5/23/22, 2:21 AM May flowers - New Mandala words.” “Be responsible in what you say,” they said. After they spoke, those in the room began posing for photographs, with yellow padauk flowers in their mouths. In Myanmar, yellow padauk flowers mean it is the Thingyan New Year. Some people will also say that padauk pan are the national flower, that they represent strength, honesty. If flowers can have many meanings, words can call those meanings forth. “Words can destroy the whole country,” the activists said. With padauk flowers in their mouths, they said: “Speak pan zagar [‘flower speech’], instead.” Over the next few days my newsfeed began to be taken over by similar photographs, of friends with flowers in their mouths, out on Yangon’s hot streets distributing stickers, posters, t-shirts, wristbands; singing songs, speaking out against speech that causes hate, calling for a pan zagar movement. A Pan Zagar Facebook page gained followers by the thousand, daily. When the Thingyan holiday arrived I escaped for a quiet paper-writing refuge with family, but each day, each time a group in a new city joined the movement, their photos appeared as a reminder in my newsfeed: “Speak pan zagar.” A reminder: you are not alone in your opposition to sparking hatred. I am back in Yangon now. In the last few days, I saw on Facebook that young people in three more cities have been on the streets with stickers and flowers. Six weeks after jolting a room to attention with a shattered keyboard, youth in at least 27 cities have taken part. Prominent artists, ex-political prisoners, prominent religious leaders, have voiced their support. More than 11,000 people support Pan Zagar on Facebook. The politician that wants to kill with words responded: Muslims are attacking us, and Burmans talk about hate speech? Soon after, he posted a photo of a grave marked with the name of a woman, “Ma Thida Htwe.” Her rape and murder, which Myanmar language media noted was committed by “Bengali Muslims,” is widely recognized to have motivated the retaliatory massacre of a bus full of Muslim pilgrims in Rakhine State in June 2012. The politician’s post was a reminder that May 28 will mark the two-year anniversary of her violent death, and a call for people to change their profile photos to her gravestone on May 27 and 28. A few weeks ago, another friend from the neighbourhood was in my apartment, helping make a spare water tank out of a barrel once used to transport shampoo. He is a plumber and an electrician. Like his brother, he is a champion chinlone player and, lately, I think the only time he takes off the Bluetooth earpiece for his new mobile phone is when he is on the dusty court in front of our quarter’s pagoda complex. He picked up a pan zagar sticker from my kitchen table, the last of the handful I’d taken from that first press conference. “My friends have been giving those out,” I said. He nodded as he peeled the backing off the sticker. Then he put it on his mobile phone and we went back to work. Let’s kill with words, says the politician on Facebook, and turn photos to gravestones. I wonder, how long will the pan zagar sticker stay on my friend’s phone? [1] Matt Schissler, ‘Conversations After Lashio’ (New Mandala, 3 June 2013) <asiapacific.anu.edu.au/newmandala/2013/06/03/conversations-after-lashio/> accessed 11 March 2014 [2] David Blair, ‘How Can Aung San Suu Kyi – a Nobel Peace Prize Winner – Fail to Condemn antiMuslim Violence?’ (News – Telegraph Blogs, 24 October 2013) <http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/davidblair/100242929/how-can-aung-san-suu-kyi-a-nobel-peaceprize-winner-fail-to-condemn-anti-muslim-violence/> accessed 10 May 2014 https://www.newmandala.org/may-flowers/ 3/4