Transcript: Episode #306: The Long Road To Freedom
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 0:20
Hello. Thank you for joining us for the next hour or two in this episode of Inside Myanmar podcast. In an age of nearly limitless content, we appreciate that you're choosing to take valuable time out of your day to learn more about what is happening in Myanmar. It's vital for this story to be heard by people around The world, and that starts right Now with you.
Hello to this episode of Insight, Myanmar podcast, and we are speaking to John quinley at Fortify Rights. John, thanks for taking the time talk to us.
John Quinley 1:52
Yeah, thanks. It's great to be on the podcast. I've followed you guys and listened listened to a lot of episodes, so it's great to have the opportunity to speak today. Yeah, I first started getting interested in Myanmar when I was actually really young in high school. I grew I was born and raised in Thailand, and so Myanmar was always like, really close by. So I just became really intrigued. I was home schooled for many years growing up, and so my mom was trying to push reading on us, so we would read these magazines put out by this humanitarian organization called Partners relief and development. And they were started and founded by Steve and Aung kamir. They would put these magazines out, I think, monthly or quarterly, and they would talk about the humanitarian situation, the work that partnership development was doing the internal conflicts going on in Koran and Sean, those kind of long term wars, and then they would talk about just the general political situation. So when I was I remember us being 1516, just being really interested in and making my first trip to Myanmar when I was like 16, so just really fascinated and in love with the people and the place since I was in high school, and then I started doing proper work in Myanmar, later on, volunteering for partners, relief and development for a year in San state, doing educational stuff with them in loi To Lang in a RCSs controlled area, ethnic armed organization controlled area along the time Myanmar border, and then coming back and doing some journalistic work, and then joining Fortify Rights about eight years ago. So been with fortify for about eight years. And for those that don't know, Fortify Rights is the international human rights organization and kind of started working in Myanmar at the founding of the organization.
Host 3:43
You had this growing awareness from reading. Then you visited when you were 16, and then you went to Shan State on this kind of volunteer work with partners relief from and that sounds like a very interesting experience as well with being under the auspices of an armed group. But from those first two trips of actually being in the country, the country right next door to where you grew up. What stands out? What do you remember from learning about the country and the people from those early encounters?
John Quinley 4:08
Yeah, I mean, I was really young at that time, and I think it was formative years, right? But I remember going in that time, I think it was, you know, it was junta controlled. It was military dictatorship that time, wasn't a lot of tourists. So the Burmese people that I was meeting at the time as a young adult were really interested in talking to foreigners, getting information. There was a very little information coming into the country. At that time, sanctions regime was still very much in place, and, you know, there was a lot of surveillance and restrictions in places like Yangon and Les Bagan even even the tourist areas. So I think people were super curious and interested in talking to a foreigner like myself, and that gave me a lot of opportunities to make friends and to learn about what was happening in Burma. I remember I had a. Lonely Planet book at that time that I was using to kind of travel around and lonely planets, and those kind of books had some critical information about the junta, so they really illegal. So I remember one of the tour guides that we hired asked for the book at the end of our trip, because he was like, I know. I want information in the country. I remember being a young adult and being like, oh, yeah, of course, I'll give you the book. But even at that time, you know, it was quite closed off, and it was great to have the opportunity to go. So I, you know, I took the train, went up to Mandalay, but gone is, yeah, just a formative time. And I think that's what kind of laid the foundation of my love for the people of Myanmar and kind of hope for the long term human rights and democracy of the country. And so when it opened up in 2012 obviously I was super hopeful and really invested in trying to see those changes come, come, come to realization, right? And so it's been super tragic to watch the deterioration of all the stuff that happened in 2012 post to 2021 coup, but I'm still committed, and I want to work for human rights. And you know, as as I work for an international human rights organization, my role is to support the people of Myanmar. I'm not the one that's going to be the person that changes things on the ground, but I can support the ethnic resistance organizations, the peaceful protesters, the human rights movement as a whole, but as an international human rights organization, we really come alongside a company, and we try to let the Myanmar people lead their own, their own future, right?
Host 6:34
So you took these two trips. There one, two, I assumed a more, the more tourist track, more ba Mar regions, and then you went to Sean state. And it's also, it's interesting, you mentioned about the story about Lonely Planet. I was actually just talking recently to Joe Cummings, who wrote that Lonely Planet, which we were trying to bring on, because he talked about the process of, I don't want to give anything away, and also want him to tell the story. But just incredible, the work that went into the behind the scenes, that went into actually writing and composing something in the military dictatorship, and how difficult that was for him and the consequence of doing so. So it's interesting to hear the other side of it, of how it was, how it was viewed and held. But then you went to Shawn state, and this has more Sean has more similarities with ties, and Shawn state is also very different from the rest of the country, as well as different from it sounds like the region you were in wasn't actually controlled by the BA Mar military regime. So what was that experience like?
John Quinley 7:31
Yeah. I mean, in Myanmar, there's been ethnic resistance organizations that have been fighting against either former government or the Myanmar military for 70 plus years, and the Shan State army at that time was actively involved in conflict against the Myanmar junta. And there was very little humanitarian support coming to Shan state. You know, a lot of them weren't recognized as refugees by the Thais. You had the refugee camps along the Thai Myanmar border, but those were a lot of Karen Karenni people. So the Shan kind of fell through the cracks. You had a lot of Shan migrant workers. You had Shan internally displaced peoples camps. And so Loy Talang, which is where I was for a year, was an internally displaced peoples camp led by the political wing of the Shan State army, the RCSs, and so they had, obviously, the military wing, but then they also had social services. They had schools that were run by the resistance organization. So I volunteered in one of those schools and taught geography, taught English, and got to learn about the Shawn struggle for democracy. For sometimes they wanted autonomy. You know, it's kind of changed over the years. And didn't get to travel a ton in Shan state. It was quite controlled. But, you know, were able to, you know, I taught English to monks. I taught English to Shawn state Army soldiers. I just tried to use the opportunity to learn and grow as a young adult. And that's when I started really learning about the human rights reporting that was coming out of Myanmar. You know, Suu on which is a Shawn women's organization that's been working on human rights in Myanmar for a long time. They were exiled from the country and then made a base in Chiang Mai. A lot of these Burmese women's organizations have really led the diaspora movement in the early days to try to hold the Myanmar military accountable for their crimes. So I remember reading some of the Swan reports and about rape being used as a weapon of war, about forced labor, and just being really interested in that approach to change and trying to use human rights reporting as a process of, one creating history of truth telling, but also allowing survivors of violations to tell the stories themselves. And so even. At a young age, when I was working in chan state, I think I was 18 or 19 at the time, before I went to university, being, yeah, picking up those human rights reports by those local groups, and being quite intrigued.
Host 10:15
I'm also wondering, because I'm putting myself in this position of being an American and Burma being half a world away. And so when I first started to interact with Burma, it was, it was always kind of shaped through the distance and how far it was where you kind of with that distance, you also expect the differences that will develop. And yet you're again, you're growing up in Thailand. Thailand is your native country. And this stuff is happening not just over the border, but is actually spilling in to Thailand in some pretty major ways. So as I imagine, the way you approach this would be quite different than an American coming half a world away to what they expect to be a very different place. So was any part of that kind of eye opening or surprising or shocking and made you rethink your own reality in Thailand?
John Quinley 11:00
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I grew up Bangkok is in my hometown, so I grew up and went to high school here. And, you know, I always felt like Myanmar was a neighbor, and I was interested in the region and interested in the effects that Myanmar had on Thailand. And for many years, I went to a church, and that church was quite interested. And, you know, part of the the biblical teachings are about sheltering refugees. And some of those refugees were obviously Burmese people, Syrians, Pakistanis, you know, Bangkok has a big urban refugee population. So I remember meeting Burmese refugees at the church I used to go to. But I think as Thailand has bordered Myanmar and had conflicts with Myanmar in the past, you know, there's been animosity in the past, but I think particularly the youth nowadays see Myanmar and Thailand, Thai youth, particularly you say, See Myanmar and Thailand as having a lot of similarities. They both fought against dictatorship. They're both peaceful protests in the streets. You know, they're mimicking each other, and they're supporting each other. You have the milk tea Alliance, which is across Southeast Asia. So I think even growing up not having as much information as there is now on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram, and what the youth movement has now still being quite intrigued, and Myanmar has been a threat to international peace and security the Burmese military has for decades. And so I kind of think I realized that in a small way as a young adult, and thought that, you know, this is something that people should invest more more time into. Yeah, right.
Host 12:45
So let's get to your work with Fortify Rights and Fortify Rights itself. You went a little bit into the background before of how it's not trying to lead the effort, but support from behind and I and you mentioned also the amazing work that some of those ethnic women's organizations are doing in their reporting and just getting documented history out so that, to contrast with the propagandized, Romanized history that the military gets out, tell us a bit about for those that have never heard of it, what Fortify Rights is what you do?
John Quinley 13:14
Yeah, Fortify Rights is a like, I said, an international human rights organization, fairly new still. We've been working in Myanmar for 10 years. Our theory of change kind of revolves around three main areas. So we investigate human rights violations, and that we try to do Aung alongside human rights defenders, alongside civil society groups. So we investigate human rights abuses against communities that we're working with. We use that investigative work to engage people in power, to try to change bad laws, policies and practices and bring them in line with international standards. So we're always trying to analyze the violations that we're documenting under international human rights law. And the third prong is what we call our strengthening work, and that's really coming alongside accompanying human rights defenders, civil society groups and affected communities to try to see how they can make change themselves. And that is different in the different countries you work in the different contexts we work. So it can involve trainings, workshops. It can also involve technical support to groups. It can involve things like trying to connect groups to people in power. You know, we've linked Rohingya groups with the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice to try to understand what's happening at those international courts related to accountability, to be able to ask questions to the lawyers working on those cases. So we're trying to just help support the communities we're working with in that regard, linked to people in power, and try to make the change they want to see themselves. So the strengthening side, I think, is a bit different than some of the other human rights groups that do just, just documentation work, just investigative work. So it's that three prong. Mandate that we use to try to change the laws, policies and practices, and we believe if we use all three of those approaches at one time, we can see change happen, and we've seen that in small ways over the years. The Human Rights Movement moves slowly. It is a movement. It's not just done by us. It's done by a plethora of organizations and people and different groups, and so we're trying to see that slow change come over time.
Host 15:27
So you said that this three prong strategy is somewhat unique in the Human Rights field, and that you have seen incrementally, small signs of success. Can you give us an example of that track record of something that you worked on in fortified rights history, that where you did, you were able to see incremental change based on using these three prongs.
John Quinley 15:46
Yeah, that's a good question. I think one area we saw is it's a bit of a dated example now, but under the National League for Democracy, which is the government that was led by Aung San Suu Kyi. You know, before in Myanmar, you had the ward administration laws right, and these laws, the household administration laws, these laws would be used and like these kind of midnight checks would be used by administrators to check who was in their homes. And you had to basically register guests to stay in your home from outside townships. What we saw with this law was actually that it was used mostly to try to find activists, political leaders, human rights defenders, and so it was being used disproportionately against these people that the government at the time wanted to sniff out the NLD, the NLD or the previous military government, the law was put in place by the previous military government. So we saw an opportunity, so we trained a number of human rights workers, we wrote a whole report, and we did advocacy with these human rights workers that law was eventually changed under the NLD that it was done away with, and it was put back in place by the recent military generals after the coup. We were told at that time by some people in Myanmar that actually that's a fairly low hanging fruit. It's not that big of a human rights issue. You probably shouldn't work on it. But some people, some Myanmar human rights defenders, thought, actually, this is an important law that we should look into. So we tried to listen to them, and we tried to move forward that work alongside those people. And so we wrote the report, we researched it, we put it out, we tried to have a press conference, and tried to do advocacy after the research was done to try to push the junta to change the law. Unfortunately, it didn't change right at that time. It changed later under the NLD, but it was something that we thought was needed to be to need to be changed, right?
Host 17:54
So I want to get into post coup developments in a moment, but I know the discussion takes quite a turn there. So before we get into 2021 if we could stay more at the pre coup transition era work that you were doing, and just give us more of an overview of what, what what were, what the concerns were at those times. We know the obvious one, obviously the genocide, but that, in addition to some of the other work that you were doing, as well as some of the the hope and optimism and successes that you were either working towards or were within reach. So we get a sense of that landscape when the coup kicked in.
John Quinley 18:27
Yeah, I think some of the work we were doing at that time, we wrote a, you know, we were working on kind of issues around freedom of expression, freedom of assembly. After, after 2012 there was a big opening for journalists, but there was still some silencing of journalists, some censorship of journalists, so of protesters, even there was a problematic Assembly Law in Myanmar. There was problems within University institutions, detaining student journal, student activist. We worked with groups like Aung back then, very famous freedom of expression freedom of assembly group that was started in Myanmar. So we worked jointly with them to try to highlight the restrictions on peaceful assembly and freedom of expression. We also worked kind of, we did some interesting work around like cross country work, so trying to link activists in Thailand, activists in Malaysia, and activists from Myanmar to try to co learn from each other. So we just facilitated workshops for these people. We flew them in to different countries to try to meet each other and CO learn from each other. So I remember bringing in Malaysian student activists, Thai activists, fighting against the gold mining industry, peacefully protesting and bringing, I don't know if you know zaa, Zaw and PP, lat Muslim interfaith activist, bringing them to Bangkok and having them kind of you. To just learn from each other over two or three days. So we were trying to do some of that kind of work in the past under the NLD, even during the good years, you know, you had really problematic citizenship laws. And so the 1982 citizenship law, we've been working on since the founding of the organization, so trying to make small, incremental changes and amendments to that law, trying to meet with NLD officials, trying to meet with civil society members who would try to change that law. Unfortunately, it still is a really problematic law on the books, and still been used as a discriminatory tool against people across the country. Can you share what that is? For those who don't know? Yeah, the 1982 citizenship law is a law that excludes a huge population of Myanmar people from getting access to citizenship and nationality. The citizenship categories in Myanmar are tiered, so you have a three tiered process. You have like what they would consider like a full citizenship associate and naturalized citizen. And usually citizens can only come from certain ethnic groups. So it's citizenship based on race and ethnicity which is really problematic. So we've been advocating to try to change the particularly the ethnicity and race part of becoming a citizen. You know, in somewhere like America, you can become a citizen. Doesn't matter what kind of race or religion or ethnicity you are. In Myanmar, over many years, that has not been the case, and the law itself was, you know, we believe it's discriminatory, and it really blocks out a whole segment of people, particularly the most well known example is the Rohingya in Arkan state or Rakhine State.
Host 21:45
Right, okay, and before we move on to post coup, I think also, just for those listeners that haven't been following all of this so closely, I think it might be counterintuitive to hear that this moment of opportunity that opened up in the transition and this, these Democratic leaders that were brought in, that there would be such resistance or such a problem in changing an archaic law that was instituted and promoted by the military regime. It might be a somewhat obvious question for those following us very carefully, but if you could just unpack where there might be confusion with that.
John Quinley 22:19
Yeah, I think under the NLD, you know, the National League for Democracy, you know, the figurehead was also in Suu Kyi, it wasn't a perfect organization. There was still bad laws and policies on the books, and so we were actively working alongside the Myanmar people to change those bad laws and policies, and one of them was citizenship law or the even the Constitution at that time. And so I think there was a lot of also inter ethnic violence, racism, hate. The opening up of Myanmar brought the brought technology. It brought cell phones, it brought Facebook, but it also brought about a lot of dangerous speech across ethnic lines, particularly, and the Myanmar military used that as a tool to try to persecute and oppress certain swaths of the population. So I think even under the NLD, you know, you had quite and I would say, even under the NLD, you had quite racist officials, some of them actively saying hateful things against the Muslim population, not just Rohingya other people, you know, Muslim population in Mandalay. And so you had some pretty archaic views and laws on the books that even when the country opened up, you had internet, you had business, you had infrastructure, you had, you know, yeah, you had, like, great coffee shops, great food. It was, it was a really hopeful time. But even in the midst of that, you know, there was changes that needed to be to be made.
Host 24:01
I lived through that time as well. So I know I lived. I was there before that time, and I was there during that time. So I definitely lived through those changes happening and the and I would say, some of the confusion over what this freedom means and how it is to be used. And by freedom, I also mean freedom of expression. Of freedom of expression, both meaning the things that you can now say, but which are very hurtful to others, as well as the things that you can say that are not hurtful but others think you shouldn't be able to say it, or you shouldn't be able to create certain artworks or certain performances or whatnot. So which I think is not so unusual for people that have not known have not had those tools of being able to enact that free expression and critical thought in the ways that we might take for granted elsewhere that it was, it was kind of a it was a bumpy learning period, I would say. And so it must have been, and I remember for myself at that time, I was actually doing my own. Training and work in Myanmar before the transition, so it was a much different time once the transition hit. I wasn't doing that work anymore, so I wasn't engaged professionally in that but I was having conversations and observations and observing and connecting with people on a more informal level, but I can only imagine bringing formalized trainings trying to promote certain ways of thinking and connecting. It must have been a really fascinating and incredible time, but also, I imagine frustrating and confusing and some pushback in there. So what did it feel like to be a trainer and an activist and a and and bringing participatory trainings to the people at that time, when there was there were certain fires that were catching hold, some of which were not exactly accidental. With 969, and in the military.
John Quinley 25:53
Yeah, it's great question. I think you know, I started doing work more in 2016, 2017 and you know, we're an international human rights organization, so we try to teach people about international law that includes Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is actually a very basic instrument, right? If you, if you just ask someone like, what are your rights, they probably can come up with most of the list just intuitively, just because they're, they're, you know, they're kind of universal. People understand them without walking through the declaration itself, right? So we try to teach people about basic human rights, whether it be the most basic, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or political rights, or economic rights, or, you know later, after the a lot of atrocities occurred in Khin state, in Rakhine State, in other in khuren, we also taught people about international criminal law related to crimes against humanity, genocide, war crimes, or the crime of aggression. And so we were teaching activists and using international law to try to create a framework for people. So a lot of the work that we are doing is either documenting those crimes with human rights defenders and communities, or we were trying to do trainings related to the human rights framework and try to just build that knowledge. A lot of you know we're not the trainings and we do aren't, aren't like slide shows. They're participatory trainings. We try to get people to kind of CO learn, to try to actually, you know, we do mock interviews, we do different games. It's very interactive. And really, everyone has something to teach when it comes to human rights. So we just try to co learn. I'm constantly learning from people that I'm talking to, or in the trainings that I'm in, either from my colleagues that work with Fortify Rights, or from the participants themselves. Really, we're all participants in the training. So I think, you know, particularly, you know, I started working in Rakhine state during the right after the genocide. Happened in 2000 16,017, you had state sponsored violence that happened mostly in northern Rakhine State, in Bucha, dongda, Rati Aung, you had the Myanmar military commit genocidal acts. That means murder, imprisonment, sexual violence, and what the International Criminal Court found was the crime against humanity of deportation. So these people being deported to Bangladesh, you had, you know now you have nearly a million Rohingya people as refugees in Bangladesh after the 2016 2017 violence. And so I was working in Rakhine State with my my colleagues for many years, and then soon, soon after the the genocide that was actually under during the National League for Democracy time, the military conducted those what they called clearance operations at the time, but you had a civilian government as well. They didn't control all the ministries, and it was definitely min online and his soldiers that committed the crimes. But Suu Kyi during childhood 16,017 was very quiet. She didn't publicly condemn the violence. She didn't say, Rohingya are citizens. Rohingya should be protected. These violent acts should be stopped. She was not actively vocal, coming to the Rohingya coming to their aid. And so Rohingya got, of course, rightfully, very upset with Suu Kyi, part of Rakhine State. You also have arkanese people, Rakhine people, Buddhist. You have come on people, another ethnicity, but you have a. Lot of arkani people, Rakhine people, and they're primarily Buddhist, and they're one of the main ethnic organizations, ethnic armed organizations that the Rakhine are a part of, is the Arkan army. In 2019 the Arkan army started fighting the Myanmar junta, and the junta started really disproportionately in wartime, disproportionately hurting civilians. And so I would talk to Rakhine people, and they would say, actually, we kind of understand what happened to the Rohingya? This is also happening to us. This is 1920 they start being actually, we kind of understand now. So you had a lot of Rakhine people kind of opening up to the idea of, like, wow, actually, what happened to the Rohingya? Isn't that that far gone? The military is the problem. And I think then later, in 2021 you had the military coup, and you had this huge awakening in Myanmar, and we're still seeing, you know, that happening today. So I think, I actually think that the Myanmar people are really open to change, and when they see a problem and it affects their own community, I think there's a lot of empathy amongst Myanmar people that I've met a lot of like people that have had change of hearts, that have changed their perspective. I know for me, I'm constantly changing my perspective. So I think a lot of the Myanmar people, human rights defender civil society members, that I've seen have really changed their perspective on the Rohingya, on the military, on the NLD, and it's just been kind of this slow, but sometimes very fast change. You know, it's only been 10 years. That's actually quite fast. You know that we've been working, and I think even the, you know, we're talking about three or four years difference here or there, but that's just a drop in the bucket, in the scheme of things, that's people changing their mind and society changing their mind really, really quickly. So I'm always really impressed by the Myanmar people, because they now post coup. It's the whole country that have created this resistance against the military junta, and it's a it's not about ethnicity, it's not about religion, it's not about sexual orientation, it's about a fight for democracy and human rights. So it's a, yeah, I'm really it's an honor to work with Myanmar people, and I'm always constantly learning from them.
Host 32:28
I definitely appreciate the how you talk about your trainings. As a fellow trainer, I can sense you have the heart of a trainer and what it means to not be an authority of knowledge that you're passing down but an active participant that's moderating a learning process, and that's, yeah, I could talk all day about that, and I and I also, I want to highlight, again, just how remarkable it is that, as you're talking about this conflict that's waging in the pre coup era, that this is happening in the same breath, in the same sentence, as the new coffee shops opening up, as the tourism that's coming that's flowing in, and the opportunities that are pervading the country, the education that's opening up, the free press, albeit with some restrictions, certainly, but the sensor, the sensor self, resigning at that time that this is why this transition period has been so controversial and so such heated opinions on either side, because there's really examples of both. You could find that are happening simultaneously. Therein is the contradiction that is Myanmar, that we have to hold in our in our hands, of two opposite things happening at the same time, and not denying either of those realities. And I'm also, I also appreciate you had mentioned that, that what you find of Myanmar people is how much they really want to help their neighbor and care. And that's, I think that's also a symptom of of the repression of whatever regime has been in place, that they have to band together and help each other. We saw that with Nargis. They have to band together and help in ways, because no one else is there. And then the flip side of that is one of the quotes that always stood out to me. I just nearly my mouth hit the floor when I read it was they were talking. There was a farmer that had just gotten Facebook on his phone, and he had it maybe for, you know, a year or something, and he and as he's reading through things. He was quoted by saying something like, you know, I never heard of these Rohingya people before, but it tells me that they're my enemy and that I have to be afraid of them. And I'm really grateful for this new mechanism that's now providing me with this accurate information to be able to know what I have to be afraid of. And it's, I mean, he's, it was, it was such a stunning quote of just a naked admission of ignorance and propaganda that was taking advantage of that ignorance coming from a society with such closed information that was having a hard time to be able and then moving to this free flow where, like even in America, which is a much, which is quite. Sure you can say, in its democracy and free speech, we fell for that during the trump the 2016 Trump Russia campaign. So you can imagine, in Myanmar, where it had gone warp speed from nothing to everything, that that this kind of propaganda would be so effective. And this farmer saying, Well, I had never heard of this group before, but if this news source is telling me, I now have to be afraid of them.
John Quinley 35:24
But we had been documenting the violence against the Rohingya for many years. My colleague, Matthew Smith, was at the forefront of documenting the atrocities in 2012 and in 2016 and 17, and I later came in and documented the use of citizenship documents to further erase the Rohingya population. And I remember, you know, the fact finding mission was created. The fact finding mission was a un mandated mission to investigate crimes happening in Myanmar, investigated crimes happening in Rakhine State, and investigated crimes happening in Khin state, and it happened, it investigated crimes happening in Shawn state. So those were the three main focus areas. The fact finding mission, first report, I believe, came out in 2018, or 19, right? After that, you know, I think people in kah chin, in Shawn, in Rakhine, started realizing, like, you know, the Myanmar people are, after the transition became fairly like middle income, right? So you had people educated, people reading fact finding mission was translated into Burmese, or parts of that that that report was translated into Burmese, we had a Kachin group reach out to us. Soon after the fact finding mission report came out, saying, Hey, you guys work a lot with the Rohingya. Can you come up and do a presentation in Michigan for us. And I remember our My colleagues and I were all sitting around being like, this is an amazing opportunity. Khin people realizing that the fact finding mission looked at these three states, saw similarities in all the three states. And, you know, they made they recognized the crimes for what they were. And, you know, Khin human rights defenders and activists who hadn't had many linkages with the Rohingya community in Rakhine states, you know, just very far away, opposite sides of the country said, actually, you know, Fortify Rights. They're known as a Rohingya group. Why don't you come up and and do a presentation on on the Rohingya people. And so my colleague Nikki diamond and I went up to Mitch na and we we mostly just answered questions the whole time, young students in mitchannah and activists who wanted to understand more about the Rohingya people. And I think, you know, we showed videos, we showed some of our documentation. We just tried to introduce the Rohingya as people that also experienced similar crimes to what happened in Kachin state. So I think that was something that we saw as a really big opportunity coming from our work. I mean, the fact finding mission didn't come from our work. But, you know, we were known for documenting the crimes in Rakhine State, and we had some linkages in Kachin, and my colleagues had also done a lot of work in Kachin, documenting war crimes and crimes against humanity and displacement in Khin state after the breaking of the ceasefire 2011 so we had, you know, good linkages there, and partners and friends and so, you know, over the years, I've always been trying to introduce Rohingya colleagues With other ethnicities or other ethnicities to other Rohingya colleagues. I think after the coup, though, that's I don't have to do that kind of, those kind of linkages anymore, right? You have Aung Joah Moe who is now a part of the national unity government, which is the, what is considered the real government of Myanmar, or at least the closest thing they have to the government. That's not the Myanmar junta. Aung Cha Moe is an ethnic Rohingya person, and he's min. He was, he's been elected to the cabinet, and that was not heard of in former Myanmar and Aung Cha Moe has been really outspoken for the Rohingya people and other ethnicities as a part of the national unity government.
Host 39:44
If we could put that in terms that Westerners might understand or sympathize with, can we say that there could be some parallel of having an African American like Barack Obama elected president in a white house that was built by slaves and that and were. Blacks were so long marginalized and denied any opportunities, and now it's the this doesn't mean that racism is over in America, but it does. It can't be seen any other way, but a pretty fundamental expression of progress.
John Quinley 40:11
Yeah, I think it's like just a pivotal moment. And like you said, it's a huge shift, just like if we in America would have a woman elected as president, we, you know, we hope and we advocate, and at least I do for when a woman can can come to power and lead the country. We've never had that in American history. And so that would be another pivotal moment for us. And so, yeah, so I think when Aung San Moe was was elected to the Human Rights ministry, and are not elected, he was appointed to the Human Rights ministry that I think that was a huge moment for the Rohingya people, but also for other ethnicities. And, you know, we talked to the national unity government, we and I think they should, they should be appointing more of the Muslim population. They should be appointing more other ethnic groups, not just ba Ma. You know, I have a David Kun Aung chin activist. He's part of the Ministry of International Affairs. He's very progressive. So I think as the national unity government grows, is they're going to become, they're becoming more and more inclusive, right, respecting very progressive government. And so it's a huge, you know, it's the Myanmar people moving forward, it themselves. And I was recently in in Karenni state, and seeing local governance structures be formed in Karenni state was an amazing thing to see. So you have the national unity government being the kind of the bigger government, and then you have local state government. So what you have in Karenni state is you have the Interim Executive Council, which is basically the Karenni local government. And they built, they were built from the ground up for two years. They created their they have their own army, they have their own hospitals, they have their own schools, and they're working with the National Unity government to move forward local politics there and liberate big parts of that state and actually administer them in a right, respecting way.
Host 42:14
Right? I want to move to post coup before I do, I just want to take a slight detour or pivot as you're, as you're talking, you're, you're, you're going over your career and and those you work with of documenting human rights abuses, violations, atrocities, crimes against humanities, these are no small things. And I think you have to be somewhat clinical in being able to, well, just by definition, documenting, whenever you're documenting anything, there's a certain kind of clinical nature you need to be in trying to objectively analyze and understand the information so that it holds up when you're then presenting it and making it effective for whatever use it has. But the human element is still there, and that often, that human element is sometimes it has to be suppressed in the process of doing this, or managed in a different way. It's as you're you're presenting this documentation. There does have to be this, as we say again, clinical, detached kind of cold nature of really getting the facts and figures and getting those straight, really stripped of emotion, because they need to be clear and objective for anyone looking at them, but the subjective and the emotional can't be separated from that.
John Quinley 43:25
I think secondary trauma for researchers, for journalists, is a really real thing. People need to be really careful. People need to take time off. People need to, you know, check in with counselors, have debriefs, have a close community around them to be able to process the information that they're digesting. But I'm always really, I'm really, always honored to speak to the survivors and witnesses of violations that I'm you know, able to meet with them, to sit with them. At Fortify Rights, we do long form investigative interviews. So that means sometimes 345, hours you're sitting with someone. Maybe you have a break of coffee, go to the bathroom, maybe that person wants to go have a cigarette, cheap tube, beetle, whatever it is, you might have some breaks, but you're mostly sitting with that person for many, many hours. You're learning their life story, but you're also learning what they survived or what they witnessed, and there's a ton of emotions that come out during that process. You know, you have women that have lost their children in Rakhine State, you had babies thrown into fires or into rivers. In post coup, I'm talking to survivors of torture. In Karenni state, you have survivors of air strikes. And so these are people that. Talking about really intense moments in their lives. So some people are crying, some people have to stop the interview. But as a researcher, you know, we're just creating a space for someone to tell their story. They can say whatever they want. They can stop the interview at any time. It's really their time to share with us what they see fit. But you know, I've gotten emotional in interviews before, but I try not to. I try to keep my emotion lower than the person that I'm interviewing, the survivor. I wouldn't want to get more emotional than the survivor, but I don't think it's unheard of for researchers, when a survivor is crying, to also cry with them, right? You want to experience joy with people, but you also want to experience sorrow with people. So you ought to be clinical, but you don't want to be devoid of empathy. And so I think it's an, it's a really it's sometimes a hard balance to have. But, you know, I think that's why, like the debriefing process for researchers or humanitarian workers or journalists is are really important, because then you can be more emotional with your colleagues afterwards, after those really intense interviews. But you know, I'm, I'm always extremely impressed by survivors that are willing to tell their story, and so I always, you know, there's people tell me really sad things, and we're learning about human rights violations every day, but they're feeling empowered. They're part of a truth telling process. And so I always feel like just honored after talking to people, even if it's an emotional experience. But I think the mental is also physical, right? And so I'm really into trying to rock climb, trying to move my body, trying to actually get out some of those emotions that are, you know, coming because of some of the investigative work. So I think that's also a part of the process of kind of unwinding and processing some of the secondary, maybe trauma, you would call it, or hard things that you're hearing as a researcher, journalist, humanitarian, whatever, whatever you are.
Host 47:32
Thanks for going into that. I think it's really important to get that, that more of that, that humanity, out and just shows up as the reports on a page, and know the work and the people that go into it, which moves into the post coup. The coup takes place February 1, 2021 every person, every organization, every business that's associated with Myanmar has their life changed forever at that point, whether they're in the country or out. And every I could speak for myself with this as well, and I know that that at that moment, you then have to decide, who am I and who are we, and what are we going to do at this point? And that's that's certainly true of organizations such as yourselves that have been in that fight for some time. It's even true of organizations and people that have used that moment to awaken and to start to do something new. But can you take us inside to whatever is safe to share publicly? Because I know a lot happens behind the scenes for all of us, but whatever is safe to share publicly about what was going on behind closed doors, within Fortify Rights as to okay, this just happened. Who are we now? What do we do?
John Quinley 48:38
Yeah, we had a lot of work going on three coup. We had work about citizenship. We had work about amending public assembly laws in Myanmar. We had a coordination meeting lined up, and quite soon after the coup, we realized, wow, something big is happening. We didn't see it coming. We were we didn't know it was gonna happen beforehand. I mean, we saw some rumblings a few weeks beforehand or something, but we didn't have any insider knowledge anyway of anything particular. But we had to put a lot of work, I guess. I don't know if you would call it on hold, but that work became, I mean, unfortunately, irrelevant, because the junta just took away power from the elected officials, from the people of Myanmar.
Host 49:35
I'll never forget one young college student saying we recorded this podcast in the months after the coup, she said I was, I was spending my time trying to fight for greater gender rights and glass ceilings, and suddenly my freaking human rights were taken away from me, you know. And I'll just, I'll never forget that statement of what it felt like to be thinking that you're fighting an elevated, refined battle of something of. Greater Good you'd like to see, and then the bottom has just dropped out from below.
John Quinley 50:03
Yeah, and I, I can't imagine, you know, I listen to my Myanmar colleagues, and I can't fully understand what it was like for them. I can try to empathize, but I don't fully understand what it was like for them. But my Myanmar friends and colleagues, they went into overtime trying to hold together their country. You know, I knew people that were working basically 24 hours every day, and the resistance movement worked non stop, and is still working non stop almost three years later. Or Yeah. So I think, I think my colleagues and the Myanmar people are courageous. They work overtime. They're steadfast in their fight for democracy and human rights. And they really, a lot of people pivoted, and they said, Okay, what, where, where can I work now? But what we also saw was like a lot of people coming under threat, under surveillance. You had arrest warrants go out for people. You had a shrinking of civic space. So you had people fleeing. Some of the prominent activists that we were working with had to go into hiding, so we kind of turned into emergency gear, and we started doing trying to help human rights defenders get emergency support grants. You know, frontline defenders, Freedom House, people like that, do these fast paced grants to try to get people out of conflict zones, to try to help them with legal support, to try to get in, get them relocated, if they're if they have arrest warrants. So we started just providing technical support to human rights defenders that we knew, help them fill out these grants, help them get into safe houses. And you know, we're not a we're not a service provider, but in our in the emergency gear, we started doing some of that technical support as our strengthening work, because it was the best kind of work that we can do at that time. You know, we didn't need to lead a workshop at that time. We needed to help people try to relocate to safe areas. So in the in the interim, in the emergency phase of the of the coup, right afterwards, and in the months that follow, when there was peaceful protests in the streets, and those protests were cracked down on by the by the junta. We we supported a lot of journalists, a lot of human rights defenders to apply for those emergency grants. You know, they were moving from Safe House to safe house. They didn't have time to write a whole grant themselves write an application. So we're just providing that kind of technical support. Another thing we started, my colleagues and I started doing was we started just documenting the crimes as they started happening, which you were set up to do, yeah, and we'd done it in Rakhine State. And so we used those same skills that we learned and applied in Rakhine State and into starting to document the same battalions that committed crimes in Rakhine State started committing crimes in Mandalay started committing crimes in Yangon, you had the same really egregious libs being deployed to major cities and towns. And so we said, oh man, we know what you know. 77 does you know what these, these kind of battalions are like, and their rights abusing? And you know we documented, you know we documented, during the protests, we documented enforced disappearances of people, mass arrest, the use of snipers to shoot protesters in the streets, you know. So we were just trying to collect evidence. We were also, we've also, over the last couple years, you know, the International Investigative Mechanism on Myanmar, the iimm, was set up to collect and preserve evidence for future prosecutions. So if there is, you know, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the case in Argentina, or if there's a universal jurisdiction case that fully opens up and moves forward, the iimm as a mechanism to collect and preserve evidence. Can give over that evidence to these accountability to these courts to actually prosecute people. It's a long term approach to accountability. But we started submitting evidence to the iimm of the of the different incidences, different violations that we were documenting, and we continue to do that, that work today.
Host 54:44
You reference military snipers that are in civilian areas, taking out civilians. What did you learn about why they were doing this, how they set up the rationale and who they were targeting and why.
John Quinley 55:00
Yeah. I mean, we interviewed, we interviewed military deserters. So a number of soldiers, you know, in the early days of the coup, sold some soldiers said, you know, I don't want to be a part of this. A number of months after the coup, they looked at what was happening. People started the the military started killing people in the streets, young people, 19 years old, 18 years old, 20 young adults, peacefully protesting in the streets. You know, big banners, they had flags, they had music, you know, like peaceful protests. Yeah, and the military cracked down, shot into crowds. And so some soldiers said, I don't want to be a part of this. And so at Fortify Rights, we said, you know, it's important to interview military deserters. They have a lot of information on how the military operates, on their chain of command, on the way they work, and some of the military deserters that we interviewed talked about the use of snipers. Snipers are trained for active warfare to fight against the enemy, but what the generals in Myanmar said was the enemy was young people peacefully protesting in the streets. So they use the same exact tactics as they use in active warfare against children, against women, against university students and so, yeah, we documented cases of snipers being on buildings and shooting people in Yangon and other places. And this is the kind of military that we're dealing with. Men online will go to whatever lengths he can to control the country and to hold on to power, and he should be prosecuted in international court.
Host 56:50
So this is describing the immediate aftermath of the pivot, and the decision that Fortify Rights has to make to to decide how they're then going to engage, as you reference, the resistance has gone on now over three years, and it's been it's things have only gotten more grim in terms of the conflict. Perhaps there are some signs of optimism in terms of not perhaps there are signs of optimism, not just of the momentum, but of the governments and the coalitions and the solidarity being built and what we're seeing, but as Fortify Rights has had to come to play the long game and to continue to stand by the Myanmar people as they continue their resistance. What? What other activities and and support mechanisms has fortified rights taken on to learn how to be a best service at this time of sustained conflict and resistance.
John Quinley 57:41
Yeah, I mean, we're, we're actively involved with trying to help the national unity government, you know, we sent, we sent them some memos on citizenship, on accountability. You know, we're trying to still hold the Myanmar junta accountable for their crimes. And so we've done this documentation work that I have been speaking about, but the documentation work is useless unless people are held accountable. So you know, a lot of human rights, national human rights organizations and Myanmar civil society groups and human rights defenders, they're interested in international accountability, and they want to push it forward. One of the things that for the rights is trying to do is trying to get member states of the International Criminal Court to make an article 14 referral to the ICC. So if you're a member state and you signed up for the Rome Statute, then you can bypass the security council and make a state referral. So we've been talking to governments to try to refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court in Southeast Asia. You only have, I believe it's two governments that are ICC member states. You have Cambodia and East Timor. So my colleagues, two of my colleagues, flew out to East Timor, met with the President, tried to talk to him about an article 14 referral. We've been meeting with other governments, talking to them about an article 14 referral. This is a way to bypass the veto of a China or Russia veto at the Security Council on an ICC referral Tom Andrews, the special repertoire on Myanmar recently also made a similar, the same recommendation for an article 14 referral. So this is something that governments can do if they're signatories, if they're ICC member states. So we would encourage governments to make that referral. And the referral is pretty basic. It's letter. It's a brief letter. It doesn't have to be long enough to be detailed. And so we want to create we're trying to push for a coalition of government to make this, this referral possible. We're also actively helping local groups submit information into the iimm, encouraging them to do it so. Um. Recently in Karenni, State, I was working with a group called the Burma war crimes investigations. They're a national human rights group founded after the coup, and we did documentation together. So we did joint interviews, we did Joint Investigative work. So we're now, you know, co writing some some research about air strikes and artillery strikes in Myanmar. I think this the doing documentation alongside a civil society group. We get to learn from them, and they get to learn from us. And I think that's that CO learning process that really benefits both both people and they have the contextual knowledge that fortified doesn't have. They're based in Karenni state, and so they have the networks and the knowledge that we don't have. And we have some experiences from other parts of the country that we can bring in to Karenni and or from the different countries that we work in. You know, we also work in Thailand and Myanmar, in Ukraine and Bangladesh, and so we have maybe some comparative knowledge that we can also bring to our work with when we do co documentation. So that's some of the work that we're doing post coup. We're, we know we're still, we're still working in Bangladesh with the Rohingya community. We work with a number of civil society organizations. There Rohingya civil society organizations. We're actively trying to advocate for more third country resettlement from Bangladesh. You know, in Bangladesh, they welcomed Rohingya people for you know, they welcomed hundreds of 1000s of them right after 2016 2017 but now DACA, Sheik, Zina, the Bangladeshi authorities, are putting in place severe restrictions on Rohingya people's rights. So we are actively trying to meet with the Bangladeshi Government and get them to allow freedom of movement for refugees, allow access to livelihoods. You know, recently you have people fleeing still from Myanmar. You know, there's ongoing crimes, there's an act of warfare in Rakhine State. So you still have people Rohingya fleeing to Bangladesh to seek safety, even after the genocidal attacks, and we just recently documented how the border guard forces of Bangladesh pushed Rohingya people back. They did not allow them protection in Cox Bazar. And we documented six incidences, separate cases of Bangladeshi authorities using force to push Rohingya people back into Rakhine state that under international law is considered rafulmont. Rafulmont is pushing someone back to a place where they may experience persecution or ongoing violence. And of course, that's clear in Rakhine State. And so this goes directly against daca's obligations under international law, and it really doesn't benefit Sheik Zina in any way. It's, you know, we're not talking about, you know, 1000s more people. It was a couple 100 people that wanted to get in. And they and the international humanitarian groups that are working in Cox bazar would have provided them services. Would have tried to help them. But you know, we still see the Bangladeshis putting in place severe restrictions on refugee life.
Host 1:03:30
As someone who has has this institutional history with knowing the persecution the Rohingyas have been through and having, having been involved for years and through the worst of it, really the genocidal, so called clearance operations that the military LED. And then looking at the coup, and of course, you have what you just referenced, you have incredibly conscription is extending to the Rohingya people as well. But just to give an update for in looking back at the history of the oppression and the conflict that we've seen with Rohingya and then three years on after the coup, how would you describe the issues and the instability that the Rohingya are now having to live through?
John Quinley 1:04:18
Yeah, I mean, Rohingya people are still restricted. Their daily life is restricted by the Myanmar junta in large parts of Rakhine State. What you have in Rakhine State now, though, is you have the Archon army, which is an ethnic resistance organization that's fighting against the Myanmar junta. You have them taking and liberating large parts of Archon state, of Rakhine State. So now the junta actually doesn't control a lot of Rakhine State. So now what the AAA is doing is starting to create administrative structures in the places that they've liberated. COVID and starting to actively fight against the Myanmar junta. So in those places that are liberated, we would, you know, we're we. We recently put out research on the internment camps, which has been in place since 2012 since the state sponsored communal violence that happened that put 1000s of Rohingya into what, what the Myanmar government at the time called IDP camps. What they ended up being was internment camps. They were never allowed to leave the Rohingya. Those people are still in internment camps many, many years later. So what we've called publicly for the Arkan army to do is when they liberated an area that has internment camps, to immediately allow Rohingya out of those internment camps, to allow freedom of movement, to allow those Rohingya to go back to their original homelands if they want to. This is something easy that the Arkan army could do, that Tun Mar Aung could do, the head of the Arkan army. So this is something that, you know, we're monitoring closely, but Rakhine state right now is an active conflict zone in Bucha, Aung Muang da places where a lot of Rohingya people are there's there's artillery shelling, there's air strikes, there's both the Arkan army and the Myanmar military shooting into villages, fighting each other inside Rohingya villages. I mean, the civilian impact is severe. It's so I think the Rohingya are not they're still trapped in the middle of the Arakan army and the Myanmar military. And now in Rakhine State, there's also Rohingya armed groups. You have, you still have a group called the Arkan Rohingya Salvation Army, and you have Rohingya solidarity organization, two Rohingya militant groups that are also fighting in Rakhine State. So the Rohingya civilian population there, have very little room to breathe there.
Host 1:07:03
That's a lot of years of trauma that's hard to even imagine.
John Quinley 1:07:07
Yeah, yeah. I mean, we just, we've been actively working on, on Rohingya. We've been looking at, you know, you know you have part of genocide is the intent to destroy in whole or in part, right? And the Genocide Convention has a bunch of, you know, enumerate, enumerated acts. One of them is physical and mental harm. Part of the Genocide Convention when it's kind of analyzed by courts or tribunals, the physical harm is the one that's mostly analyzed. And what you talk about is this trauma people aren't analyzing the mental harm that happens over many years to the Rohingya people. So even if, even if the fighting stops, there's still this mental harm going on. So we've worked with, we worked with a team of researchers in Bangladesh to survey 495 people to look at mental trauma, mental harm as an act of genocide. So what, what are the PTSD levels in in Bangladesh? What are the daily stressors that Rohingya people are experiencing, and how are they coping with this? And is this, is the rates of PTSD daily stressors? Is that related to the crimes that they experienced in Rakhine State? And it's a carrying over into Bangladesh. And our reports and research have found, yeah, it is. The Genocide Convention was created a long time ago, but now the scientific literature, the psychological literature, shows that there are signs of generational trauma that can happen in communities. And there's, you know, the Rohingya population is experiencing higher rates of PTSD than the normal population, and so it's obviously clear they have experienced this mental trauma that the Genocide Convention also has in the enumerated acts.
Host 1:09:08
I think that's one thing that's probably true across the board in Myanmar, maybe more so in Rohingya, but just if the one of the things that we often talk about on this podcast with guests from very diverse backgrounds is, if the conflict ended tomorrow. What would be the case with Dot? Dot? Dot fill in the blank. You know, whether it's the education, infrastructure or economy or whatever else. And to look at how far back this terrible waste of potential and mindless conflict has has set so many things, back, not just to pre coup levels, but but but decades beyond that. And when you're looking at mental trauma, you know, you put that in there, if, if, if there was, if the conflict were to end today with the Rohingya as well as people across the country. What kind of mental trauma are we looking at? That? Would take a lifetime to process and try to work through it. It must be unimaginable.
John Quinley 1:10:05
Yeah. I mean, there's also a lot of literature. I guess on the inverse, there's a lot of literature on resilience, and the Myanmar people as a true as generation shows, and as the whole population shows, are extremely resilient. So, you know, there's a lot of work to be done to mitigate some of the mental trauma that's happened. I think there's more psychosocial support that's needed along the borders for refugees, and we would encourage donor government to provide unrestricted funds to civil society groups, to counselors, to mental health practitioners. You know, Myanmar people should be counseling other Myanmar people, they should be counseling in their own language. They should be in places that they're comfortable with. They should be, you know, in a way that's culturally sensitive, but funders should be thinking about those kind of approaches in the interim, but I think there's, you know, Cornel West says we're all prisoners of hope, and so I think I try to have that approach when it comes to the situation in Myanmar and The mass amount of unity across the country is still surprising to me every day, and it's, it's, I think, a big reason to be hopeful, because in the midst of the junta, in the midst of mid on the lion's oppression, the Myanmar people have said, well, actually, we're going to still create our own institutions. We're going to still create our own government structures. We're going to still we're going to still be journalists, we're going to still be doctors, we're going to still be teachers. We're going to create alternative systems that are outside the junta system, that are able to meet the needs of our own people, and that is extremely resilient. And I think, as an international human rights organization, we just need to continue to accompany the Myanmar people in fighting for democracy, in human rights. And I think the next, the big part, I think in the in the next couple years, will be building, you know, I was talking to a member of the National Unity government recently, and he was talking about the very important work of building a democratic Federalist charter, right to be able to have a country with federalism that uphold unity and diversity and is able to have different ethnic groups, different races, different religions. And so I think supporting the national unity government, supporting civil society groups to be able to build this Federalist Society is really important. So I see, I mean the national unity government and the local institutions, like in Karenni state, the Interim Executive Council, are doing really important structural work right now.
Host 1:13:05
So do you think it might be fair to say that there could be a silver lining in the sense of the kind of changes you were pushing for pre coup, and in some ways going against a brick a brick wall, even when it was the NLD that was in place, that that there could be a bit more leeway and progress that could be shown post coup in the conversations that you're having in trying to create certain kinds of or encourage certain kinds of freedoms and and changes in imagining What a post coup, democratic government would be different from the democratic government we saw a pre coup.
John Quinley 1:13:44
Yeah, I think the interim governments are super progressive. They want a society that is pluralistic. They want a society that's right to respecting and they're all, in my perspective, a lot of the ethnic resistance organizations are trying to do the right thing. You know, we're, we're international human rights group, so we'll call a spade a spade. So if, if ethnic armed resistance groups are abusing their own people, will document that. We'll try to hold those groups accountable. So the resistance movement as a whole is not perfect, sure, sure, but I think large parts of it are trying to be unified and are really progressive. And I think, you know, donor government should realize this. They should recognize the national unity government as a legitimate government in Myanmar. They should have seats at the table, and they need to show they need to, you know, it's been three years, and still some governments think the junta should be, you know, put at the table. That's not the case. The national unity government has shown itself as at least the most, the most, the closest thing to the real government of Myanmar and state government like the KNU, like the Interim Executive Council in Karenni, those governments should also, you know, be at the table. And they're starting, they're making change at the local level, and then they're coordinating with the national unity government. And so I think donor government should be working also closely with them, and when, when we're talking about providing aid into Myanmar. Services into Myanmar, we should be working directly through those institutions, or directly through civil society groups that have the contextual knowledge and the networks to provide aid. We shouldn't be providing it through the junta. We shouldn't be signing Moe use with the junta. The activists in Myanmar have been calling for this for for a long time, and I don't think, you know, I know groups that are even getting aid and money into sagain. You know, it's not that's like pretty far cross border aid, that's, that's a, that's a more like a remote modality. So I think groups are able to navigate the complex systems to try to get aid money systems in place even in the central parts of Myanmar. And we can see civil society groups doing that. So I think the arguments around signing MOUs to try to get access to segyn or GUI quite weak in my perspective.
Host 1:16:42
You're describing this, this ongoing three plus year resistance to a brutal military regime that everyone, everyone, everywhere, except for a few outliers, wrote off any possibility of this regime not being in place for another generation, just having to. We don't like it, but we just accepted that we live with it. Well, everyone was proven wrong because it's still because they're now losing and and and so number one, you have that. But then number two, you have the groups that are resisting them, while not perfect, they are holding themselves other international communities not holding them to these standards. They are holding themselves to the kind of standards, yeah, that they would like to follow, working with Institutions and Human Rights Defenders like yourself and many others, and trying to build something that will sustain and last beyond just winning a fight, but wanting to win the peace, and wanting to create a peace that is good for for many different groups to come in and to prevent something like this from happening again. And so for we can imagine why certain countries, like certainly Russia, China, even India, where the direction it's going in other countries, why they are not so keen to want to support the brighter future that some of these groups are creating. And one would think that in these countries that care about this and that are also battling these forces in their own Western countries, these illiberal and anti democratic forces in their own country, that this would be something that they would want to support in any number of ways. We don't have to talk about lethal aid. We can leave that, leave that off the table. But there are so many other ways to want to appreciate and acclaim this miracle happening in front of us in a region that hasn't known in a country itself that hasn't known these kinds of values being promoted the way they are and and yet you have, you have such poetry, support, such insufficient standing by and wanting to aid them in their time of need, for For so long as it stretches, everyone seeming to continue to turn away and pretend what's happening is not happening. You talk about the aid mechanisms that, I mean, for crying out loud, that are, that are, we're still three and a half years on, we're still debating if we should give aid to the military that's killing its own people, and maybe they would provide aid to the to the they would simultaneously be providing aid in the regions, they're also burning villages. I mean, this is it's insane to even think of the logic behind this argument.
John Quinley 1:19:04
But I think some governments have come come around more recently, so like the US government and the Burma act, sure, the Burma Act was was passed. It wasn't appropriated for a long time, so meaning money wasn't actually like the Act was passed, but there was no money to actually put in place the things that was in the act. So the Burma Act basically had a number of things in it, but one of the things was be able to provide funds to the resistance movement as a whole, non lethal funding for the resistance movement, for the democracy movement in Myanmar, and the institution that the democracy movement is trying to build because US politics, it wasn't appropriated for a long time. My colleagues and I were in Washington, DC, meeting with people on the Appropriations Committee, telling them, please. Please move this money forward. Please, please, please. So we were advocating for it. We were not one of the main actors that were, you know, making amendments the Burma act before it was passed. You know, the there was a lot of Myanmar Diaspora people in America that called their representatives and tried to get them to pass the Burma act. And so I think it was those groups of Myanmar Diaspora people who actually moved the needle on that. But, you know, we were in Washington, DC, trying to get the Act actually appropriated and do advocacy around that, now that there is a bit of money for it. You know, hopefully that money will get to building institutions, educational institutions, as a part of the resistance movement. Government structures, things like that, the Ministry of Education, non lethal parts of the resistance movement. But you're right, the international community has not done enough, particularly around accountability. It's been way slower than other places you look at in Ukraine. I was earlier talking about an article 14 referral that happened in Ukraine already, so that hasn't happened in Myanmar. You have it's a lot slower. I don't exactly understand why, but the Myanmar people, despite the slowness of the international community's response to the atrocities happening in Myanmar, the friends and colleagues and people I know are still steadfast in, you know, trying to move forward things. But I think also parts of the Myanmar resistance realize that the international community might not come to their aid in the ways that they want them to. And so a lot of people that I know are taking things into their own hands. They're raising money. You know, I visited a hospital in Kearny state, a newly built hospital, and because the Myanmar junta is targeting civilian infrastructure, hospitals and schools well documented, these what they call CDM civil disobedience, doctors raise money from mostly the Myanmar diaspora, rich Myanmar people, celebrities, even middle class people to build an entire hospital with an operating room in a liberated area, you know, parts of the hospital built underground to try to mitigate air strikes. So and all that money was basically raised by Myanmar people themselves. And so I think, you know, my friends and colleagues and people that I work with are realizing, yeah, well, we want international support, we want solidarity, we want accompaniment. But in some ways, it's not happening the way they want it. And so they're really moving the needle forward themselves. And that's why I always talk about supporting the Myanmar people, because I think they have they understand the problem more than anyone, because they've been affected by it, and so listening to them and trying to understand what the solutions are from them. Is something that I think international institutions, governments, business people, should be listening directly from the survivors themselves and the people that are actively involved in the resistance movement. And you see this also in the armed resistance. You know, they're raising money from mostly Myanmar people abroad for guns and weapons, and they're taking they're liberating large parts of the country. And you know, war is not good for Myanmar, but they see it as a just war. They see it as a justified war. We're an international human rights group. We're not a pacifist organization. So we believe in the laws of war, and we teach people about the laws of war. You can't torture people, you can't kill POWs, you can't use disproportionate force, you can't block humanitarian aid to a conflict zone, so we try to have conversations with the ethnic resistance organizations that are armed about their responsibility under international law in the time of war. How does that go? A lot of times, you know people. Well, the ethnic resistance organizations want to do the right thing, you know, I think, particularly in places like here, any state you see, you know, before the Interim Executive Council really became a body, you mostly had the kndf, which is the resistance armed resistance organization, the main armed resistance organization in khurrani state that's become quite popular. They were filling a lot of gaps. They were providing aid into IDP camps. They were protecting civilians that were trying to flee conflict areas. A lot of the people that joined the kndf had no military background. You know, one of them, a few of them heads of the kndf, have backgrounds in political movements or NGOs. And so these are fairly progressive men that are now fighting the junta. So I think you know, like I said, ethnic resistance organizations are also not perfect, and people have documented crimes from PDFs. We documented a killing in Karen state under General Nadar of 25 spies in August, almost two years ago now, and we published those findings, and the KNU committed to investigating the killing of 25 Nadar was stripped of his position, and he created his own organization after he was stripped and let go, Nadar is one of the was one of the main Military commanders in Karen state, and he was in charge of the area that the 25 quote, unquote spies were killed. But that's, you know, that it was basically an extraditional killing. So not all the ethnic groups are, you know, there are bad things happening in ethnic areas, and ethnic resistance organizations are committing crimes, but not in any way the scale of the march junta, and they're trying to hold their soldiers responsible when they do commit crimes. And you see this happening in Karenni state, you know they're doing they're going through proper judicial processes to hold soldiers accountable for crimes, and that's an important step that's extraordinary.
Host 1:27:21
Yeah, it's just really amazing to hear about a so called authority, meaning the military regime. You don't want to give them any legitimacy, but that are in control because of power that are just widespread, not following, disrespecting any sense of rule of law, especially now, but over their reign as well, and in, I just can't emphasize enough that in the actual act and process of resisting this brutal regime, in the moment of that resistance also simultaneously trying To build civil structures that ensure and that hope, that they will not follow a path of that brutality. When the power is taken, it's just, it's just extraordinary commitment and dedication to be doing those two simultaneously, and I just don't think that that can be appreciated or exclaimed enough.
John Quinley 1:28:18
Yeah, I am daily. I'm impressed, and I'm honored to work alongside the people that are building institutions and structures, alongside their either peaceful or military resistance. I don't think I'm not, you know, I'm not an expert in any other countries or in Myanmar in any way, but I understand from from some of my readings, that you know, when you have resistance movements in other places, the armed resistance and the peaceful resistance don't always work in tandem in the same ways as you have in Myanmar. In Myanmar, you have doctors, peaceful protesters and armed resistance fighters working basically together. And I don't think you have that happening in a lot of other contexts that have been or conflict contexts that have been studied. And I think that's a testament to the Myanmar people's real desire for democracy and human rights. If they didn't want democracy and human rights exactly in the same way, they wouldn't be collaborating in such an efficient way. It's incredibly efficient, and the ways that they've been able to gain control of liberated areas, create institutions and build back societies is incredibly amazing. And, yeah, I think we should just keep supporting the Myanmar revolution for democracy and human rights.
Host 1:29:52
That's beautifully said. And I think that's a message that doesn't get out enough in the space of the conflict that we always hear about in the headlines is. That simultaneous to that conflict, the possibility and the commitment to creating these structures simultaneously, that's really, really quite stunning, in that it's happening in tandem and at the same time and again, can just not be emphasized enough that that's occurring. And I want to leave you with a question of you've said many times throughout this interview of the importance of listening to your me and my friends, listening to what they want, what they're telling you, how they're describing it, learning from them, engaging with them, which is so nice to hear and empowering really to is that's we know that this is not the way that all foreign assistance works in places like Myanmar, where you're listening as much as, if not more than feeling that you have to teach them or tell them something. When you open yourself up to that listening, which is really the essence of our podcast platform itself, to open up to the the experience of listening, of dialog, of conversation, the mutual learning that that's happening right now between us, and that hopefully is happening to the third invisible member we're inviting at a future date into this that is sitting with us and and I do know that as a fact, many listeners will tell me after interviews, I just felt like I was sitting there with you guys the whole time. And that's a beautiful thing to say.
John Quinley 1:31:17
But I think is something that hopefully, Myanmar people appreciate about the work that Fortify Rights does is, you know, a lot of people parachute in to places. A lot of humanitarian funding goes in and it gets uninteresting, gets unsexy, goes out. And so I think steadfast commitment and presence goes a long way. And so what I would stress to international people, foreigners working with Myanmar people, is practice presence. You know, go sit in the refugee camps. Sit in the apartments of your diaspora friends that are Myanmar try to, if you don't know a Myanmar person, try to connect with the Myanmar person. Maybe text them on Facebook or Instagram or just practice the presence of being with people that are involved in a long process of trying to liberate their country, that takes a long time, and so I think, as an international person, coming into a place that's not our own, not my own, that's the least I can do is just practice presence. Thank you for that. Yeah. Thank you. I really appreciate it. I like the work that you guys are doing, and I always like tuning into the podcast. So thank you for creating the space and the time for us today.
Host 1:33:09
Thank you.
John Quinley 1:33:10
Thanks.
Host 1:33:35
After today's discussion, it should be clear to everyone just how dire the current situation is in Myanmar. We are doing our best to shine a light on the ongoing crisis, and we thank you for taking the time to listen. If you found today's talk of value, please consider passing it along to friends in your network, and please also consider letting them know that there is now a way to give that supports the most vulnerable and to those who are especially impacted by the military's organized state terror. Any donations given to our nonprofit mission better Burma will go to the vulnerable communities being impacted by the coup. If you would like to join in our mission to support those in Myanmar who are being impacted by the military coup, we welcome your contribution in any form, currency or transfer method, Your donation will go on to support a wide range of humanitarian and media missions, aiding those local communities who need a post. Donations are directed to such causes as the Civil Disobedience movement, CDM families of deceased victims, internally displaced person. IDP camps, food for impoverished communities, military defection campaigns, undercover journalists, refugee camps, monasteries and nunneries, education initiatives, the purchasing of protective equipment and medical supplies, COVID relief and more. We also make sure that our donation Fund supports a diverse range of religious and ethnic groups across the country. We invite you to visit our website to learn more about past projects. As well as upcoming needs, you can give a general donation or earmark your contribution to a specific activity or project you would like to support, perhaps even something you heard about in this very episode. All of this humanitarian work is carried out by our nonprofit mission, Better Burma. Any donation you give on our Insight Myanmar website is directed towards this fund. Alternatively, you can also visit the Better Burma website, betterburma.org and donate directly there. In either case, your donation goes to the same cause and both websites except credit card, you can also give via PayPal, by going to paypal.mebetterBurma. Additionally, we can take donations through Patreon, Venmo, GoFundMe and Cash App. Simply search Better Burma on each platform, and you'll find our account. You can also visit either website for specific links to these respective accounts, or email us at info@betterburma.org, that's Better Burma, one word, spelled B, E, T, T, E R, B, U, R, M, A.org. If you would like to give it another way, please contact us. We also invite you to check out our range of handicrafts that are sourced from vulnerable artisan communities across Myanmar, available at alokacrafts.com any purchase will not only support these artisan communities, but also our nonprofit wider mission that's Aloka Crafts spelled A, L, O, K, A, C, R, A, F, T, S, one word, alokacrafts.com. Thank you so much for your kind consideration and support.