement, one that I was told didn't exist,” she says. “And I ended up seeing a ray of light of this movement being so essential to the opening.” In contrast, most foreign journalists felt that the Burmese people were simply too beaten down to find a way to continue resisting, and that there was no change coming to the junta’s rule. “My thesis is that these [activist] people were there and never went away! Even if you tried to discard them into 90 different prisons, and you can knock off as many heads as you want, but they will keep coming.”
The Saffron Revolution that she covered occurred just before the Arab Spring, and Delphine observed a real difference in how the Western media was covering those developments. While the Arab Spring was front page news, very little attention was paid to Myanmar, in spite of the similarities between the two movements in pushing tyrannical regimes to change. “[There was] a whole network of citizens who understood that one day, beyond protests, beyond toppling a statue, you have to put another government in place… ‘How are we going to get rid of this dictatorship? How long will it take? And what are our values?’ I simply haven't seen that book, so I felt I had to be the one to write it.”
As Delphine made more connections within the underground movement, she realized the stakes at play for anyone willing to speak with her; if military intelligence found out, they could easily be arrested, if not killed. So she had to be very careful not only about who to approach but how, as well as considering how to safely frame questions. She also had to take circuitous routes to meetings lest she was being followed, sometimes taking taxis, and sometimes walking. “Instead of just interviewing someone cold, you're witnessing their lives and writing this scene,” she describes of her process, referencing the nonfiction writers David Finkel and Katherine Boo as inspirations, as well as Andre Malraux’s La Condition Humane, which detailed the failed 1927 Communist insurrection in Shanghai. As a further safety precaution, Delphine scrambled her completed transcripts and hid them in her clothes when leaving the country.
As noted earlier, one of her protagonists was Nway, who gave a compelling answer as to why he chose to dedicate himself to the movement. Delphine explains that while in medical school, Nway had a run-in with the military police, who told him that he had to give up his activism in order to be allowed to stay in school. “He's like, ‘That's it, I'm done!’ And he’s never made money since. He’s lived destitute. He could have gone on to a comfortable professional life relative to what that's possible to have in a repressive regime. I wanted to capture more than just the cold bare facts, which, to be honest, can be quite dull to people who aren't really interested into the history. I wanted to capture with a sensibility and a feel and like, ‘What does it take?!’” In Nway’s case, Delphine also learned that this dedication to the cause is a family affair, as Nway’s father was a doctor who chose to work in rural poor areas, and whose activism eventually landed him in prison, where he died. Nway’s mother then informed her four sons that one of them must continue to carry the torch of democracy—much like one male child is often expected to ordain as a lifelong monk to bring the family merit—and Nway’s hand shot up to volunteer. And much like a Buddhist monastic, Nway also chose to sacrifice any semblance of a romantic relationship in order to commit fully to the movement.
The other protagonist, Nigel, was somewhat the opposite. While Nway was a networker and organizer, Nigel was more a of a lone operator. “He almost looked like a Hollywood matinee idol in a masculine and tranquil way. When he spoke—and he didn't speak that often, but when he spoke—you listened.” Like Nway, politics also ran deep in Nigel’s family; both his parents were NLD members and had spent long periods in prison. This led to the family becoming destitute, which initially disgusted Nigel, turning him off to politics. But during the Saffron Revolution, he gave an impromptu speech and got caught up in the moment, which ignited his passion for the movement. He soon joined the underground network.
In addition to the two principal characters, Delphine also fleshes out her story with other key individuals who had dedicated themselves to pursuing this change. One is Win Tin, the beloved political prisoner who emerged in 1988 as one of the leading intellectuals and journalists associated with the NLD. Imprisoned for his participation in the democracy movement, he was released 20 years later, and famously refused to wear any other shirt for the rest of his life than the standard issued blue prison uniforms, as a testament to and reminder of the many still behind bars. Win Tin was also unafraid to share his opinions, even when they went against NLD party orthodoxy, such as his insistence that the Bamar-led movement needed to do a better job incorporating ethnic voices. “People loved Win Tin because he dared,” she says. “He dared to say whatever the hell he wanted to say! He wasn't scared and he wouldn't bite his tongue, and he was really sharp about it.” To Delphine, Win Tin was part of a strong cadre of Burmese activists advocating for democratic ideals who didn’t then— and often still don’t— get as much attention as the bigger names. “This movement wasn't all about this one messiah, this figure who descended on Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi, who told them, ‘We can have democracy.’ A lot of it came from the bottom up, and he was one of those he was one of these.”
Other important figures inhabit Delphine’s chronicles. Nyan Win, the longtime lawyer of Aung San Suu Kyi’s, was imprisoned by the military in 2021 and died shortly thereafter. Khin Maung Swe, a geologist, was arrested and then brutally tortured for his involvement with the NLD, but later had a nasty break with Aung San Suu Kyi, and has since made strongly anti-Rohingya statements and joined the SAC (State Administration Council, synonymous with the junta) after the 2021 coup. Dr. Zaw Wai Maung, an NLD candidate who was elected to parliament, was sentenced to two decades in prison, and became one of the party elders following his release. And Khin Sandar Win, Nigel’s wife, had to manage her pregnancy alone while also caring for Nigel after he was thrown in prison. A common theme running through all these personal accounts is the value of sacrifice, and Delphine sees many of their stories as a kind of “Hero’s Journey.” However, many dismissed such notions when Delphine tried to understand their stories, regarding their effort as nothing special. “It wouldn't even occur to them that they were doing something brave and courageous,” she relays, and goes on to point out how their work planted the seeds of what we’re seeing now in post-coup Myanmar. “That level of sacrifice is what has allowed the Burmese to have this deep, long-haul vision of Generation Z.”
Delphine also brings Aung San Suu Kyi in as a character in her book. She skirts the more usual, polarized, Western narratives about “The Lady”—as either a pro-democracy human rights icon, or a defender of the hated military and an apologist for genocide—and brings her into focus through the perspectives of Burmese informants. Her informants describe Aung San Suu Kyi in equal measures as inspiring, pragmatic, and rigid. Yet at the end of the day, Delphine acknowledges that “take her away, and there will be no democracy movement.”
Delphine also explores the role that Buddhism and meditation plays among activists, particularly how the practice finds its way behind bars. She notes that many former prisoners recall their initial experience as a child learning ānāpāna meditation, or observation of breath, and how this simple technique becomes a lifeline once they are incarcerated. Delphine believes that the enduring practice of mindfulness embodies the essence of what Aung San Suu Kyi alluded to in her famous book title, “Freedom From Fear,” which suggests that mental liberation is attainable through this transformative discipline, even in the face of oppressive regimes or the loss of physical freedom. Delphine takes issue with what she feels is a rather lazy, Western characterization of Burmese Buddhism as leading to passively suffering under a longstanding, brutal military regime. “The dissidents used Buddhism and meditation as a way to strengthen their resolve and strengthen their ability to move forward through, frankly, incredibly difficult personal suffering that other people might sit back and feel themselves to be victims.” She also notes how their understanding of the Buddhist concepts of anattā (non-self) and samsara (the endless round of rebirths) encourages activists to courageously sacrifice themselves for the greater movement.
Delphine points out that while a nonviolent ethos defined the pre-transition activist community, largely guided by the writings of Gene Sharp, the post-coup resistance, and the NUG itself, has since called for armed resistance. She recently checked in with Nway about this shift in strategy. “Since 1960, we could say that armed struggle has not succeeded. But since 1962, we can say that nonviolent struggle has also not succeeded,” she reports him as saying. “That was his answer to me, and it was this beautiful balance between, ‘We don't know, [and] we got to do what we got to do!’” In other words, nonviolent resistance was never promoted just for its nobility, but also because it was really the only sane way to respond to an oppressive dictatorship. Yet that is no longer seen as a viable option in Myanmar, and many feel the time has come to launch an armed response. Delphine references a scenario from the Saffron Revolution to buttress the movement’s decision to take up armed resistance: Buddhist monks peacefully chanted the mettā sutta while calling on the junta to engage in dialog with democracy activists… and were subjected to horrific violence in return. “They were seeing these horrific crackdowns that led to children getting killed! At some point, everyone has the right to self-defense, unless you're truly a sort of extreme pacifist.” Many activists have come to the somber realization that peaceful protests no longer work because the military acts inhumanely, and shows no sign of changing.
“From a 30,000 foot perspective, in the long, long story of Burma, they haven't exactly sat pretty and said, ‘Oh, fine, yeah, forget this whole democracy movement.’ Quite the contrary, to a degree, and that's pretty amazing,” she says in closing. “And no, they haven't got to the destination… but they're getting there eventually, so I still have huge faith in them. And because of all the things we spoke about in the sacrifice, and the understanding of that long struggle, and all the other things that many of them have, and even the Buddhist philosophy underlying all this, they're going to get there, it just might not be in their own lifetimes. And some of them are willing to accept that. But they're going fight like hell until they get there and lose a lot of people along the way.”