It’s impressive how the people of Myanmar have supported the resistance in countless ways over the past three years. Many have fought with their hands, pens, and wallets, participating in campaigns and funding the cause. While international support hasn’t reached the level we hoped for, there are a few expats who have stepped up to help. One of them is Saw Htee Cher, a humanitarian worker who decided to stand by the people of Myanmar in this struggle. He fights for Myanmar’s freedom from dictatorship through his work with Free Burma Rangers, as well as documenting and blogging about the resistance to keep the international community informed. We spoke with him to hear about his personal aspirations, and his hopes for our country beyond the resistance.
What drew you to development work in Myanmar’s ethnic regions, and what were some of the key challenges you faced in helping such communities?
I spent much of my career in Africa doing humanitarian work, and got my first short-term assignment in Myanmar among the Delta Karen people near Labutta in 2011. I loved Myanmar from the start, and wanted to return. The political and economic situation was grim at that time, but the people were warm and the Burmese culture was fascinating. After a couple of other short assignments, I managed to secure a two-year contract with a European humanitarian organization starting in 2019, based in Hpa-an. I was assigned to build its Livelihoods program for resettled refugees (including IDPs).
By 2019 there was a lot more political openness and freedom, which had given rise to much more economic advancement than I had first seen here. Many international organizations were trying to help refugees, the poor, farmers, and other disadvantaged people in Myanmar by then, but we found that we were working at cross-purposes with the real power, which was Myanmar’s paranoid, authoritarian military. While we were trying to improve the condition of the Rohingyas, the farmers, and resettled refugees, the Tatmadaw was actively working to keep them poor and powerless. It put humanitarian workers in a moral dilemma, trying to provide support to the people while being forced to tacitly endorse the regime that oppressed them.
My job allowed me to travel to Loikaw and Demawso, Taungyi, Banmaw and Momauk, Sittwe, Mawlamyaing, Tavoy (Dawei), Beit (Myeik), and many other parts of Myanmar. That was a great privilege.
In Hpa-an I lived with a Pwo Karen family, who welcomed me into their culture at events like Karen New Year, the Wrist Tying Ceremony, Don dancing, etc. During Covid 19 my local family and my co-workers protected and supported me. Working with refugees in the Southeast, many of my program’s beneficiaries were also ethnic Karens, as well as some Karenni, Muslims, Pa-O, and others. Many foreigners find Karen easy to love, and I fell for them too.
What motivated you to join the Free Burma Rangers after the coup? And what is your role there? How did the shift from development work to actively resisting the military regime affect you personally and professionally?
When the attempted coup happened, my contract with the refugee organization was ending. The moral dilemma of the international aid industry grew much worse after the illegal power seizure. In order to continue working in Myanmar, organizations have to sign memoranda of understanding with a ruthless regime that kills and oppresses the same people they claim to help. They pay taxes and fees that the regime uses to carry out its atrocities. The regime decides where our aid can go, and it channels it for its own purposes. The best international organizations relocated outside Myanmar to work across the borders, through local partner organizations. The big aid industry players, however – the United Nations, the big-name INGOs – continue to collaborate with the junta, doing more harm than help.
I relocated to Thailand, but I didn’t want to abandon my Myanmar and Karen friends in their worst hour. The Free Burma Rangers is one of those very rare foreign organizations that go into the liberated parts of Myanmar, completely bypassing the military junta, and deliver direct assistance such as food, shelter, health care, and reporting on human rights abuses. That’s what I wanted. The people of FBR are do-ers, not talkers or funders. At FBR I have my hands on the building of solar power mini-grids for rural hospitals and schools in Kawthoolei (the Karen nation), and on my own I even get to do some livelihood work in remote mountain villages, such as helping people grow coffee for sale in Thailand. Mutraw District of Kawthoolei is so traditional that the people are only now getting their first cash crops. Everything has been on a subsistence level before.
I’m also involved in the training of new medics. At the FBR hospital in Mutraw, called the Jungle School of Medicine of Kawthoolei (JSMK), I teach human anatomy classes to the young trainees, while foreign doctors teach medical subjects. These trainees spend a year learning basic health care, then return to their villages or their military units in the KNLA, or sometimes the KNDF or KIA, to provide care. I have now assisted with three graduating classes of new medics.
One more thing I do is tag along with FBR and KNLA visits to the front lines of the war in Kawthoolei, in places like Papun, Kaw T’Ree (Kawkareik), Latkatdaung near Myawaddy, and the contested Thanphyuzayat-Xrotherpler (Payathonsu) road. Unlike the others, I have no military experience, but I try to get close so I can report on the war in the most informed and realistic way I can. I have had to learn safety in proximity to bombing and live fire. Like people elsewhere in Myanmar, those in Kawthoolei have to run at the sound of aircraft and hide in bunkers. That applies to us too.
Other things I have learned are basic conversation in the S’gaw Karen language, because the villagers speak nothing else, as well as Myanmar and Karen history. I read a whole shelf of books on pre-colonial Burma, World War II, the Karen Revolution, and the horrible history of persecution, displacement, and massacres. Through reporting on the civil war I’ve learned a great deal about Myanmar geography in places I never went.
In what other ways are you involved with the resistance?
Apart from my involvement with FBR, since 12 February 2021 I have published regular reports on the civil war in Myanmar on social media and on the Substack platform (https://burmacoupresistancenotes.substack.com/). I write in English for an international audience, and my goal is to raise worldwide awareness of the pro-democracy struggle in Myanmar, even while other events like the Ukraine and Gaza wars get much more attention. As a foreigner I cannot carry a gun and fight, so this is what I feel I can do to support the cause. When in my home country I also give presentations and do advocacy to try to generate more support for the Spring Revolution.
How has your understanding of the military regime changed through your work with the Free Burma Rangers?
Through FBR I hear first-hand reports when jets bomb schools and refugee camps in Karenni, or when the KNLA captures a town or a junta camp, or when the different Chin factions have disagreements. I have had the opportunity to talk with KNLA officers and KNU Padohs. I have seen schools both before and after they were bombed. I understand that there is no middle ground in this war – the military regime must be completely eradicated for Myanmar and Kawthoolei to have peace. Any “negotiated settlement” that leaves any vestige of the junta with any power will just lead to another cycle of violence.
In what ways do you believe international support could better address the situation on the ground?
As I indicated, international organizations should quit Yangon and Naypyitaw and relocate to liberated areas or neighboring countries, and work with local organizations. It is not UN or bilateral assistance that has kept the people alive during this war, it is local organizations, crowd-funding support locally or through the Myanmar diaspora, that have done that. The aid industry needs to get behind those local organizations, and put aside their hand-wringing about transparency and the usual bureaucratic habits of the industry.
Diplomats at the UN and foreign embassies need to stop suggesting “negotiations” between “all parties” for a “political solution” to the civil war. The solution to this crisis cannot be political, it is necessarily military, since the illegal regime will continue to use force until its defeat. “All parties” are not responsible for the crisis, the illegal military regime bears entire responsibility, which is why it needs to be removed, or “uprooted” as the protesters in Myanmar say.
Foreign know-it-alls also need to stop issuing warnings about the post-junta political order. We all know the formation of the new order in a federal democracy will take time and be complex, but that is for the Myanmar people alone to work out. External finger-wagging is not helpful.
How have ethnic communities been affected by the coup, and how do you see the role of ethnic groups evolving in the resistance?
When ethnic Bamar youth began showing up in Kawthoolei just after the attempted coup, the Karen were extremely wary, because they thought it might be a repeat of 1988, which did not go well. Urban youths were considered poor soldier material and potential spies. That attitude has changed dramatically during the war. The KNLA, KIA, Karenni Army, CNA, and other longstanding ethnic armies took in the great wave of outside youth, trained them, armed them, and now command them. Those units, with names like the Cobra Column, the Black Panthers, the Albino Tigers, and Venom, have proven their value through fierce combat. They are mostly Bamar soldiers with Karen officers. It is strange to hear Burmese spoken in the KNLA, but those soldiers have greatly increased the strength of the ethnic armies, which has contributed to their many victories.
Specialized fighters from the cities with IT skills have set up drone warfare units like Federal Wings and Angry Birds that have been a key element in the fight against the highly-equipped Naypyitaw regime. I have met CDM surgeons and anesthesiologists from big Yangon hospitals who currently operate in jungle clinics in liberated areas, treating both villagers and wounded resistance soldiers. These are areas that never before had advanced medical services.
For their part, the Bamar youth in these ethnic military units have learned about the Karen, can speak some of the language, know the geography – things that never interested them before. And most importantly, answering to ethnic minority officers, they have learned respect, for the ethnic armies and also for the historic persecution and suffering of their people. This is new. I am confident that this respect and mutual familiarity will go home with the soldiers after the war, and make possible a genuine federal democracy based on equal rights. That would never have been possible if it were just the NLD returning to power afterward.
What are your personal aspirations as you continue this work? How do you see your role evolving in the resistance, and what are your hopes for the future of Myanmar?
My personal aspiration is to dance in the streets of Hpa-an when the junta is finally crushed. Then maybe I can return to peace-time livelihood work. I want to travel freely around Myanmar, which was never possible. I want to see the Karen people have freedom from fear in their country for the first time. I don’t know if all of the ethnic homelands will choose federal democracy or independence, but whatever they choose, their new military power will enable them to have it. And when the new order is being decided, I hope it can be done peacefully among the various parties with their competing interests.
If you could ask for specific forms of help—whether resources, awareness, or advocacy—what would your message be to the outside world?
The KNU has said that if the Myanmar resistance received only 1% of the military aid given to Ukraine, it could quickly finish the war. Humanitarian assistance is important to the people displaced and impoverished by the junta, but it is only a band-aid that won’t address the underlying problem. Only military assistance can help end the war so all the refugees can go home and economic development can begin again. That is the real solution.
Of course, you have China looming threateningly to the north. If Western countries gave weapons to the resistance, there is the risk of a Chinese invasion to prop up the illegal Naypyitaw regime. Perhaps that is why they don’t do it.
Another thing supporters could give is money. The American government is contributing several million dollars to the NUG and ethnic homeland governments for non-lethal technical and humanitarian assistance, but other countries could do so as well. It would be best if the Chinese could understand that they will eventually have to deal with the NUG, and begin building that relationship. And as mentioned, the international aid industry needs to directly support the NUG, ethnic homeland governments, and local aid organizations that have done all the work in this crisis, and separate themselves entirely from the junta.
