Episode #234: Beyond The Barricades
“In the beginning, I didn’t believe in non-violence, I thought maybe the armed struggle is better, because it's clearly a good way to make a change. It's very feasible, results-oriented, and you can just expand your territory,” says Ye Htet, describing his immediate reaction in the wake of the 2021 military coup. Ye Htet’s thinking was similar to many Burmese who suddenly found themselves trapped in a living nightmare, with their freedoms stripped away overnight and wondering how to respond.
But even as many of his peers took up arms against the junta, Ye Htet‘s path veered in a different direction: he chose, instead, to dedicate himself to non-violent resistance. “Nonviolence, for these three years, I have seen that it's not just an action, it has a much more deep thinking and a deeper philosophy behind it,” he explains.
Initially skeptical that nonviolence could achieve any real results, he soon learned it was not simply a way to confront a brutal adversary. It also pointed towards an inner transformation, of learning to lead a life of non-harm, communicate respectfully and authentically, and develop empathy. However, it was not easy to explain this ideology to other activists, who were committed to armed struggle as the only way to effectively fight the tyranny and terror. “Learning about non-violence, [you] more clearly see the change mechanism,” he says. “Even though it's somehow more difficult compared to armed resistance, like the changes are more subtle and gentle, and it's happening at a deeper down level.” Ye Htet seeks to not just replace military leaders with democratically elected ones, but to help create a society that prioritizes an individual’s inner transformation equally to the development of more humane social and political structures. “Changing yourself and changing society, it is something that is interrelated and happening at the same time,” he says. Ye Htet further clarifies that the particular actions that non-violence advocates may take are not nearly as important as the rationale behind them; thus, much of his group’s time is spent studying the core principles of non-violence, translating materials from leading non-violent thinkers around the world, and sharing these ideas with interested newcomers.
Unlike in the immediate weeks following the coup before the crackdowns, when there were many possibilities for nonviolent action, there is now grave danger in organizing public events. This narrowing of the public space has driven many into thinking that armed resistance is the only option left, and at the same time, it has forced Ye Htet and his group to identify options for nonviolent resistance. This is an important development, and Ye Htet notes that he has spoken to a growing number of people in private who acknowledge the risk of long-term consequences associated with militant action, and so are becoming more interested in his group’s messaging. He is also concerned that the armed resistance is overlooking the potential of real “people power.” “People really want to take part in the revolution, but apart from holding arms and making donations, they have very few roles, like maybe only clicking and signing petitions are the kinds of things they can do,” he says. “If you want to mobilize a movement, you need to really commit to communicate, to build understanding, to convince, and this hard work pay offs and sustains has a sustained impact!”
One concern Ye Htet often hears is that nonviolent resistance in Myanmar simply cannot be effective against this military-led regime. In other words, while a non-violent approach worked in the places like the US and Colonial India, today’s military-controlled Myanmar is more like Nazi Germany or present-day North Korea, with tyrannical leaders unmoved by references to a shared humanity. But Ye Htet flips this concern on its head, explaining that “[w]e are preparing for the long journey,” referring to the decades it took for Gandhi, Mandela, and King to work towards their aspirations. “For me, it is not just about a coup, but a 70-year-long institution,” he adds. noting that because the military has had such a long stranglehold on power, the need to reform underlying societal structures and thinking goes much deeper.
This connects to another factor that sets Ye Htet’s thinking apart from other activists: he doesn't spend much time bothering to criticize, or even think about, the military and their associated violence. He feels that dwelling on this obvious fact inhibits their own agency in becoming the change they wish to see in the world, and uses the 1988 and 2007 protest movements in Myanmar as examples. While he doesn’t hesitate to name the military’s brutality in those cases, he feels that ultimately, those movements failed not because of the military’s actions and violence, but because of the democracy movements’ own organizational and strategic shortcomings, and he does not want this present opportunity to fall prey to the same dynamic. In other words, rather than obsess about what can’t be changed, however awful it is, it’s best to focus all one’s attention on what is within one’s control.
In a resistance movement that many, including Anthony Davis, have termed to be a bona-fide revolution, Ye Htet feels his group’s work is especially critical in helping determine the kind of new society that can emerge after the military is overthrown. With this in mind, he examines how religious, educational and societal conditioning have contributed to shaping corrosive, divisive views about the “Other,” while censoring and shutting down other perspectives. “Without trying to tackle these pillars, we cannot have any real change, because otherwise, there will be just reactions to military operations, and those reactions might not be the solution. They might create more harm for the people,” he explains. For this reason, he feels it’s imperative to study the conditions within Burmese society that enabled such an oppressive power structure to survive and thrive in the first place, so that it can be dismantled and replaced with something better. Only then can real change occur.
Acknowledging the critique that many of the Burmese nonviolent leaders come from privileged backgrounds— though in fairness, pointing out that this was also true of King and Gandhi— Ye Htet explains that “to be a nonviolent [person], you need to have a very stable pathway to build yourself first, because non-violence needs a lot of internal strength, and you need to build that before you go into battle.” But he admits that this privilege then represents a power differential between Ye Htet and his group— who have the time and ability to immerse themselves in this literature and way of thought— and many of the poorer and displaced populations of Myanmar simply struggling to survive. Therefore, another major tenant of the non-violent approach is that its adherents not lecture or talk down to others, or try to “convert” them, but rather look for solutions in authentic communication and active listening. “Identity should not be a way to shut down our voices and to form a barrier between these different communities, and [to prevent] this exchange of ideas properly. So we need to think more about this power play and our roles, and how can we can reduce the role of power.”
Ye Htet turns his attention to the problematic narrative of Aung San Suu Kyi. He still holds her as an example of a non-violent leader, but feels she made some serious, tactical miscalculations. First of all, in general, he points out that holding “actual power always leads to blindness, and making evil plans, maybe with good intentions, but leading to evil things.” More specifically, he believes that she did not do enough to attempt to change the culture from the bottom-up before pushing her various policy initiatives from the top-down; that she shut down critical dialog; and in general, that she did not make more effort to try and understand the country’s ethnic minority communities. In essence, to Ye Htet, her story only emphasizes the importance of righting the ship now, otherwise—assuming the military will eventually dissolve—future democratic leaders may similarly start out with good intentions, only to show other sides of their character once they are in power.
For Ye Htet, understanding non-violence means not seeing people and issues in black-and-white terms. This traps one in binary thinking— like good/bad, right/wrong— that shuts down authentic communication while intensifying blind allegiances… which then inevitably leads to armed conflict. Ye Htet believes it is important to understand how different individuals fit into the system, what has shaped them, so that a more inclusive and sustainable way forward can be found that works for everyone; this includes how power is exercised in a post-military Burmese society, though he admits to no guarantees.
Finally, where some see a value in armed and non-violent approaches operating in tandem, Ye Htet rejects this as contrary to their ultimate aim. “If you say you're non-violent while at the same time you’re affiliating with armed resistance,” then the result of such a collaboration can never truly be effective, because the deeper ethos of the belief system has been violated. While at the same time he is quick to admit that “it's impossible to just have a purely non-violent and or purely armed resistance, they're always mixing,” he clarifies that there can’t be any intentional collaboration between the two paths, as that confuses the deeper aims. “With armed resistance, you can make more arms, you can kill more people, you can gain some territory, and you can build power based on this ability of violence, but is that the end? Or is that the future that we want to create?” He fears this will only form a new type of dictatorship instead, as the society may very well go through a revolution, but the thinking underlying it will not, and so the same problems will only repeat themselves. Here he makes reference to the wisdom of the Noble Eightfold Path, and particularly the Buddha’s teachings on Right View, “because you cannot start with an action if you don't know whether it's right or wrong, as you don't even know what result you will bring!” That also underscores why Ye Htet thinks less about the specific actions he is looking to undertake, and far more about the mind that is executing them. He also doesn’t want to focus only tearing down without equal thought towards what is being built up. “We don't want to just fight military, we want to create a new story that is better for the military and also for the for the rest of the community,” he says. He takes pains to clarify that he is not anti-armed struggle per se, and in fact, he feels that it is quite reasonable for people to choose to take up arms to fight against such severe oppression. However, he firmly believes that being for or against violence is not the issue; to him, the core ethos of nonviolence is to investigate the root cause of violence and seek alternatives to perpetuating it. And from listening to interviews with military defectors, he explains that many have credited their decision to leave their post with the momentum of “having been awakened [by] the People’s Power Movement,” rather than the growing armed resistance.
In this way, Ye Htet believes that choosing the path of non-harm is not just a net good for society, but an inner protection—and transformation—of the individual on that path. “It’s a very significant chance to deviate your lines of thinking and your original approach and intentions. So that's one thing,” he says in closing. “When you do physical violence and kill, you also kind of sacrifice a part of yourself.”