by Pyae (Raise Three Fingers)

When Myanmar’s military overthrew the civilian National League for Democracy government on the morning of 1 February, Tun Myint saw the news as a call to action, a sign “that we need to do something”.

An associate professor in political science at Carleton College in the U.S, he had been active in the 1988 uprising in Myanmar, when tens of thousands of demonstrators took to streets in towns and cities across the country to oppose the former regime.

Videos from recent months of protestors shouting “Pyi thu ye” (“People’s police”) triggered flashbacks to that time more than three decades ago when, for a brief instant, change seemed to be within reach.

That ended with the military killing some 3,000 demonstrators, while families across the country were left in dire need of financial support. Fearing similar levels of destitution as a result of the nationwide strike now underway, he and several colleagues immediately arranged a series of phone and Zoom calls. Several days later, Mutual Aid Myanmar was born.

Mutual Aid Myanmar

Mutual Aid Myanmar’s sole focus is to support participants in the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM), which the demonstrations have come to be known as. Tun Myint believes the movement’s size and subsequent potential to bring every industry in the country to a halt is key to ensuring the military cannot hold onto power in the long-term.

“I said to my colleagues, ‘If we can sustain this movement [while] crippling government functions], we will be able to make [the difference today that we couldn’t make in 1988].'”

Through public donations, the campaign has so far raised approximately US$300,000 that has been dispersed among 5,800 CDM participants. The money goes towards helping CDM families in four key areas: lost income, food, medical expenses, and shelter.

Like Tun Myint, Louisa-Jane Richards also had an immediate, visceral reaction when the news of the coup broke, recounting that she felt “taken aback” by it all.

Richards, who grew up in the United Kingdom but lived in Yangon for eight years until her departure in 2018, began receiving calls and messages from other foreigners who had spent time in Myanmar and were now feeling equally enraged and helpless.

“We were all collectively asking ourselves this question of ‘What can we possibly do at the moment?’”

Friends of Myanmar

From those conversations, Friends of Myanmar was born. At first, collected funds went towards buying secure VPN accounts for local journalists and activists to ensure they could access the internet securely.

Then, when there were rumours that the internet might be shut indefinitely, they funded the purchase of Thai SIM cards so that people on the ground could still go online using roaming data.

Today, Friends of Myanmar’s funds are split between two main categories: CDM participants’ salaries, and emergency or makeshift healthcare setups, the latter due to several team members’ backgrounds and subsequent contacts in the Myanmar healthcare system.

In particular, the money is distributed in remoter areas where the military has taken over hospitals, as well as border regions where services are being stretched following the arrival of people who have fled urban areas.

Mutual Aid Myanmar and Friends of Myanmar are just two of a number of fundraising campaigns that have been established since early February, but the obstacles that these organizations continue to face are near-identical across the board.

Problems faced

First, there’s the problem of transparency in relation to usage of funds. Tun Myint and Richards both rely on their on-the-ground contacts to distribute assets, and in the case of CDM participants, to verify people’s identities.

However, because of telephone and internet connectivity issues and the work’s covert nature, the administrative teams cannot receive consistent and detailed reports. And from the reports that are received, high security risks mean teams are unable to relay any kind of information that might reveal the recipients’ identities back to donors.

Mutual Aid Myanmar, however, does keep reports and spreadsheets of where their funds are being distributed in case any “integrity issues” arise in the future, but only two people within the team are able to access the files, which are stored on a secure server.

Another recurring issue is the difficult decision of having to “prioritize” certain recipients over others due to the limited funds required to sustain a large number of people.

Tun Myint says that they have a set of “rough criteria” by which they decide where to allocate money, the first of which is the “level of impact” that they believe a CDM participant will have according to the department that they represent.

Yu, a local activist who is in Myanmar and is part of a CDM support team, says that they prioritize people with “urgent and emergency cases, such as having to leave their house, being on the run [and] having sick family members,” as well as CDM participants who are “central to department operations.”

Richards acknowledges that having to assume this “tactical” approach has raised debate within their own circles.

“There have been periods of time where people have been like, ‘We need to be really tactical and therefore only high-value workers who are going to really damage the military if they don’t go to work are the ones who are going to get the salaries.'”

But, she adds, there have been other times when organisers have argued the opposite — that everybody needs a salary and everybody who is participating is “high-value”.

With nearly five months having passed since the coup, fundraising campaigns are seeing donations begin to dwindle. In addition to further complicating the discussions around who to prioritize, this drop in donations has also led to a third issue, one that is rather more personal yet equally pressing: burn-out.

Yu talks and texts directly with CDM participants, and the stress of not being able to provide money to everyone is acute.

“I feel heavy in my chest and feel very overwhelmed so some days I stop and avoid their calls and messages for days. [But] then I also feel guilty. And the next day, I feel heavy in my mind again that I have to answer and respond to them again.”

Some days, when she doesn’t have enough money to send to them, she cannot sleep.

“If I have to hear that they need support then I feel an immense sense of responsibility that I have to find money, but I obviously don’t know where, and I’d feel depressed for days.”

Tun Myint also admits that this experience has had its “ups and downs”. But he is undeterred. He reminds donors, “If you contribute five dollars to [a CDM] family, you ease their mind about one meal, and that is a huge, huge impact. If you can contribute more than that, then you basically sustain their agency, their freedom, and their critical thinking to engage against this military coup.”

Richards is similarly convinced of the immediate impact that even small donations can bring.

“Twenty pounds enables [healthcare professionals] to run a pop-up healthcare clinic with basic firstaid next to a protest site. Eight pounds can be enough to provide someone life-saving surgery after being shot by a bullet.”

What keeps these organizers going in spite of burnout is the reminder that the funds they are raising aren’t just of material value. There is something far more profound happening on the streets of Myanmar — the crystallization of, as Richards puts it, “a whole new vision of what the world can be like”.

Tun Myint echoes this.

“A threat to democracy in Myanmar is a threat to democracy everywhere, and that is what takes for you, for an individual of the world, to think ‘Can I contribute? Can I make an impact?’ Yes, you will indeed make an impact even if you give only one dollar. That is how intricate and serious and meaningful your contribution is.”

Support artists and the fight for democracy in Myanmar by buying art prints on Raise Three Fingers’ online shop, available for a limited time until 12 September. All profits are split between the artist and Mutual Aid Myanmar.

Raise Three Fingers is a campaign hub founded by artists and creatives in Myanmar to bring the global art community together and highlight the unfolding human rights and humanitarian crises caused by the military coup.