Mission Accomplished; Now a Greater Task Awaits

By Kyaw Zwa Moe 28 February 2023

It was a fraught, reluctant, however pressing and mandatory operation. We may rightly name it an “escape mission”.

It was not the primary time I had been pressured to flee my dwelling nation to keep away from political persecution—that occurred in 2000, a yr after I used to be free of the earlier navy regime’s gulag. Twenty-two years later, I discovered myself with no selection however to make my escape as soon as once more, for a similar cause.

It was this month final yr—Feb. 23, 2022 to be exact—precisely one yr and 23 days after the navy seized energy, overthrowing an elected authorities and launching its reign of terror over a inhabitants that now lives in worry of arrest, torture and dying by the hands of the regime. Its infinite violent crackdown on dissent has pressured numerous anti-coup protesters, college students, politicians, artists and members of varied professions, together with journalists, to flee the nation.

A number of hours earlier than dawn on that day in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest metropolis, a colleague and I headed for a beforehand organized location the place an unknown driver can be ready for us. Minutes later, two extra colleagues joined us, and the younger however calm driver wordlessly drove his outdated van into the darkness. His project was to take us to a distant border city; our mission was to flee our nation.

It was one thing we hated to do.

Within the van, it was nonetheless too darkish to see one another, and we traveled in silence. However I may really feel that the entire passengers have been overwhelmed with fear and sorrow. For them, it should have been an unfamiliar feeling, because it was the primary time that they had undertaken such a journey. As for the driving force, he should have had considerations of his personal: Although he didn’t know we have been journalists, he knew he was transporting “fugitives” fleeing the junta’s arbitrary persecution.

Concern of being detained by junta safety forces earlier than reaching our vacation spot mingled with the sorrow of leaving our properties and family members behind, together with every little thing that we held pricey, or that was merely acquainted: a cracked or stained espresso mug; an outdated eating desk round which relations would sit to eat each meal; a stained wall, empty, or maybe with a tilted portray or yellowing, framed household {photograph} held on it; the odor of 1’s mattress; the stuffy air in a single’s rooms or the best way daylight shines by a specific window; a beloved pet; even the on a regular basis noises of the neighborhood—and too many extra to call. Nothing can exchange such issues, nothing feels extra beneficial or stunning as soon as taken away. Collectively, such issues, I consider, add as much as what we consider as “dwelling”. With out them, there is no such thing as a dwelling, only a constructing. Their absence creates a robust nostalgia for dwelling.

Sure, leaving dwelling was one thing all of us hated to do. However we needed to do it to outlive.

Three days earlier, junta troops had arrested one in all our admin employees who knew the house addresses of all of The Irrawaddy’s staff, together with the editors and reporters. He was pressured to point out the authorities the place we lived, making it mandatory for us to go away our properties instantly. The group of us within the van have been one of many final teams from our publication to go away the nation.

After the junta’s ruthless and bloody crackdown on nationwide peaceable anti-coup protests within the early months of 2021, following the coup on Feb. 1, tens of 1000’s of individuals fled their properties and plenty of of them left the nation. Amongst them have been many dozens of journalists.

Because it confronts the sheer scale of the anti-regime motion, the navy regime has recognized as one in all its primary enemies the information media, particularly the journalists whose work day by day exposes the true colours of the coup leaders—their merciless, inhumane and immoral acts in opposition to your entire inhabitants. Their work has made the media an enemy of the regime. Myanmar was the world’s third-worst jailer of journalists, with not less than 42 journalists behind bars, on the time of the Committee to Defend Journalists’ Dec. 1, 2022 jail census.

In these early days I made the dangerous—a few of my pals mentioned daring—determination to remain contained in the nation to proceed to work as an editor for The Irrawaddy, which by this time had been charged beneath varied repressive legal guidelines. I believed I might be capable of conceal, periodically shifting areas, whereas persevering with to work. In early March, one month after the coup, I went into hiding. This lifetime of concealment and disguising myself in public was manageable for a yr, however finally, transferring from one hiding place to a different grew to become untenable as a result of junta’s oppressive legal guidelines, such because the obligatory visitor and family registrations, to not point out its manhunt operations focusing on us. Pals who supplied to cover me at their locations grew to become involved for their very own security, as they have been serving to a “fugitive journalist”.

With the safety state of affairs deteriorating, the arrest of our employees member pressured me and my colleagues to make the tough determination to flee the nation. It was an undesirable final result however the one sensible one if we have been to outlive.

Our automobile needed to cease at each one of many many safety checkpoints we encountered all through the journey. The motive force, nevertheless, was ready, and knew learn how to cope with police and navy personnel: He slipped a roll of money into the palm of the safety guard at each checkpoint. He had ready many rolls of money forward of time; his technique labored—we have been by no means significantly requested to determine ourselves.

We fled as a result of it’s merely not price getting arrested, tortured and given prolonged jail sentences, if not killed, for doing the work that’s our calling—our work with the pen, with phrases. No citizen of my nation deserves to stay and work beneath this brutal junta and its generals, or any form of dictatorship or authoritarianism. Our nation has endured six a long time of this. That must be sufficient, however it has but to finish. In fact, nobody deserves such ruthless rulers; the Ukrainians don’t deserve Vladimir Putin’s invasion and battle, both.

I endured loads of what I didn’t deserve—to understate issues—beneath the earlier regime. As a 19-year-old pupil, I used to be handed a 10-year jail sentence for my peaceable anti-regime actions, together with publishing a pro-democracy journal, after the 1988 pro-democracy rebellion. I managed to outlive that harsh eight-year incarceration in two infamous prisons. For what? To hold on what I began—my very own revolution in opposition to authoritarianism and navy dictatorship.

In 2000, one yr after my launch, I fled my nation for the primary time, vowing to not be jailed once more. Within the 13 years of exile that adopted, I labored as a journalist, dedicating myself to exposing the actual nature of Myanmar’s merciless, grasping generals and different highly effective figures. I survived exile, simply as I had survived jail. For what? To inform tales: Not solely horrific tales of the regime’s inhumanity, but in addition tales of the resilience of the Myanmar individuals. To share them with these residents of our world fortunate sufficient to be spared such experiences, in addition to for the longer term generations, for whom our tales include beneficial classes of survival.

Within the days following the coup in 2021, my pals urged me to go away the nation instantly. They mentioned it wasn’t price it, risking one other prolonged imprisonment. However I used to be cussed, decided to proceed my work from hiding. Why? As a result of I needed to share with the world the tales of our individuals who have been struggling and combating in opposition to the brutal regime—I needed to inform these tales from the bottom.

Now, although, having been pressured from my nation for a second time, I’ve come to consider that the choice to go away was the right one—that I must survive this time, too. The reason being the identical: to have the ability to inform the tales of our horrible, all too “fascinating”, occasions—beginning with my very own experiences of life beneath the dictatorship.

After a 12-hour drive, we arrived at a city on the Thai border. The motive force took us to a gathering level the place a four-wheeled pickup waited for us. The drivers greeted one another familiarly; they appeared to have performed many such missions because the coup. We moved straight from the van into the second automobile, a four-wheeled pickup, which set off after a short trade of phrases between the 2 drivers. Our new driver was really an officer from an ethnic insurgent group. Whereas driving by rebel-held territory he advised us that, as a result of heightened safety state of affairs alongside the border, his group had stopped smuggling individuals in a foreign country. He had made an exception in our case, nevertheless, as he had been advised that our group was crucial. He mentioned: “You might be VIPs. That’s why.” I’m certain many “VIPs” preceded us on this journey. We thanked him.

A few hours later, we reached our vacation spot. All issues thought-about, it was a comparatively fast and secure expertise. A few of our colleagues weren’t so fortunate. Touring with a child they endured a horrific, two-day-long ordeal on a special route, although they finally made it out too.

Our mission was to flee from the hell of navy rule.

Mission achieved. We survived.

However escaping the junta’s persecution was simply our first mission. As journalists, our new and higher mission is to proceed to report and write about what’s happening in our nation beneath the ruthless navy regime, and to clarify the bigger truths past the headlines, each to our personal residents and the world.

The morning after our arrival, all of us did precisely what we had been doing in hiding for the previous yr: We turned on our laptops. That is the job we now have been doing for a few years. The distinction is that we’re now not in our properties, or in our nation. To be all of the sudden wrenched away from our properties, our family members and our cherished belongings leaves one susceptible to nostalgia. However in nostalgia, together with the slight disappointment, there’s a optimistic aspect, one thing I bear in mind feeling in my first exiled life: a optimistic, even pleasurable power with the ability to inspire somebody who has been pressured from their dwelling to try to discover a approach to return.

For me, it’s the start of my second life in exile. The primary stored me from dwelling for 13 years. For my colleagues, it’s the start of their first such life. The bitter fact is that no one is aware of how lengthy it’s going to take this time, both. Properly… it ought to now not matter to me. I’m what I’m, as I selected who I’m. I’m certain this rings true for my devoted colleagues, different journalists and the numerous resolute residents of our nation who’ve been pressured to go away their properties for appearing within the service of their nation.

On the very least, all of us must survive to see the autumn of the dictatorship.

That also higher mission stays unaccomplished…