Episode #223: Thinzar Shunlei Yi
“[When I was young,] I didn’t really know what towns looked like,” admits Thinzar Shunlei Yi. “I’d never been to one! I never met or talked with any civilians. I was raised inside [the military compound], around soldiers, and by soldiers. We had our own school, our own hospital, our own markets, and we lived in our own small society.”
In describing her childhood growing up in a military family, Thinzar explains how the impact was not just material, but also psychological. “We were trained to be superior. I was always being told that we were different, we were not same as civilians. We have to take care of them, which gives us a superior role. We are the protector.”
Because her father was more progressive than others, Thinzar was allowed to read books, which she did voraciously, and this piqued her sense of curiosity, and she was charged with running the family grocery shop, which inspired a sense of independence from a young age. This budding curiosity and sense of freedom significantly shaped the adult she has become. At the same time, her upbringing shielded her so much from normal life outside the barracks that she had little clue what was really going on in her country, until she attended university, where she found herself alongside people of all backgrounds. Ethnic minorities, who she had long considered terrorists, described a different story of the atrocities visited on them generation after generation… and all at the hands of her father’s peers.
“That really shocked me,” she remembers thinking. “I couldn't accept it, and I was defensive.” But after more conversations, and seeking out books that had been banned on the compound as well as exploring the newly-emerging internet, Thinzar came to realize the tragic truth of what she was hearing. “I prepared myself mentally and physically about becoming more democratic… and in that way I built my tolerance and understanding, and that's where my activism grew out of.” It was not an easy transformation, however, as Thinzar had to grapple with inner feelings of guilt and shame as she reflected on her past and upbringing. “The reason why they were persecuted, the reason why the families are living in fear, the reason why civilians always submitted to us, now that all makes sense,” she admits. “When I went out in public, civilians gave an immediate priority to me, just because I'm a daughter of a soldier.” Where she had once interpreted this action as a sign of respect and gratitude, she now understood it was in fact fear and contempt.
Yet while her experiences with other students at the university began to open her eyes, Thinzar soon learned that her professors were afraid of her opening her mind. They quickly hushed her when she inquired into the nature of democracy, or why ethnic and religious minorities were not afforded basic rights. Myanmar was not a free society, and there was much danger in speaking about such topics.
So Thinzar began to form discussion groups with a diverse circle of friends. Yet she faced resistance from the activist community, who doubted that someone from such a privileged class could genuinely be interested in the plight of others. But she persevered. “I became part of the activist community, I became a human rights defender, and a civil society actor. And then I protested, I was charged, and then I became, really, a revolutionary,” she says of her transformation.
Yet she still faced questions and resistance from other activists because of her background. For example, when she publicly called out the NLD for not following through on their promises to improve the lives of minorities, she was accused of being a military lackey who really just wanted to undermine Aung San Suu Kyi. And she admits to having to overcome her own fears that Myanmar was under threat from a Muslim invasion, which the military’s relentless propaganda had fostered over the years. Her final realization came in 2017, when she heard stories of persecution from many Muslim Rohingya friends, and she understood the full extent of her brainwashing and the terrible consequences it was leading to. So she organized a public forum to amplify her friends’ voices, but because this was at the height of the military’s Islamophobic propaganda, many Bamar were quite upset with the event. She describes targeted attempts to shut her down by engaging in public character assassination, and disparaging things were said about her Muslim boyfriend. “I was speaking about privilege and power,” she describes, “and how we should be aware of our own privilege, and not abuse it or misuse it against others, but use it in a better way.”
Believing in the impact that communication and dialog could have, Thinzar did everything she could during those years to influence public perception of the nation’s ethnic minority communities. She began to travel across the country, conducting trainings and forming grassroots networks of like-minded activists. This was no easy work: speaking in front of tight-knit communities who had developed a built-in suspicion of The Other over the years, she encouraged people to trust where little had existed in the past. “I felt like there was a space for us [as a Bamar person] to raise different opinions, especially when you are not a minority. So that gave me more confidence, and I started speaking up for other different minorities.”
In addition to organizing dialogues and training sessions, Thinzar’s activism also began to encompass performance art. One of her more meaningful activities was dressing up as a Shan IDP in 2015 in front of a popular, downtown, Yangon mall, to bring the reality of continued violence against ethnic communities to the Bamar heartland. Taking on the actual identity of a persecuted minority was another step in Thinzar’s evolution to understanding the ethnic experience, and it left a deep impact on her to quite literally wear the shoes (or in this case, the flip-flops), of another person. “It was so overwhelmingly humbling,” she says. “It gave me a strong reason to work for the people, especially on the grassroot level.”
Of course, today the question of privilege in Myanmar has changed dramatically following the coup and its ensuing violence, as Thinzar wryly notes, “We all equally refugees, we are all equally stateless, and in a way, this gives us more chances to open up our heart!” As most Bamar have by now faced the targeted terror of the military in some form, they sadly understand through their own, direct experience the truth of what ethnic communities have been alleging for years. And like Saw Htee Char has also pointed out, far from feeling superior to them as had so often been the case in the past, many Bamar have come to rely on the fighting prowess and training of ethnic militias to survive. That people from all sides now see the necessity of a true federal democracy is a clear silver lining for Thinzar that emerges out of the dark clouds wrought by the coup. “We’re on the right track, and I feel better than the past 10 years,” she says. Indeed, Thinzar was so depressed by the NLD’s track record that she couldn’t even bring herself to vote in the 2020 election! “The one thing that we can say is, we will never be the same again, after 2021. So that's something we get out of this whole process. It is so painful, but at least we are going for a better political system.”
Aside from the political sphere, another core element of Burmese society and culture undergoing a radical shift is religious, specifically Buddhism. Although she grew up in a traditional Buddhist family, Thinzar’s personal transformation with the faith began in earnest when she was 16 years old, when she attended an Abhidhamma course at Sule Pagoda. Always the independent thinker, she took advantage of her teachers by asking many questions, and their answers encouraged her to read and study further. Realizing that study could only take her so far, she also enrolled in intensive meditation courses every Thingyan. Learning the Buddha’s teachings through diverse methods and teachers demonstrated that there was not one single way forward, but many different options based on one’s personality and interests. In this sense, she learned that her spiritual path need not be constrained by simply reading and sitting formally and intensively in silence. As an active person, she realized that she could apply mindfulness throughout her life. “There are other way of doing things, and that unlocked my understanding of Buddhism,” she says simply, adding that meditation practice also provided a stable mental and emotional training that could be utilized and applied anywhere. To her, now, the Buddha’s teachings are less a religion, and more an ethical guide, as “a way to rely on yourself to [develop more] self-awareness and a critical mindset.” It helps her to contextualize the inevitable ups and downs of life, be more reflective about her mental states and emotions, and to trust in the ethics of her actions based on the law of cause and effect, even when facing various difficulties or criticism.
The complex social and political dynamics of Buddhism in present-day Myanmar has created an odd dichotomy that affected Thinzar’s ability to openly integrate her sincere Buddhist faith into her role as an activist. On one hand, the nationalistic brand of Buddhism actively promoted as a tool for persecution by the military has caused ripple effects throughout society, and their backwash complicated Thinzar’s efforts. Due to her privileged background and association with the military, she had to break through the resistance of those who had suffered at their hands. Similarly, she found that many non-Buddhist contacts did not initially trust someone who devoutly claimed the faith that was used as a means to oppress them and deny their own freedom of religion. Moreover, when she emphasized the Buddhist tenants of compassion and good-will while speaking out against the military’s violence against the Rohingya community, it was not received so well by the older generation, in particular, who had been the most susceptible to the military’s propagandizing; they felt she was naïve about the “problem” of Muslims in the country as well as unrealistically idealistic, and so her appeals went ignored.
Thinzar has also watched with growing concern as the younger generation is coming to associate the Buddha’s teachings with the nationalist, pro-Bamar sentiments promoted by the military, and she fears this could alienate an entire generation from the benefits of this spiritual path. Still, she sees is a growing awareness among some Bamar Buddhists as to how the military tricked them with hateful propaganda, spurring them to try to uncouple their devotion to the Buddha’s teachings from the regime’s divisive messaging. And where she had once been dismayed to see how many Bamar Buddhists had showed a lack of compassion towards the Rohingya and ethnic minority communities, Thinzar now sees a wealth of forgiveness being expressed towards those soldiers who choose to defect, understanding they were part of a corrupt system that harmed them as much as anyone else. That goodwill extends to ethnic peoples who are non-Buddhist as well, recognizing that these soldiers were treated like animals, underscoring the need to finally break what Thinzar calls “this “cycle of violence.” Her Buddhist understanding allows her to see how many in the military suffer with intense insecurity and fear, which makes them cling all the more to their power and their weaponry, causing them to feel they will have nothing left if they walk away. Therefore, part of her work is not only trying to bring about defections while encouraging their warm reception by the people; but also helping these former soldiers to discover a greater meaning and fulfillment in life once they leave the military behind.
Thinzar has also continued her use of performance art. Perhaps the work she is most famous for, and which went viral around the world, was done in solidarity with the many women who the military had assaulted. She photographed herself with makeup to give the impression of her face being bloodied and bruised in order to highlight how the military had brutalized these women, and even published their photos as a kind of twisted warning to other female activists. “You could be ugly, but it's your spirit that we are fighting with, and it's your spirit that we love,” she says by way of explanation. Hundreds of other women in Myanmar and beyond followed suit, and because of this, an online campaign began to shed a light into what was happening in Myanmar.
Although Thinzar Shunlei Yi has lived as activist for all these years, she acknowledges the personal toll it takes. “You see all your close friends being tortured, sometimes killed, and also different stories coming out from the ground every day, we have to deal with these news,” she says in closing. “In the morning, you will be really sad and depressed, you don't know what to do, you're not in a position to control things; and in the evening, you will be motivated again, because you see the whole picture of what the revolution is about, and still people are striving, and this is for the good for the country.”