Transcript: Episode #282: The Revolution Will Be Steeped
Below is the complete transcript for this podcast episode. This transcript was generated using an AI transcription service and has not been reviewed by a human editor. As a result, certain words in the text may not accurately reflect the speaker's actual words. This is especially noticeable when speakers have strong accents, as AI transcription may introduce more errors in interpreting and transcribing their speech. Therefore, it is advisable not to reference this transcript in any article or document without cross-referencing the timestamp to ensure the accuracy of the guest's precise words.
Host 0:17
Hi there, and thanks for listening. If you're enjoying our podcast and have a recommendation about someone you think that we should have on to share their voice and journey with the world. By all means, let us know. It could be an aid worker, monastic author, journalist, doctor, resistance leader, really, anyone with some tie or another to the ongoing situation in Myanmar to offer up a name, go to our website, Insight myanmar.org, and let us know. But for now, just sit back and Take a listen to today's podcast.
You Kyaw, we welcome Brian Hioe to this episode of insight Myanmar podcast, and we're going to hear about his life of student activism in Taiwan, the many connections perhaps surprising to some listeners that that association in Taiwan had with Burma, both today in contemporary times, as well as going back generations, and then how his involvement as a student activist led into the milk tea Alliance, of which Burma is playing a very important role now with the crisis that's been developing and the role of the milk tea activist.
Brian Hioe 2:27
Thanks for having me. Yeah. So actually, a great deal of my life is actually spent in the US. I spent around 20 years in the US, of course, of growing up, a lot of my early childhood was back and forth to us and Taiwan, but I was mostly in the US, and so that's where how Myanmar issues came on my radar. In high school, I was the president of a human rights Club, which is very kind of new, young, fresh to activist person doing these kind of different activities. But that was a country of concern quickly, I think, for the international human rights discourse that point in time. So I was aware of issues going back to high school, which is 2006 to 2009 and later on, I ended up in various other movements, like Occupy Wall Street in New York in 2011 and Japan in the anti nuclear movement of 2012 and then in the Sunflower Movement in 2014 which is where a lot of my current work comes out of. But in that sense, then it is interesting. I think I was to build connection with Southeast Asia, and the issues were something I was tracking from a distance from some time on.
Host 3:26
Right. And so what was it particularly about Myanmar that was drawing your interest and pulling you in?
Brian Hioe 3:31
I think a part of it is just the regionally, the human rights abuses by the military regime were quite visible, and at a certain point it seemed like there was hope that things were changing. But then with the NLD taking office and etc, under Aung San Suu Kyi, but disappointing things occurred, such as the ethic cleansing of the Rohingya. And so that was quite disappointing to watch in the 2010s where as there had been a lot of hope previously on Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD, that seemed to be quite disappointing actually, to see this kind of turn. And so that was something I was also tracking from a distance. I were encountering Burmese students in Taiwan, actually, and sometimes getting them into arguments with them about throwing gears. And so that was something that also occurred in the 2010s I think that you do see a few less students from Burma after the after COVID. But that was something that occurred. And so it was something I was watching from a distance. Was only until more recently, with milk tea Alliance, work that I have encountered more directly, actors from Myanmar.
Host 4:23
So you talk about being involved in the sunflower revolution, Occupy Wall Street, the anti nuclear movement in Japan. So I guess a question to predate all of these different involvements of activities is what drove you towards activism and wanting to make a difference and being concerned in the first place? Because there'd be many people in your situation who would see these things happening around you and not really feel compelled or empowered to take a step. So what encouraged you to take that step?
Brian Hioe 4:49
It's a good question, and sometimes I'm not actually very sure. I think a lot of times it is just the people around me were very much part of these movements. But I think the experience of being between identities, between places, do. Being connected to more than one place, it's very easy, then for me to feel that the social causes of whatever place I'm in are something that I should advocate for. And I think being an outsider, seeing economic inequalities or social inequalities also contributed to that in the US, when I was studying abroad in Japan or after going back to Taiwan. And I think wherever I am, I would be involved in some kind of local cause. And I think particularly for me, I was always around surrounded by a lot of young people that are conscious about social issues, and so my friends were involved in this. And that is often my experience when I talk to student movements, whether in various countries in Southeast Asia, they the students often talk about being drawn into movements just because all of their friends were there. And that was also very much my experience in all of these different contexts, actually, right?
Host 5:39
Do you remember the early stages of when, of some of the first stages of activism, where you saw some injustice or something that wasn't right, and then something in you arose to want to try to respond to it, which then sent a wave of momentum that's continued to this day. Do you remember the early stages of that?
Brian Hioe 5:55
It's a good question. But I think even, let's say, on the streets of New York City, it's just so visible the homelessness and the people that do need help, but then cannot receive it, because society is quite unequal. And so I think in terms of that, a lot of my early activism around fundraising or various forms of advocacy, for example. Then in high school, we organized a Pride Parade, which was the first one in the area of New York that we were in. So these various demographics then that don't have the freedoms that we should all have, I think not. None of us are free until we all are. And so I think that was something that was I was very cautious about early on growing up.
Host 6:26
So let's move to involvements you had in your home country of Taiwan. I understand you also spent years in us, and you're half American as well. But looking at your where you are now in Taiwan, you talk about being involved in the sunflower revolution. This is, of course, an insight Myanmar podcast. So our listeners may have varying degrees of understanding what the sunflower revolution was, as well as basic Taiwan politics. So tell us, give us a basic overview of what that was and how you were involved. Yeah.
Brian Hioe 6:52
And so I guess maybe you could fast forward or fast rewind, back to a bit about Taiwan's politics. In that Taiwan is a former authoritarian country. There are two political parties. One is the KMT, the former authoritarian party, which, after democratization, is still around. It realized that by becoming involved in the processes of democratization, it could actually survive if it did not get directly involved in facilitating this process and allowing for it, framing itself as a partner rather than enemy. It knew that it would be limited, and so it is still around during the Sunflower Movement, in 2014 there was a period in which the KMT had come back to power by winning an election, actually, and after winning an election, then it tried to turn back a lot of democratic reforms. For example, there was concern about the rising threat of China, but the KMT had pivoted in the years since the Chinese Civil War, had become a more pro China party, and that's a bit of a complicated story, because, like AMT, of course, fought a bloody civil war with the Chinese Communist Party, but now it is more in favor of political unification. There's a complex story there, but I think the interests of elites within both parties have come to coincide, particularly after the opening up of China and with Taiwan democratizing. And so after democracy, after we have democracy, many in the KMT, the elites have lost their privileges, but if you do facilitate unification between Taiwan and China, perhaps you can get those privileges back. And so there's that. And then in the context of 2014 the KMT is back to power, there is the buying up of meat outlets by pro China businessmen and then censoring content that is critical of China, in spite of the human rights abuses occurring there. And then there's attempt then to ram through a trade deal with China that would allow for Chinese investment in the service sector, industry, which is 65% of GDP. And so that would have an enormous political impact on Taiwan. And that's what led to this month long occupation of the Taiwanese legislature that came to be known as the Sunflower Movement, which I was involved in when I was 22 or so and right out of college, but still hang out with a lot of college students, and so that's why I published a movement. It was mostly with a student group at national Yangon University, and then later on, we ended up forming this publication. It was quite a long movement, but then it was a very much a generational moment of awakening, I think, for Taiwanese young people about staying up for causes or feeling empowered to do.
Host 9:02
So in what ways were you involved in the sunlight movement?
Brian Hioe 9:07
So it's interesting, because I was just a foot soldier, basically, when there was a charge, such as occurred on the first night, on March 18, I charged the legislature with a bunch of other students, physically, yes, charging, yeah, yeah. And so we climbed over a gate into the parking lot of legislature. I got there a bit later after the initial charge had happened, but then me and my friends were there, and then just that's how it all started. And other events, other forms of direct action or escalation, such as on March 23 the night of there was an attempt to storm the executive branch of government, and I was also part of that. And just being gathered in a kind of off site location, secretive, could not communicate like what you're doing, and just like, are you going to part of this action or not assemble at this time? And then we all charge the executive branch of government and things like that. And so I was just kind of variously around at the movement, but it didn't really occur to me that I could act on the movement or try to influence things and build a platform until later on, after the end of the initial wave of the movement. Mm.
Host 10:00
Um, right before getting to the platform that you built, and what that did, just going back to that experience of physically charging, I mean, you're a university student, these, these are you're going into government buildings, which I assume have their own state security. There was there feelings of fear or excitement, or what were you actually feeling physically through the or of danger? What were you feeling physically as you were charging through these buildings?
Brian Hioe 10:22
So it's actually kind of interesting, because compared to a lot of my friends who might have been younger or around the same age or older, I had a lot more experience of social movements because of Occupy Wall Street and the fact that I've been active, in some sense, since 15, and so I by the time then I was a little more used to it, but there's a sense of adrenaline, I think, from this kind of direct action. And I think there are some people in movements that are actually pursuing that sense of adrenaline, which is not necessarily the most productive. But then there's also fear, because you don't know what to anticipate. You don't know what the rule book for the police is to what level they may escalate. And so the night of March 23 is remembered as perhaps being the largest use of police force since the end of martial law, with firing of water cannons and police coming with batons and things of that sort. But at the time, it was just a lot of confusion and just a lot of adrenaline. And I think a lot of it is that we were quite young, and so there's a lot of kind of passion that go into things. People really sometimes become very sucked into the movement in a way that it is being useful in that sense.
Host 11:15
Did that physical charge feel like something coordinated and organized and following a certain protocol, or was there any degree of mob mentality or the excitement of being caught up in something that then came and morphed it as it went along?
Brian Hioe 11:30
So the interesting thing is that the sun firemen and all the direct actions that took place, whether the charge into legislature, the charge of the executive branch of government, they were all premeditated actions. Often, the framing from the protesters would be to act as though these were spontaneous actions, because the public at large, romanticizes spontaneity. But for example, the charge in legislature was deliberate, and people didn't expect to actually get in, but then people got in. And so what do you do now? We just maintain the occupation, but how long will it go? And so A week passed, and the desire was to escalate, because it was not seen as the public responding to the demands of the government responding. So that led to the attempt to charge the executive rent the executive branch of government. And then, even though that occurred, the people the legislature, even though they knew about this occurring, pretended as though they did not in a different group, but it was premeditated, and there were three different groups, the front door, back door and side door. As part of the back door group the front door and the side door group got in. The back door group did not, and we ended up getting surrounded by police and kettled. And what happened was a group of our friends were surrounded by police, and then we were surrounding the police in turn, so we lay down the ground, so they have to step on us if they want to get out. But then a crowd assembled behind us, and so eventually, after a standoff of several hours, the police let us out, because they could not get out safely without the crowd just kind of intervening. And so we all got up then, and we went back around to the front to see what's going on, because they got in, it looked like a war zone, in some sense, but still, then it was very chaotic, et cetera, but it's a lot of different things. It was definitely a planned action, but I think a lot of people didn't have experience, and so the little incidents that occur within this action too have sometimes become magnified within the activist circles, because there's still this kind of portioning out of blame about why that went wrong. It could have been better, and that often happens in social movements.
Host 13:13
I see that all over, yeah, it's interesting hearing you talk because you're quite young, and yet you have quite an institutional history that you're already willing to learn and to draw from. But then you talk about, after this physical action of being, in your words, a foot soldier, you then realize that you could move to another level of activism and advocacy and have your own platform. So tell us how that came about and what that platform is.
Brian Hioe 13:36
Yeah, so we ended up founding nublo Magazine, and so we launched in July 2014 and so it's right about 10 years now, and we celebrate our 10 year anniversary like two months ago. Great. And so after the movement, we just talked about what we could do after, because I see this too with the movement in Myanmar and elsewhere. After this massive spontaneous energy for a movement, you think about how to keep it going long term, and I think it's sustainable, and often it ends up being creating structure, creating a structure, creating new organizations or networks or platforms, et cetera. And so there was a wave of new organizations that emerged, student networks, student unions, and for us, then we wanted to make a publication. There was also a wave of publications that came out of the movement, and one of them was us. Part of it was because a lot of people in our group of friends were more bilingual, and so there's a reading group we often met to read political texts, political literature, philosophy, those kind of texts. And a lot of the reading is in English because it has never been translated into Chinese. And so when the movement happened, a lot of people got involved in the outreach efforts, translating things into English, trying to connect with international world, to make sure people are aware of this expression of how young people feel Taiwan's relation with China or Taiwan democratic politics should be. And so that ended up being the position we played. And so how to continue that? It seemed like forming a publication was a natural step. And so then we got our friends together, just trying to get people involved to write. And I had some experience on student newspapers, and some other people did as well. And so that helped with building a website or editorial content, and that ended up becoming nub magazine, which still runs now, 10 years later, and we also run a physical space in Taipei to do events. And so it has changed a lot, but I think a lot of it was just that the role that people with this ability to communicate could play. And that ended up, I think, determining what kind of platform we decided to make, and what is this apply what?
Host 15:27
What is this platform allowing and empowering you to do now as you follow and engage with the ebb and flow of Taiwanese politics and social movements that you couldn't do before, when this was happening 10 years ago, when you were trying to be involved, you didn't have a platform like this. How is this increasing your stay in power and impact?
Brian Hioe 15:49
Yeah, so I think a lot of it had to do with the fact the world did not really care about Taiwanese voices, or what young Taiwanese people felt about their future. Taiwan's often talked about as an object, as though it's America that determines the future of Taiwan, and I think that's an issue with many countries in the region, actually. And then the international attention on any country that's out of the Western context is quite fickle, so it will very quickly be distracted by the latest news spectacle. And so I think it was building a platform for the counter chat to have more in depth reporting on Taiwan that's more ground level from local perspectives, that's also more detailed, rather than having to always explain these basics, the Chinese Civil War, and then Taiwan, the renegade province and things like that. And so even seeing, actually with Myanmar, just the reporting that those same few lines, yes. And so we have this issue, I think. And so I think it's that's the reason why I decided to do it that, and to try to really kind of counter that, and to have a platform and build up over time so that people could see these viewpoints.
Host 16:45
It's really interesting, because before I had this podcast, I felt that whenever there was a development about Myanmar in the world, I would have to read 75% of an article which told me everything I already knew, to try to get two or three lines of something new, because Myanmar was so off the spectrum of exactly of what was known that we had to remember what happened 15 years ago and 10 years ago and who this person was. And then you'd find one or two little nuggets in there. And when I started doing this platform, sometimes we would have authors or Democratic leaders or different people on and I would tell them, Look, you, I know in the other interviews, you have to explain where Myanmar is on the map and what their history is from. I don't know 48 or 62 or 88 or whatever it is. You don't have to do that here. People know those dates. You can just get right into the the meat of of what your whatever your background or your actions or your work is, and we'll have an audience ready to follow along. People's reactions will just be like, Wow, that's so great. They're so tired of having to explain Myanmar history one on one, and just be able to get, you know, directly into what their particular perspective or work is, so that that definitely resonates.
Brian Hioe 17:51
Yeah, absolutely. I do a lot of the media appearances after a while, eventually, after people knew this platform that I started appearing on radio and television, and it started saying the same thing, and I feel a bit like chatgpt and just explaining, you know, just like the have to digest Taiwan's a complicated 70 year history into just like, a few sentences and then try to get to the actual developing story. And then it is, as you say, just these major outlets for the portal and Taiwan, most of everything has just already been reported. It's common sense, and nobody really to know this, but they might have, like, a paragraph or two. That's something new that you didn't know, right? And so that's something the that is the actual new development that they are reporting on. So it's actually, it's very frustrating. I think that particularly building a platform, we wanted to do something to get around that, because there was a need for that. And it's very different now, actually, 10 years later, because there is such focus on Taiwan after the Pelosi visit and the Chinese military drills and TSMC and semi semiconductors being world known things like that, and so it's very different compared to 10 years ago, when there's very much obscurity regarding Taiwan.
Host 18:48
So I definitely want to get personally into your involvement with milk tea Alliance. But before that, I think this is a really great segue to get into the perhaps in some listeners mine unlikely Association history and current connection between Taiwan and Burma. This is a really interesting point of examination, and let's start with the history, because really, we can, as we were talking before this interview, we can trace the interesting history between Burma and Taiwan at least until the 1950s if not before that. I'm not sure.
Brian Hioe 19:18
Yeah. I mean, I think a lot of it is after the Chinese Civil War, because there were probably connections before. A lot of it, the modern history really goes back to that. I mean, there were k&b troops in the war against the CCP that ended up in Burma, yeah. And we have a long history there that I won't go into as much, but there are some people that came over Taiwan after that. And so, for example, even one of the members of my organization is half Burmese Chinese, Chinese Burmese and half Taiwanese. And so there are people that migrate. And there's a neighborhood in Taiwan that's often referred to as little Burma. That's actually where my family is from, my dad's side, because my dad is actually Chinese, Indonesian, but immigrated to Taiwan, and so he ended up in a place with a lot of other migrants from Southeast Asia. And during the coup, for example, there's a lot of demonstrations there because. The communities there, the exile community. So diaspora communities were NLD supported primarily, and so there's a connection there. But I think what's interesting is that contemporary Taiwan, it doesn't come up as much, because in the past, there has been this emphasis on the KMT and the history and the glory of it. But then there are all these troops that were just abandoned, and they end up having afterlives that then the current government Taiwan, if it's under the KMT, still, they don't really want to deal with that, because it doesn't reflect well on them. And if it's the DPP, which historically came out of the pro democracy movement, they're not as interested in history, because for them, it's the history of authoritarianism party that came Taiwan and then imposed authoritarian law on the people that were there already, which is the population. And so building those connections are more in a democratic, I think, way, or among youth movements I'm much more interested in, but there's actually a very rich history there, and I think people go into that more. There's a history of migration from Southeast Asia. And u do see migrants. I mentioned seeing students from Myanmar in the past, I think again, after the coup and after COVID In particular, you see far less of that. But then that's another connection. I think that it would be quite valuable. And I think this history is something that people are trying to mine out now. And there's some very interesting documentaries have been produced, and some very interesting academic research going to Southeast Asia and trying to find these connections with these communities, something between minority groups, for example, such as haka in Southeast Asia. And so it's quite interesting history there.
Host 21:21
Yeah, yeah. I think the first time this really came on my radar as being something that was a field of interest to to think about, was so I was in some book shop in Yangon, you know, you find all these random books you can't find anywhere else. And I I found some book that was from Taiwan, some some Taiwanese Publication Society that I don't know when it was from 70s or the 80s, and it was a reflection of Taiwanese former, former KMT in Taiwan, who were reflecting about their battlefield trauma and comrades that were lost or that had never made it out of either because they died or they they stayed on in Burma. And it was, it was showing this, this migration from China to Burma and then settling in Taiwan and Burma being this, this kind of, this special but traumatic memory of something they couldn't quite let go of. And that was the first thing that put on my radar of and, of course, in World War Two, you hear this with people from all different, all different backgrounds and regiments and and countries. But that was my first inkling of like, oh, this, this is some, some connection there that I wasn't aware of before this. Yeah, absolutely.
Brian Hioe 22:24
I think it's quite interesting. I mean, there are a lot of people that spent most of their lives, in that sense, actually in Burma, and then may have ended up in Taiwan later on in life. And for them, you know, Burma was actually the place traumatic, but they spent literally most of decades there, and that experience, I think, of wartime, is, yeah, then very at the core of, I think their identity in that sense, yeah, it plays itself off out in different ways. But I think particularly Taiwan often has not grappled with history of the Chinese Civil War and the different afterlives and all across Southeast Asia, in Taiwan itself. And this another part of this large history that has yet to be unpacked.
Host 22:54
And I just want to flesh that out also for our listeners, because not only is this significant, obviously, for the formation of modern Taiwan, but also for the history, the traumatic history of Burma itself, because the Chinese Civil War was one of the great destabilizing factors of many that were already endemic in Burma, but that specifically the the Chinese involvement in in the Civil War at that time, the American CIA covert ops that were taking place in supporting the KMT and the eventual how difficult it made it for U news government to the during the parliamentary democracy period, it was one of the factors that led to ne wins coup and making the in further destabilizing everything. And we had Kenton kymer on the podcast some time ago, who is an academic who studied us Burma relations, and he has entire chapters on what happened during this period and how and the the tense negotiations that were occurring between the US and China and Burma and some of the other actors there To try to evacuate the KMT, but then to pretend that you were evacuating some, but there were some still left. And then, of course, you inferred this. But to flesh it out even further, the KMT who stayed largely turned into what we see as the drug trade and the Golden Triangle that remained. And so the legacy of these KMT troops, these nationalist troops that ended up on the losing end of fighting the civil war against the communists in China. What became of them both, in terms of, well, not, not both, because you have so many factors of destabilizing the country, of going leading to the drug trade and some of the armed conflict that happened in that region, and then the formation of modern Taiwan. I mean, these are, these are, this is definitely a history that hasn't really been unpacked and discovered as extensively as it should be, absolutely.
Brian Hioe 24:44
I mean, just the KMT involvement of drug trade went back to its presence in China. I mean, basically all the force involved were involved in the drug trade to some extent, KMT, CCP, even though they publicly were against OPM, they still engaged in some trade kind of in that sense. And then. Us with somebody sort of blind eye to that. And so particularly Taiwan is another country that in which an right wing, authoritarian actor was backed for so long by the US, which is and in terms of that larger geopolitical design, I mean, Taiwan, Myanmar, it's all kind of part of the US, and that larger what was seen during the Cold War. It's the struggle against communism and propping up these various forces. But then oftentimes the decision making would be very unstrategic, or change suddenly, or to the lack of understanding of local context. And so I think in that sense, most Burma and Taiwan have seen a lot of twists and turns in terms of history. Yeah,
Host 25:34
absolutely. And then that's because so much of that was covert, that's when you mentioned the US would then turn suddenly in a different direction. What they did before that turn is still something not really known today. And so the history of some of these countries, particularly Burma, which is what I know more, is the role the decisions that the US played at different points in time because of geopolitical reasons. And of course, you can go to Britain before that in the colonial period, so much of that has led to the problems that have developed since, really laid the groundwork, but they're now. They now have kind of a ghostly quality of disappearing, where we we forget to attribute some of the problems today with the decisions and actions made there by some of the Western powers before exactly.
Brian Hioe 26:15
I mean, a lot of the essing issues currently go back to British colonialism and the kind of vision that were popped up then. Yeah.
Host 26:21
So again, before we move to your involvement with milk tea Alliance, just staying on looking more from the geopolitical sense and Burma, China, Taiwan, we talked about that history of KMT and how that the what the role that played in the for in in Taiwan over the years. But let's look at the relation between Burma and Taiwan in the ensuing decades. Because, of course, the the question of who is recognizing Taiwan and and having relations is an important one. And so through the years of the dictatorship, the the NLD being in charge, and then the current formation of the nug, even you can say the military. What connections, if any have, they have these different governments or leaders had with Taiwan and recognizing Taiwan.
Brian Hioe 27:05
So ironically, um, Taiwan wants to build stronger economic ties with South Asia to counterbalance China. But then, when it comes to that, there are a lot of the countries in Southeast Asia are military juntos and at the backing of those military junta sometimes it's China. I mean, not direct ties of, let's say authority, but economic and technology transfers, those kinds of things. And so that is for Taiwan is trying to carve out space in Southeast Asia, but it puts itself in an awkward position in that sense. So in the past, there are more migrant workers from Myanmar, actually, but that's not occurred as often in the past few decades. Right now, Taiwan currently have four major countries, which is Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia. And so because of that, there's not as much kind of overt discussion of what goes on. There is actually some movements in the Taiwanese parliament, contemporary Parliament regarding supporting Myanmar. So there are marking of the coup anniversary by civil society groups that go and try to do things with legislators and so forth. But it doesn't really come up that often, particularly in the last decade. And so I think it's quite unfortunate, because I think there could be much more attention to the movements there and what's occurring, or trying to build ties. And so it does come up once in a while, but I think particularly Taiwan ends up becoming one of these places where, because there's sometimes not a lot of attention paid to what occurs there, it can be a way station for funneling goods and technology, repairs and that kind of thing similar to the role Singapore plays. And so civil society groups in Taiwan have sometimes been quite critical. So I think it's a challenge. But I think then, particularly Taiwan, in terms of diplomatic relations, the allies that Taiwan currently has are mostly countries that have very poor human rights records. They're all smaller than Taiwan. And so actually, Myanmar has a larger population by like two or three times. So it's much larger, and so it hasn't really fit into that. But Taiwan's unofficial relations are often much more important. And in terms of diplomatic relations, it often now, in the past decade, particularly, it follows what the US does. And so I think particularly San says on Myanmar would have to probably follow the US. And then the current administration has not really talked about that. I mean, their discussion of, let's say the Burma, discussion of, let's say, the Burma act in DC, but then it doesn't really come up as often in Taiwan, even though there's similar desire to have proposals from the US legislature, they're backing Taiwan. And so it's quite interesting to watch, but it doesn't really come up. It doesn't really come up in political discourse as much.
Host 29:17
And has the nug come out to make any statement on Taiwan.
Brian Hioe 29:22
So there's been some controversy regarding that, because the nug did once refer to one China principle. So this is another complicated thing regarding one China policy, which is the US, and one China principle, which is China, but then China conflates the two deliberately to try to really get people caught up in recognizing its policy. And so it was actually a bit surprising that people from nug emit to one China principle rather than policy, and that seemed to be a strategic misstep, which maybe they themselves were not always so conscious of. The differences I looked into the mid in that sense. And so it's interesting, because Taiwan is a very key interest. For the CCP, but in terms of the nug, for example, negotiating with China, it might have made a bit more sense to actually hold on to that card and play it more strategically. And so that was a bit puzzling. But I think surprisingly, in Taiwan, there's not a lot of strong reactions to that. Taiwan often, despite the fact that it is a former authoritarian country and the current government came out of a democracy movement, does not pay very much attention to what occurs on other parts of the world in terms of similar places with similar contemporary times to Taiwan's own history. Why do you think that is I think there's a blindness to it. I think just Taiwan is very much focused on the US, because of the US backing Taiwan. And so there's only attention paid to US domestic politics. But even then, it's very much flattened into, for example, just the one dimensional metric of, does this politician support Taiwan, or do they not support Taiwan? And so that is actually something I see with other countries too that have substantial ties with us or China. It's very much flattened out in terms of a very simplistic understanding of the context of these places.
Host 30:55
As you're saying that I'm just contrasting Taiwan with Czech Republic. And Czech Republic famously came out of authoritarian rule, and Havel was famous for wanting to look at the freedom that his country had gained, and tried to share that freedom with those who are not yet free. And so because of that, there are, just as we talk about the surprise, the perhaps surprising or unknown connection between Burma and Thailand to Burma and Taiwan to a lay audience. Yeah. So also there, there's, there's a decades long history of somewhat surprising close connections between Czech and Burma, and particularly Havel and Aung San Suu Kyi of Havel wanting choosing Burma as one of several countries he really wanted to to use his own liberation to help others to achieve that as well. And so it's even though check and and Taiwan are such different countries in every every aspect of how you would look at their histories and geography and such, it is interesting to contrast and that when when you said that, it immediately brought to mind the way the role that check has played in wanting to support today and in previous decades, the Burmese democracy movement as it can.
Brian Hioe 32:06
Yeah. So it's interesting, because Taiwan often does have ties with the Czech Republic or Eastern Europe countries that went through this history during the Cold War. But then, I think particularly, Taiwan has not always had the desire to reach out to other countries regarding democracy. I think a lot of that goes back to again I mentioned the issue of China, that the attempt is to wean yourself off of economic dependency on China and build stronger ties with Southeast Asian countries. But then the governments of these countries are often authoritarian, and so that leads to these issues then, in which the Chinese government will not talk so loudly about democracy because of this desire to have economic ties. And so I find that quite unfortunate. I think that human rights kind of a much stronger role to play into. Play in diplomacy for Taiwan. Some legislators are interested in that, but then it often ends up being causes that Taiwan is more familiar with, such as Tibet or Xinjiang. And so then, for example, Myanmar does come up sometimes, but not enough. I did allude to that there are a number of, I mean, Burmese migrants in Taiwan, but they're not large enough as a voting bloc to influence politics in that sense.
Host 33:03
And you did talk about how there was some civil society activity in Taiwan that was in solidarity with the developments in Burma. Can you expand on that?
Brian Hioe 33:13
Yeah, so it's actually quite interesting, because this took place at a time in which basically there was all these different rallies being occur, occurring in Taipei in particular, regarding Hong Kong, regarding Thailand, regarding Myanmar. And so as these events were happening, the students in Taiwan would then start organizing and doing events. And that is the similar pattern in that sense, and that took place around the time in which the notion of the Mukti Alliance came together because of the fact that there's all this online activism. Young people are connecting because of this ability to have a shared discourse online and social media. And that was also around when COVID happened. And so when that occurred Taiwan, which was able to avoid COVID for over a year because the borders were closed, then there actually was still these kind of real world solidarity events happening. And so new organizations came out of that. In terms of the there's a neighborhood, as I mentioned, called Little Burma, which is the where there are a lot of Burmese migrants. And for the first time, I think Tommy decided to realize how large that neighborhood is. There are rallies of 10s of 1000s of people. Wow. And I'm actually not sure this registered regionally as well, because that is quite a large diaspora, yeah, but I think because there are compositions that they're mostly ethnically Chinese, and so they are NLD supporters, mostly. And so I think that's kind of there's not been a lot of attention on that kind of diaspora there, but it is quite interesting to watch. And so there's a time of substantial mobilizations, but Hong Kong and Myanmar were among the largest in Taiwan Hong Kong, because there are Hong Kong migrants, and there's a shared language and historical connection. But also then this diaspora was quite large and could mobilize. So new organizations came out of that, but then some have not really lasted. I think there's a peak of energy, and so I'm not really sure as much what's happening now.
Host 34:50
Yeah, so it's quite interesting, because you've gone into exploring these age old connections between Taiwan and Burma. And that have really impact the futures of both countries going forward, as well as your involvement as a student activist in in Taiwan and the really everywhere you've been, this leads into looking at how all of this came together, how all of this coalesced into what is now known as mot and and you reference how you, yourself, were interested in Myanmar from an early stage, just the egregious violation of human rights leading to a kind of cautious optimism going in the transition period. And so where did this all come together?
Brian Hioe 35:37
So interesting? Because I think a lot of it is because New Bloom at the publication I helped found was very much from the start to the very social media driven phenomenon, because it's young people starting a new publication. It's not going to be print, because there's no way to afford that as being online. But then online spaces, other people start reading to English. It's one of the few English language kind of progressive news sources on Taiwan. It is the largest English language independent media, okay, and which is basically, we're the only independent media in English. And so then what happened is that we built these connections, and they kind of came together online, and Mukti Alliance happened, and then I'll get invited to events to talk about it and things like that, and being pulled more into these different networks. And it's interesting too, because in the beginning I was very skeptical of this phenomenon, because I think particularly around Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring. There's such enthusiasm around social media that, in a way, I didn't think was always justified, because it was a way to organize, for sure, but people organized before the rise of social media in massive numbers. And I don't think that replaces the kind of on the ground activism either, where you do have to go and talk to people rather than just online interactions. But then when it came to the multi Alliance, there was a lot of creativity online, and in terms of artwork, some means being produced. There's a very self referential but humorous kind of element to it. And what's also interesting to me is that it's very much a phenomenon of the present. It's very much a phenomenon of globalization. Even the name Milk Tea, Milk Tea, of taking the name from that each country in the milk tea Alliance has a milk tea beverage signifies that you're aware of the other country through food, for example, because either that you've traveled there or there are restaurants in that country in your home country. And the way it came together through online memes from a Thai BL drama and then all these other memes from Japanese anime or Hollywood that reflects this kind of shared discourse that young people in the region or worldwide have. It's kind of the ability to come up with a shared sense of humor around that, and then to steer that in political directions. And then we see that with other phenomena as well. For example, K Pop stands can be very political. That's another online phenomenon that came together in multi Alliance. And then eventually, kind of in these online spaces, I encountered names I'd heard before, because there was a series of movements that occurred in the early 2010s which are often occupation style movements, whether in Taiwan or Japan or Hong Kong, with Umbrella movement or elsewhere. And then there would always be the groups that came out of each of these movements. I was interested in building transnational solidarity. And so for Taiwan, our group was that group, see. But then there were other groups, and other individuals are very much interested in this. And there were attempts in the early 2010s like 10s that come together and form these kind of transnational alliances. And eventually they lost steam by the mid 2010s but then in the late 2010s with the rise of the Mukti Alliance, I would say the same names again. And so then it's like these people. And so sometimes I would finally meet somebody through this framework, the Mukti Alliance, that perhaps in a different world, or things had gone differently, or if there had not been COVID, I would have met maybe closer to early 2010s but then in that sense, we started working together and doing things and coordinating campaigns and things like that. And often takes place at a distance. But I think COVID in particular has been an accelerator for the ability to coordinate campaigns online, because everyone's doing everything online, and so that's been another phenomenon.
Host 38:41
Great. So that leaves us where we are with milk tea now, through this rather amorphous journey of people coming together and finding connection, where would you say? How would you say that Myanmar has influenced milk tea, or the role that Myanmar plays in this?
Brian Hioe 38:57
Yeah, I think Myanmar is a very strong focal point, because it is the outlier, in some sense. So the milk tea Alliance, the original three countries were Taiwan, Hong Kong and Thailand. And if had only been Taiwan and Hong Kong, nobody would have linked, because Taiwan Hong Kong, there's the shared threat of China, there's a shared language, or ability to read each other's language, so maybe not communicate speaking. And it's East Asia that Northeast Asia, in that sense. And then for Thailand, it's the new addition. It's Southeast Asia. And so that's actually what made it unique, in terms of milk tea Alliance. But then Myanmar also joining the multi Alliance reflects the permeability of this framework, that basically, when there's a struggle, you can also be part of the multi Alliance. It's not exclusionary, but it is the one in which there was not just peaceful protests or student movements in forms of civil disobedience, but one that's sold over into a civil war, and I think that is the difference, but I think that though there's a very strong difference that sense. So the protest tactics that work in the other places, for example, will not work in Myanmar, because it is more oppressive and it is a civil war. So different circumstances, but then a lot of other experiences are similar. For. Ba Paul, the experience of exile with Hong Kong and Myanmar currently, that is very similar. And so I think there are particularly ways that we can all learn from each other, actually.
Host 40:07
So when you talk about Myanmar joining, what does that mean? Myanmar joined? Was there? Was there a particular group or activist that came to the fore? How did, how was it that Myanmar became involved in those moments?
Brian Hioe 40:19
Not really people are getting involved, because milk tea alliance is very decentralized and there's no formal organization. But then voices from Myanmar would emerge. Were interested in this or this kind of framework online. And so there was that, and there was a desire from other milk tea Alliance groups that had already formed to kind of look at Myanmar then, or to build more ties there, because of seeing what's going on. And so I think it really is the ethics of the milk tea Alliance, in some sense, is this shared sense of solidarity and this desire that, or the view that whatever happened to the region, we all have a stake in this. And so I think that's what led to this desire to really outreach. And I think it did help having friends from Myanmar that you knew from before, and so they're in the struggle when things happen there. And so you also feel a sense of investment, because they are your friends. And so I think a lot of the construction of solidarity is based on friendship in that sense. And so knowing people from places which gets you invest in it. I mean, I mentioned that from high school, I knew what was happening in Myanmar back then, but you don't really have a personal stake until you actually know somebody from there, right?
Host 41:14
And so now, over three years after the coup has taken place, still not successful, unlikely, hopefully to ever be successful, but resistance continuing, and the country really going through, through struggles. What? What is the role that that Myanmar now is playing in the milk tea, alliances and discussions and frameworks? Because it is, even though there are similarities across these countries of the type of struggle and the type of authoritarianism that they're fighting, there really is an extreme going on in Myanmar that still does make it something of an outlier. So how is that being seen in the contemporary discussions milk tea?
Brian Hioe 41:54
There's also another reason why Myanmar is an outlier. It's because milk tea is a very internet driven phenomenon, but there are such internet outages in Myanmar, so it's very, actually difficult. So I think particularly there's a desire now to have more Myanmar voices. I mean, I mentioned all this desire to, like from my work, for example, to try to get Tommy's voice out there. And I think we all feel that about our own countries, but then in this struggle, I mean, obviously it should be Myanmar voices, but then that becomes more difficult because of the lack of internet access, the repressive conditions, and so that's a challenge. And so oftentimes that we end up working with people that are in exile, and that then trying to build something to kind of have shared campaigns. The fact that so many people are here now in Thailand is actually that helps a lot. Because, I mean, I think then you can have more direct connection with someone that you can actually meet, but then I think that's that's a challenge actually, how to connect these different places. But then places, but then really how to elevate Myanmar voices, and I think particularly ASEAN is a target of a lot of campaigns, because ASEAN is supposed to be this regional framework that is for a benefit, but then does not actually do things, and is often very quiet and is reluctant to take stands on human rights abuses in any of these countries, really. And so trying to call that to account is another kind of thrust of the multi Alliance thing efforts currently. I mean, there's no organizations, there's no specific policy or campaign. There's just a number of various spontaneous campaigns are decentralized. There are various attempts at coordinating as well between different groups, which can also be challenging. And that occurs within Myanmar as well, because when you have a exile diaspora, often then you see fragmentation and fights and infighting and so also navigating around that is another challenge. But that's true actually, of all of these contexts. I mean, you know, Hong Kong sees similar struggles. And so how to share our experiences and learn from each other is something we, I think, attempt.
Host 43:33
And so where do you see milk tea? Going forward, if you've had a part of moe tea is such an emphasis on decentralization and democratization and not wanting to have a central leadership or organization. And yet there, there are disadvantages and things you give up by being able to have the more spontaneous collective decision making type of action going forward that maybe you lose in terms of the focus and the central decision making that can happen, but then you take empowerment and authority away from people with their own ideas and creativity, and you just repeat the same structures that have existed before.
Brian Hioe 44:13
Yeah, I think the identity of milk tea is very much caught up to being decentralized and having no leader. Particularly that's an evolution, because for the movements of early 2010s to the late 2010s is the early 2010s are much more leader figures. The Joshua Wong was the netowitz et cetera. And what happened is they get targeted, and part of efforts decapitate movements. Once they don't have leader they are more directionless. And so the adaptation is to have leaderless movements or decentralized. You have planning. That's coordination attempts, but then it's very much not based on individuals, and that's very much the core of milk tea Alliance. But I think that, again, as I mentioned, after movements, there's a lot of spontaneity. You try to put that into the structure, to keep it going, and that's maybe also the attempt. The other thing is that the milk tea alliance is fading as a hashtag. There's research done by Austin Wong, who's a Tun is professor of political science and tracking the. Mentions of military alliance on the internet, there's been a very dramatic drop. And so is it still relevant that I think for us, it's still relevant, but it's also true, I think that we'd be the people trying to organize transactional solidarity regardless. And I think then think about ways to keep this going, because movements have ebbs and flows, highs and lows, and we're going through another kind of phase of contraction. And so how do we get ahead of the curve and think of ways to make it more sustainable? That's a question. And so it might involve some income structure that is still able to maintain a decentralized ethos, or to keep managing the current level of activity in a kind of pattern, a holding pattern, until something else comes along that allows for another kind of flaring up of protester capacity to do things.
Host 45:40
And so that's another question. One thing we've heard a lot from people outside of Myanmar who have been in milk tea or supporting the in some form. What's been happening in Myanmar is that this, this sense of a reciprocal relationship, that what we're doing for them now, they're we hope that they're then going to be there for us when we go through our struggles, and we have similar struggles were also working out. And one of the things we saw soon after the coup was that that I heard of at the time was that a lot of the Burmese protesters and the organizers were using advice and guidance from Hong Kong especially, and Taiwan or Thailand as well, in what in those early days of the protests. And there were actually like manuals being translated, and people overseas that were that had been there, done that, that were giving them advice when that happened at the time, I to be honest, I didn't know so much how to make sense of it, because I wasn't following those regional movements as much. I was really just in Myanmar, and knowing that more as the time has gone on, the scope has come out, I've been much more interested in seeing these transnational relationships and these connections and associations that can happen.
Brian Hioe 46:46
I think that multi aligns a lot of the ethics, is to pay it forward, because everyone's gonna go through something eventually, and so you try to be there for other people in hopes they will be there for you when something occurs. In that sense, I think there's also a lot of capacity to learn, because we all share similar challenges, but more practically or pragmatically, we share similar policing techniques from states because often they're using the same technology we learn from each other. So do authoritarian states, and so you do have different manuals. I mean, Hong Kong during the protest, there was a lot of crowdsourced manuals of what year is useful, the safety helmets, the goggles, the masks, what model helps for what circumstance, how many blows can this helmet take from police baton before breaks those kind of things? And because then that that kind of knowledge is very useful for another context, if you can get the same stuff. But also, for example, the way that tear gas canisters were put out with safety cones, and that in Hong Kong was filmed and memed and manuals are made, and that ends up elsewhere in Thailand, or Myanmar, et cetera. And the iconic clothing from Hong Kong pro democracy protesters are black, and the kind of gear that people wear, you see that in other places now, and I think that's much more common, because that's just the way you deal with things. And then I hear stories of people knowing how to put out tear gas and things like that. And, you know, just villages doing that and things like that. And Internet has really been very powerful for that. And so you do have this attempt to create connections. A lot of that. These manuals are just kind of produced spontaneously online from random individuals. But then I think also there's a lot of internet artwork that gets created, and I think that's also very interesting to watch. The three finger salute, for example, is spread from place to place to place, and it came from The Hunger Games originally. And so that's another way which this, this meme from a kind of popular culture thing that we all know regionally, became present in each context. But I think it's another kind of it's a very sequential in that sense, because Hong Kong drew so much attention at the time that other countries seem to learn from Hong Kong. And I think correspondingly, it's not as much that Hong Kong protests would look to Myanmar as perhaps the other way around, and so points to some of the unevenness within the military alliance. Hong Kong is the kind of focal point, and then other countries try to learn from this experience. And I think about a lot of is because there's so much media spectacle there. And I think it's interesting too, because particularly Hong Kong ties to China, and that ties to the Western world's geopolitical interests, and Myanmar has not received as much attention sometimes, because of contrary to that, there's not as much geopolitical interest there. And I think particularly Hong Kong, there's a lot of Western media that are present in Hong Kong. That's why all these images could flow out from Hong Kong. But Myanmar, though there's a civil war, and though there's as much air strikes as in Ukraine, you don't have as images and spectacle coming out. And so it is true. I think there's also some shortcomings of this kind of online phenomenon in terms of what place it pays attention to, right?
Host 49:27
One of the other hopes and aspirations of milk tea is obviously to influence society, to have an impact, and trying to create the types of societies and freedoms and governments and leadership structures that you would like to see going forward to advocate for that and any number of ways, whether it's media or politics running for office or social initiatives, campaigns, freedoms, changes in law, whatever it is. Looking at the wider milk tea phenomenon movement over these past number of years, are there real successes? Can point to that you can attribute to milk teas influence in whatever country you want to point to.
Brian Hioe 50:04
It's actually a good question. I actually think not really, because I think a lot of these phenomena it's hard to point to as a concrete influence. I do see these memes, I do things, these images and manuals and things like that circulating. But having a concrete influence for anything is very difficult, I think, for social influence, and I think it's very hard to point to that. And I think that maybe that's the point is to not look at that concrete example, but the shared kind of ethos or discourse, or the desire for young people from different countries to kind of stand in solidarity with each other in that sense. Also, I think maybe it's good that there's not this attention to what does occur, because it is an online phenomenon. It's anonymized in age in which it's, as I mentioned, we don't really have a leader of protests. Now we have leaderless protests because things are more dangerous. Everything is anonymized. And so I have a kind of danger or fear of the military alliance becoming this kind of conspiratorial thing where people point to that as Illuminati orchestrating everything. So it's like all these conspiracy theories about the NED or the CIA and so forth. So there's also that, but then I think, in the meantime, it's a is a network that exists, and I think it is helpful, right?
Host 51:06
That's you bring up the question of danger and safety. And so just as these dictatorial regimes and authoritarian leadership structures are conspiring and talking to each other to learn the latest in how you control your population. So also these transnational movements of of activists and advocates are coming together to see, to learn from each other and see what they can do to to be able to to influence the kind of change they want. But I'm sure that those more authoritarian regimes are not too happy about their own nationals talking to each other more and more and connecting more and more. And so are there wider safety considerations to be considered when, in terms of the sharing at the top levels going on, of how you guys are meeting each other, coordinating, having campaigns physically at times, going to physical places to meet and to talk in person. Are there real safety precautions that have to be made about those governments coordinating to prevent you on the ground from having those connections.
Brian Hioe 52:07
Yeah, it's a good question. I think there's always that concern. But then then the need is to stay under the table and kind of keep it out of the being under the radar of the governments, I think. But it's a question, and so it's interesting, because it is a form of activism that's very much based on a non amenity, whereas in another context, or maybe even 10 years ago, it'd be about trying to raise your profile, and much more about individual sense. And so I think a lot of that is it's a challenge. I mean, there's some places we can still have meetings and that kind of thing. I mean, Taiwan is still safe, and so you can still go there. But then what happens is the visas are much more challenging from activists from Southeast Asia, and so we always have these kind of compromises that you have to kind of make, and so it is difficult. I think it's always it's a form activism that's about reducing profile in a way, while drawing attention to a specific cause. And so I think that's, that's the ethos currently.
Host 52:51
And where do you see the focus on Myanmar going forward, from the Milk Tea standpoint?
Brian Hioe 52:56
It's a good question, because I think particularly these online phenomenon or even this kind of an authoritarian ethos. It's often protesting against state actors. But then in this case, with Myanmar, you do also have to appeal to other state actors to try to provide aid or etc, or to pressure other governments to condemn the actions of the junta. And so I think it's a good question. It's also a challenge, as I mentioned, because connecting with actors on the ground is much more difficult right now, compared to the other context of milk tea Alliance, in which there were protest movements happening, but you still had ability to access people online. And so it is a question. So I think a lot of the question is, how do you conduct this advocacy from outside, but also which hopefully does center Myanmar voices, and yet it is so difficult to do so at present. And so I think that's still the things we're working on present. I think it's kind of unresolved, but we've been trying to get around that, I think, for several years at this point, because this has not really changed in the course of the past few years, trying to center Myanmar voices, but then it's very hard getting people to be able to put energy into this, or have the capacity that you can access them those kind of things, right?
Host 53:57
So with that in mind, I think we've covered a great gamut at warp speed of this Taiwan, very interesting Taiwan Burma history and milk tea, and where you found yourself in the nexus of all of this. I really appreciate this discussion and the sharing that you've done to help us understand this. And thank you for your time and coming on here.
Brian Hioe 54:19
Well, I mean, I hope that there we can continue to act in solidarity and continue to coordinate so continue to coordinate. So still trying to work on that, I guess so, I guess I'll leave it there. Thanks for having me.
Host 54:40
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