Myanmar's Failed Coup - transcript

00:00:02 ; This is the Nordic Asia podcast.

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00:00:09

Duncan McCargo; Welcome, everybody. We're going to be talking today about unpacking Myanmar's failed coup and have a roundtable discussion with a number of really distinguished and knowledgeable people who are going to be able to shed some light on what's an extremely complicated and rather dark and gloomy situation in the country I still usually refer to as Burma, also known as Myanmar. So that’s to say, welcome, everybody. This is an event which is co-hosted by the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies here at the University of Copenhagen. I'm Duncan McCargo, and I'm the director of NIAS and a professor of political science here at the university. We're running the event, along with DIIS, the Danish Institute of International Studies and the New York Southeast Asia Network or NYSEAN. So this is a collaborative venture and we're very pleased to be joined by four scholars who are going to comment on what has been going on over the past few months in Burma. This is, as you say, a difficult situation. In the title we put the provocative phrase "failed coup". We're in the ironic situation of having a successful and unsuccessful coup at the same time. The coup is very much still with us. It hasn't failed in the sense that the military has gone away. I guess the failure that we're debating and discussing today is the failure of those who staged the coup to bring the population, for the most part, on board with what has happened and their failure to secure legitimacy both domestically and internationally. And that's the conversation that we're going to be having. So I'm joined by four speakers. First is Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung, who is a professor and chair of the political science department at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. She's been a very active scholar following what's been going on in her original home country of Myanmar for many years, at a time when very few people were going there she was going back every year, spending summers and doing all sorts of adventurous fieldwork in different parts of the country. We are also joined from UMass Lowell by Myat The Thitsar, who's a Ph.D. candidate on topics related to politics of the country. We're also joined by Helene Maria Kyed, who is a senior researcher and head of the research unit at the Danish Institute for International Studies. She's also the editor of a recently published collection about everyday justice in Myanmar, which the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies press brought out last year. And we also did a podcast on that. And we also have with us Liv Stoltze Gaborit, who is a postdoctoral researcher at Lund University. She's also the co-founder of the Myanmar Action Group in Denmark. So we have a great panel to talk about a range of different topics and the first one is really about the nature of the opposition to the military takeover, how it's unfolding and how it's been developing. I don't know if Liv you'd like to say something about the question of Generation Z and the great salience of younger people in the protests, which seems to have been such a feature of what's been happening.

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00:03:03

Liv Stoltze Gaborit; Yes. Well, so I've been working with prisons in Myanmar for many years. And of course, that also means working with political prisoners. I've been working with a lot of the people who were student activists in former uprisings. We have these different generations and this time with the coup, we see again the young people rising. So therefore Generation Z has been a major player in the resistance movement. And it's interesting to see how much Generation Z has actually learned about democracy in the short period that the country has been open. So quite shortly after the coup Generation Z they had two strategies that they used. One is they called for federal democracy and they fought for that by disabling the state that's in place now through civil disobedience. Civil disobedience was something they spread the news around and also got the older generations to engage because a lot of the younger generation are still students, b ut then they support the people who are part of this civil disobedience movement. And then we also saw them in the streets in a range of different street protests. And we've been seeing how they learn from other protesters in the region. They exchange information through the Milk Tea Alliance, and they've been extremely creative and skilled at adapting the demonstrations to the strategy of the military in attempts to stay non-violent for as long as possible.

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00:04:29

Duncan McCargo; You mention this Milk Tea Alliance to you, and this is really interesting for those of us who work on other parts of Southeast Asia and beyond. The idea of a kind of emerging alliance of progressively oriented young people, many of them not even yet out of their teens, linked together by sort of common themes of opposing authoritarianism in the region, Hong Kong protests, the Thai protests. Is there something about this generation that's different from previous generations? Like we also always hear about the 88 generation and the 90s generations in the Burmese context.

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00:05:04

Liv Stoltze Gaborit; I think the technology that allows them to communicate is the main difference. Because you also saw people from like young people from the Communist Party moving to neighboring countries and trying to learn stuff in 1988 and previous uprisings, but this time, you really, you have the ability to get knowledge from other demonstrators, the protesters. And you have other protesters in the region that can teach you something about this situation, because often we come as international organizations and as Western scholars and try to teach them how to stand up for democracy. But we have no real knowledge, no real experience of how it is to be in that actual situation so we have a lot of South-South exchange of knowledge. I think it's mainly the technological advancement and the way they are able to use that and they're able to use it even when the military tries to crack down and tries to shut down the Internet. It's quite impressive how you see demonstrations being livestreamed while the Internet is being shut down as much as the military is able to.

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00:06:06

Duncan McCargo; Right, yeah, and we've seen the internationalization of some of these symbols, like the Hunger Games salute, moving across the region, posing the Thai coup to the Burmese coup. And we also saw Thais out on the streets, banging pots and pans in emulation of the fellow protesters in Yangon. Perhaps I can move to you, Myat The, to tell us something about how the opposition movement has been organizing itself. What's going on with all this?

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00:06:30

Myat The Thitsar; Thank you very much Duncan. The more popular terminology is CRPH, Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw. This Hluttaw is the union legislature in English. So this actually CRPH is kind of being considered in this current context as a legitimate government representing them in the current context. So kind of like serving as an umbrella body that can organize movements and all sorts of political dynamic where the anti-movement, all of these things actually kind of more and more center around this CRPH. So let me give some a brief background. CRPH came into existence with initiation of some younger generations of NLD while the older generations of NLD and MPs were still waiting instructions from the leaders in the aftermath of the coup. So long story short, the CRPH was formed four days after the coup out of 32 elected members of ethnic political parties and the rest of NLD and three hundred eighty nine other elected members and not CRPH. So as soon after a National Unity Government was formed, the number of the CRPH members were increased to 20 members. So throughout the process, there is a lot of challenges. And then we can see some kind of four main areas where CRPH has still been trying to embrace this ethnic diversity to shape an image of having national unity.

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00:08:04

Duncan McCargo; Right, yeah, I mean, it's clearly a fascinating development, a very telling about what's going on. I don't know if anybody else has any thoughts as to whether it's likely that this government of CRPH could receive any degree of genuine international recognition, as opposed to tea and sympathy from embassies and foreign ministries around the world. Does anybody else have any thoughts or insights on that?

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00:08:27

Helene Maria Kyed; Adding to Myat The, first of all, with the National Unity Government, I think what is also interesting to pay attention to, apart from including the ethnic political parties, is that we also have some quite significant civil society figures, like the minister of Human Rights, which, by the way, is a totally new ministry in Myanmar. There's never been a minister of human rights before who is also from the LGBT community. So embracing this kind of diversity also beyond the political party landscape is, I think, a very significant and very interesting move. There's also some of the younger women who have been heading the protest movement, which has also become part of the National Unity Government, I think is a very significant development, despite the challenges of creating this unity after a long history of splits, splits and distrust. But I think those are very significant. I know that they are also working at the moment. I heard a webinar last week from Columbia University with the Minister of Human Rights that they're also working on how to relate to the Rohingya and recognizing them as an ethnic group in Myanmar. And I think they're coming back to your question about international recognition. I think moves like these could be very important in terms of international recognition, but in terms of recognizing the National Unity Government or CRPH as a government in itself doesn't have much historical precedents. There are not many times that states have recognized exiled or shadow government. So that is a big sort of legal challenge in the international landscape. But I'm not a legal specialist in that field, but I know that people have been commenting. That is a huge challenge.

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00:10:05

Duncan McCargo; Right. Yes. And I also noticed in the event I joined up the pitch, the Rohingya issue, but of course, that's a wild pivot against what the NLD has been saying up to now and what could be construed as criticizing previous positions. So it gets into quite a lot of interesting terrain here. Ardeth, yes.

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00:10:24

Ardeth Muang Thawnghmung; Yes, so I think that the legitimacy and the future of NUG government also depends very much on their relationship with ethnic armed groups. So ethnic groups, until lately, they were the only organizations that have access to arms. But there are at least twenty one ethnic armed groups that have taken up arms against the state for greater autonomy and independence, for greater autonomy for minority ethnic groups. But they vary in size and legitimacy in their relationship with the military as well as the NLD government. Some of them had ceasefire. Some of them are members of a nationwide ceasefire agreement. So they have a very complicated relationship with not just the military, but also with the NUG government. And generally speaking, they are against the military coup, but they have not really engaged actively in armed resistance against the military. And the only two organizations that are currently engaged in war against the the military are here in China border and the Karen state. They have a dilemma because they don't also trust the NUG government that much, given the fact that the past experience dealing with the NLD government, which they saw as another Burmanized organization, some of them have provided shelter, training defectors from the Myanmar military, which Helene will talk more about, and provide shelter to protesters, even though they don't actively support, they don't formally recognize NUG as a parallel government. They at least see, I'm talking about, generally speaking, because it also varies among different groups. They see the NUG government as one of the entity of the broader coalition movement that are against the military. So the nature and relationship between these different groups and the NUG government will very much determine the directions in which the opposition movement is leading.

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00:12:37

Duncan McCargo; Right, yeah, it's not straightforward, is it? I've got another abbreviation, NUG, which I guess means the National Unity Government, is another abbreviation that we can use for this emerging force. Helene, do you want to say something about what's going on inside the security forces of the Myanmar government and the police and the military? Because there seems to be a very, very important area as well talking about legitimacy of the state.

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00:12:59

Helene Maria Kyed; Yes, so it's knowledge that we can get access to because obviously the environment for doing research at the moment is very, very difficult. But we have done a piece of research on defecting police officers. Both based on secondary social media and media analysis, but also with a few select interviews based on trust and people that were well known to the researchers. And the research, unfortunately, had to be anonymized for security reasons, but I'm very thankful for them for doing this work. So it is clear that if you look at the picture of violent crackdowns, that the police is under the command of the army and have been participating in arrests and the violence against protesters. We have also seen reports of looting and all kinds of brutal acts also from the police forces. And obviously, this has also created a fear and anger amongst the population. But there is also another side to this story, because at the moment we know that at least 800 police officers are known to have defected and joined the civil disobedience movement that Liv was talking about before. These strikes of the public sector and also increasingly private sector workers, some have gone quite public on social media about it. This is not a big number, 800 out of a fourth of what is estimated of 80,000 police officers. But it still tells us something about the security forces not being a homogenous force and that there are dissatisfaction and resistance within the force. But at the same time, our study also found out that it's extremely difficult and extremely dangerous to leave the force, not only for the individual police officers because of the kind of prosecutions that they can face if they defect and are caught, but also for their families, not only in terms of livelihood, losing a job, but also that the army is deliberately threatening the family members of people who defect from the police force. So what we have seen is that police officers from the civilian branches who have been brought up also under another kind of training in more community based policing, but with also worked among communities over the past 10 years and that have closer relationships and also more accountability to local communities are mainly those who defect, but also who in the every day are trying as much as they can to defy engaging in this violent crackdown. So we have some police officers reporting that they have warned protesters, they've warned people in the civil disobedience movements where the protest, where not to protest. So there is this kind of underground maneuvering going on.

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00:15:28

Duncan McCargo; Right, yeah, these are obviously incredibly important developments and extremely difficult to get full information about. I don't know if any other of our speakers would like to jump in here.

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00:15:37

Helene Maria Kyed; Liv, you have worked a lot with prisons. I'm just wondering within the prison service, because, I mean, they're receiving all these political prisoners at the moment. How do you see people working within that field? I mean, that's also part of the establishment of security forces, detention services.

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00:15:53

Liv Stoltze Gaborit; I think in the prison staff, there's a lot of people who would like to participate in this, but who don't find themselves able to, because like you also say, there's this fear of what will happen not only to yourself, but also to your family. So I think there are people who want to. The people I talked to say that they are aware that they are under heavy surveillance. They don't dare to post anything on their Facebook about supporting the resistance because they know that they are being kept an eye on. I'm also working on a piece about some of the women who have been detained in connection with the military coup. The accounts that we have from there, they also talk about some prison staff who tried to help but then find themselves unable to because of the structures and hierarchies inside the prison. So I think there's a lot of well-meaning people within the prison service that don't dare to fully shift sides. And therefore, I think another interesting aspect is not only those who defect, but also what kind of everyday resistance do we see inside the services of those who don't dare to take the first step, but who still don't share the values of the military. And I think those people will also be very important for the protection of the political prisoners. And also, when there are crackdowns on the demonstrations, those people can play a vital role for the protection of people.

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00:17:13

Duncan McCargo; Great, thanks a lot. Maybe we can move on then to talk about what's been going on in terms of the strategies of the opposition.

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00:17:20

Myat The Thitsar; Yes Duncan. So we have a different strategies. Every day we have seen a new strategy. So I actually want to focus on that important of civil society organizations, because since three days after the coup, all of these mass demonstrations, mass movements being led by the civil society organizations, trade unions, that as Liv also discussed already these initiative by the Generation Zs. But thanks to the civil society efforts, we can see all of these visible movements. The country, you know, they have been forming network like People Defense Force. So then we can also identify more invisible efforts of civil societies in the area of forming a network. So that network has also been engaging with National Unity Government, CRPH and also international communities to make all of these social understanding and conceptual change gained through this resistance movement became normative changes. The role of civil society organizations as a powerful, invisible hands behind the scenes is really important.

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00:18:25

Duncan McCargo; Thanks very much. Maybe I can go back to the strikes, whether you wanted to talk about that Ardeth, but with these the strikes. And clearly, when you have strikes of the kinds that have been taking place, it has an enormous impact on ordinary people. Does it have a parallel impact on the regime? Is this actually effective in changing the power dynamics of the thinking of those who seized power when these strikes take place?

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00:18:48

Ardeth Muang Thawnghmung; Well, initially, I just want to summarize what Myat The has just said. Initially the resistance was very peaceful against the military coup was very peaceful. You see massive, massive nationwide peaceful protests against the military using CDM, which is civil disobedience movement by doctors, teachers and rural workers a nd people who work at the post facilities or bank employees of the central banks refuse to go to work. And you also see various applications that have a list of military businesses for people inside the country to boycott, to refuse to buy products from the military. So it's really undermined the military legitimacy. But as the military has intensified its repression, you see the people switching more on violent strategies. Many protesters have fled to the border areas, to areas controlled by armed groups and they have been trained. And so recently you have seen an explosion in several city areas which are targeted against either politicians or military bases, or there were reports of administrative local administrators being killed or being threatened with all those threats. So there has been a shift in strategies in terms of people, and like Myat The talks about, community based resistance movement. But I think that protesters and people will continue to use a variety of strategies depending on the military actions against the military response to this. However, this coup has generated the level of humanitarian crisis that we have never witnessed before. And I would say that the crisis is caused not just by protests, also by military actions to restrict political and economic activities, including restrictions on mobile Internet, access that affects money transfer and trade flow, and restrictions on transports of goods, as well as economic sanctions against the military. The economy has come almost to a halt since that the military took over power on February 1st.

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00:21:10

Duncan McCargo; But yet clearly bringing the economy to a halt is not bringing the regime to a halt in and of itself and hence we see this diversification of strategies. This is the problem.

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00:21:19

Ardeth Muang Thawnghmung; It seems to affect ordinary people more so than the military.

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00:21:23

Duncan McCargo; Yes. Liv, do you want to follow up on the shift in tactics towards.

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00:21:27

Liv Stoltze Gaborit; Yeah, maybe just to add on a personal level for the people who actually make this change and make the decision. Because most of the people that I talked to, they started with non-violent methods. And one of the people that I talked to, I talked to him yesterday because he joined the KIA for training and he's been speaking for a long time about how hard it was to go to the street and see people be slaughtered and not being able to defend yourself or your comrades. So he's now changed completely to the violent strategies and he says we cannot get anywhere with the shadow government before we take down the military because we cannot sit at a table with the military and negotiate. So first priority is to take down the military, and for him, that means to kind of compromise with the ideals that he's lived after for his whole life and get into violent struggle. And I think it's going to have a lot of consequences for the people who have to make these hard decisions and go into a violent struggle. And it had for previous generations as well. In ‘88, we saw the same. I talked to one of the protesters from ‘88 a few months ago, before the non-violent was turning violent, and he said he was so happy to see the younger generation's new nonviolent strategies. He was so happy to see that they wouldn't have to go through the same that he did when he joined the ABSDF. But now, because the situation is so desperate, we see them having to go through the same. And I think it's important to remember also when we witness what's going on, that even though we might like to see an innocent movement that doesn't step in any wrong direction, they are acting out of necessity. And you cannot live up to your ideals in a situation like the one they are in today.

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00:23:20

Duncan McCargo; Yes, that's sort of a depressing reality check. And we get to future scenarios in a minute. But that sounds like a future scenario for a whole lot more violence if you had anything else to add, Helene.

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00:23:31

Helene Maria Kyed; Well, very shortly I agree with everything that's been said, but I think that these people's defense forces, I mean, they are popping up here and there right now. And if we see how the army is dealing with the situation. It's very similar to how they have reacted to those ethnic armed organizations that have been strongly against the coup, like the Grand National Union, as an example, is that they strike back in those particular localities. Zaw Min in Kachin State is a good example of this. That was an effort by the local people to organize and basically close off the town and excluding the military from coming in. But now they have to flee the city because the army is responding back with the air strikes. So if the strategy of sort of People's Defense Forces is to work, it needs to be really united and very widespread movement, because as long as it's only in specific localities, like among certain select few ethnic armed organizations or certain select few localities, the army can concentrate and move. But if it's very spread out, I would question that the army, even though it's very strong and it’s got the strongest weapons, it would be very difficult for the army to work on all fronts at the same time. And here I'm not trying to encourage widespread armed conflict or war, but just to say how it's looking right now with these kinds of self-defense. Under the current situation, it's looking very dark because it's still only uncertain.

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00:24:58

Duncan McCargo; Thanks very much. I don't know Ardeth, if you want to say a little bit more about the economic effects and the sort of humanitarian consequences of the coup, we have touched on it. But did you want to elaborate?

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00:25:07

Ardeth Muang Thawnghmung; Yes. So this immediate consequence of the military coup has been displacement in conflict areas with people with no immediate access to food and medical facilities, as well as loss of job or reduced income, inability to repay loans. And in addition to that, ordinary people are facing a situation not only reduced loss of income, but also rising prices because political instability caused the decline in the value of kyat. So at the beginning of the coup, you have the exchange rate was about 13 hundred kyats per dollar now, and it has gotten up to 16, 17 hundred kyats per dollar. And this led to the rise of price and food and basic items, especially imported items such as fuel, cooking, oil, fertilizer, and the increase in fuel prices also led to increase in domestic transportation costs. So in some areas, we've seen price of transportation went up two times. So the World Bank and the FIS solution predicted that the size of the economy will shrink by 10 to 20 percent. And some survey reveals that the majority of households now earning only half of their income. And I think the most depressing prediction is by UNDP, which predicted that if this trend continues, half of the population will live under poverty very soon. Another concerns that I have is a health care crisis, and this is due to civil disobedience movement by medical doctors who pioneered this civil disobedience movement, especially on COVID. We've seen that the military has offer COVID vaccination to a limited number of people, but this was extremely disorganized and there was really no guaranteeing that the vaccines were appropriately stored or kept in the right temperature. There have been a few places in major cities that conduct tests for COVID, but overall, the military does not have any capacity to handle this impending health crisis in the country. If it were to be hit by the third wave of COVID in the same way as the neighboring countries, like India, have faced. But there are reports that COVID patients, for instance, in Mon State have to travel to Karen State to receive treatment because of the lack of treatment and facilities. So my concern is that this humanitarian crisis impact on ordinary people. And we can talk a little bit more about how this crisis has varying impacts on people from different localities, different socioeconomic backgrounds and different occupations.

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00:27:51

Duncan McCargo; Thanks very much, Ardeth. I just want to give everybody a chance to reflect on future scenarios and where we could possibly go from here. I think it's harder to find optimistic scenarios as each passing week and month goes on here. Maybe I could ask each of you to say something about a scenario that you are thinking about or concerned about or hoping for.

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00:28:11

Helene Maria Kyed; There can be several scenarios, but I think I want to just focus on one possible one, and that is to what extent that can be splits and cracks within the army. There can be a coup within the coup, so to speak. I don't see it happening at all right now. And people who know a lot more about the military than I do also say that this has no historical precedent. Even the efforts that's been before historically have failed because of an incredibly strong institution. It's very hierarchical. They build up around strong patient-client relationships with soldiers, are bound up through their salaries to the military companies where they get part of their salaries. Through that, it's ideologically very tight. People are kept in the military. They're not allowed to leave. I spoke before about how families are under threat, but there could be some avenues. One is if the economy keeps on breaking down, if the sanctions directed, if people continue to boycott the military owned companies. A lot of also lower ranking soldiers live off of also having their own incomes because salaries are really bad, but also lack of morale, because the reports we're hearing coming out of some of the 13 soldiers is that the lower ranks are living off of rice that you normally would feed the pigs. I mean, they are, the morale within the army is really decreasing. And here they're sort of ambivalence sort of situation. Also with the armed resistance to it is that for desertions to snowball and people to actually leave the army en masse, there need to be some alternatives. And there I can also see the building up of a federal army and a People's Defense Force is creating sort of an alternative for deserting soldiers and police to go. But whether it will happen at the higher level is a much bigger question. And there I think we may look to a role that the region could play. I don't have much belief in ASEAN, but perhaps China, if China feels the instability is becoming too high and the economic interests are effected we could envision at least behind closed doors that China could put some pressure on at least factions within the army, so there are some possibilities there of cracks, but still very uncertain of whether that would happen.

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00:30:07

Duncan McCargo; OK, thanks Helene. Liv?

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00:30:10

Liv Stoltze Gaborit; Yes, there's a lot of reasons to be quite depressed because it's a hard struggle ahead. But I want to pick up on one of the things that makes me hopeful, which is I hear a lot of people comparing to North Korea when talking about what is it the state is trying to do. Like what what kind of state is the military imagining? And because the control that they try to implement is is so extreme then North Korea is where people look to. But there is a major difference. There are probably many. But but one of the key differences is that in North Korea, the leaders are seen as godlike. And in Myanmar, the military doesn't even have the support of the people. And I think this is a key difference that make it impossible for the military to reach a stage where Myanmar will be like North Korea. And I think this also means that the resistance is vital. So even though there was no immediate result, and even though it's a long struggle and it can take years to get through this, the resistance will succeed.

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00:31:28

Duncan McCargo; OK, thanks a lot. Speaking out of turn, I'll abuse my position here and say as far as I could see, Myanmar is light years away from North Korea. It is very, very close to Thailand where the military staged a coup and manipulated an election in order to claim that they're now a democratic government, even though anybody who studies the facts objectively does not believe that. I guess I'm more concerned about, of course, we don't have to look very far across then to Cambodia to see how you can institutionalize a one party dominant regime by getting rid of opposition movements. So that's another scenario that's in my mind. I don't know what the people want to respond to that. I don't know if other people want to respond to that, but let me just throw that one into the works. So Ardeth, do you have a scenario for us?

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00:32:08

Ardeth Muang Thawnghmung; Yeah, I wish I could predict the situation, but it's really difficult. I would usually look at the dynamic between the military and the opposition movement to come up with different scenarios. I would say that a couple months ago, Myanmar was moving toward situations like not North Korea, but more like Syria or Iraq. It was very chaotic, very uncertain because the military was able to use just brutal force. It seems like the military is now able to bring the situations under control. Many sites that have been the place for a resistance and many of the protesters that we have already talk about either fled or detained. So the military is able to bring the situation under control in the core areas. But the problem is, is they could not run and manage the daily operations of the government. But it's been trying to run the government economically and politically by starting to replace in all local administrators and by issuing threats against businesses to go back to open their businesses. So once it is able to start running the country, it may start thinking about long-term strategies, like hosting elections, providing incentives for foreign investors to come back. And so I think the situation is almost like a situation in 1990s, 2000s when the military is still in control. But then again, you have opposition movement in the peripheral areas and along with other civil disobedience movement and nonviolent resistance. So a lot of situations will depend on the dynamic between the military and the National Unity Government and other forces that are against the military Myat The has talked about. And it will very much depend on whether the NUG is able to get support from foreign countries in terms of legitimacy and other support, as well as whether they are able to walk among all the anti-coup forces. Right? But one of the problems is Myanmar is facing right now and faced in the past is the divisions within the opposition movement and which allow the military to divide and rule. And I would say that the one major significant difference between 1988 and the current situation is the presence of diaspora. In 1988, in 1990, we don't have that many Burmese people living abroad. Right now we do have significant numbers of Burmese people who are now citizens of America or UK or European countries, and they have remained a major force providing legitimacy and support to the NUG government. But I feel like we're now in a situation where the military is continued to consolidate its rule.

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00:35:12

Duncan McCargo; Great. Thanks a lot. I'm afraid we're going to have to draw this really fascinating session to a close. Thanks so much, everybody, for joining us. Thanks especially to our speakers for your great responses. Thank you so much, everybody.

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00:35:24

Liv Stoltze Gaborit; Thank you.

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00:35:25

Ardeth Muang Thawnghmung; Thank you.

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00:35:25

Myat The Thitsar; Thank you.

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00:35:28 ; You have been listening to the Nordic Asia podcast