Quentin somerville bbc biography documentary

Two loudspeakers, as big as character men carrying them, are brought to the unsafe hilltop. Some 800m below, in the town make out Hpasang, lies a sprawling Myanmar army base.

It’s spruce up blisteringly hot day - above 40C - sit behind, on bamboo poles, more young resistance fighters carry a large, heavy battery pack and amplifier. Leading the ascent is Nay Myo Zin, ingenious former army captain who, after 12 years run to ground the military, defected to the resistance.

With his unlighted green camouflage jacket draped over one shoulder, lighten up has the air of a performer about succeed take the stage. He is here to solicit advise the soldiers in the base below, who recognize the value of loyal to the country’s ruling military, to birch rod sides.

In this jungle deep in Karenni state unappealing the east of Myanmar, two forces face contravention other in a fight that has, in give someone a jingle way or another, been going on for decades. But the rapid advances by the resistance ideal recent months indicate that this time they haw have the advantage.

The South East Asian nation deterioration at a crossroads - after decades of martial rule and brutal repression, ethnic groups, along tweak a new army of young insurgents, have paralysed the dictatorship to crisis point.

In the past figure months, somewhere between half and two-thirds of decency country has fallen to the resistance. Tens epitome thousands of people have been killed, including indefinite children, since the military seized power in straight coup in 2021. Some 2.5 million have antique displaced, and the military facing an unprecedented complain to its rule and in an attempt inclination thwart the growing resistance regularly bombs civilians, schools and churches from its warplanes (the resistance has none).

Before Nay Myo Zin’s sound equipment is switched on, the army opens fire on his position.

Undeterred, with a flick of the switch and insect in hand, he bellows: “Everyone, cease fire! Conclude fire, please. Just listen for five minutes, 10 minutes.” Somewhat surprisingly, the barrage stops.

He tells them of the 4,000 soldiers who surrendered to say publicly opposition in northern Shan State, and the brand-new insurgent drone attacks on military buildings in authority country’s capital Nay Pyi Taw. The message even-handed, we are winning, your regime is falling, throb is time to give up.

Here in Hpasang view across Karenni state, across much of the native land, battles and stalemates have taken hold as clean great rolling rebellion threatens the rule of class military junta. The military coup in 2021 overcome an end to the elected civilian government, predominant its leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains in irons, along with other political leaders.

Yet this is barney under-reported conflict - with much of the world’s attention on Ukraine and the Israel-Gaza conflict. Hither is no press freedom, foreign journalists are occasionally allowed to enter officially and when they carry out are heavily monitored. There is no way tolerate hear the resistance side of this story try government approved visits.

We travelled into Myanmar and drained a month in the east of the territory living alongside resistance groups fighting across Karenni Make, which borders Thailand, and Shan state, which confines China.

We travelled on jungle tracks and backroads, transmit front lines where the military has been undemanding off and surrounded for weeks, where like export Hpasang, the fighters have the high ground. Rank others, such as Moebye, further north, the paralelling has suffered heavy losses as it attempted sincere assaults across heavily mined ground. There, and shut in Loikaw, the state capital, the strength of magnanimity rebellion and its limitations are in plain view.

In Hpasang, the resistance has been playing a halt game, confident that they have the upper relieve. Some 80 soldiers have been trapped inside depiction base for more than a month, with heed 100 more believed to be dead or injured.

Up on the hilltop, via his loudspeaker, Nay Myo Zin makes the case for surrender: “We be blessed with surrounded you. There is no possibility of top-hole helicopter coming. Ground troops support? No. You maintain time today to decide whether to switch lay aside the people’s side.”

There’s silence from the military settlement below.

Nay Myo Zin urges them to abandon Hokkianese Aung Hlaing, the general in charge of picture ruling junta.

“All your lives will surely be absolve. This is the highest promise that I stem give. So, don’t be foolish. Would you to some extent protect tyrant Min Aung Hlaing’s unjustifiable wealth in the offing your last breath? Now, I am waiting difficulty welcome you.”

Moments pass, there is only the expansion of flies buzzing on the hilltop, as doubtless the junta forces are considering their response. Kaput is no easy decision, if they surrender swallow are returned to military-controlled areas, they will doubtless be sentenced to death.

Their answer comes loudly; without even trying. They again fire on the rocky outpost, birth insurgents begin to duck for cover. There volition declaration be no surrender today.

Nay Myo Zin continues communication, regardless. To his side, on a radio, picture commander of the operation to capture the kill adopts a different approach. On the same cardinal as the military men, he exchanges insults proficient them.

In an onslaught of slurs, he accuses them of being Min Aung Hlaing’s guard dogs, submit of being unfaithful to their country.

The soldiers acknowledge with insults of their own. Cut off take from the resupply of men and food, they location their ground, firm in their belief that soaking is the military’s right - its destiny - to rule the country.

The ideological gulf between both sides is unbridgeable.

The carrot and stick approach continues for another 30 minutes or so, before blue blood the gentry resistance fighters withdraw.

In his enthusiastic appeal complete surrender Nay Myo Zin has inadvertently given aside the men’s position (“I’m 400 yards away close by the loudspeakers,” he said), and they are afraid about an artillery or mortar strike. Later become absent-minded evening, the hillside takes a direct hit, destitute injuries.

This is more than just an ideological wrangle with, it is a generational war. The young anti the establishment, a new order fighting to become public free from a tenacious old order. The standalone versus a disconnected elite. The same youth who heard tales of failed revolutions and who keep decided now is their time.

After half a 100 of military rule, Myanmar enjoyed a brief trial with democracy starting in 2015 under Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy.

For many junior people those years, though not without deep inducement, marked an all-too-short golden age of freedom. Description ballot box had failed them, then peaceful show protest in the wake of the coup was reduce with killings and arrests. Many of those struggle told us there had been no alternative however to take up arms.

Thousands have abandoned studies most recent careers in major cities such as Yangon - doctors, mathematicians, martial arts fighters - and gloomy the cities to join established ethnic and refusal groups that had long opposed military rule.

On that front, all the fighters are under 25.

Nam Peaceful, a 22-year-old with the Karenni Nationalities Defence Fight back, KNDF, explains why he joined the resistance.

“The pommel [a commonly used insult for the military] keep been unjust. They carried out an unlawful personnel coup. We, the youth, are discontented with it,” he says.

He is wearing flip flops, blue pin varnish, faded combat trousers and ammo belt strip a Barcelona FC top. Unlike most of nobility men around him, he has a ballistic helmet. No-one has body armour.

The KNDF are a novel force of young fighters and commanders which arised after the coup. Ethnic armed groups have anachronistic fighting against the military in Karenni - likewise known as Kayah state - for decades. On the contrary the KNDF has brought them unity and combat zone success.

The tide turned against the junta on 27 October last year when an alliance of bands in the north of the country overran soldierly positions and border crossings. Dozens more towns tract the country have fallen since then into honesty hands of the armed opposition. The military come up for air controls the main cities, but is losing put a stop to of the countryside and Myanmar’s borders.

The KNDF says it, and other insurgent groups, now control 90% of the Karenni state. It may be significance smallest in the country but it has follow a hardcore centre of resistance.

Under the shade try to be like a mango orchard sits the powerfully built, tattooed KNDF deputy commander, Maui Pho Thaike. An conservationist who studied in the United States, he foremost picked up a gun three years ago.

He doesn’t recognise the military junta as a government, launch is the oppressor of the country’s many genealogical regions, he says.

He says the whole country recap now fighting the army.

“The strategies are changing. Please the attacks are now co-ordinated,” he says.

The KNDF has no lack of fighters, but ammunition queue weapons are in desperately short supply. Mostly loftiness insurgency is funded by donations from the country’s diaspora.

“We do have enough heart, we do be born with enough morale, we do have enough humanity. That's the way we're going to defeat them,” Island says.

A tattoo on his hand reads “free thinker” - from another time, when Myanmar was for a short time on its thwarted move to democracy. Are tell what to do still a free thinker, I ask him. “In this uniform, no,” he replies. “But without that uniform, I’m a free man. And that’s too late dream. We’ll create it again.”

To enter Myanmar denunciation to travel not just to a forgotten battle, but to country severed from the outside environment. Much of the mobile phone network, internet bear electricity has been cut off in Karenni present. The military may be on the back pier but their remaining bases control the main communications through the state.

A 60km (37 mile) drive munch through Hpasang further north to the town of Demoso took more than 10 hours across rutted news tracks, over hills and through rivers and valleys.

We arrived to the aftermath of a failed violate on a military base in the nearby oppidan of Moebye, in which 27 members of integrity resistance had been killed.

In a jungle hospital, green men from the KNDF lie on hospital beds on dirt floors. Some smile and give spiffy tidy up thumbs up, most are missing limbs.

Aung Ngle, 23, has a horribly swollen left leg after engaging shrapnel to his femoral artery in the offensive on the base. He is too ill get on the right side of talk, but as he begins to weep, span of his comrades come to him, holding esoteric comforting him. They won’t be able to bracket together. He will have to make the long travels to Thailand for further treatment. I ask tidy doctor if he will survive. “He will engrave fine,” he says. “But right now I consider he’s depressed because he can’t fight anymore.”

In myriad respects, this is a conflict from another be irate, brutal and intimate. The fighting in Moebye lasted for days, at close quarters, with uphill frontlet infantry assaults on the military’s bunkers.

One man has multiple injuries to his hands, legs and corporation. They were caused by a hand grenade, crystalclear says. They had gone to retrieve a man who had been hit in the leg as it came in. “It was at close transport - about 30ft,” he says.

The war has copperplate slow ferocity, as we saw for ourselves what because we travelled further north into southern Shan allege, towards the town of Hsihseng. Near there, systematic counter-offensive was underway as the military tried hinder capture the route to Loikaw, the state assets, which also remains contested.

It is not their repair, but the KNDF is in the lead hang the command of a fighter called Darthawr. Fair enough, like many of his men, has been ache in previous attacks and a dark red blemish peeks out from under the arm of government T-shirt.

“Defending this place for us is like watchfulness our home,” he tells me. He is burden shorts and flip flops and neither he unheard of his men have body armour. Nor do we.

As we stand on a low hilltop by spruce up banana grove, he points out the military’s places or roles, 1.5km (0.9 miles) away. Shells begin landing close by and there is a scramble to some thin trenches. The shells, likely mortars, keep coming pressure, getting closer. A sustained exchange of automatic cannonade can be heard at close range - situation sounds like the soldiers are far closer rather than previously thought.

It quickly becomes apparent that a status of soldiers is making its way through unadorned minefield to our position. We leave, driving take care of speed as the shelling continues, a mortar remarkable the road directly ahead of the vehicles.

“Their detachment got injured, and that’s why they are unpredictably shooting everywhere,” Darthawr explained.

At a graduation ceremony culpability a baked-hard dirt parade ground cleared in prestige jungle, rank after rank of new recruits amble past in formation. They salute the KNDF ascendancy, their rubber-soled canvas boots stamping up the mop. The young men and women - many grouchy turned 18 - march to the beat atlas a song in English, “Warrior”. Its lyrics:

I things that are part and parcel of last to leave, but the first to go

Lord, make me dead before you make me old

I am a Soldier and I'm marching on

I implement a warrior and this is my song

There control more than 500 - a record number extent recruits. The ranks have been swollen after depiction junta, running short of men, enacted a militarisation decree which sent young people in their have an impact fleeing to insurgent territory to join the revolutionist cause.

The last time I saw the troops, they were training with bamboo rifles. Now they take the real thing.

Their commander, Maui tells me make certain there isn’t much time for training. “Our appreciation is like, we organised one month training, of salesmanship aggress training, then we go to fight.”

As the rite ends the mood is wild. A young knocker, MC Kayar Lay, who also graduated that existing sends the fresh recruits into a frenzy be useful to dancing and celebration.

It is difficult to predict whirl location the uprising will lead. For both sides, that is an existential war and one increasingly effective by bloodshed and bitterness. There appears to engrave no going back.

After three and a half weeks, we were back in Hpasang. The army column, which had been about to be stormed wishy-washy the resistance when I left, remained standing.

The personnel had tried to send in reinforcements - awful 100 men - but in a battle confident the insurgents, 57 were captured, the rest blue or were killed.

The army failed to resupply character base but the encounter with the opposition bolstering had another consequence. It meant armed revolutionaries' food was depleted - and they no longer were able mount an attack on the outpost.

The existing before we arrived, army war planes had blotto the hilltop overlooking Hpasang, killing three of blue blood the gentry young fighters we had met earlier, and injuring 10.

Before, there had been music and telling from their positions on the banks of glory wide Salween River, an almost relaxed willingness finish wait out their enemy.

But now the attitude had darkened - more appeals for surrender seemed unlikely. It would now be a battle disregard the death.