IF WE FEAR THEM, WE ARE USELESS by Maggie Lemere and Zoë West
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INTRODUCTION IF WE FEAR THEM, WE ARE USELESS by Maggie Lemere and Zoë West As we write this, Burma finds itself in a defining moment. A country of more than 55 million people, marked by oppressive military rule and civil war, Burma has been ruled by successive military regimes for the past five decades. The current regime, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)—led by Commander-in-Chief of the Tatmadaw (Burma’s military), Than Shwe—is among the most notorious human rights violators in the world. The military regime held the first national elections in twenty years on November 7, 2010, in what was widely viewed as an attempt to consolidate and legitimize its rule under the veil of “disciplined democracy.” Citing deeply flawed election rules, the main democratic opposition party, the National League for Democracy, boycotted the election, refusing to enter a candidate. As many analysts predicted, the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP)— headed by the SPDC prime minister and other SPDC ministers—won approximately 75 percent of parliamentary seats. 15 NOWHERE TO BE HOME One week after the election, NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi— Burma’s widely respected and beloved democratic voice—was released from house arrest after being confined for fifteen of the past twenty-one years. Meanwhile, new rounds of fighting erupted between armed opposi- tion groups and the Tatmadaw along Burma’s eastern border with Thailand. Nineteen armed opposition groups have signed tenuous ceasefire agreements with the ruling SPDC regime, while others have refused, and still actively oppose the regime. In its campaign to crush armed resistance to their rule, the Tatmadaw has committed widespread human rights abuses, eliciting grave concern from the international commu- nity. The Tatmadaw has tortured and imprisoned thousands of nonviolent democratic opposition members; at press time, there were 2,203 po- litical prisoners,1 including activists, journalists, politicians, artists, and Buddhist monks. With brutal and calculated tactics, Burma’s military regime has successfully imposed a deeply embedded fear of dissent across the country. No matter how you interpret recent events, Burma remains in the same protracted crisis it has been in since colonialism began in the late 1800s and since a military coup d’état thwarted the progress of the newly independent state in 1962. The people of Burma continue to suffer the far-ranging and severe impacts of oppressive military rule and ongoing violent conflict; the civil war between the Karen National Liberation Army and the Burmese government is considered the longest-running civil war in the post–World War II era. Across the country, the military junta’s abuses have included forced labor; arbitrary arrest and detention; physical and sexual violence; torture; severe restriction of speech, assembly, and movement; the destruction of homes, property, and villages; forced military conscription, including the conscription of child soldiers; and severe persecution against religious and ethnic minorities. As a result, between 2 and 4 million Burmese are 1 The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma); as of November 3rd, 2010. 16 INTRODUCTION displaced both internally and across Burma’s borders. Since just 1996, more than 3,500 villages have been destroyed in eastern Burma alone.2 Nowhere to Be Home delves into the diverse lives of twenty-two people from Burma, who describe life under the military regime in their own words. The narratives in this book are based on interviews conducted with people inside Burma, as well as people who fled and are now living in Thailand, Malaysia, Bangladesh, and the United States. The narrators encompass a wide range of intersecting and constantly evolving identi- ties. Stories of persecuted ethnic minorities stand beside the story of a child soldier forced to become persecutor; the words of political prisoners stand beside that of a fisherman with HIV. Though the narratives in this collection were gathered in the year leading up to Burma’s November 2010 election, the stories depict full spans of life experience, and the persistence of the human rights crisis over decades. Though slightly smaller than Texas, Burma is a diverse, multiethnic coun- try. While two-thirds of the country are ethnic Burmans, there are more than 135 other ethnic nationalities, and more than 100 distinct languages. Many of Burma’s current challenges stem from divisions—both of land and of people—fostered under the British colonial regime, which gained complete control in 1884 over territories that were previously independently ruled. Toward the end of World War II, Burmese nationalists led by General Aung San fought the British for independence. In 1947, the British ceded to the demands of the independence movement, and Aung San became the leader of an interim government. Aung San and representatives of a few of Burma’s ethnic nationalities signed the Panglong Agreement in 1947, in which they agreed to form a Federal Union of Burma and grant ethnic minorities some autonomy. Independence was officially granted in Janu- 2 From “Protracted Displacement and Militarization in eastern Burma,” a report by the Thai–Burma Border Consortium, 2009. 17 NOWHERE TO BE HOME ary 1948, but General Aung San was assassinated with most of his cabinet before the constitution went into effect. It is believed that a group of para- militaries connected to a political rival carried out the assassinations. The assassination of Aung San and his cabinet members became a major obstacle to the formation of the new union. The years between 1947 and 1962 were marked by instability as ethnic nationalities felt increasingly threatened by the directions the new leadership was taking. New armed groups were formed along ethnic lines, and the union of Burma collapsed. In 1962, a Burman general named Ne Win led a military coup d’état, which would set in motion nearly five decades of military rule and armed conflict in Burma. Economic reforms were enacted that largely isolated the country and created a precipitous downward spiral. By 1987, the economy was in ruins and protests had erupted all over the country. The largest demonstrations in Burma’s history occurred on August 8, 1988, and saw the emergence of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as an important pro- ponent of democracy. The current ruling junta, the State Peace and De- velopment Council, or SPDC (formerly known as the State Law and Or- der Restoration Council), seized power in 1988 after the protests. When Daw Aung Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, won national elections in 1990, the SPDC refused to hand over power. They imprisoned Suu Kyi and other opposition leaders. Suu Kyi remained un- der house arrest for the majority of the subsequent two decades, but she continued to call for a tripartite dialogue between ethnic minorities, the military, and the democracy movement. Despite ongoing resistance to its rule—including the monk-led “Saffron Revolution” in 2007, which was brutally suppressed—the SPDC military junta maintains its oppresive power. The regime profits greatly and reinforces its strength with the sale of natural resources, earning around $3 billion annually through trade with countries such as Thailand, Singapore, China, and India.3 While the regime and its 3 Earthrights International, Revenue Transparency in Burma Campaign. 18 INTRODUCTION business cronies are extremely wealthy, they only invest 1.4 percent of Burma’s GDP in health care and education, leaving most Burmese citi- zens with substandard options on both fronts. In 2005, the SPDC moved Burma’s capital to a gleaming new city, Naypyidaw, built to the tune of around $2 billion. Naypyidaw, built in secrecy, is effectively an isolated city largely reserved for military of- ficials and civil servants. As the only city in Burma with twenty-four hour electricity, the disparities between Naypyidaw and the rest of the country are stark—and revealing. “Imagining what it is like to be someone other than oneself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality.” —Ian McEwan With a country like Burma, where news reports emphasize millions of displaced and affected peoples and a conflict stretching over decades, it can be hard to connect to the people who face this reality every day. The individual lives of the Burmese people become buried under a pile of issues, abuses, and statistics. Oral history creates a space for those “faraway stories”—the experi- ences of people whose realities seem starkly different from our own— to enter the realm of our awareness through their own voices. It offers the chance for those stories to be heard in delicate nuance, rather than sweeping generalizations. Just as any person does not fit into neat categories, the people who shared their stories in this book are multidimensional and not easily cat- egorized. The narrators highlight not only the incredible challenges of life under the military regime, but also what they love—what they are fighting for. Every person we interviewed took pleasure in describing his or her best memories, in highlighting a side of life in Burma that reveals hope and dignity. Nge Nge, a teacher, recounted how blessed she felt every time she walked into school and was greeted by a flock of students hoping for the privilege of carrying a book for her or holding her hand. 19 NOWHERE TO BE HOME Khine Su transported us to the lush rice fields where she worked as a girl, singing with her friends as the rain fell around them. In honoring the fullness and fluidity of their lives, the narrators demonstrate the human- ity that is missing in simple labels like “migrant worker” or “refugee.” Each narrator reveals complex truths and realities, cast upon the back- drop of perpetual instability in Burma—a son or a daughter, a migrant worker one day, an underground activist the next, or both at the same time.