"Now we're getting shot at, what am I going to do?"
There are stories of bravery, desperation, heroism, inhumanity, and courage coming out of Ukraine on a near daily basis now. Yet we, along with other platforms, have been telling these stories for over a year now. For whatever reason, the world doesn’t seem to care as much about these stories when they come out of a place like Myanmar. So we continue to tell them, sometimes feeling like the words are going to a brick wall. Still, they deserve to be honored, and they deserve to be heard.
This particular story is over a year old. When I was talking to Coco, he discussed first experience joining the nonviolent protests that developed immediately following the attempted coup. He describes in detail what was happening on the streets from moment to moment, followed by his emotional response, all told in stunning honesty. Following this incident, Coco would use his medical skills as a doctor to tend to protesters after the soldiers turned violent, which he talks about later in the podcast.
All the while, as the days got darker and the nights turned bloody, the international community continued to turn its back on Myanmar. With even a modicum of the support being shown towards Ukraine now, either at an organizational or societal level, Myanmar might be in a very different place today. Instead, we are still stuck trying to get our voices heard.
Well, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you here. I am 30 years old, and I have seen what Generation Z activists have not seen. So I'm going to be honest with you, I was actually afraid to go out on the street.
Call me a hypocrite.
I was actually persuading people to join the CDM movement and put themselves forward but actually, I was straight afraid to go out on the street at first. But one of my friends was very active. He was one of those few people who went right out in the street, on the very first day of protest.
What he told me was, at that time, there were a lot of news and activities on Facebook and social media, and people sort of exaggerated things online, like, ‘Okay, people are getting shot now, and heads are being cut off. And there are grenades and whatnot, there is blood everywhere.’ A lot of news like that on Facebook, and a lot of those things were not true. They were all fake or exaggerated in a way. So what he told me was, ‘Stop being online so much, just come with me out in the street and see what it is actually like.’
So I thought, ‘Yeah, I'm going to do it.’ I've been persuading people to join the CDM and put themselves in danger. So it's only natural that I should also put myself out there, too. The first day that I went out, it was back when protesters were peaceful and there was no violence back then. The protesters were actually trying to make peace and become friendly with the security forces. They were offering the police food and water bottles, just handing them out and putting it in front of police forces and saying, ‘Okay, these water bottles are for you. We're just here to make friends, and tell the world our side of the story. We’re just here to protest, and we're not going to be violent.’ The police didn't say anything, but it was okay, back then. There was no shooting or anything.
So I started going out there with him sometimes, and then just alone and joining the general areas of the gathering where there are a lot of protesters.
One day, they shot rubber bullets and stun grenades. It was actually very scary. This one Monday, when I decided to go out again, I'd been hearing news on Facebook that the soldiers might become violent. The security forces were trying to violently disperse the crowd and handle the situation.
So I bought all this protective equipment like goggles and fire-resistant gloves, in order to put out the tear gas, or maybe try to throw it away, just like in the movies. I sort of felt like a Power Ranger at that point! I was like, ‘Okay, Okay, I'm ready. I got my goggles on, I got my mask on. Just throw it to me, I'm going do this shit!’
But when things started to happen when they start firing, this is the very first time in my life that I have actually heard a gun firing. I wasn't actually sure if it was rubber bullets or live ammunition, but it was very loud. The first time I heard it, it is like, bam, bam, bam, bam, and I almost peed my pants, to be perfectly honest. Instead of running, I just sat down, because at that time, my legs couldn’t actually carry me anywhere.
I just dropped down on my knees and tried to breathe normally. But it wasn't like in the movies, where everything slows down and you think clearly. No, it wasn't like that, everything was so fast! People were running, there was a lot of loud noise everywhere. Everything was so chaotic.
I just sat down on my knees and I thought to myself, ‘Okay, so this is it. Now we're getting shot at, I don't know with what, but what am I going to do? What am I going to do?’
I looked to my side, and what I saw was people almost half my age, and some of them were actually girls. I'm going to use the word ‘girls’ here because from the looks, they are so young, like maybe 15 or 16 years old girls and boys. They were actually ready to face what was coming to them.
They have this ‘war face’ on them, you know, stern faces while carrying a water bag. They are ready to put out any tear gas coming their way, and my friend was the shield bearer. Some are even smaller than me in size. They were all ready to do whatever needed, and I was here letting fear take me over.
So I just thought to myself, ‘Okay, this is not how you're going to win this fight! You have to calm yourself down, because people a lot younger than you are fighting this war, so you have to do this.’ So I tried to get back and get into position. A couple of tear gas canisters flew past over me a couple of times. So I tried to put out the tear gas. When the bulldozer came in to destroy our barricade, these shield bearers start to retreat slowly back into the street while we were throwing away the tear gas.