 Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon and welcome to 31 Bly Street. I'm Hervé Lemieux, director of research here at the Lowy Institute. Before I go any further, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians on the land on which the Institute stands, the Gadigal of the Euro nation. I pay my respects to their elders past and present. It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to the book launch of my friend and colleague, Professor Chantonelle. It's a huge honour that we're the first ones up on this extensive programme of launch events. And in studying international affairs, we come across lots of remarkable stories every day. But usually these stories are of hardship, of power and ambition, of intrigue and injustice. So it can be a bit of a miserable business. It's very rare for these stories to bring hope or indeed a happy ending. And Chantonelle's story is both about hardship, but also the very rare exception of tale of human endeavour overcoming tremendous adversity and fundamentally of optimism prevailing. On the 6th of February 2021, Chantonelle found himself detained by the Janta in Myanmar that adjusts his power. The man who I believe had never had so much as a parking ticket. Is that right, Chantonelle? Unbelievable, but anyway. Had committed the crime of trying to help the Burmese people. He was arrested because he had been an economic adviser to Myanmar's civilian leader, Ang Sang-su Chi. And he was charged under Myanmar's Official Secrets Act for carrying, among other things, a document on which he himself, I believe, had scribbled confidential. Chantonelle spent 650 days in prison, during which time we heard very little about him. Other than reports of his declining health and multiple bouts with COVID. Supporters and friends led by his courageous wife and fellow economist Havu, who's here with us today, fought tirelessly for his release behind the scenes and at times in public in an international campaign which enlisted King Charles, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong among many others. Chantonelle was finally released on the 17th of November last year. And I remember the picture very well that was flashing across the news of a bearded, emaciated Sean in the arms of Ha, flashing the broadest grin on his face and betraying a chipped tooth. I mean, you were a real pirate, Sean, that was incredible. And as a remarkable testament to his ability to bounce back, he joined us freshly shaven only a few days later at the Sydney Town Hall for the 2022 Lowy Lecture. The nerdy economics professor couldn't miss an opportunity to hear from the director general of the WTO on de-globalization. And I'm not ashamed to say this, but that night sitting next to him at dinner was the most surreal and happiest day of my career, Sean. It really was an incredible moment. We're honored that Sean has chosen since then to make the Lowy Institute his home as a senior fellow in our Southeast Asia program. And he's able to share his expertise, his experiences, incredible good humor with the rest of us every day. And today, almost exactly a year ago to the day since your release, Sean, it is my absolute pleasure and delight to launch your memoir of your time in captivity and unlikely prisoner published through Penguin Press. So ladies and gentlemen, can I welcome the remarkable Chantonelle to the stage? Sean, let's begin. I mean, firstly, what were you doing in Myanmar? I mean, that's the first question. I mean, how does an economics professor in Australia end up advising the leader of the first civilian government in Myanmar for decades? How did that come about? What exactly was the nature of your job? So I think like most things in Myanmar completely by accident. So years and years ago, 100 years ago when I was doing my PhD, I lived in a share house that included somebody from Burma or from Myanmar. And the stories were fantastic. They were tragic, but they were heroic. And, you know, I got totally captivated with the country. And then gradually over time, because, you know, people knew I was an economist back at the Reserve Bank then, people asked me to write things about the economy, in particular, to critique the military who were in control even back then. So I started writing things and my names sort of got passed around some of the democracy people. My academic career just fell completely then under Myanmar work. And I wrote a book on the country's monetary and financial history and somewhat bizarrely, people have heard me express this wonderful before, the BBC Burmese Service serialized the book on the radio, which, yeah, anyway. This was Fiery Dragons. This was Fiery Dragons, which despite its name, I think was probably used by the regime to put people to sleep. But anyway, however it was, it was broadcast in Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi got to listen to it. And from that, we sort of began to be in contact. She was then released from house arrest in 2010, which on what we hoped was going to be the last time. And yeah, I met her in person. We established a real rapport. And then finally, 2015, a series of economic reforms and political reforms along the way. Elections held NLD, National League for Democracy, and also coming to government. And on the day after the election, she said to me, Sean, you've been helping us all these years. You've been writing all this stuff. Why don't you come over and give us a hand at actually doing the things. So I got permission from Macquarie Uni, support from Department of Foreign Affairs here in Australia, permission from my wife, and went over to Myanmar. And yeah, started working from there. Yeah. And tell us a little bit about the, in some sense, the culture shock, not only of functioning in a very different country to Australia, but actually the culture shock, more importantly, of transitioning from academia to policy practice and also of making the kind of everyday trade-offs, I think, that are a necessary part of any job in power between idealism and pragmatism. So I'm sure this will shock everyone in the world, in the room, sorry. Real world policymaking is really different from what you write in an academic paper. So we had a blueprint of what to do, which was sort of the standardized thing, but very much adapted to Myanmar's circumstances and history and all of that. But yeah, day-to-day, you're constantly running into things. Myanmar's bureaucracy had been built up over 70 years, just about a military rule. It was sclerotic. It was top-down. It was designed for a command economy. So every day we struggled just to get anything through. And on a good day, you've got something really small through. On a bad day, you can actually go backwards. But yeah, but a real struggle. And as her, they said, lots and lots of compromises along the way. You know, you might have a policy you think, now, this would really work, but yeah, just having the jettison bits here and there, maybe because of politics, sometimes just circumstances. And those were, I mean, incredible years from 2015 onwards. But things started going a little bit awry. I mean, the pressure and the relationship breakdown between Nong San Suu Kyi and the military, that was something that was, you know, had never really fully reconciled to begin with, but there was a sort of de facto working arrangement, which I think started to become undone at the seams in the lead-up to the second election, the one in 2020. And at the same time, you were dealing with an international community that had really started turning against Nong San Suu Kyi. So tell us a little bit about what that was like. I mean, I know you were working on economics. You weren't across all the briefs, but still you had a firsthand account of what it was like to be in that government. What was the mood like at the time? So the mood at the beginning was incredibly enthusiastic. In fact, I know there's many people in this room who were there. There was just a feeling in Myanmar that you could do anything. We were starting something new. We really were going to get the last and best of the tigers. Yeah, things started to go wrong. I mean, there was the compromises that we mentioned earlier, just the struggle to get things through. But then halfway through, I'm sure people will remember the story, the terrible story, right, where Myanmar's military just started massacring people in Rakhine State, the Rheinga. Now, the interesting thing about that was that we knew that they would try something, because as Hervé said, the relationship between the civilian government and the military was always an uneasy one, and a sort of unacknowledged one. It wasn't like there was any formal deal or anything like that. Communication between the two was near non-existent. And even at the best of times, communication was often through the media, through proxies, things like that. So, yeah, a very uneasy relationship. Then we get the atrocities, the near genocide against the Rheinga. And we had expected the military to try and do something, to devalue the National League of Democracy, to bring Dorsu down. So then we had to try and deal with that. At this point too, I think everyone, the biggest supporters of the government would acknowledge a lot of mistakes were made, particularly in communication, because behind the scenes, there was a huge amount going on on the civilian government side to try and lessen the atrocities going on and try to pull the military back. But they had to be very, very careful, because throughout the whole time I was there, there was always a feeling that the military were a hair-trigger a way of coming in. In fact, I remember it quite distinctly, because I was living in Napid or this bizarre capital city in the middle of the country through most of that. And you wouldn't have a day go by, almost, without a sort of rumour of a coup. And, you know, it might be just a few trucks, army trucks or something parked at a shopping centre or something, and rumours would develop from that. So, yeah, so there was always this incredible unease, this feeling that the military could come in at any time. So people like Suqi had to sort of juggle all of this. And again, communication is terrible. How to send the signals to the military using proxies, sometimes publicly, sometimes in other ways, trying to lessen that. We've got the international community quite rightly, completely outraged about what's going on for the Riga, and then trying to deal with that all at once, you know, and trying not to trigger the military. So it was really difficult. Lots of things being done, yeah, in the background, including by myself. And as Hervé mentioned, one particular document that the regime used against me in the trial was set out a program through which we could use our inside information of the financial system to target some of the military figures who were causing the atrocities in Rakhine. And, yeah, when I saw that, Wayne Terrogate has presented that to me, I was really worried because I thought, wow, this is the smoking gun. Thankfully, I don't think they've read it. But it did have confidential on it. And the confidential stamp was put on by me. But again, you might have heard me say this. It still led the interrogator to tell me, well, it doesn't matter that you wrote it. You shouldn't have had it. And above all, you shouldn't have read it. Should have declared it confidential. I think it's... I remember you were, in fact, in Sydney over the Christmas break, I believe, just before flying back to Yangon. We were actually meant to meet up and then you left. I remember we exchanged an email. So you went back into what was a very tense and dynamic situation. But the sort of orthodoxy at the time was that the military wouldn't consider a coup because, in many ways, the whole game was stacked in their favor to begin with. The 2008 Constitution created a diarchic system in which the military retained its power over the ministries of defense, home affairs, policing, what was it, border areas. And why would they squander a system that they had so carefully set up through years of constitutional conventions in ways or by people that really favored their interests? And yet they did so. They did so. Was there any sign in the lead-up and immediate days before the coup that things were going to go very awry? What was the first inkling that something was going to happen? So there were signs, but, as I mentioned earlier, there were always signs. And so trying to filter out whether this was anything different than the past was a problematic thing. And also around that time, one of the weirdest things is that Myanmar's election cycle almost exactly tracked Americans. So an election in November. In America, what is January 20 is where the president comes in. But in Myanmar, it was about March. But there was this election in November, this long gap in between. And again, sort of tracking Donald Trump a little bit, the military were using the same sort of arguments that the election was rigged. It was, you know, even though in this case it wasn't even close, right? So it was about 80% of the vote went to the Sue cheese party. But yeah, the military were complaining a lot. So there was this drumbeat of vitriol from the military. But exactly as you've described, it didn't make sense that they would have a coup because they were in the box seat in many ways. Although I'll come to as to why there might not have been in a moment. But they thought they'd rigged the system really well. Yeah, complete control of home affairs, complete control of the military, including over the budget, as the civilian government couldn't even question the budget. It wasn't allowed to be discussed in Parliament, for instance. So they were sitting pretty. They had lots of crony enterprises all around them that were well placed and all that. So it didn't seem to make sense. The only thing is, I think a couple of things came in. Number one was that the senior general, who's the leader of the country now, this guy called Menon Lai, his term of office was coming to an end because of age. He would have had to retire. He was then very exposed to action at the International Criminal Court and other places. And he was worried that Tsuche and the civilian government could hand him over. So there was that. The other thing was, in retrospect, and after being interrogated and so on, it was clear that the economic reforms were beginning to work. And so that cosy deal that had been stitched up where the military sort of kept their power very separately was coming under pressure. And some of those crony enterprises were coming under pressure as we were opening up the economy, bringing foreign investment and so on. So I think that's partly as well. They began to feel that things were moving against them. So having said all of that, it still makes no sense. It's absolutely irrational. And if we look at the situation now, the biggest losers, well, apart from the Myanmar people, they're the biggest losers, of course. But significant people around the military regime, crony enterprise and all that have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. So it's a failed enterprise, but yet they did it. They did it. Tell us a little bit now about the circumstances of your arrest. I believe you were in a hotel room, the chat room, is that right? Yep, it was. I mean, Ha, I'm sure would have already been, you know, on tenterhooks and somewhat nervous. There was news that a coup had happened. But then there was a strange kind of few hours in between the coup happening and you still being a free man. So were there any attempts made to try to get you out of the country? I know there were others in your situation who were successfully very rapidly repatriated. That didn't happen for you. So what was your situation like? What were you being told? And how did they ultimately come to arrest you? So the coup itself was a shock to me. I've been in contact with Suchi's office only the day before, just to see what was happening. Sorry, this is before the coup. And I've been advised, because I was due to go to leave my hotel, go up to Naipi door and we were going to, actually we're going to launch the new economic plan. That was the story. But she advised me, Sean, look, postpone it a bit. Just a few days. We think there are rogue elements of the military on the roads and if they see you, they'll probably hassle you and all that. So let's put it off till Wednesday, I think it was or something. Then the coup happened. But yeah, so a real surprise. I got notifications through an email from someone purportedly on the staff of the hotel, just saying that, look, you need to get out. Military intelligence have taken over the hotel. But leading up to that point, I tried to get out. I was a little bit complacent at first, to be honest. I thought, okay, I'm a foreigner. And above all, too, I thought the coup might just disappear because it was a near-run thing, I think, in those early hours. So for a couple of reasons, I wasn't too worried to begin with. I was more worried about Burmese colleagues and hoping that they would get to the border or get to safety. Then it became apparent that I needed to worry. But the big thing, of course, which we all remember, was the middle of COVID. So there were no flights in and out. In fact, I'd gone into the country in January on a special... Remember those evacuation flights that were moving workers and people all around? So I'd had to get a special seat on a plane. There was nothing going out. There were a few flights going out, but of course now they're totally full. So literally, for me to get a seat would have been bumping somebody off. One of the things that I've only just remembered, in the last few days, is I've been telling the story. That's something we remember. I did get a seat. Finally, I got a seat that I will probably remember. On to London. And I was going to go to London, I remember. And I had visions of, oh, wouldn't it be terrible to be going to London for a few months? But anyway, it didn't happen. It could be my rest that then took place. So I was trying to get out, but just couldn't. It was a bit too late then. It's too late. And what did you think would happen? I mean, once you were arrested, what was your sense in terms of, what did you tell yourself in terms of, will you be out of here in a short period of time? Were you still hopeful that this situation could be resolved? It was all a misunderstanding. What were you thinking? Yeah, so my complacency continued even after being arrested and so on. And being arrested was horrible. I don't want to underplay that. That was really frightening. And I was scared and all that sort of stuff. But I thought it would end. It would end for that same complacency about rational actors and what they might do. And in the sense that I thought, well, okay, there's going to be huge international fuss about this. The world will be against them. Why would they keep me? It didn't make any sense. It's just going to be another area through which the rest of the world can attack them and agitate and all that. And also the long history of MIMA, which usually what they do is they arrest foreigners and then deport them more or less straight away. So I was still quite well into it thinking, okay, they're just going to really frighten me and then just send me out. So I maintained that for quite a time. But they were really keen to hear from you about in particular one country, which was Britain and British spies. And I mean, why this obsession with Britain? It's really interesting. Yeah, so I was constantly being accused of working for MI6. But also George Soros simultaneously. So it might be news to George that he's connected to James Bond. But, you know, they're obsessed about this. And I think it's a colonial hangover, basically. So probably everyone knows here that, you know, Myanmar, when it was known as Burma, part of the British empire and all that. And always that thing of perfidious Albion in the background, stirring things up, pushing the strings or pulling the strings rather. And even when America's the dominant actor and all that, but behind them, same forces. So I think it was just that. It was this obsession that if there was trouble, if there were foreigners interfering, that that's ultimately where it was. And to be honest, I think being Australian or being British. Close enough. The next best thing to actual Brits they could get. And it actually reminds me a little bit of the Russians, similarly, in their propaganda. But I think also by conviction are convinced that the Brits are behind everything. The Russians, the Middle East crisis or something else. They're the last. I mean, the Burmese and the Russians, the last big believers in Great Britain. But look, I mean, coming back to more serious circumstances. I mean, the first two months were not, you know, you were held in solitary confinement in something called the box. Is that right? So can you? Yes. I called it the box. Nobody else called it the box. But it was sort of, I've described it in many places as like a shipping container. You know, it's about as big as this stage, actually, about this sort of size. And it was horrible. It was a room inside a room in the headquarters of CID. And had not like concrete floor and just wood panelling sort of walls, fake wood walls. And then a chair, just a metal chair just bolted into the centre of the floor, in which there were chains on the arms and on the feet. And with ankle and wrist cuffs of manacles on them. So it was a horrific image. And it had no windows or anything like that, except a tiny, slick window where the police outside could look into the box. And then a couple of light, about three powerful lights were on and a fan, a single fan near the top. So yeah, but I was held in there for two months and allowed nothing in. So yeah, it was probably the worst, well, not probably. It was the worst time, I think, physically. And yeah, but, you know, I coped through it and, you know, in some of the media, people have often asked me, like, how did I cope in that situation? And it's interesting to me that the first thing you do, I think we'd all do it because it's probably hard-wired, is just pace. You move up and down. Like, you need to be moving. And so pacing from one end to the other and counting was a real soothing thing because it sort of stopped your thinking for a start by just simply counting. But it sort of gave you control over the space, over the domain. So yeah, it was sort of a way of getting control a little bit as well. But yeah, but a pretty horrible place because the lights were never off, except when the blackouts were on during the day, which was an early sign that the military were already mishandling the economy. But yeah, it was a... Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it. I'd give it one star or less as a combination. We're laughing with it now. And I suppose humour is one of the big ways in which you can preserve your sanity. But how do you not lose your sense of not only time, but also self in that situation? I mean, did you feel as if you were... How close to a sort of proper mental breakdown do you feel that you got? A few times. I lost it a few times and just thought of the door shaking the cell doors and shouting obscenities that I didn't even know that I had access to, particularly about men online, his parentage and procrivities and so on. But in fact, so much so, I remember on one evening, there's a little bit later up in Napidore, that some of my friends, amongst the Myanmar economical formers, came to see me the next day because I'd been doing this at night, and they said, and I said, yeah, it's okay. It's just an Australian way of getting it out. Because they were much more stoic. I never saw them single. None of them ever lost it once. They were very, very calm. They've had experience as well. And the former, the NLD government, had spent years in prison. Absolutely. Incredibly stoic. So by this point, you'd been transferred to a sort of more general wing. This is insane prison still in Yangon? Yeah. So after the box for two months, I was then moved into the wonderfully known insane prison. Which is the 19th century British construction, right? Yeah. Panopticon or something? Yeah. So it's a mark, like in the book, first book plug, in the book, there's a picture of insane. And it's like a big wagon wheel. And yeah, divided up into little sort of pizza slices with the different wards of the prison. And in the middle, so it all comes from Jeremy Bentham, the famous philosopher and social reformer, the idea of the Panopticon of prison reform. Actually, 19th century England. But from the centre there's a giant tower, which is meant to economise on staffing because then the wardens can just look from the tower and see all parts of the prison. But yeah, but it was well built, really run down, but still in some ways in a more functioning condition than later prisons I was in, that have been built, you know, a century later. But yeah, extraordinary place. And I always remember though, marching towards, after being taken through these terrible big doors of the prison, which was like entering Mordor in Mordor the Rings. But marching along there with my clanking guards and so on all the way and seeing the tower ahead of me, because we had to sort of head towards the centre and just to continue the Lord of the Rings analogy. It was like Sauron, it was like the Great Eye. But yeah, horrible place. I mean at what point, I think it was sometime while you were in prison, you decided you'd write a book. Is that right? So at what point and why did you decide to write a book? Very early on. It was part of the coping mechanism as well because it gave me something to think about. So in fact about one third of the book, but particularly part two, I think it is, totally from memory. In fact I didn't even have to, it was almost like muscle memory actually in writing it when I got back. So that was to give me something to think about. And it required like a lot of discipline and again, a way of not thinking about anything else. So when I literally constructed sentences and in my head I would even change a word or a comma on a given day and think, oh no, that doesn't work. So it was good from that point. I also wanted to send that signal to my Myanmar colleagues because I knew, one of the real dilemmas is that, well as you alluded to, I think at the beginning, Myanmar just goes down the list of international interests and some people don't care and all that. So I knew that I would be in a position if I ever got out to tell a story and I wanted to tell my Myanmar colleagues that and to say that their struggle wouldn't be forgotten. I also had a very practical thing actually in telling them that because I wanted to get their feel, their permission about telling their story and using their names and things like that. And interesting enough to a person amongst the major figures in the book, they all wanted to be in the book. In fact they were most worried that I might put a pseudonym for them. So it was the opposite of what I might have thought. So that's why in the book, I do have pseudonyms for some people who I've not been able to contact at the time or whatever and I need to protect and things like that. But the leading figures were all okay with what I was going to do. You talk about your friends in prison. This is a hard question, but do you know how they're doing? Where are they now? I believe some of them have been released as part of amnesty deals. Others might still be in prison. Others were not that fortunate at all because you described some really heavy-handed interrogation tactics. And of course, the Burmese themselves were the most exposed to that heavy-handedness. To the extent that you're comfortable, could you describe what some of your friends went through and how they're doing? Yeah, so personally just what they went through was much worse than mine. I was sort of roughed up a few times and things like that. But they got the full measure. In fact, one guy who was actually an American citizen as well as me and Mark, he had the full thing. He had the electrodes put on him and electrocuted. He had scars on his face from beatings and all that. And yet, he's an American citizen and American consular people were getting in touch with and all that. But for the ones who didn't even have that that went even further. So their treatment was awful. And I felt for them, to say felt for them, I don't describe it enough, but because I had a whole government behind me. I had Haran Fuong behind me. I had all this support. I had everyone here. I knew what the ruckus that would be causing in Australia. For my Burmese colleagues, they didn't even have that. They just lost in a terrible system and treated in the way you describe. Yeah, so anyway, so yeah, their treatment was terrible. Since I got out, a few have been released. In fact, some were released before I was released as well, depending on what they were being charged with and all that. So some have been released. Some still haven't and some have disappeared completely. And I sort of worry most about the latter category. I worry about the ones who are still in captivity. I worry about the ones who have been released and still in the country. Yeah, so basically I just worry, more or less constantly. I mean, there was one particular friend that you mentioned who has happened to be Muslim as well. Yes, yes. And was he killed? He was, yeah. So the worst case of all, Kim Bong Shui, his name of course, but he had the Islamic name of Yaikub, so I knew him completely as Yaikub. And he was fantastic. He looked after me. He cooked food for me. He cleaned things for me. In fact, he did so much. He couldn't do enough. It was very often I would say, Yaikub, no, no, no. You don't have to do this. We're in this together. I can do all this. But he was, yeah, would just do so much. And also, but he was a very strong character and so strong actually that the prison guards were frightened of him. And he had the appearance. He had the beard and everything. And, yeah, they were generally frightened of him. So they were out to get him basically. And so he was okay up to the point that I'd left insane in Yangon, transferred up to Napidor. And then I was a year up in Napidor. Finally, he eventually came back to Yangon, back to insane prison. And one of the things, first things I wanted to find out when I got back was where was everyone? And above all, where was Yaikub? Was he around? And I'll never forget the horrible day that I said to one of the interpreters. I said, where's Yaikub? And the guy said to me, oh, Sean, he's gone. And I thought he meant, oh, he's been released. This is great. And he said, no, no, no, Sean, misunderstand. He's dead. And I said, how? And, yeah, it turns out that a fake fight was sort of staged. He'd gone in there just outside his cell, in his cell. The details were a little bit unclear. And he'd intervened. And that's very him, because he was always, like, safeguarded me, but he tried to be safeguarded everyone, basically. He somehow, yeah, got pulled into the fight. We think to break it up. But the two assailants then turned on him, as did then the prison guards, who kicked him and beat him to death, basically. He lingered on for a day and then died the next day. So, yeah, it was a really horrifying, I mean, horrifying so many levels, but it came at a bad moment for me because this was after the trial, after the conviction. That was the last moment that I thought I would be released, because I thought I'd be convicted and then just applauded. But I then spent a few more months in Sainte. And one of the first things I found in going back to Sainte was the news about that. So, yeah, terrible circumstance. I particularly pay honour to him in the book. There's a photograph of him in the book and so on. And again, I've been in touch with his family and things like that. But, yeah, an awful story. But representative of so many others in the environment. There were moments that gave you a bit more hope, if not on your case, and in terms of the drip feed of news stories that somehow made its way through the prison system into your ears or something that you could read and that sort of stuff. And I believe, actually, the Lowy Interpreter, our blog, was one of the things that managed to make its way into the prison so that you could keep yourself busy and occupied and aware of what was going on in the world around you. And I think in the book you also describe how you came to hear about Ocus, which was a real sort of fist pumping moment for you. So what was your reaction? And I remember then also at the Lowy Lecture last year you had read about Ocus. But of course, like so many of us when we first heard about the concept or the acronym, we had no bloody idea how to pronounce it. And you actually had to ask me, well, what is it? How do you pronounce it? I've read this term. Tell me what you felt about it. I mean, what was it about Ocus that made you feel so pumped? So I should say, too, the channel for all this was, again, so I had all this material photocopied and sent through to me by the embassy and so on. And one of them was the Lowy Interpreter. Well, I read about this thing. But no, that's right. I'd had a heads up before then because a guard came to me and said, it was real, it was a nice one. So he said, oh, Sean, Australia's bought nuclear submarines. And I thought, oh, OK. And he said, you're going to start nuking people. And I thought, oh, all right. And of course, I think around that time there were so many other things going on. I misremember now the order of events, but the world was going to hell in the way that it has been. And I'm thinking, oh, my God, what's going on out there? But I was very pumped at the idea. I thought, well, yes, this is great. So it gave me a real lift for a day or two. And I could think about submarines. And I asked Hardin's ME details about the submarines. And yeah, but above all, I didn't know how to say it. I thought, wow, how do you pronounce this? What are people calling this? And then, yeah, when I saw Hervé a few days after getting back, Hervé, how do you pronounce this? That's quite a funny moment there. I'm trying to catch up on two years' worth of events, global events, and the like. Look, I mean, we're going to fast forward a little bit. But you've gone through this sham trial. In fact, you were able to interact with Aung San Suu Kyi then as well. So what was it like to catch up with Daw Suu because you were both in your respective corners of the draconian system? She's been kept in isolation for a long time now. But in these rare moments, you could actually, in court, you did actually interact with her. So what was her state of mind? What did you talk about? So I had lots of really substantive conversations with her. And the Daw Suu that we'd known all along was there, if you know what I mean, incredibly strong. But yeah, we had so many wonderful conversations of things. But I should preface that by saying the initial encounter was anything but impressive on my part. Because I couldn't think of what to say. I hadn't seen her for a long time. Then she's a prisoner. I'm a prisoner. I'd last seen her as leader of the country. She gets ushered into a room. I sort of approached her and all I could think of was saying, I think the force is still with us. It sounds so pathetic now even to recount it. In my defense, which I've got in the book, we were both sort of Star Wars fans. So it sort of came naturally. There was a context, but still. Did she get it? She did. Yes. And she agreed and said, yes, it is short. But yeah, we had many conversations. Mostly not about the trial, because the trial was just such nonsense. There wasn't really anything to say. But she was incredibly supportive of the rest of us and someone like me. As you mentioned, her vape, which is absolutely true. I never even got a parking ticket. And so she wanted to reassure someone like myself but the others as well, was that even though there were all these accoutrements of a penal justice system, blah, blah, blah, this was all a sham. And that we had to make sure that we knew that and deeply understood it and not to get caught up. Because if you're in the environment with prosecutors and police and judges and all the rest of it, it's all too easy to slip into the feeling that you, gee, maybe I did do something wrong. But yeah, so she was very anxious to say, no, look, this is politics. It's a sham. Yeah, which is again quite helpful for someone like me. Do you think that she regrets any of the decisions that she took in the lead up to the coup? Or was it a foregone, inevitable conclusion that there would be a coup or that been online is largely irrational? And did you get the sense that she felt that things could have been done differently? I don't think so. It's a good question. In some ways, the conversations between, there were some topics we couldn't really get close to because we were always in a room. There was one room in this sort of sham, shambolic sort of courthouse that there weren't cameras, but we always suspected that there were bugs of something. So we had to be quite careful of what we spoke about. We did touch upon it a little. Funnily enough, and it'd be interesting because I don't know when the history of this can ever be written because of all the players who are in prison or, you know, on the other side. Because there were some very fraught negotiations. They broke down and all that. In my conversations with other people as well, some of the ministers in the prison, I used to hear different stories about what was happening in those last few days and all that. So I'm sure there are aspects to that that could have gone differently, things like that. But I never heard her give an opinion on those, even though obviously she knew probably more than anyone else. But yeah. So I think the history on that still awaits, I think. It awaits, and it's potentially your next book project because the other two thirds, you said one third of this book, you thought of while you were in prison, and the other two thirds of the rest of the material is making its way into a policy memoir, which may or may not be your next project to the Lowy Institute. So we're looking forward to that one, but you are in that unique position of having had a ringside seat in those key years between 2015 and 2020. So what point did you feel that things were potentially changing for you, that your fortune was shifting and that there might be a release coming? And did you allow yourself to hope or was that actually something that in many ways was psychologically hard to even... If you go there and then you're disappointed, it's a terrible thing. So what point did you feel or did you let yourself believe that things could actually change for you? I let myself believe all the time. One of the insights that I had from being in the prison was how wishful thinking is so powerful. Even though you try not to have it, it just overcomes you. And again, I think I've got this in the book, where there was a rumor went round the prison very early on that the US 7th Fleet were off Yangon, two aircraft carriers, and the US Marines would be there in the end of the week. It's so absurd, right? It's ridiculous. But I can remember thinking, okay, maybe. So yeah, all sorts of weird stuff you would just believe, even though you told yourself it wouldn't happen. But having said that, there were episodes like that, but actually I was trending downwards in terms of feeling being released and particularly at the end. So I actually never felt the ground shifting towards me because the day before I was released, in fact, one year ago tomorrow, Har and I had what turned out to be our last phone call in the prison, and we reconciled to each other that I was going to be there for a few more months, that I would still be there on Christmas time, another Christmas would go by, and I was released the very next day. So it was a total shock. But on that phone call on the 16th of November, yeah, I was probably the lowest end at that point because I thought, okay, I've been convicted now, I've been back and insane for a couple of months. There's no dates because there's a tradition in Myanmar of releasing people on religious holidays. And I thought the next one of them is not until March. And yeah, I'd sort of given up hope. Little did I know there was a very obscure religious holiday on the 17th, which turned out to be the date. It's a good thing there's so many of them, right? So you were holding out for the water festival, was I? That's right, yeah. I was holding out to that. And then it was you, in terms of the internationals that were released, it was Vicky Bowman, former British ambassador to the UK who had then joined an NGO, and is actually also my former landlady in London as it happens. But I remember seeing pictures of you on a shuttle bus to the airport, and I dreamed that. So that must have been a bit of a surreal moment. Tell us what it was like to be on your way to the airport to get in that plane. Yeah, totally surreal. But matched always by an anxiety that was still going to go wrong because Myanmar has a history sometimes, well, particularly under this regime, of them releasing people and then charging them anew. And so it wasn't until I got on the plane. It actually wasn't until the plane landed in Bangkok that I really felt safe. But having said that, I mean, yeah, the trip in the mini bus with Vicky and others was a wonderful moment. And we were all talking about what we'd do when we got home and all that sort of stuff. And then arrived at the airport and all the diplomats are there, and it was just surreal. And I'm, as you would identify, I've got this draggly beard. Pretty old shirt because I'd been exercising in the morning when they told me to be released. And I couldn't shower anything. I'd smell it. It looked terrible. And we're sort of hobnobbing with diplomats and champagnes coming out. It was just very odd. And yeah, but yeah, all surreal, but very nice. Incredible, incredible. Look, I mean, I think that was probably an opportune time to open it up to audience questions. I'm sure there are plenty of them. We've got about 15 minutes left. I have plenty more questions Sean, I could ask you, but now seems a good time to ask anyone to raise their hands and identify themselves and ask Sean a question. Any interest? Lady there in the middle. Thank you. Johanna Pipman, CEO of Advanced Global Australians. So really just very interested in your perspective on the economic future for Myanmar and what you're seeing now at this juncture. What hopes you hold for it? So I think under the current regime I have almost no hope because what they've set out to do is to dismantle all the reforms which in their own mind has a certain logic to it because again those reforms were moving in directions that was essentially against their rule because the whole economic problem of Myanmar, the original theme was that there was this military just sort of sucking up all the resources. So we were trying to open things up, reduce their influence on the economy and all of that. So it's with great sort of alacrity that they've moved to dismantle all of that. But of course they've turned the whole country into a disaster. I mean it's just war from one end of the country to the other GDP fell 25% in that first year. It's still like, well it's way below where it was in 2019. 40% of the population are now in poverty. In every measure you can think of, inflation, unemployment, I mean everything. It's just all this absolute catastrophe. And of course it's going to require a great amount of effort and trust and all that to turn it around because unless the military is taken completely out now it's hard to imagine any sort of compromise, right? Because if they're sitting there, you know, where do the reforms go? So I'm deeply pessimistic at that level. Although having said that, and Hervé and I were talking about this earlier, I mean the news lately out of Myanmar over the last week, last few days has been hopeful. The regime which has been on the back foot in so many areas now seem to be on the back foot, on the battlefield. So it's just interesting. You're getting lots of stuff. I don't want to get ahead of myself because we spent 30 years looking for this sort of thing. But it is possible now to see mass defections of troops, instability at the top, and a whole range of other things that suggest that maybe this regime is not going to be around for too much longer. So that's the optimism at the moment. Just hold on for the mic as we're recording this as well. Thanks. Hi, my name's Chris Hughes. I've also spent a bit of time in Myanmar and knowing Sean for a little while. But on a similar theme actually, looking forward, it's painful sometimes to look back even though you do it with such great humor. I mean, it's a thorny question, I think, right now about whether and if we do how we engage with Myanmar at a government level but also even at a civil society and economic level. But, you know, Australia has put out its long-term strategy for Southeast Asian engagement. And Myanmar is just excluded completely from that as part of the methodology of that sort of study. I think that's a bit sort of strange. But from your perspective, I mean, what council would you give now about any level of engagement with Myanmar thinking more at an economic level at the present in the near term but also taking a longer term view? What sort of advice would you give on that? So I think the most productive thing Australia can do on that front is to engage in non-government actors. So there is still, you know, Myanmar civil society, right, business and all of that. I mean, the core of that is still there, you know, and is the future. So I think the institutional frame that's under the control of the regime at the moment is sort of irredeemable in my view. And I think any sort of support for that, even sort of indirectly through UN agencies and so on, I think is probably misguided. But support for other actors who not only are important to support at the moment but I think important for the future, there's still something to be done there. You know, these are the actors who will reconstruct the economy. The National Unity Government from outside, most of whom I didn't know before being released have been enormously impressive, particularly on the economic side. The degree to which factionalism and things like that has been really minimized, it seems to me. So yeah, so I think there's things that can be done, but essentially it's about supporting, I guess, non-government, non-regime actors. Yeah. There's a question at the front there. Hello, Professor Turnel. Thank you so much. I learned a lot. Let me reintroduce myself. I'm the mother of Kim Edwards, who's the program leader and senior economist for the World Bank and his territories, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia. So he goes there quite regularly. My question is, first of all, do you have a gag order? Can you say anything you want to say outside of Myanmar? And secondly, most important, is he safe? Well, I mean, the good thing about working for the World Bank is that there are parameters through which, what you can say, and you'll have, you know, quasi-diplomatic protection and all that, and I'm sure he'd be very careful. And in fact, I broadly know of him and he's very careful, very professional and all that. For me, there's nothing that's not me saying anything. We're living here in Australia. And in fact, I have said lots of things. You've been reprimanded there by Nibbida. They tried to re-arrest you, didn't they? Indeed. So the regime gets very upset. In fact, men online personally, I think, is most affronted that I had the temerity to suggest, you know, that being over there in prison wasn't such a good thing. And yes, I have to bear that in mind. But other than that, you know, there's nothing stopping me from saying things here. The only thing is, I do have to be careful about what I say with respect to other people. So I've got to bear that in mind all the time, that my actions could endanger other people. But, you know, I've been careful about that. So, yeah, but other than that, it's, you know... And even to the point that when, you know, someone writes to you on Facebook purporting to be someone you know and you really have to think twice about whether this is a potential trap that may end up incriminating, you know, the person that you actually think you're communicating with. That's right. This whole area has been the most emotionally fraught because one of the things I really desperately want to do is contact all these old friends. Even when I want to say contact, just hit like on a Facebook post and things like that. And I can't do it because I just, you know, I can't endanger them in that way. So, yeah, that's immensely frustrating because, and again because of communication issues and all that. I don't want them to think that, you know, I've just abandoned them. I've got back to Australia. Everything's great, you know, having a wonderful time and all that. So, but I can't. So, yeah, it's very frustrating that. But you're right. I mean, there's been a few times where people have reached out in ways that it's never been clear to me if it's the person or someone or they're acting under duress, perhaps, or it's just all fake, you know. And, yeah, it's been a real problem. There's one more question there. Yes. Hi, I'm Rosio Toya from Agencia Efe, Spain's international news agency. Just have a couple of questions. In this situation, what is the role of China and Australia has applied several sanctions as many countries. So, what else should be done to, in order to kind of see Myanmar return to democracy? And if democracy is coming soon, will the new government, democratic government, will consider to be more kind or consider the Rohingya minority to get the international support? So, dealing with the second thing first, one of the other really good things, I think, to over merge from the situation, and I mentioned that NUG, or National Unity Government, it's just so much better on the issue about Rohingya and all the ethnic minorities and so on. It's really extraordinary. The thing that really separates now from, say, the situation 10 years ago is just the degree of cooperation among the different groups, and the NUG in particular has gone dramatically out of its way, particularly on the Rohingya issue, but other things as well, to be a different entity on this. So, it's really good news on that front. Just to back it up too, I spent a lot of time with really young Myanmar people when I was involved in this think tank over there, and then again in the prison. And their attitudes on things like this, just fantastic. Like, they were horrified at the treatment of Rohingya and all that. So, it's a different order of things now. And that, I think, in itself is something that's really hopeful. On the first thing, oh yeah, about China and so on. So, China, I think, is in a strange situation at the moment. They're really the most important player that the regime would end tomorrow if China withdrew their support. So, although the regime in Myanmar are emotionally closer to Russia these days, because Russia doesn't criticize them or do anything except support them. But the Russian support to the Myanmar military is limited. In fact, the flow of weapons is sometimes a reverse. It's hard to know what's going on between those two. But yeah, apart from that loving, the real only support of material effect is China. But China is... I can only imagine China is incredibly confused and doesn't know what to do, because it doesn't like the idea of a vibrant democracy on its border. It doesn't want that. But at the same time, it wants a relatively peaceful Myanmar because they've got all sorts of huge investments. They want this big port on the Bay of Bengal. Strategically, they want to be close and all of that. But yeah, they need the country to be stable for their economic investments to work out. And so they were sort of tending towards the NLD on that score. But then the military come in and politically, that's sort of a more amenable in a sense. But then the regime is so irrational that the report you get from China is that they're looking at, hang on, you don't need to do that. You can be an authoritarian regime and do it smarter, I think is part of their response. But then there's all sorts of other irritants that have come along the way. People have probably heard about these weird cyber scam cities that have developed inside Myanmar and other countries in Southeast Asia. The Chinese were really pressuring the Myanmar regime to close them down, and the regime was not, didn't. And so in fact, part of the reason for my little bit of optimism I mentioned earlier about military developments is that China basically sent a signal to groups that they were supporting to push back and close these scam cities and all that. So yeah, so China is sort of all over the place, I think, at the moment, and probably doesn't know how long to back the regime long before. Obviously, there's a bigger strategic play gone on there as well. But yeah, I can only imagine that Beijing or Kunming, Yunnan province, which is the real player when it comes to China, are probably confused at the moment and not quite knowing what to do. Oh yeah, well, so on the sanctions. So the really effective sanctions that are in place at the moment are being levied above all by the United States, financially sanctioning some of the banks and some sanctions on jet fuel. It's really highly targeted stuff because most Myanmar people, 90% of people in Myanmar don't have bank accounts or anything like that. A bank sanction is not going to affect them. Likewise, they don't fly in aeroplanes. In fact, the biggest user of jet fuel in Myanmar now is the military, so the Air Force. So it seems to me that these sort of sanctions are highly targeted and quite effective. And I think we're seeing that they're effective. If we look at what the regime's doing to try and ration foreign exchange, get foreign exchange, look at their actions, not just what they say. This seems to be really effective. So I guess for me, what I'd like Australia to do is join in that because the Americans are doing it, the Brits are doing it, the European Union's doing it. Even Singapore is actually tightening the screws financially. And so I'd love for Australia to join in that. The practical effect, probably not that great. I can't imagine there's that much money here. Although you do get stories every now and then. But just to join that and sort of with our traditional allies, it seems to me wouldn't cost us very much. And yeah, might be a good place to start, I think. Sean, as you say, it's hard to be optimistic. Somehow you find a way to do that. I mean, it seems to me there's a war of attrition really, isn't it? And there's a question of, is time on the side of the junta or is it on the side of democratic forces? And to complicate everything else, you've got the ethnic armed groups who are quite separate and with individual agendas to the NUG, the National Union government, the shadow or opposition government. It's complicated. And even if the military were to collapse overnight, there's a question about a vacuum and who feels it and it's not obvious who would feel it. I think Da Su still has a future if something, if we were to talk about a post-Tatmadaal Myanmar, I mean, is there still a place for her within that and could she fill the vacuum still today or has her authority been lost in all this? No, I think she could. And the reason why I think that is because I think the people of Myanmar would insist on it. So I don't think it would even be her choice. I think that she would have no choice in it. I really think the people would demand that. Again, but it's got to happen soon. One of the tragic situations of all of this, if we look at the raging tactics with the respect of Da Su, they're waiting for her to die, I mean, to put it bluntly. So she's 77 now. She has a number of health ailments and all that. They keep her in appalling conditions. And yeah, they're trying to wait it out. But within the country especially, so even though, you know, outside it's a little bit different now, within Myanmar she's revered just as she always was and remains the key player. I would imagine that she probably wouldn't see herself occupying a lengthy period or anything. But if things were dramatically changing in a good way, I could absolutely see her coming back. Not unlike, say, Nelson Mandela, a short-term sort of thing, unifying figure, which I think, again, in the country, I think she still is. And probably handing it over, you know, to a younger cohort. One of the really great conversations I had with her was just about that, actually. And in fact, it was a message that she asked me to pass on to people, which was just how proud she was of the younger people and how they were responding to the military coup and that even though their experience of democracy was so brief that they were so willing to defend it. But yeah, I spoke at length with her about, you know, about the young economic reforms and all that. And yeah, she had immense faith in them. So yeah, I could definitely envisage something like that in the short term. But I do think, again, time permitting that she would still play a role, particularly that beginning period. Sean, thank you for somehow finding optimism in the darkest moments of your life and the darkest chapters in entire country's history. It's quite a remarkable achievement. It's a brilliant thing to see you here on the stage with us today. And the book is probably the best way you could have processed your experience. And as you say, I think you're rendering a great service to all of your friends in prison, still languishing by airing their message and by keeping the flame alive, so to speak. So thank you for your time today. Congratulations on the book. And please join me in thanking Sean.