The Decibel - A rare look inside war-torn Myanmar

Episode Date: December 12, 2022

Myanmar has been in a state of chaos since February 2021 when the military staged a coup following a democratic election. Thousands of people have been killed in this civil war, and the UN estimates t...hat around a million people have been displaced in the country.Siegfried Modola, a photojournalist and documentary photographer, spent weeks inside Myanmar for the Globe traveling with one of the rebel forces. That gave him a rare look into what’s going on in the country, the state of the civil war and what it means for the population.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at thedecibel@globeandmail.com

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 It's been nearly two years since Myanmar fell into chaos, after the country's military junta staged a coup. The civilian leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, had won a democratic election by a landslide, but she was arrested and has been imprisoned ever since. People flooded the streets to protest, and the military crackdown was brutal. Since then, thousands of people have died, and around a million have fled their homes. After the coup of February 2021, I felt that there was a need to try at least to go and report on the country.
Starting point is 00:00:53 Siegfried Modula is a photojournalist and documentary photographer. He recently spent weeks inside Myanmar for the Globe, traveling with one of the rebel forces that's fighting the military regime. As the time after the coup went by and people protested on the streets after they started arresting and detaining thousands of people and killing, basically we stopped hearing and reading what was happening inside because it was basically impossible for journalists to get those news out.
Starting point is 00:01:24 The few that there were, they were doing this at a high risk to themselves and their family. Today, Siegfried tells us what he saw in the country. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Sigfried, it's so good to talk to you. Thank you so much for speaking with me. Thank you for having me. Of course, Myanmar is not an easy place to get into right now, especially for a journalist. How did you manage to get into the country? Well, the access in this particular story was challenging, to say the least. I went in illegally because it was impossible to obtain a journalist visa through a different country.
Starting point is 00:02:18 And then eventually I was picked up at the border, close to the border, by the Karenia army representatives. And that meant of me arriving at the border and then waiting for a few days, crossing at night through jungle and forest, walking for hours, then arriving at a camp on the other side, waiting a few other days. This, you know, we have to imagine this is monsoon season, it's raining a lot, humidity level is over the roof,
Starting point is 00:02:53 and the walking terrain is very hard, it's thick, dense jungle. So if you're not with a local, you'll never find your way in, and you will get lost. So once on the other side basically then with a group of many soldiers, civilians, local politicians, we walked for four days non-stop from the morning to the evening. We slept on hammocks in the middle of the jungle, on the shores of rivers and up high mountains to arrive in the middle of Karen state, where there is towns and villages and where the fighting is happening. And so as you say, you were embedded with the Karen army, which is a
Starting point is 00:03:40 rebel group there in Myanmar. How did you arrange this embed with the rebel forces? Through months of networking. This is one, I believe that taking pictures, it's 50% of what we do of our job. The rest is the work of actually getting on location. So I got in touch through organizations and then people that were working directly on the ground in one capacity and the other, local NGOs, academics and eventually I managed to get through
Starting point is 00:04:19 people in high command that they wanted to meet me first to make sure that I could do the work and to make sure that I could do the work and to make sure that I could actually stay there for as much time as they wanted me to stay there. And they wanted to make sure that I was going to be able to publish the work. Yeah. I want to ask you about the commander that you were traveling with. Can you tell me about him? Well, it's quite a person. Very young, 27 years old. He was an activist before the coup, and the coup happened in February 2021. He was arrested because of his activism job, and then he picked up a gun and joined the Karenny army and quickly rose ranks to become one of the third top commanders in
Starting point is 00:05:06 Karenni state. And he's taking care and leading a unit of about anything between 25 to 35 men, day and night. And we have to remember that these people, him including, haven't seen his family since the coup began because they all come from different places. It's all very young people that are fighting the government, the military junta. And so it feels basically like a family, and this commander feels a little bit like the father
Starting point is 00:05:36 of all these young people. So his job is to keep the morale up, and his job is also to keep them safe when they actually go and fight because fighting then things happen and they die as well. And I'll ask you about those young people that you mentioned then like what what did you hear from those people about why they were there fighting with this Karenny army group? You know I think for this we have to understand a little bit of the history of Buma of of Myanmar. You know, 74 years of independence and nearly seven decades of military rule. The country has gone through one general
Starting point is 00:06:12 and one dictator at a time. And these dictators and generals have led the country by the barrel of a gun. I think people now are tired, tired of the military regime, tired of this oppression that has been going on for decades. And all the young people that I met, all the fighters, all the activists, all the people involved in this struggle, in this civil war, because we can call it a civil war now, in this rebellion, say that they want a future free of military rule. And they say this is the time now that we fight
Starting point is 00:06:51 and we have to fight until the end. There is no going back. If we do not fight, we will be slaves and we will keep on being slaves of the military junta. After the military coup happened in February 2021, there were weeks of peaceful protest. I guess, why are those people who were protesting in the early days, why are they now taking that joined the protest the days following the coup then quickly realized that there was no other way because then the protests were squashed very quickly thousands of people were arrested many
Starting point is 00:07:41 were detained they were tortured many were were killed. Up to now, nearly 2,000 people have been killed in the conflict, but the UN says that over a million people have been displaced in the country. And the amount of anger in the population at large, it's so big now that I don't see this situation being solved or going back to the situation like before the coup. Yeah. And I understand, of course, we're talking about this coup that happened in February 2021, but there's a lot more history that goes back a little bit further here as to why all of this is happening. Just very briefly, Siegfried, could you walk me through a little bit of really what has led the country to this point? So basically, the military declared after the coup, during the coup, the Tatmadaw declared the November 2020 elections invalid. So they made
Starting point is 00:08:40 a coup, and they officially said, we're going to do another election, one that is fair, because those elections were rigged. So essentially they overturned a civilian election, essentially. Exactly, exactly. That civilian government had been in power for a brief time and the coup was the end of a brief stretch of democratic rule in Myanmar that saw power being transferred once again to the Tatmadaw. After the coup, or during the days of the coup,
Starting point is 00:09:11 the leader of the NLD, the civilian government, Hong San Suu Kyi, was arrested, together with ministers, members of parliament, and the government, her government, totally dissolved. Now the NUG is acting as a shadow government outside the country. The national, sorry, the NUG is the national... The National Union government, that it's acting, that they say that they are still the recognized government in the country, which of course the military
Starting point is 00:09:42 does not agree with. So there's really a struggle here between the military wanting power and then the government that the military does not recognize as being the rightful government. Exactly, exactly. But I think the coup and this civil war that is spreading throughout the country now because of the coup, this is years in the making.
Starting point is 00:10:06 It's basically the last drop in the bucket that made the population completely explode in anger and rage. And they cannot handle anymore being oppressed by the military, fighting back. We'll be right back. Human rights groups have accused the military junta in Myanmar of targeting and killing protesters, including children. During your time there, Siegfried, I just want to ask you, what did you see? I've seen the junta indiscriminately shelling civilian areas. We have to understand that in this conflict, there isn't a clear, there isn't a front. There isn't a barrier where you arrive and they're fighting.
Starting point is 00:11:04 The fighting is happening everywhere. The government controls certain towns, they lose certain towns, they control certain positions and they lose. But they are in ethnic areas such as Kareni, the Tatmadaw sees the entire population from what I understand and I've seen and witnessed on the ground as enemies, as a situation to control by the rule of the gun. Because I've seen them and they are basically what they're doing, they are laying landmines around towns, villages, people's homes, properties, churches, in places that they lose control, they leave thousands of landmines, which will take years to clear. I've seen hospitals being shelled by mortar fire.
Starting point is 00:11:56 We see an increase in air bombardments, in helicopter attacks, in jet fighter attacks, in mortar shelling, in landmine using on civilian population because the civil war now, it's engulfing the entire country. And we know that half of the country now is not in the control of the armed forces of Myanmar. You mentioned landmines, and I know you went to a field hospital for landmine victims. What was that like um yeah very sad uh you you realize how serious the situation with land mines is in this in this area of the country and then you you tell yourself is this happening throughout because this is going to take this is a humanitarian catastrophe.
Starting point is 00:12:47 They are very small landmines, but the damage that they cause to people psychologically, physically, but psychologically as well, because people know that they cannot go back home. They cannot go back to the villages, to the communities, to the towns that they leave behind. And why, can you just connect that for me? Why is that, that they can't go back? Because it seems that one of the tactics of the Tatmadaw is to lay these landmines in urban settlements that they cannot control.
Starting point is 00:13:17 So the urban settlements where there is too much fighting or they have to retreat, they will leave all these landmines around. So villages, communities, towns, crossroads, strategic positions, if they don't control that area, if they cannot hold to that area, they will leave all these landmines, which then in the monsoon season the landmines wash away, they change position, they go into the rice paddies. And so not only armed combatants suffer because of this, but children, women, civilians on the ground. And I don't see how these landmines will be cleared in the future. Surely the Tatmadaw has no plan of clearing them.
Starting point is 00:13:59 Wow. I understand that you spoke to some people whose lives were affected by these landmines. Can you tell me about anyone that you spoke to some people whose lives were affected by these landmines. Can you tell me about anyone that you talked to? I met a woman. If I'm not mistaken, on my notes, she is 32 years old. I don't want to name her because of security reasons. I prefer not to. And she lost most of her leg and a part of her foot because she was walking back home from the rice paddy in the afternoon.
Starting point is 00:14:34 And this is an area where she had been living most of her life. There was a landmine on the path and she stepped on it and all the daughter was there in the hospital when I visited her I asked her a few questions of what happened where she's what she was from and and yeah and she told me that this happens on a daily basis this is a danger that people the civilians have to face daily now and as the conflict goes on the more the danger increases because the number of landmines being placed in this area increases.
Starting point is 00:15:12 And it's just in a split second, your entire life changes. Yeah. I think one of the really compelling photos that you took, Siegfried, is from the field hospital where they were treating landmine victims. Can you describe that photo to me? Yes, it's the picture of this man missing both his legs.
Starting point is 00:15:35 He's a soldier, part of the Karenin army. And in the image, you see that his friend is helping him onto the bed. And I think this picture summarizes the tragedy of war, the conflict in Myanmar, the human side and the suffering of the situation over there. As photojournalists we try to tell the story through one picture every time. And I think this is the picture that allows somebody, I hope the reader, to look at it and say what's going on there. Yeah. It is a very, it's an arresting photo. It really makes you kind of stop and understand what's happening in that situation.
Starting point is 00:16:25 From everything that you've seen, Siegfried, what has this ongoing conflict done to the lives of the people who actually live in Myanmar, to their experiences? I believe it's creating a trauma that will not go away anytime soon. The trauma was already there before because the psychic of how the military regime has been controlling the population for all these years, it's great. The oppression, it's great. The stories that you hear from the past, the elders, how they explained that the entire villages were burned down when there were children, or they saw people being killed. And all this goes back to the Tatmadaw, to the military regime, to the Junta. I think today this trauma is even greater,
Starting point is 00:17:16 because we are seeing, we are witnessing all the social classes stopping. Young people have stopped going to school. They've stopped going to university. In Karenin state, there is no electricity. There is no network. All this has been cut off either by the fighting, because of the fighting, or by the regime itself to stop certain areas
Starting point is 00:17:41 for functioning properly, because rebels are there, because armed groups are there. And the country feels that it's now frozen, frozen into this forever conflict. I only hope that in all this, the suffering of the civilian population on the ground will not increase. Now civilians are mostly staying in displaced camps. In these displaced camps, the only humanitarian help that they are receiving, it's from the
Starting point is 00:18:11 Karenia army and local organizations on the ground, because the United Nations and international NGOs are not allowed to operate in these places. So there is a great need of human resources that it's lacking. Just lastly, Siegfried, you published a series of very compelling photos from your time in Myanmar in the Globe this weekend. What do you hope will come of the work that you've done there? Well, I always hope that my work can raise, ultimately, awareness. First of all, for the public, whoever picks up the magazine, the newspaper, or looks at the computer in the morning and looks at the story, to understand what's happening. Internationally there is so much going on with Ukraine and the economic crisis today
Starting point is 00:19:03 and all the other crises around the world. We don't hear much about Myanmar but it's a dire situation that thousands of people if not millions are facing on a daily basis. There is a civil war going on in the country. I think next year is gonna get much worse before it gets better. I hope that this work is seen by as many people as possible and you always hope that maybe the right people can see this and they can actually bring this as an agenda in an international level and maybe make some noise, shake the system a little bit, the right people, the people in government that can actually say back to the government in my mind, shake the system a little bit, the right people, the people in government that can actually say, back to the government in Myanmar and say,
Starting point is 00:19:49 OK, you know, we know what's happening. We've seen it because we have journalists on the ground. And I know that for journalists it's very difficult to get there, so I take my job there very seriously. Sigfried, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. It's a pleasure. Thank you very much. If you'd like to see some of the photos Siegfried took in Myanmar, you can go to theglobeandmail.com. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms.
Starting point is 00:20:16 Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Kasia Mihailovic is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.