Editor's note: The audio connected to this story contains mention of sexual violence.
Myo Myint, a Burmese resident of Fort Wayne known for the HBO documentary ‘Burma Soldier’ passed away in February at the age of 63, following a lifetime in service of a free Burma.
At 17-years-old, Myo Myint joined the Burmese military as an engineer.
After decades of British rule, the country was being run by a military dictatorship, the Burma Socialist Programming Party, which believed there should be one superior ethnic identity in the country.
Myo Myint was born into a military family; his father had been a solider before him. He was sent into the fight believing joining the military was the right thing for him, but quickly experienced the worst parts of the regime.
In 2011, he told WNYC what he saw while in the military.
"Burma military men, they rape the women from the ethnic groups, and then they looted their properties, burnt down their villages," he said. "They took the men to use as military porters. Sometimes, they would use the villagers as human minesweepers."
One day he was sent out to act as a minesweeper. A mortar struck the ground near him, setting off the mines hidden around him.
Myo Myint lost a leg, one hand and most of the fingers on his remaining hand. He was discharged from the military and began to reflect on the things he’d seen. Later, he spoke about these realizations in a speech for the Administration for Children and Families.
“If you want to stop the civil war, if you want to build the democratic establishment in our country, first thing you must do is to throw down the military dictatorship," he said.
He went on to become a prominent voice for the resistance, and one of the first former soldiers to speak out against the military regime.
It was these experiences, as a solider on the frontlines of the civil war to becoming a vocal critic of the regime, that led photojournalist and filmmaker Nic Dunlop to Myo Myint.
“I wanted to get an insight," Dunlop said. "And although I'd met various defectors in the past, I was looking for someone who could really, really describe from the inside what it was like to grow up in the military and be a soldier on the frontlines.”
In 1988, the Burmese resistance staged the largest demonstration against the regime in the country’s capital, Rangoon. Myo Myint was encouraged to speak.
“And Myo Myint was persuaded by friends of his to take to a podium and speak to the crowds who were protesting," Dunlop said. "And he also spoke directly to Burmese soldiers.”
In an NPR story about the 1988 uprisings, Myo Myint recounted that speech.
“At first, I was very afraid," he said. "Their commander ordered all of these soldiers; ‘Be ready. Load.’ But, I start to talk to the soldiers. ‘I am a soldier like you. We should not fight each other, we are brothers.’"
The regime struck back against the protest violently. Myo Myint made it out safely, but was arrested shortly thereafter at the age of 26. He went on to spend 15 years in prison.
In 2011, Myo Myint spoke about his experience in prison with WNYC’s Leonard Lopate.
"When I was in prison, they hated me much more than other democracy activists, because I used to be a military man," he said. “So I got more torture than other people.”
At 41, he was released from prison and fled to a refugee camp at the border of Thailand. It was here that he first met Dunlop, who would go on to feature Myo Myint in the documentary ‘Burma Soldier.’
In 2008, he was approved to move from the refugee camp in Thailand and relocate to Fort Wayne, where some of his family already resided.
He packed up the few things that had come with him to the refugee camp – including a plastic bag of soil from Burma, which remained in a glass jar in his home in Fort Wayne until he died.
The documentary captures the tearful goodbyes between Myo Myint and other refugees in the camp as he prepared for the journey to the United States.
“So, those moments that you saw in the film of people breaking down and wishing him good luck and then eventually Myo Myint breaking down, you just realize what a pillar of the community he actually was," Dunlop said. "And I suspect he took that to Fort Wayne with him as well.”
In Fort Wayne, Myo Myint met journalist John Gevers, who was working on a story about Burmese refugees. Gevers said the two of them talked for so long his pen ran out of ink.
“And he told his story in a way that was compelling and as though he was on a mission to get it out into the world," he said.
Gevers said the two became fast friends.
Myo Myint became a source for the journalist, acting as a translator for Gevers in interviews. It didn’t take him long to settle in, Gevers said, and that mission of service to other refugees quickly began to take hold.
Myo Myint went on to work with various refugee organizations in the area, including Amani Family Services and Catholic Charities, often acting as an interpreter for Burmese refugees who needed services but struggled with English.
It was through Catholic Charities that Myo Myint met his wife.
"When Myo Myint stepped off the plane to start his new life in Fort Wayne, there was a social worker from Catholic Charities there to be his main point of contact in Fort Wayne," Gevers said. "And that particular social worker was named Karen Bender and they ended up falling in love.”
Myo Myint wrote for Burmese publications, recorded for Radio Free Asia. He never stopped trying to get his story back into Burma, even releasing underground copies of his documentary into the country.
Myo Myint had a passion for learning. He would visit museums and stop to read all of the information. And afterwards, he would share what he learned in Burmese on social media to help inform his fellow refugees.
“He just liked to get out and about and explore and learn," Gevers said.
Myo Myint went on to fulfill what Gevers said was a lifelong dream to live in the country. He gardened – raising both American and Burmese vegetables – and loved his dogs.
But he never stopped fighting for Burmese refugees here and the people like him, imprisoned and tortured, back in his home country. He spoke in front of the Refugee Congress and the State Department in Washington D.C.
“So, he became a voice for every refugee who is imprisoned and trying to remind countries that are free, like the United States, that we probably have some responsibility to help our fellow humankind," Gevers said.
Both Dunlop and Gevers echoed Myo Myint’s mission for people to have grace for refugees in their communities.
“Refugees often don’t necessarily want to be resettled, they love their homeland," Gevers said. "So much of the culture is different.”
"When we think about people who’ve come overseas as refugees, we need to I think as much as we possibly can engage with their stories, and treat them with dignity and kindness," Dunlop said. "And understand that that trauma continues.”
Dunlop is currently working to get ‘Burma Soldier,’ which isn’t available for streaming anywhere, back online so people can discover Myo Myint’s story anew and, hopefully, learn something from him.
