A Border Runs Through It

A Border Runs Through It

Episode #577: Thomas Shapwon, a Naga elder and former politician, recounts the long struggle of the Naga people for sovereignty and survival between India and Myanmar. He describes the Naga as an ancient, independent nation with distinct language, culture, and traditions. From the formation of the Naga Club in 1918 to the declaration of Naga independence in 1947— one day before India’s own— the community has resisted external domination. Mahatma Gandhi supported their independence, but his successor, Prime Minister Nehru, rejected it, eventually dividing the Naga homeland along the India-Myanmar border without consultation. Shapwon explains that the Naga people have traditionally lived under village councils with no kings or centralized rulers, embodying a democratic, republican ethos. He traces their ancestry to Mesopotamia and describes their migration through China before settling in the region. Christianity, brought by American Baptist missionaries, became central to Naga identity, with 95% of the population now Christian— a fact Shapwon sees as a potential bridge for international support. He emphasizes peaceful advocacy over armed resistance, using careful language: the Naga, he says, “request” recognition of independence rather than “demand” it, asserting equality rather than subjugation. Yet he acknowledges the armed movements that arose after Indian and Burmese military aggression in the 1950s, which forced the Nagas to form their own militias. The Burmese army’s campaigns of violence and forced Buddhist conversions devastated Naga villages, while internal divisions— fueled by politics and drug infiltration— further weakened their cause. Despite assassination attempts and near-death experiences, including a bear attack he survived through what he interprets as divine intervention, Shapwon remains devoted to peace. Through his NGO, the Eastern Naga Development Organization, he promotes education, healthcare, women’s empowerment, and opium eradication. Reflecting on the post-coup era, he calls for cooperation with other ethnic groups and envisions a future decided peacefully by the Naga people themselves.

The Hidden Flock

Episode #576: “I have been attempted [at assassinations] twice when they shot me, but I escaped. My family, my brother, they are targeted, and armed groups are always behind us. They kill in a second.” Peter Saiful, a pastor with the Rohingya Christian Fellowship and a human rights defender, describes what it means to live as a Rohingya Christian refugee in Bangladesh after his family fled Myanmar in 1992. His account centers on a community he estimates at around 3000 Christian individuals in Bangladesh, dispersed across camps where concealment becomes a survival strategy rather than a choice. In blocks dominated by Muslim majorities, he says, Christians often cannot identify themselves safely, and “now they are pretending to be Muslim,” because discovery can bring abduction, beating, torture, and ransom. Saiful argues that the primary engine of fear is not the broader Rohingya population, but small armed factions with outsized power. A group of “very few people [are able to] control the Rohingya, because [the armed groups] have access to weapons that we cannot imagine,” leaving the majority too frightened to speak out. He traces this environment into specific violence, including attacks culminating in January 2020, when he says more than 400 youth set fire to Christian shelters, destroyed documents, and injured community members. On repatriation, Saiful rejects near-term promises as unrealistic, pointing to continuing flight from Myanmar and the lack of enforceable guarantees, while still insisting on belonging and citizenship rights, warning that without equal treatment and access, any return risks repeating a cycle in which Rohingya are moved and renamed for other people’s purposes. “The government must ensure us that [they will] welcome us as a child, the way we welcome our children,” he says, and without that, he expects the same cycle will repeat and “we will be treated as a football.”

Terms of Extraction

Episode #575: Lindsey Kennedy, an investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker focused on organized crime, corruption, and conflict, argues that the scam-compound economy across Cambodia, Myanmar, and Laos can no longer be treated as a marginal criminal problem. It has become a governing force in parts of the region, shaping infrastructure, labor flows, border management, and even the logic of war. “They are not a separate organized crime phenomenon. They are a core part of the economic activity of a country.” Her account widens the frame far beyond online fraud. Inside these compounds, people can be trafficked through fake job offers, trapped behind guarded walls, tortured for missing targets, sold between operators, or pushed into sexual exploitation. Many do not even realize which country they have been taken to until they arrive. “People are completely tricked into working somewhere they have no idea what's happening.” Others enter under economic pressure and discover too late that there is no easy line between coercion and consent once the system closes around them. Kennedy is especially focused on state responsibility. These industries do not grow into cities without permissions, land access, military or police protection, and a wider network of businesses willing to build, transport, finance, and normalize them. “They just cannot take root without state sponsored backing,” as she puts it. Casinos, special economic zones, and new fintech platforms help move and launder money while giving criminal infrastructure the appearance of development. In Myanmar, those same criminal economies blur into conflict itself. Armed groups need revenue, illegal industries expand, and even landmine contamination becomes harder to address when crime, territory, and war finance overlap. Survivors, meanwhile, are left with little support. “There's not a lot of thought for aftercare,” Kennedy says, pointing to a system that recycles people through exploitation rather than helping them exit it. What emerges is not a hidden underworld but a visible structure of power—one that continues to expand and harden.

Unscripted Awakening

Episode #574: Diego Prieto, a Chilean filmmaker, embarked on a journey to explore the Buddha's legacy and its modern relevance. His documentary started as an effort to explain the core teachings of Buddhism but evolved into a personal and transformative journey. Together with co-producer Camila Arias, he traveled to key sites in Buddhist history, including India and Sri Lanka, to trace the historical Buddha's life and teachings. At one point, Diego faced an intense personal challenge while attending a meditation retreat, which shifted the documentary's focus from an external exploration to one reflecting an internal journey. Through interviews with scholars and practitioners from diverse Buddhist traditions, Diego came to appreciate the adaptability of the Buddha's teachings. He realized that Buddhism cannot be confined to a single formula; instead, it offers varied paths tailored to individuals. This understanding reshaped the documentary into a motivational tool meant to inspire personal exploration of Buddhism, rather than providing definitive answers. Diego’s final message is that spiritual growth is deeply personal and cannot be systematized. The documentary aims to encourage viewers to embark on their own journeys, embracing the multiplicity of approaches within Buddhism. As Diego concluded, “We found out that the Buddha taught different practices for different people... there is no one-size-fits-all path.”

Behind the Firewall

Episode #573: “I brought you here to the United States not so you could forget our homeland,” Salih Hudayar remembers his father telling him, “but so you could become educated and one day return to liberate our people and our country from the Chinese occupation.” Hudayar, now Foreign Minister of the East Turkistan Government in Exile, traces his political life to that instruction. Born in 1993 near Kashgar, he grew up amid tightening state control and left for the United States as a child after his father fled repression. He situates the current crisis within a longer history that includes two short-lived East Turkistan republics before Communist consolidation in 1949. He describes a post-2009 escalation of surveillance, detention, and forced labor under the banner of counterterrorism. Citing Chinese government documents and satellite imagery, he argues that mass internment, religious repression, family separation, and demographic engineering amount to genocide. Now based in Washington DC, Hudayar presses U.S. lawmakers to move beyond condemnation. Recognition of genocide, he says, is not enough without confronting what he calls the root problem of colonial rule. Running a government in exile, dispersed across continents and sustained by diaspora donations, requires coordination, discipline, and constant vigilance against external pressure. Myanmar surfaces repeatedly in the interview as both comparison and caution. Hudayar draws parallels between the Rohingya genocide case and his own effort to bring a complaint before the International Criminal Court, noting that the Rohingya precedent shaped the jurisdictional argument he pursued. He also references Myanmar’s strategic importance to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, particularly access to the western coast and energy corridors that could reduce Beijing’s vulnerability in the Strait of Malacca. At a broader level, he frames the Uyghur and Myanmar struggles as linked by geography and power politics—both situated along China’s periphery, both affected by Beijing’s economic leverage and security influence, and both navigating how global powers respond when human rights concerns collide with strategic interests.