In this interview ICNC speaks with Jane Fritz, an organizer and educator with the Thailand/Burma Border Project.  In this capacity, Jane works with civil society actors and various ethnic groups who are resisting multiple forms of oppressions and injustice under Burma's military Junta.  Fritz talks about successful ways Burmese have use nonviolent action to resist their country's military junta, and the various techniques and strategies she uses as an educator in sharing and teaching about human rights and the power of nonviolent action.

Interview:

Jane Fritz (JF): What I do is I work with these organizations who live in border areas who are working to go secretly inside their countries and organize their communities to mobilize them to join together to resist the regime that’s in place. I’ve been working for the last about six to eight years with young activists both those that are exiled or are living in the U.S and those who live along Burma’s boarders who are working in their communities and helping them develop their strategies and programs and joining them in solidarity.

What have been the most successful tactics and strategies used in Burmese struggles?

JF: I think one that’s always powerful for me to see are tactics that involve multiple stake holders on really really different levels coming together. So one example that’s often used is there were gas pipelines, the Yadana Pipeline, under Total and their partner Chevron which is a U.S based company and they really destroyed these communities. There was tons of forced labor, forced child labor specifically. And the local activists went in and were on the ground and were organizing and were telling people the truth and were recording their history, doing video documentaries, recording the abuses. All that information was used to mobilize people together, and then Chevron was taken to court. And it’s one of the most successful human rights cases in history where a bunch of indigenous people won their rights and their lands back from one of the biggest companies, and what that’s gown to is creating a transparency act that was just passed in the U.S courts by the same organization and group of local activists who have come together to say that you need to show the money that’s going to the regime. So now it’s creating a whole future framework of transparency and accountability.

And why is that important, well the regime is propped up more than 50 percent by these oil and gas investments, by these kinds of development projects and their most often targeting the most vulnerable ethnic communities who could literally be wiped out because of them.

There’s a film that came out called Burma VJ I think that exposed the world the power of exiled media, well organized exiled media, and how media that’s working in resistance can really get the story and voice out. Burma has one of the strongest movements in terms of exiled media, there’s like radio and they broadcast programs that go inside the country , both very underground and to the local people and their able to get broadcasts out about what’s happening and speak against the regime constantly and I think that’s really really powerful. And the media has not only done all these things as exiled media, but remained largely objective which is hard when you got this regime based propaganda coming out and you’re trying to represent the power to go against all those lies from the regime and represent what’s happening on the ground. And I think another great success is the way that the movement has prepared itself , because it’s had such a long time it is able to think about not only what is happening now but the transition process. I think that when we talk about strategic nonviolence we often talk about the merits of it being based not only on the tactics themselves in the moment but how those tactics teach a society to create a transition and to be more participatory and actually train them to have the kind of democracy or government system that they want to have in the future.

What elements of nonviolent conflict and civil resistance are you using in your work?

JF: I would say that the greatest thing about strategic nonviolence that I’ve shared with groups that I have worked with is suddenly you can put together the whole system and analyze the whole framework and analyze the power and analyze who’ keeping the power holders in place and understand that people are the ones that affect that. We always do this joke when I started training; There’s Saddam Hussein and Than Shwe on a plane together and they’re flying along and who has the most power? And there’s always this big debate, “Saddam!” “No it’s Than Shwe!,” and someone always pipes up “it’s the pilot!” right? Because the pilot is the one who, through his obedience to that system, is carrying these two dictators across the country when he could jump out of the plane and you know kill them right.

And so the idea I think that’s revolutionary is that when people who are young activists realize that they are change makers but when they realize where power really comes from within this realistic framework of power, thinking about pillars of support when they really realize that people are the power and how that system of obedience and legitimacy to those power sources is really what keeps a regime in place. it's really incredible that moment when that starts to shift and they start to rethink their strategies because they think, ok well we were working on environmental campaigns and these mining companies were coming in and destroying all these communities and they know that it's dangerous to interact with these companies because they're very closely related to the regime, but at the same time, they realize that there are ways that these guys are the power holders and they can start working with these business men and mobilizing them and started rethinking this whole structure of power and I think that can be a really incredible moment when that whole system becomes cleat to people and they really understand that.

How do you train activists in these tactics and ideas?

Once you break it down into how people work in their own families, settings and experiences they're able to figure out strategy and which tactics are most effective by applying it more to their own lives and once you can break it down into examples and let people think about their own context and their own experience then they're able to apply that to a larger framework. And what I find is really helpful and what I always try to do is to get local activists to teach each other what tactics have been effective. So once they get; ok here's how I strategically approach a situation here's tactics that are useful against certain power holders, and they think about it in their own context and they have a strong security analysis with that and then they hear from other activists what tactics are working and what aren’t and why things are effective and why things are not, then they can choose the tactics that a, are more strategic b, are most secure, and c, are most effective in different environments and use and constantly adapt to what's happening. What's been really cool in some of the work I’ve done has been being able to combine, because I work with so many different groups, is to get them to bring one group along to a training that I do with another group. and to have them share with each other what worked and what didn't or to ask permission from another group to take what they've done and share it with another group that's doing a similar project, and when possible, create linkages and coalitions so they learn from each other.