The first few alliance partners of the Milk Tea Alliance or MTA were Thailand, Taiwan and Hong Kong. Then people and groups from Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Tibet, Myanmar and beyond also joined. This was 2020. “The Milk Tea Alliance is a fairly horizontal, shifting diffuse movement. It’s not a single organisation,” says Xun-ling Au, who is a UK-based digital activist and an early supporter of MTA.
The impetus for most of these groups on the social media platform Twitter (now X) was either an anti-China sentiment or an impulse to protect democracy and democratic rights. The alliance itself owed its name to the first. Most alliance members are from milk tea-drinking countries, while China likes its tea black, as the experts will tell you.
What the alliance was to begin with is not our story, what it has come to represent is. MTA, the very name suggests digital solidarity or protests or the need for one or the other.
Here, in India, it might be indeed difficult to imagine this new avenger. That could be one of the reasons why MTA India looks like a handle with an identity crisis, currently reposting videos of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and foreign minister S. Jaishankar. The Telegraph’s efforts to reach out to those running the handle got nowhere.
Someone like Xun-ling Au will tell you that digital mobilisation may not move mountains yet, but it can shift a few formidable boulders on the path of regional peace. “I doubt there would be so many sanctions on the Myanmar junta without the pressure from online,” says Xun-ling Au.
Brian Hioe, who is one of the founders of an online magazine covering activism and youth politics in Taiwan, adds, “Digital activism and on-the-ground activism do not exist in separate planes, but intersect.”
The Southeast Asian scene looks like this — Cambodia is under dynastic rule, Indonesia is reeling under protests against President Prabowo Subianto’s policies, in the Philippines Vice-President Sara Duterte has just been impeached, Vietnam’s president is a military man… The on-ground churnings echo in the digital space. The digital movement bolsters the on-ground protests.
After the February 2021 coup in Myanmar, when the democratically elected government was overthrown by the military, on-ground activists contacted one of the original members of MTA Myanmar. They took his help to organise support from the MTA alliance, and the MTA Friends of Myanmar group was born.
Likewise, the first post of MTA Bangladesh on the platform X is dated August 3, 2024, days before Sheikh Hasina was toppled. It reads: “Milk Tea Bangladesh: formed to advocate for the rights of students and civilians of people of Bangladesh (sic). We bring you news from the heart of the country for the world to see and learn.” The hashtag says “SaveBangladeshiStudents”.
There is something called “protest swapping”. Xin-Ling Au says, “When one group can’t talk about something openly or due to risk of being prosecuted, other groups outside of the country take up such issues.”
This is borne out by the posts of MTA Calendar. A call for Hong Kongers, Tibetans, Uyghurs and Southern Mongolians to congregate at Dam Square in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and protest against “Chinese oppression” or a talk showcasing Rohingya voices in Indonesia and Malaysia scheduled for X pm Taiwan time, or an invitation to join rallies in Malaysia and Singapore to halt the execution of Pannir Selvam, a Malaysian in Singapore, handed a death sentence for having 52 grams of heroin on him. The Singapore Supreme Court has stayed Selvam’s execution “after dozens of supporters held candlelight vigils in both countries to protest capital punishment”.
Hioe says digital activism cements networks that could not otherwise exist except in digital spaces. The examples tumble out. Xun-ling Au says, “There was a strong chance that the National Unity Government of Myanmar would not really take any position on the Rohingyas… However, there was enough online pressure and they eventually appointed a Rohingya deputy minister and said that they would scrap the 1982 citizenship law.” He adds, “While there is a lot more to be done, it is progress.” According to the UNHCR site, the 1982 law creates a hierarchy with three categories of citizenship and limits automatic acquisition of so-called “full” citizenship to children born to parents from a so-called indigenous race.
Then there were the Blood Money and Justice For Myanmar online campaigns to get companies in Myanmar to stop doing business with the military junta. Hioe says, “Digital activism is often strongest when it takes on multinational campaigns, targeting companies, state actors or international bodies... Such entities are often quite concerned about their international reputation.”
All of this does not mean digital activists are exempt from real consequences. “A depressingly large number of people who aligned with MTA are in prison,” says Xun-ling Au. Joshua Wong, the pro-democracy student activist from Hong Kong has been in jail since 2021, as have many activists in Thailand. Xun-ling Au says, “Laws like the NSL, greater use of the 116 and 112 in Thailand have put a dampener on the ability of many to speak out safely. Lots of Hong Kong accounts have been deactivated, Thai accounts are quieter.” NSL is the National Security Law imposed by China on Hong Kongers, while 116 and 112 are references to sections of the Thai Criminal Code.
As for MTA Bangladesh, it has fallen silent since August 7. Something is brewing and it is not tea.