Active Days, Restless Nights

Exhausted from the daily protests and sleeping at a different monastery roof with fellow protesters every night for safety, his face darkened from being out under the hot sun all day, his voice hoarse from giving daily speeches, and his words crackling with emotion as he struggles to describe his horror at the loss of freedom and the innocents who have died… Chit Tun takes listeners to the front lines of the protest movement. Struggling at times to find the right words, his mind so harried that he sometimes loses his train of thought, and at various points not even able to pronounce sounds properly, this is a very personal portrait of the human toll the on-going military coup is taking.

Chit Tun describes a day in the life of the protest movement. He notes that there is no one single leader, or even any group of leaders, and that his generation— Generation Z— realizes that each individual needs to take responsibility and be a leader in their own right. He also highlights the importance of non-violence, describing its roots in his Buddhist training at the monastery. This has certainly been put to the test during these protests, and at points in our talk emotion overtakes him, such as he describes his shock and fury first recounting how in Nay Pyi Daw, 19-year old protester Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing was shot through her helmet while protecting herself from a military water hose, and then later in Mandalay, 16-year old medical volunteer Wai Yan Tun was also shot in the head by a military sniper, while helping an injured protester an ambulance.

Chit Tun was so enraged by this loss of innocent life that he described wanting to “burn down police stations,” yet his commitment to Buddhist principles reaffirmed his commitment to non-violence, evoking Michelle Obama’s famous refrain, “When they go low, we go high.”

A note about our mission here at Insight Myanmar Podcast. While it usually takes us several weeks at minimum to produce an episode, we feel that the current moment demands a faster turn-around, and we managed to release this episode after just 36 hours. However, this can be challenging for a primarily volunteer organization, especially one with limited funds. We hope to continue bringing interviews on this topic with Buddhist practitioners, teachers, and scholars, but we need your support to do so. If you would like to support our mission, we welcome your contribution. You may give by searching “Insight Myanmar” on PayPal, Venmo, CashApp, Go Fund Me, and Patreon, as well as via Credit Card at www.insightmyanmar.org/donation.