Putting peace on hold
There were few interviews more compelling, revealing, and devastating than the one we did with Lynn, a lifelong pacifist who became a leader in the resistance movement. In the following excerpt, after he describes his rationale for abandoning his work on the peace process to join an ethnic armed training camp, I ask him how his mental and emotional states have accepted this new direction. His answer is soul-searching, vulnerable, and heart-breaking all at once, while also giving expression to the individual struggle that so many Burmese are facing in having to make these difficult decisions. At a time when so many people are Ukraine are now having to face such horrible decisions in their own lives, attention to and sympathy to their struggle continues to make front page news, while voices like Lynn, speaking over a year ago, continue to be ignored. For those of us trying to support the democracy movement in Myanmar, it is so important to take the time to listen to people like Lynn.
“My personal values for appreciating and loving peace, it can wait until this is over. And then we will be back on a path of peace with our ethnic brothers and sisters.”
Host: You’re describing how you have run out of options of what you had been trying to do to resist dictatorship, and that this was the only remaining option to secure freedom for yourself, your family, and your country. And how you see [violent resistance] as a tool that is to be used as limited as possible until you reach to the other side, back to democracy. So while I understand all of that, I imagine that there are still emotional, ethical, perhaps mental, even spiritual or religious components that, even though this is what's accepted logically, there's still something internally that struggles with the process and the transformation, is that right? And if so, how does that manifest, and even as the logical mind has laid out the path, but internally, how does that transformation then to adjust to that new logic?
Lynn: Well, it's quite difficult to express how this transformation is going! I am not a religious person, but was born and raised as a Buddhist. So Buddhist principles are guiding principles for my life, and although I'm not religious, and don't go to temples and pagodas, and don’t pray, but at the same time… I am rather confused.
All religious teachings, for the whole life, and our political system, it has restrictions imposed on us. So for individual and internal freedom, I believe Buddhism is good, but when it comes to a society, like fighting against some injustice, I don't think it works that way.
So, I'm not quite sure whether I can put myself in that religious aspect, and look at what I'm involved in right now. It's rather difficult to actually express that transformation to you now.
I don't know if I'm making sense, but I am looking at the Arakan Army’s model, which started with just 26 people or so. It's quite an inspiring story for self-determination. The ethnic groups need to have an army for self-determination.
I am called a Burman, although I don't recognize myself as such. I don't believe myself as an authentic Burman or Bamar, because I'm mixed. I am Mon-Karen-Bamar… whatever.
Anyway, what what I'm saying is that I get inspired by the Arakan Army's story and General Twan Mrat Naing’s story. For self-determination for ethnic groups, there must be an organization protecting the rights of their citizens.
Yet for the Bamar people, we never had this apart from the army. And this army that we have, it's not for Bamar people, it's just an army of Min Aung Hlaing. They're working only working for him! The ultimate objective and responsibility of an army in a country is to protect its citizens. But this is the total opposite, they are a mechanism that tortures and kills their citizen, not ever really protecting them.
So in order to stop them from what they're doing, there must be an army or an organization or groups that fight them, so that they will not be able to do that anymore. So with that belief, my determination is that it must be stopped. And my personal values for appreciating and loving peace and working for it, it can wait till this is over. And then we will be back on a path of peace with our ethnic brothers and sisters.