Infused with facets of civil unrest in resisting the prodigious and stifling dragon of Beijing, residents of Hong Kong, trapped within the unilateral tools Republics clashing with fundamentalist Communism, software engineers and coding enthusiasts in the absence of firearms, engaged in a frenzied paroxysm of app development and attempting to overcome the brute force of government and state police in preserving rare trinkets of personal freedoms.
Those indirectly imprisoned behind Xi’s implacable wall of totalitarianism were gifted the lifeline of computer programs built to assist in withstanding the onslaught of the Chinese military overrunning the former British colony, as the government of the mainland proclaimed the inevitability that common law would soon be a causality of the past, and citizens would be subject to indoctrination, imprisonment, or torture for simply promoting and supporting the unsustainable concept of independence. The apps gave protestors and patriots crucial knowledge as to the location of military cadres and law enforcement in avoiding potentially violent consequences and remaining saliently vocal in avoiding arrest for violating stringent laws designed to silence public discourse.
A similar scenario is now playing out in Myanmar, a once nation now regulated by the military outsourcing government operations, the population faces the will of a joint autocracy and the stifling of fundamental liberties, and the atrocities associated with a full-scale civil war. Add into the incendiary mix a schism between Buddhists and Muslim factions, any short-term resolve is as impossible as a global revival of common sense at the expense of lives.
Techies have resoundingly spoken through the medium of gaming software, resisting the militarized dictatorship through raising money from platforms to spark autonomy and the slight chance that the socioeconomic infrastructure will ascend to a template of opportunity available for law-abiding citizens pursing happiness.
As the 2021 coup decimated hope for the near future, coders have followed the model of supporters of the Hong Kong resistance, highlighted by a mobile game that emulates the strife and daily battles that citizens face victimized by an ominous tyrannical force, led by military general Min Aung Hlaing, who attended team building summits in Albania, North Korea and the Congo.
The popular app not only endorses the anti-military movement of the People’s Defense Forces (PDF), but raises money to combat the blatantly stifling proxy regime through ads, a cash cow for freedoms noble venture at least providing the population with another avenue to prevail over procedural annihilation. The lifecycle of the software and the dynamics surrounding the tumultuous environment that the people of Myanmar endure, illustrates the volatility of the third world and how human rights activists are becoming directly involved in solving horrific issues through innovation.
However, distribution of the smart device game designed to promote resistance to Aung Hlaing and allies, aptly named “War of Heroes- The PDF Game”, (The PDF acronym is quite confusing with the prevalence of the Adobe product) has been limited by the ambiguous “terms and conditions” of download portals such as Google Play and The Apple Store. The disappointing fate of the software parallels a United Nations management style of fostering hope and stability based on speculation and exorbitant morally superiority as diplomats sample the pockets of Manhattan gastropubs, and members of fringe groups sip $30 cocktails.
Following the horrendous policy which resulted in the Hong Kong police tracking app being pulled from both domains, once again, Apple has opted to omit “War of Heroes” from its software listings, citing that protagonists programmed in a game “cannot solely target” a “real government, corporation or any other real entity”, as well as a policy around violent conflicts. While the hypocrisy of big tech remains mind boggling, the corporation still maintains a robust H1-B visa hiring program, recruiting global workers at pennies on the dollar from such political holocausts occurring in volatile environments, such as Myanmar. At least it is still quite apparent that Silicon Valley has an ulterior motive to maintain monopolies that transcend the brutal sacrifice of those not fortunate enough to reside in the industrialized world.
As the citizens of the nation state formerly known as Burma struggle to maintain their identity and preserve the memory of generations criminalized by a stifling system of aggressive coercion, the big tech moguls continue to indirectly campaign against free will and free markets through negligent policy that cancels individuality. With lucrative contracts on the line heavily subsidized by bureaucracy, the plight of the underdog is simply a Hollywood script that can be justified through sentiment and trillions of dollars at the cost of men, women and children clinging to the idea that justice and compassion are still inherent components of a universe trying to be reengineered through brute force and lacking accountability.