It Could Happen Here - Myanmar: Printing the Revolution, Part 3

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

We follow Zaw, a gen Z militant fighting with improvised weapons in Myanmar. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everyone, I'm Robert Evans, and welcome to episode three of Printing the Revolution. Here's my partner, James Stout. In the spring and summer of 2020, my partner, James Stout. In the spring and summer of 2020, millions of Americans had versions of the same experience. State forces killed a helpless man, protesters took to the streets in anger,

and armed agents of the state responded with mass violence. A lot of people's lives changed forever in fairly short order. What happened in Myanmar after the military coup was that story turned up to 11. Within days, the military had used live fire on demonstrators. Zor, our source for today's episode, was 22 years old at the time. He spent his days working as a delivery driver, hanging out with his girlfriend, playing video games. On the day the coup started, playing video games. On the day the coup started, he was playing PUBG after a long shift. Soon, he and his girlfriend took to the streets with thousands of other Gen Z Burmese kids. The state responded with massacres, often firing automatic weapons into the crowds.

Zor hadn't been particularly politically active before this moment. In fact, he felt pretty poorly towards revolutionaries opposing the government in the jungle, seeing them as rebellious troublemakers. In the past, we thought that the military is a group that loves all the people, all the different groups in the country. And then there's just a few people who really hate the military but especially after the the 2021 coup we face it with our own foreheads you know with the guns we can face the evil of the military and all the human rights and things that people who hated the military before we're talking about, we understand it now because we had to face it ourselves. And then they're going to tell us terrorists and however much they call us. We know that we're fighting for human rights and we know that each

person deserves these basic things, you know, so, so even when we captured a soldier, we don't kill them immediately. They're unarmed. When they capture a PDF, they torture and kill them very horrifically or horrendously. And they kill and hurt all the citizens and ordinary bystanders. So for us, what they're calling as rebels before, we're not rebels. They're the ones that are rebels. So we have to call them rebels. They're the terrorists. But as violence against protesters escalated,

Zul began to see through the lies he'd been told by the military all his life. What we were calling as rebels are what we kind of become, but we know why we are now rebels. That's because of their terrorism, their oppressive regimes, and their violation of human rights. That's why we have to revolt against them. For a time, protesters responded creatively, with giant potato guns meant to fire less lethal projectiles long distances. These homemade guns would be fired in volleys, while other protesters protected them with shields. Some of these tactics were effective at points, but it quickly became clear that the government was willing to massacre everyone standing up to them. Zor, his girlfriend and their friends quickly decided that non-violent resistance wasn't going to work. But they didn't give up. As we get into June, there's two paths, right?

We can be normal, we can go on the streets, we can ask for the people's power back. And since that's not working, we know that what we have to do is we need to hold these guns get these guns and on the military side all they know is that they will solve this by holding guns so the only thing the only path that's left for us is to take those guns for ourselves so around the end of may we started entering training school so the down tool is what the word he used and it's something like this corner part so one corner part one to two so he's talking what that means is that and hunting hunting's that we were doing hunting rifles that we were using for that so we kind of start started

and we fought first in demoso if we can ask the military nicely then there's no reason for us to be using guns but since they don't listen to our demands or our request at all then and since all we can do all they are saying all they're doing is using the guns and being terrorists trying to shoot us. So the only thing that we can do to get what we need and what we want is to take the guns for ourselves. And so like hundreds of people his age, Zohr headed into the jungle in May of 2021. The decision wasn't an overnight one or an easy one. But after protesting non-violently, then meeting state violence with community defense, then seeing his peers gunned down in the street, he didn't have many other choices. He'd picked up a megaphone, then a shield,

and now he was heading in the jungle to pick up a rifle. The only problem was that there weren't any rifles. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me as the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you.

Filling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know it. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows. As part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. He left with his girlfriend and, quote, with the blessing of his parents. Keep that in mind for later. When he first went to the jungle, Zal went to a two-week training camp

where the Karini People's Defense Force taught him the basics of guerrilla warfare. But they didn't have enough weapons to arm him and his friends. So, these Jinzi militants began their fighting careers with.22 caliber rifles. If you aren't a gun person, the.22 is one of the smallest widely available bullets. Like any bullet, it can kill, but as a caliber, it's better suited for shooting rabbits than soldiers. These.22 rifles were handmade locally and only fired one shot at a time. But it was those rifles that Zaw, his girlfriend, and their friends carried into their first gunfight with the Tatmadaw. After battling like

that for about three weeks, the shooting stopped, he said, in an interview we conducted over Signal. After the shooting stopped, we grouped together money to buy arms by asking for donations. They were massively outgunned, but determined to fight on with the weapons they could make and buy on the black market until they could find something better, even if that meant taking guns from dead soldiers. The military's guns are extremely good, of course, compared to.22s, he said. We fight with the mindset that we must win. Our minds are always prepared to take their guns when a soldier falls. It's a mindset to want the enemy's arms to be your own arms.

You need to want to resist injustice, because we are fighting for what is right. We do not get sad, even if we die. We are happy even when wounded. We no longer care if our arms are matched unevenly. Now, despite their enthusiasm, PDF units all over the country were finding themselves in the same desperate situation. When thousands of young people in Myanmar decided to take up arms against the government, there just weren't enough guns to go around. AK pattern rifles sell for $3,000 on the black market, and ARs sell for up to $7,000. The GDP per capita in 2020 was just $1,218.35 per person.

And unlike militias in Syria and Iraq, the pro-democracy EAOs in Myanmar don't have the benefit, questionable benefit, of the US.S. flooding the region with its firehose of guns and money. Undeterred, Zaw and his squad took to YouTube, where they found videos explaining how to make.223 caliber bolt-action rifles. Again, if you're not a gun person,.223 may not sound very different than.22, but whereas.22 is commonly used to shoot squirrels,.223 is the standard rifle round, more or less, for the U.S. military. These new bolt-action.223 commonly used to shoot squirrels,.223 is the standard rifle round, more or less, for the U.S. military. These new bolt-action.223s Zaw and his friends were making could not match the rate of fire of a modern rifle, but they could at least match those rifles in stopping power.

Once these Jinzee insurgents had the technique down, they created a detailed album on Facebook showing how everything from the stock to the barrel could be made with pipes, lumber, and hours and hours of detailed hard work. Unlike their guerrilla warfare instructors, these kids had grown up on the internet rather than the jungle. So they knew that if it exists, there's a subreddit for it. It was the internet that came to their rescue. 3D printed guns have been around for a decade, but the early models didn't work well and suffered from a pretty bad reputation, due in part to Cody Wilson, the pedophile libertarian activist we discussed last episode. Jake Hanrahan of Popular Front has covered the printed gun movement extensively. Cody Wilson made it his whole thing.

Like, I'm the guy with the 3D printed guns, and he was on this moral crusade. The 3D printed gun lads, particularly Deterrence Dispense, were like, yeah, we don't give a shit about that. We're just putting our stuff out into the world. Obviously, they got their ideas, but they weren't really wedded to this idea of it being one person. Deterrence Dispensed was a group of anonymous activists who were more concerned with making printed guns that worked than making a name for themselves. Hanrahan was connected to one activist who used the pseudonym Jay Stark through the group

and after three years of conversing online, Hanrahan met Stark in Germany to produce a documentary. Jay Stark died of a heart attack following a police raid last year. So we spoke to Hanrahan about Stark's worldview. His whole worldview comes from this idea

that, you know, it's everybody should have the right to be able to fight tyranny. And if you can't fight tyranny, like you're fucked. And the way to fight tyranny in the modern era is firearms. We know that, you know, there's no, you can't argue. It's no peaceful march, get rid of a fascist dictatorship or whatever. But he was, you know, some people would say he was far right. whatever but he he was he he was you know there's some people would say he was far right some people say he was an anarchist some people say he was a

u.s patriot type i mean first he wasn't even from america and he had a lot of he liked the laws in america but he wasn't like some american kind of fanboy or anything on that sense like the gun laws he liked the gun laws he liked the freedom of speech laws which i do as well you know like personally i i in this country you know if you tweet the wrong thing even in jest like police will literally come to your house in britain like it's happened it's fucking mental um so yeah he liked that kind of thing um and i think i think for him it was he was very tunnel vision you know he was very tunnel vision it was just freedom freedom freedom and if you said well what about this what about that he was like i don't care about that until the freedom is there there's no point looking at anything else and so his brain was always on

people that are living under tyranny you know and it genuinely was i know there's a lot of people even leftist particularly leftist have tried to completely smear him as a white supremacist. They were saying, oh, everything he said in that doc that I made was really, it was secret anti-Jewish white supremacy. And then it came out that he wasn't even white. You know, it was like, very good, very good, you fucking idiots. So there was a lot of that going around. But I honestly believe that deep down, he was just tunnel vision focused on this idea of every, until everybody is not living under tyranny, I must go on this mission. And okay. If,

if someone shoots up a school with what I've invented, so be it, you know, which I'm not saying that's good. But that was just his idea. You know, he was like, so be it.

Fuck it. If I can, you know, he was very genuine when he was on about the Uyghurs or he was on about the mistreatment of Kurds from Turkey. And, you know, he was like,

look, if we can build something that can help them, well, sorry that the West might get fucked up because of it, but I'm focused on this. Now, obviously, in practice, that would be chaos, probably. But, you know, he just saw it the way he saw it. And that was that. The cavalier attitude Stark seems to have had to how his invention might be used is, of course, worthy of criticism. But the revolutionaries on the ground in Myanmar were not concerned with ideological debates over the ethics of homemade firearms. They needed guns, and they needed them now. Jay Stark's FGC-9, which stands for Fuck Gun Control 9mm,

was simple to make, easy to use, and relied entirely on parts you could print or buy in any hardware store. In September of 2021, a post popped up on the Foscad subreddit, which is dedicated to the manufacturing of 3D printed guns. Stark is a hero there. The post said, Wanted to say thanks to this community, the creators of FGC9, and the various mods when we could. You guys are literally empowering the armed revolution against dictators in one of the most underdeveloped countries. We are now equipped with FGC9 and starting the armed revolution to the coup leader dictator. As one poster comments, the account, quote, went from posting about mobile games to how to 3D print SMGs to desperately

asking people to pay attention what was happening in Myanmar. Then, after the FGC9 post, it was deleted entirely. Jay Stark never lived to see this. Like it couldn't be a more perfect, like practical, actual realization of his project. You couldn't pick a more perfect version of it to happen like that, you know. And there's a lot of talk of, oh, well, there's a lot of drug dealers in Amsterdam have FGC9s. There was a Nazi recently arrested with one. You know, these people are awful, of course. you know these people are awful of course but the the most prevalent use of the fgc9 at least from what i've observed has been from the the rebels in myanmar making them i think i've seen like 30 of them so far you know that's a lot of them and there was one was found stashed in a bush my theory is they're left around for ambush attacks in areas that are not as

fully controlled by the rebels. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. I know you.

Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Foscad, a community of mostly US-based gun printers, lost its collective mind. And it didn't take long for people to make the connection between the post and the desperate plight of Myanmar's Spring Revolution. Soon after the post, the Tatmadaw started posting pictures of FGC-9s, often without sights, captured from fighters in Yangon. On the 21st of September, the Tatmadaw's Ministry of Information released a statement. released a statement. Ai-myat-thwe and Ye-myint-ong were found with an FGC-9 Mark II pistol, five rounds of 9mm ammunition. They were arrested along with their drone. The military alleged they were an urban unit from the same Generation Z freedom army that Zor was a part of. That same month, the military posted pictures of three more

captured FGC-9s, suggesting that at least five had been captured by late September. Then, two months later, a new post popped up in the Foscad subreddit. Hey, I'm back. I'm the guy who posted a thank you note back in September here. Now that the FGC9s are already known by the dictator, I can proudly announce that we're from Myanmar. Yes, we are mass producing FGC9s to fight back against the dictator. More info about our production will be published later. This time the user, u slash daddy, u m cd, hung around to answer questions. Those bastards didn't know we had the tech back then. Now that everything is in public, we can proudly say we're from Myanmar.

We are mostly responsible for production and R&D, even though we also involved in other ground missions. We distribute the FGC-9 to a lot of different urban guerrillas in urban and rural areas. Some of the units got arrested a few weeks ago, which you might have already seen on the subreddit. Apart from the FGC-9, there are other equipments and weapons that are being produced with 3D printers, he wrote. He said his team were residing in ethnic armed organization areas, mainly the Karen National Union and the Kachin Independence Army controlled zones. He posted that they'd tried other 3D printed designs, such as the Plastikov, which is a printed AK-47 receiver, but getting the other parts made it impractical. By contrast,

the FGC-9 could be made entirely using a 3D printer and some hardware store parts. 9 could be made entirely using a 3D printer and some hardware store parts. According to another source, Myanmar's small motorcycle repair shops made quick work at the metal barrels and bolts. Electrochemical machining was used to make more barrels. They also had the chance to buy a few Glock barrels from Thailand, Daddy UMCD said, but those cost a lot more than the FGC 9 barrels. UMCD said, but those cost a lot more than the FGC-9 barrels. While his account continued to post, the military continued to share photos of captured FGC-9s. Three workshops that had been using lathes to make the barrels were raided, and photos of three more captured guns popped up in November.

Alongside bolt-action rifles, it still had stickers on their stocks from what looked like US gun shops. Production in decentralized locations continued despite the raids, while other groups fought on with homemade revolving rifles, crude homemade wooden stocks, and other improvised weapons. A telegram channel with instructions in Burmese on how to make the guns made sure that even when one shop or gunsmith was taken out of the fight, the knowledge wasn't lost. Although filament for their 3D printers was becoming harder to get, they'd stockpiled a lot in advance. Daddy UMCD tried to manufacture automatic FGC-9s and another printable model called Professor Parabellum Square Tube Submachine Gun. But nothing else seemed as easy or as reliable as the FGC9.

Of course, Reddit being Reddit, people questioned the veracity and utility of his posts. He responded, FGC9s are just part of the game, because they can be produced with what we have at the lowest cost available. Rifles are $4,000 to $7,000 US dollars at our border. FGCs are under $100. Rifle parts are 10 times more expensive than Glock parts. To all those who are saying these photos are sus, we don't want to blame your suspicion. If any of you remember the thread I posted in September, you will remember that we are mass-producing FGC9s. The ones in the photos you've seen were supplied by us. There are many groups like this now.

We do the main production, just like I explained in September. Then, DaddyUMCD went on to thank the other members of the subreddit, claiming that active help was the only reason he and other revolutionaries had been able to overcome certain technical issues. We wouldn't be here without you guys, especially someone who shared with me the buffer spring and fire control group spring measurements, he said. By late November, photos of FGC-9s in the hands of fighters emerged, and they showed sights this time. They had longer barrels and homemade suppressors too. The FGC-9s were apparently used by urban units for close-up fighting, and for the training

of new fighters since they have essentially the same controls as an AR-15 or M16 rifle, both of which are common in Myanmar's rebel units. We have successfully streamlined a variety of techniques to produce FGC-9. 1,000 plus, efficiently. Our primary forces are equipped with proper rifles. FGC-9s are for guerrilla warfare. We started using those in hit-and-run and special task force missions too. We don't share much about the missions to the public yet. It will definitely come, and when it does, I'll update it here. If I'm still alive, ha ha, wrote DaddyUMCD on the Foscad subreddit. Even with production in full swing, ammunition remained a problem.

Although some regions can produce 22 and 9mm at home, according to DaddyUMCD, 5.56 can be purchased in large quantities at the border with Thailand, but it isn't cheap. Instead, the PDF relied on raiding police and military outposts, in the same way the EAOs had for years. 9mm is the most common centrefire pistol round in the world. That's why Deterrent Dispense picked it for the FGC9. Seized weapons often only have a handful of rounds, but that's enough to kill a soldier and take his weapon. Jay Stark might not have been around to see his invention used to fight tyranny, but Hammerhand thinks he would have been happier

with the results. He would have been made up. I think that's everything he wanted to achieve. You know what I'm saying? That really is everything he wanted to do. Even the National Unity Government, Myanmar's government in exile, has come around to at least some of Jay Stark's ways of thinking. According to Daddy UMCD, our Minister of Defence Minister already promised about the right to bear arms at the first day of the revolution. Promises made by revolutionary governments are not exactly solid commitments, but it's not hard to see why a generation of kids like Zaw, forged by an asymmetrical conflict with a government that possessed a near-absolute advantage in armaments, might be committed to staying armed, even if they win. At the moment, the future of their struggle is very much in doubt. Scrolling through Facebook photos of Zaw and his comrades is a surreal experience. They look not just young, soldiers mostly look young,

but they look like students, kids from some weirdly militarized university. Photos on Facebook show them sprawled out together in the grass, in camo fatigues, bearing rifles, but each glued to their phones as they cuddle in together. Zaw and his girlfriend, who he described to us as the girl I love, fought alongside each other until January 7th of this year. The battle that we started, she was coming with him, and as happened since, a weapon landed near her and it hit her leg, so her bone broke, so she had to go to the hospital.

3D printed and homemade guns have helped, but Zaw and his friends are still fighting against a modern military with planes, night vision goggles, and tanks. Despite this, more than a year after the coup, they're still fighting, and more soldiers defect to join them weekly. It's hard to see what victory looks like. The cities will be another battle altogether. But in the jungle camp where Zaw Video calls us from, it's impossible to see what giving up might look like either. He's still fighting, his girlfriend is healing,

and they're both committed to staying out in the jungle until they earn their freedom back or die trying. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources.

Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America.

Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.