APPENDICESAPPENDICES

 

I. ACRONYMS

LIST OF COMMON BURMA ACRONYMS

AAPP(B) Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma)

ABFSU All Burma Federated Student Union

ABSDF All Burma Student Democratic Front

BBC British Broadcasting Corporation

BCMF Burma Children Medical Fund

BCP Burma Communist Party (same as CPB)

BDB Border Guard Force of Bangladesh

BSPP Burma Socialist Programme Party

CNA Chin National Army

CNF Chin National Front

CPB Communist Party of Burma (same as BCP)

DKBA Democratic Karen Buddhist Army

DVB Democratic Voice of Burma

ESL English as a Second Language

IOM International Organization for Migration

KDA Kachin Defense Army

KIA Kachin Independence Army

KIO Kachin Independence Organization

KMT Kuomintang, Chinese Nationalist armed group

KNDO Karen National Defense Organization

KNLA Karen National Liberation Army

KNU Karen National Union

KWAT Kachin Women’s Association of Thailand

LGBT Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender

NGO Non-Governmental Organization

NLD National League for Democracy

MSF Médecins Sans Frontières, a.k.a. Doctors Without Borders

PPP People’s Patriotic Party

SLORC State Law and Order Restoration Council

SPDC State Peace and Development Council

SSA-N Shan State Army-North

SSA-S Shan State Army-South

UNDP United Nations Development Program

UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

VCC Village Councilor Chairman

VOA Voice of America

VPDC Village Peace and Development Council

 

II. GLOSSARY

All Burma Student Democratic Front (ABSDF)—Student guerilla army founded after the 1988 uprising. The ABSDF fought against the Tatmadaw alongside the Karen National Liberation Army, the New Mon State Party, and non-state armed groups. The ABSDF was primarily active from 1988 until 1995, when the Tatmadaw seized their base in Manerplaw.

Aung San—General Aung San was the architect of Burmese independence. He founded the Burmese army (the Tatmadaw) and the Anti-Facist People’s Freedom League. He was assassinated in July 1947, six months before the end of colonial rule. He is also the father of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Aung San Suu Kyi—1991 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has become an icon for democracy and human rights around the world. The party she leads, the National League for Democracy, was the decisive winner in Burma’s 1990 elections, however the military junta that controls the country never allowed her party to govern.

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Burmese Language Service—Radio and television news service headquartered in London. The BBC’s radio programs are picked up by millions of Burmese inside the country and provide Burmese people with access to news that is censored in the state media outlets. Aung San Suu Kyi was able to receive their signal during her years under house arrest.

Burmese Names—Burmese do not have first and last names. They only have one name that usually consists of two, three, or four syllables. Names are not based on lineage, so one cannot determine genealogy simply by looking at the names.

Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP)—The only legal political party in Burma during the years 1962–1988. The party congress met periodically, and repeatedly “elected” Ne Win as its chairman.

Cheroot—A cheap form of cigar made popular by the British during colonization.

Communist Party of Burma (CPB), also Burma Communist Party (BCP)—Although banned by Ne Win’s one-party state, the CPB controlled large swaths of land in north/northeastern Burma until an internal mutiny led to its collapse in April 1989. The CPB emerged in the mid-1930s, among anti-British fervor and impoverished peasants who were hard-hit following the collapse of the international rice market and heavy taxes.

Daw—Daw is added as a prefix to Burmese names as an indication of respect for an older woman. For example, many refer to Aung San Suu Kyi as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA)—The DKBA broke with the Karen National Union and signed a ceasefire agreement with the government in 1994. The leaders of the group complained that as Buddhists they did not have enough of a voice in the Christian-dominated Karen National Union.

Democratic Voice of Burma—Funded by the Norwegian government, the Democratic Voice of Burma brings news and commentary to people in Burma via satellite TV.

Forced Labor—Compulsory, unpaid labor. The SPDC imposes forced labor on citizens throughout Burma, in areas such as cultivation, infrastructure projects (including building roads, railways, and dams), municipal work, and in war zones. Portering is a specific type of forced labor that entails carrying rations, supplies, and weaponry for the military; porters are frequently used as minesweepers as well.

Kachin Independence Organization (KIO)—Founded in 1961, the KIO is a political organization that sought to create an independent Kachinland. Its armed wing, the KIA, was one of the most well-organized and effective non-state armed groups fighting in Burma in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. In 1994, it signed a ceasefire agreement with the national government.

Karen National Union (KNU)—Established in 1946 after negotiations with the British failed to secure the Karen their own country, the Karen National Union fights for the autonomy of the Karen people within a federated Burma. The war between the KNU’s armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), and the Burmese government is the longest-running war of the post–World War II era, lasting from 1949 through to the present day. There are no indications that it will end soon.

LongyiA cylindrically sewn cloth sheet worn throughout Burma. It drapes from the waist to the feet, and is worn by both men and women.

National League for Democracy (NLD)—A political party in Burma formed in the aftermath of the 1988 pro-democracy uprising, and headed by General Secretary Aung San Suu Kyi. In the 1990 general elections, the party garnered 59 percent of the general vote and 80 percent of the parliamentary seats, but the military junta never ceded power to them. In 2010 the military declared the party to be illegal.

Ne Win—Commander-in-Chief of Burma’s armed forces from 1949 to 1972, Ne Win led the country during the caretaker government (1958–1960) and through the Burma Socialist Programme Party (1962–1988).

Pagoda—Usually bell-shaped structures built of bricks or stone and painted white or gold. They are holy Buddhist symbols and are used in religious practice.

Panglong Agreement—An agreement formed between Aung San’s government and the Shan, Kachin, and Chin peoples on February 12, 1947. It granted partial autonomous administration in the ethnically controlled areas.

Shan State Army-North (SSA-North)—An armed opposition group in Burma’s Shan state. It signed a ceasefire agreement with the SPDC in 1996.

Shan State Army-South (SSA-South)—An armed opposition group in Burma’s Shan state. Unlike the Shan State Army North (SSA-North), it has not signed a ceasefire agreement with the government, and continues to seek Shan autonomy through active armed resistance.

Shwedagon Pagoda—Located in the northern part of Rangoon, the Shwedagon Pagoda is one of the oldest and most sacred pagodas in Burma. It has functioned as the stage for many political activities and events.

State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC)—Framed as a caretaker government, the SLORC has remained in power since the 1988 coup. In 1997, they changed their named to the State Peace and Development Council.

State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)—The military junta that has ruled Burma since 1988. In 1997, the military regime changed its name from the State Peace and Law Order Restoration Council (SLORC) to the SPDC.

Tatmadaw—Burma’s armed forces, founded by Aung San to fight for independence against the British. The Tatmadaw has ruled the country since 1962, when, under the leadership of General Ne Win, it overthrew Burma’s post-independence system of parliamentary democracy.

Thingyan—The Burmese New Year water festival that usually falls in April. During the five-day festival, people throw water on each other to wash off the previous year’s sins and start the new year off fresh.

Than Shwe—General Than Shwe serves as Commander-in-Chief of the Myanmar Armed Forces and chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). He also heads the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a mass organization that coordinates government at the local level. The amalgamation of positions means that Than Shwe is the effective leader of Myanmar’s ruling military junta.

U—U is added to the front of Burmese names as an indication of respect for an older man. For example, retired general-turned-democracy activist Tin Oo is often referred to as U Tin Oo.

United Wa State Army—The United Wa State Army emerged in 1989 in the wake of the communist party’s fall. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United Wa State Army made an estimated $550 million a year from the sale of opium, heroin, and amphetamines. It continues to be the most powerful of the non-state armed groups.

Voice of America (VOA), Burmese Language Service—Radio and television news service headquartered in Washington, D.C., Voice of America’s radio programs are picked up by millions of Burmese inside the country, providing Burmese people with access to news that is censored in the state media outlets.

 

III. NAME CHANGES, BURMA VS. MYANMAR

In 1989, Burma’s ruling junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), changed the romanization of many place names in the country. The transliteration of the then–capital city’s name was changed from Rangoon to Yangon, and the major river delta in the south of the country was changed from Irrawaddy to Ayeyarwady. The old names had been transliterated by the British, and the SLORC regime stated that their English adaptations were far from the Burmese pronunciations.

The SLORC also changed the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar. This, the junta claimed, was a move toward more ethnic inclusivity. The name Burma was adopted by the British in reference to the Burman, the majority ethnic group in the country. However, Myanmar is the name for the country in the majority ethnic group’s language—so, in reality, neither name is particularly ethnically neutral.

Arguments over the name change have become symbolic of the long standoff between the regime and the democracy movement. The democracy movement’s supporters around the world argue that SLORC was not a legitimate government and therefore had no right to change the country’s name, so they continue to recognize the country as Burma.

Internationally, the use of the name is mixed. The UN officially recognizes the country as Myanmar, as do most Asian countries, while the U.S. State Department and United Kingdom still refer to it as Burma.

In this book, we left it up to the narrators to choose. If the narrator (or interpreter) switched back and forth between terms, we used Burma. We also chose to use the old transliterations.

 
 

OLD

NEW

 

 

Burman

Myanmar

Irrawaddy

Ayeyarwady

Pegu

Bago

Rangoon

Yangon

Arakan

Rakhine

Karen

Kayin

Karen State

Kayin State

Karenni State

Kayah State

Burman

Bamar

Arakan State

Rakhine State

Tenasserim

Tanintharyi

Karenni

Kayah

There have also been some more recent name changes. For example, the regime recently started using the term “region” for the areas in central Burma previously referred to as divisions.

 

IV. GEOGRAPHY

A mix of mountains, hills, and valleys, geography has had a profound effect on Burma’s history.

Burma is located in Southeast Asia, on the Bay of Bengal. It shares long expanses of its border with India, China, and Thailand, as well as shorter stretches of land along the borders of Bangladesh and Laos. The Irrawaddy River Valley runs through central Burma, which is surrounded by a horseshoe-shaped mountain range. The first civilizations in Burma were established in valleys along waterways. Later, hill dwellers created decentralized networks of clans and principalities.

Most people in Burma today are farmers. Agriculture accounts for half of the country’s GDP and two-thirds of its labor force. Rice is the primary crop, with wet rice cultivation practiced in the valleys and dry rice cultivation in the hills. Valley and hill communities generally live under different political atmospheres. In the hills, military rule is met by over two dozen armed opposition groups, some of which control significant pieces of territory. In other parts of the hills, the government resembles a military occupation, where checkpoints restrict people’s travel. In urban valleys, the military has become an everyday part of life. One vivid example of this is an act that requires people to register all house guests with the military—though it should be noted that this law is inconsistently enforced.

 

V. ETHNICITY

Burma’s hills and mountains are extremely diverse. Anthropologists have identified over 130 distinct ethnicities. The Burmese government recognizes eight major ethnic groups, each associated with an ethnic state: Chin, Kachin, Karen (or Kayin), Karenni (or Kayah), Mon, Rakhine (or Arakan), and Shan. The ethnic states form a horseshoe around seven lowland divisions (now officially called regions). These divisions are dominated by the majority Burman ethnic group.

All estimates of the populations of Burma’s ethnic groups are highly contentious; differing estimates cannot be reconciled. Below are two sets of estimates, one from Burma’s ethnic leaders, and one that combines the percentages from the government’s 1983 census with the regime’s 2008 population count.

Other groups include Chinese, Pakistani, Indian (once 7 percent of the population, now around 1 percent), and Bangladeshi, among other minorities.

 

VI. HISTORY OF BURMA: TIMELINE

563 BCE–483 BCE—Buddha’s lifetime. Burmese legend holds that the Buddha witnessed the construction of Shwedagon Pagoda, located in modern-day Rangoon.

1044–1287—Pagan Dynasty. United upper and lower Burma, and in its time saw the growth of Buddhism. The dynasty started a relationship between the monks and the state that has continued, in varying forms, throughout Burma’s history.

—The fall of the Pagan Dynasty ushered in a period of small kingdoms, including the Shan (Tai) rulers who founded Keng Tung, a Burman-dominated Ava-based kingdom, the Mon-dominated Hathawaddy Pegu kingdom, and the Arakan kingdom.

1486–1752—Toungoo Dynasty. Again united upper and lower Burma. Territory spanned parts of present-day Burma, Thailand, and Laos.

1752–1885—Konbang Dynasty. Last dynasty to rule much of the area that would become Burma. The rulers embarked on an ambitious modernization plan, but soon lost the country to Great Britain.

1825—First Anglo-Burmese War. Konbang Kingdom loses Rangoon and other coastal towns to Great Britain.

1860—Second Anglo-Burmese War.

1885—Third Anglo-Burmese War. Burma’s modern borders formed. Colonial Burma was governed by the British through their Viceroy in Calcutta, India.

1937—Burma is granted its “independence” from India, but remains a colony of Great Britain.

1942—Word War II breaks out. General Aung San and Burma’s independence fighters back the Japanese, while many ethnic nationalities, including the Karen, Kachin, Shan, and Rohingya, back the British.

1945—Aung San’s Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League switches sides, joining the British against the Japanese.

1947—General Aung San’s liberation movement signs the Panglong Agreement with the Shan, Karen, and Kachin ethnic groups.

—General Aung San assassinated.

1948—Burma gains independence from the British.

1949—U.S.-backed Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) non-state armed group enters Shan State.

1958—Prime Minister U Nu temporarily surrenders power to the military.

1960—U Nu again elected prime minister.

1962—Military coup overthrows democratically elected U Nu, citing concerns over negotiations for ethnic autonomy. New prime minister Ne Win deports all Indians, whose legacy he associates with colonialism.

1967—Burma Army institutes four-cuts policy to rout out non-state armed groups by cutting off food, recruits, money and intelligence.

1974—Alliance is formed between nine ethnically based armed groups, including Karen National Union, Kachin Independence Organization, and the New Mon State Party, all fighting against the state.

1985—Regime announces first currency demonetization to curb black market spending. The results are disastrous, with people losing much of their cash savings.

1987—Burma declared a Least Developed Country by the UN. A second demonetization in 1987 would be the spark for the 1988 uprising.

1988—Nationwide pro-democracy demonstrations by workers and students force the resignation of three successive prime ministers. Demonstrations are brutally suppressed, leaving an estimated 3,000 dead. U.S. and other Western governments withdraw support for the regime.

1990—Regime holds election. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy wins 59 percent of the vote and 80 percent of the parliamentary seats. (Aung San Suu Kyi and many party members were either under house arrest or in prison at that time.) Military junta does not cede power.

1995—Aung San Suu Kyi freed from house arrest.

1996—Students again protest the government in Rangoon.

2000—Aung San Suu Kyi placed back under house arrest.

2002—Aung San Suu Kyi again released from house arrest.

2003—At Depayin, Aung San Suu Kyi’s convoy is attacked and scores of her supporters are killed. She is again placed under house arrest.

2004—General Khin Nyunt deposed by fellow junta leaders. (Khin Nyunt was the head of Burma’s Military Intelligence and had negotiated ceasefire agreements with many of the non-state ethnic militaries.)

2007—Nationwide uprising of Buddhist monks, dubbed the Saffron Revolution. Regime brutally cracks down on the demonstration, beating, arresting, and killing some of the monk participants. Three years after the demonstration, approximately 1,000 monks and laypeople remain in jail for their participation.

2008—Regime drafts constitution, which is then approved in a fraudulent referendum. Cyclone Nargis hits Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta, leaving 140,000 dead.

November 2010—First national elections in twenty years are held on November 7.

Day of Election: Fighting breaks out in eastern Burma’s border areas in Myawaddy and Three Pagodas Pass. A splinter group of the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA) seizes police stations, citing the government’s unfair election practices as their reason for revolt.

November 13: Aung San Suu Kyi released from house arrest for the first time in over seven years.

November 17: The government’s Union Solidarity and Development Party declares victory.

 

VII. NON-STATE ARMED GROUPS

NON-CEASEFIRE GROUPS

—Arakan Liberation Party (ALP) / Arakan Liberation Army (ALA)

—Chin National Front (CNF) / Chin National Army (CNA)

—Karen National Union (KNU) / Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA)

—Karenni National Progressive Party (KNPP)

—Shan State Army-South (SSA-S)

CEASEFIRE GROUPS

—Myanmar National Democracy Alliance Army (MND/AA)

—United Wa State Army (UWSA)

—National Democratic Alliance Army (NDAA)

—Shan State Army-North (SSA-N)

—New Democratic Army, Kachin (NDA-K)

—Kachin Defense Army (KDA)

—Pa-O National Organization (PNO)

—Palaung State Liberation Front (PSLF)

—Kayan National Guard (KNG), a breakaway group from KNLP

—Kachin Independence Organization (KIO)

—Karenni State Nationalities People’s

—Liberation Front (KNPLF)

—Kayan New Land Party (KNLP)

—Shan State Nationalities People’s Liberation

—Organization (SSNP LO)

—New Mon State Party (NMSP)

—Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA)

—Shan State National Army

—Karenni National Defense Army, a breakaway group from KNPP

—Karen Peace Force (formerly KNU 6th Battalion)

—KNU/KNLA Peace Council (7th Battalion KNU)

 

VIII. A BRIEF HISTORY OF BURMA

PRE-COLONIAL KINGDOMS – PRESENT

1500s–1825: Burma’s Kingdoms—Burma’s current military leaders claim to be building a modern nation inspired by images of the pre-colonial Burmese kingdoms. But unlike today’s country, those kingdoms were marked by highly changeable ethnic identities and shifting borders.

Fluid ethnicities and ever-changing borders distinguished Burma’s early kingdoms. The king’s territory changed with the season, shrinking almost to the palace walls during rainy season and expanding during the dry season when servants of the court could travel easily. In the valleys, society was stratified. Nobles staffed government positions, collected taxes, and financed the king’s projects. Monks brought the concerns of common people to the king. Noble status was both inherited and merit-based.

Much to the confusion of the British, hill dwellers’ ethnicities were modifiable. One could be born a Kachin villager, captured and made a slave by a Tai, then earn one’s freedom, incorporate into the Tai village, earn noble status, and ultimately die a Tai noble. These shifting identities perplexed British census takers who, frustrated by their inability to place Burma’s people into neat boxes, noted an “extreme instability of language and racial distinctions in Burma.”

1825–1885: Modernization—In the nineteenth century, Burma’s kingdom implemented economic reforms in an attempt to “modernize,” hoping to ward off Western invasion. During the same period, hill-based ethnic groups began to develop nationalist identities.

In 1825, British soldiers seized pieces of lower Burma in what was later dubbed the First Anglo-Burmese War. Alarmed by these events, the Burmese kings set out to create development schemes, hoping to build economic strength and prevent further invasion.

However, the kings’ development plans inadvertently laid the foundation for British colonial rule. In order to develop, the king encouraged farms across the country to switch from growing rice for domestic consumption to growing cotton and teak wood for export. While trade flourished, the kingdom became dependent on imported rice from the British territories. In the 1870s and 1880s, a global recession caused the price of cotton and teak wood to drop. Without the profits from this trade, independent Burma couldn’t afford rice from the British territories—the king lost his tax base and a number of uprisings ensued. Thibaw, Burma’s last king, was unable to maintain control over the countryside. In 1885, the British took advantage of this instability and sailed gunboats up the Irrawaddy River to annex independent Burma.

A few years before the gunboats arrived in Mandalay, missionaries had introduced Western religion, education, and notions of immutable racial identities to the hill peoples. The British recruited soldiers from the hills and used them to suppress uprisings in the valleys. These experiences helped create Burma’s modern ethnic nationalism. An American missionary named Dr. Vinton celebrated the Karen minority’s alliance with the imperial army against the Burman majority, saying, “I never saw the Karen so anxious for a fight... This whole thing is doing them good... From a loose aggregation of clans we shall weld them into a nation yet.” Once characterized by fluid identities, the hill dwellers began to commit to over 100 more inflexible ethnic identities. However, not all hill people would immediately side with the British. The imperial occupation also met a number of hill-based insurgencies.

1885–1942: The British in Burma—In the valleys, the British broke the backbone of the Burman noble class, leaving industries in the hands of Indian merchants. In the hills, existing hierarchies were reinforced and new ones created.

“The people of this country have not, as was expected, greeted us as deliverers from Tyranny,” read a telegram sent in 1886 by the British Secretary for Upper Burma. The British did not enjoy the “consent of the governed,” but maintained their occupation by capitalizing on and instigating divisions in the country.

Different policies were established for Burma’s hills and valleys. In the valleys, Burmese society was completely uprooted; the British dismantled the king’s court, abolished the monks’ role of relaying commoners’ grievances, and created a legal code that allowed occupying soldiers to recruit Burmese for forced labor. The Burman hierarchy was replaced by Indians and British who reported to the colonial viceroy.

In the hills, the British allied themselves with village heads, simultaneously reinforcing and creating new “tribal” hierarchies. Separate governing councils were established for particular ethnic groups. They recruited soldiers from the ethnic minority areas to fight in the colonial army.

The face of Burma changed during colonialism. Rangoon became populated by Indian traders and businessmen. Many Chinese immigrated and set up small businesses. The economy flourished, but the recent immigrants enjoyed the most wealth—a grievance that helped fuel Burma’s independence movement.

In the 1930s, Aung San, the father of Burma’s modern nationhood, began organizing for independence as a student at Rangoon University. He called for a modern nation with equal rights among citizens, and for a social welfare system. As the world braced for World War II, Aung San recognized the conflict between Britain and Japan and saw the tumult as an opportunity for political movement.

1942–1945: World War II—World War II elevated Burma’s independence movement. However, the influx of arms intensified the conflict between General Aung San and ethnically-based opposition groups.

During World War II, hill ethnic groups generally sided with the British. Aung San and his fellow independence fighters sided with the Japanese in 1942, but in 1945 he switched over to support the British.

The influx of weapons had a profound effect on Burma’s politics. The Allies left the hill peoples heavily armed, with populations that strongly supported their militaries. The Japanese left stockpiles of weapons that were picked up by both Aung San’s militias and rival anti-colonial groups. Ethnic nationalist groups, in particular the Karen, would later highlight Japanese and Burman practices of sacking villages during the war to justify their demands for independence from Burma.

1945–1948: Independence and the Panglong Agreement—A conference on the eve of independence promised inter-ethnic cooperation and foreshadowed post-colonial divisions.

In the city of Panglong, Aung San’s nascent government—which at the time represented the people in the Burman valleys and Rakhine and Mon minority regions—gathered with Shan, Chin, and Kachin ethnic leaders to sign the Panglong Agreement. The agreement promised that Burma’s diverse ethnic groups would form a union but retain state sovereignty. The Shan noted that the agreement gave them the right to hold a referendum on separating from the union after ten years. The Karen participated in the Panglong meeting as observers but did not sign. The Muslim Rohingya and the Naga Hill people were not present at all.

The Panglong Agreement brought hope for a united independent Burma. But communication between ethnic groups deteriorated after Aung San, who had chaired the meeting, was assassinated. Burma’s first ethnic uprisings would be led by the groups that did not sign at Panglong.

1948–1962: The Cold War Comes to Burma—Despite efforts to avoid the Cold War, democratically elected prime minister U Nu lost his authority to militant groups sponsored by competing world powers.

In 1948, U Nu took office as the first prime minister of independent Burma. His platform combined Buddhist teachings with social democratic ideals. Internationally, he was a leader in the Non-Aligned Movement, an attempt by newly independent countries to remain neutral in the Cold War. He helped organize the 1955 Afro-Asian Solidarity conference to unite the world’s newly independent countries, securing aid and diplomatic support from his neighbors.

U Nu entered office amid religious and political turmoil. Many among the non-Buddhist ethnic groups were angered by his emphasis on Buddhism as the country’s guiding light. A group of Muslims from Arakan State was already in rebellion and seeking their own state. The Communist Party of Burma (CPB) likewise started to rebel, frustrated that U Nu was not doing enough to reverse the country’s colonial legacy. Not even a year had passed when fighting between the army, the Karen National Defense Organization (KNDO), and Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang troops (KMT) began to destabilize the fragile young democracy.

Britain gave vocal support to their old allies, the Karen nationalists, in their struggle to secede from the union. In response to a group of army mutineers who entered Karen Christian churches on Christmas Eve 1948 and slaughtered eighty Karen village people, Karen leaders and missionaries began rallying villagers around the cause of Karen nationalism. American Baptist churches in Karen State preached exodus, portraying the Karen as Moses’ tribe. The British, agitated by U Nu’s non-aligned stance, promised to support Karen independence. The KNDO rose up, and within months Karen infantry had captured fifteen cities in central Burma and began shelling Rangoon. Burma’s army retaliated, securing the capital city and beginning the longest-running civil war of the post–World War II era, lasting over sixty years, from 1949 until today.

Meanwhile, KMT troops started flowing over the border into Shan State, after their defeat in China to Mao Zedong. Low on funds, the KMT began stealing farm supplies and growing opium to finance its activities. Advisors for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) soon came to the aid of the KMT, assisting them in sabotage missions against communist China.

Burma’s democratic government felt threatened by the actions of the CIA–KMT alliance and sought intervention from the United Nations. Through the UN, U Nu asked the U.S. to pressure Taiwan to withdraw the KMT troops. The U.S. agreed, and in 1953 worked with the KMT to evacuate 2,000 troops from Burma to Taiwan. By 1954, a force of around 6,000 remained in Burma, and reinforcements continued to be sent from Taiwan. U Nu saw this withdrawal as a farce, and in protest refused aid money from the U.S.

Shan leaders became increasingly frustrated with the fighting that surrounded the military’s counterinsurgency efforts against the KMT in Shan State. In November of 1959, Shan rebels seized the town of Tangyan. Other ethnic groups began to voice their growing frustrations with the central government. A year and a half after the uprising in Shan State, the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO) was formed. The KIO was partly a response to concerns among the mostly Christian Kachin people regarding a 1961 law that made Buddhism the official state religion. In 1961, a number of mainstream Shan leaders brought together leaders from other ethnic minorities to propose some constitutional amendments to address the ethnic groups’ calls for autonomy. Prime Minister U Nu endorsed and attended these meetings. However, their vision would never be put into practice.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the country’s instability was met by increased militarization. The civilian government had difficulty controlling many basic state functions, and the military took over law enforcement, tax collection, food distribution and even magazine printing. Curfews and forced labor policies developed for control during colonialism were again enforced.

Overwhelmed, U Nu ceded power in 1958 to a military caretaker government. In the 1960 elections, U Nu won the election and reassumed his duties as Prime Minister. However, just two years later a coup d’état put the military in power once again. The orchestrators of the coup cited concerns that U Nu was negotiating to grant greater autonomy to the Shan and Karenni States, which the generals feared could lead to their eventual independence.

1962–1980s: Armed Resistance and Counterinsurgency—Modeled on the United States’ efforts in Vietnam and the British anti-communist strategy in Malaysia, coup leader General Ne Win’s counterinsurgency campaign proved to be a failure.

Unlike U Nu, Ne Win—who had seized power in the 1962 coup d’état—was a staunch nationalist. Instead of reaching out to the UN and the Non-Aligned Movement for vision and leadership, Ne Win sought to “develop [Burma’s] own ways and means to progress” and violently rid the country of its colonial legacies of foreign rule and divided ethnicities. Soon after taking office, he ordered the expulsion of all Indians whose families had immigrated to Burma after 1825, the year that the British seized the first pieces of Burmese territory. This decision crippled Burma’s economy. Many Indians were at the center of Burma’s financial operations, serving both as the bankers who helped finance businesses and the owners of the teak and rice farms that dominated Burma’s exports.

In 1967, Ne Win instituted the four-cuts policy, modeled after the British anti-communist efforts in Malaysia and the U.S. strategy in Vietnam. The regime aimed to cut off armed groups from food, recruits, money, and intelligence. It set up strategic villages in the midst of areas with armed opposition groups. Forcibly moving villagers into these new villages, the army designated the old locations “free-fire zones” to rout out the non-state armed groups. Widespread human rights abuses occurred as a result of the relocations. For many countries, this was the popular counterinsurgecy tactic of the time. Mao Zedong had said the guerilla must “swim with the people like a fish swims in the sea,” to which the U.S.-led response was often summarized as “drain the swamp to catch the fish.”

The world powers backed Ne Win. The United States provided military training for high-level officials, the Soviet Union provided strategic advice, Israel designed the agricultural systems for some military villages, China provided diplomatic support, and countries from both the communist and capitalist blocs sold weapons to the regime. Despite such impressive opposition, the non-state armies actually multiplied in number.

Ne Win’s decision to abolish the constitution that promised autonomy for Burma’s ethnic groups intensified ethnic leaders’ opposition to his regime. In 1976, a coalition formed of nine ethnically based political organizations with armed wings. This included the Karen National Union (KNU), the New Mon State Party (NMSP), and the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO). Together with the Burmese Communist Party, these groups controlled a significant amount of Burma’s territory and continued to resist the central government throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

1971: First Congress of the Burma Socialist Programme Party—The Burma Socialist Programme Party was transformed from a small cadre to a mass party.

At the time of Ne Win’s coup, the Burma Socialist Programme Party consisted of a small cadre of generals, the Revolutionary Council that had seized power in 1962. The leadership sought to expand their members throughout the country. By 1972, they had 73,369 full members, half of whom came from the military or police. By 1985, 2.5 million people attended regular party cell meetings, while a much larger group participated in grass roots groups for workers and peasants.

Regional representatives to the national congress were chosen by the party and elected by an up or down vote from the citizens. Although the candidates ran unopposed, there were some instances when the party chose new candidates in response to popular pressure. The representatives themselves had very little power, one of their major duties being to report back from the congresses at community meetings. Decisions in the party were made though a system of “democratic centralism,” with the central executive committee in charge of most decisions. General Ne Win remained the chairman of the party from 1962 until 1987.

1974: Labor and Democratic UprisingsWorker and student demonstrations in 1974 contested military rule. Their actions went on to inspire dissidents for decades.

In 1974, inflation and rice shortages caused the regime to cut workers’ rations in half. Tensions boiled over that May. Walking out of state-owned factories, workers demanded better pay and more subsidized rice. In Rangoon, around forty factories were shut down. The number of workers in the streets grew each day, until June 6, 1974, when the regime opened fire on the crowds to disperse them. Official records state that twenty-two demonstrators were killed, but the actual number may have been in the hundreds.

Later that year, students called for Ne Win’s resignation after the regime refused to hold a state funeral for national icon U Thant, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations. Enraged students seized U Thant’s body and constructed their own mausoleum. Symbolically, the students built the mausoleum in front of the former student union at Rangoon University, which the military government had demolished in 1962 to curb radical student activity. Thousands gathered to hear anti-BSPP speeches. Declaring martial law, the police stormed the campus at night and arrested nearly 3,000 people. Despite the risks, resistance to military rule continued.

Students and workers joined together in a march to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the 1974 workers’ strike. This demonstration was again crushed by soldiers, and as a response, the regime closed the universities. The military increased its surveillance of students for years to come, and threatened to fire professors who did not report their students’ anti-government activity. Thirteen years later, an alliance between students and workers would temporarily overthrow the regime.

1985–1988: The 8-8-88 Uprising—Economic stagnation sparked a student and worker uprising, which temporarily overthrew military rule.

In 1988, economic stagnation had pushed many over the edge. Students marched down the streets of major cities shouting democracy slogans, workers held strikes, and revolutionary politics were discussed in tea shops across the country. For six weeks, the military did not silence dissent.

Two demonetizations had caused a recession in 1987 and 1988. Three years earlier, the regime had taken a number of bank notes out of circulation in order to check black market speculation and curb the rising price of food. The measure was not successful. The regime continued to print money, and the inflation rate rose to 14.7 percent. In 1987, Ne Win again chose to combat inflation by taking bank notes out of circulation. This time, when the old notes were liquidated, Ne Win offered no exchange of old bills for new. Families were devastated to lose their cash savings overnight.

Anti-regime activists attempted to capitalize on the public outrage and organized demonstrations on college campuses in September 1987. But the demonstrations were small and the military moved quickly to shut down the offending universities. Two months later, the universities were re-opened for exams. The semester ended quietly.

In March 1988, demonstrations again took place on college campuses. On March 16, a group of students staged a march between Rangoon’s two major universities, Rangoon University and the Rangoon Institute of Technology. The police and military cornered the demonstrators between high walls on one side and a lake on the other, and then attacked the students. Some students fled down alleys, others scaled the large walls, and others fled into the lake, where some were beaten unconscious and left to drown. Around 100 students were killed and hundreds more were arrested. Forty-one students suffocated to death in a police van parked outside of Insein Prison in Rangoon.

Furious over the violent crackdown, more and more students took to the streets. The universities were again closed, but students continued organizing. They circulated a letter by a former general named Aung Gyi that warned Ne Win of violent uprisings if he did not fix Burma’s economy.

On July 23, General Ne Win resigned, reportedly because of the demonstrations. He called for a referendum to be held on the issue of multi-party elections. General Sein Lwin, head of the riot police, was selected to succeed Ne Win. The protests intensified.

In August, students and workers united in a general strike that temporarily paralyzed the government. The strike started on August 8 (8-8-88), when dock workers in Rangoon walked out on their shifts. Impromptu unions and strike committees were formed around the country. Groups of teachers, health workers, and lawyers joined the strike.

Although the soldiers continued to crack down on demonstrators, even firing on and killing some, the protests spread nationwide. Reacting to the state’s violence, mobs of villagers raided police stations and captured weapons. The crowds lashed out, beating soldiers, policemen, and suspected spies, shooting some of them with slingshots and homemade bows and arrows.

The general strike was followed by a temporary end to the military crackdowns. Sein Lwin was pushed from power. His replacement, Dr. Maung Maung, pulled the troops back to their barracks as the demonstrations spread. On August 26, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi—the daughter of Burma’s independence hero General Aung San—addressed a crowd of several hundred thousand in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon. She proclaimed, “Our purpose is to show that the entire people entertain the keenest desire for a multiparty democratic system of government.” She also called for the demonstrators to uphold a commitment to nonviolence. In September, 968 of the 1,080 members of the Burma Socialist Programme Party congress voted to hold multi-party elections.

Elections seemed imminent. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, former general Aung Gyi, former Prime Minister U Nu, former army chief of staff U Tin Oo, and independence hero Bo Yan Naing began talks to plan for the transition. Students had been gaining support for an interim government from embassies, including the United States, Germany, Japan, and Australia. U Nu wanted the others to join an interim government that he had formed, but they were distrustful of U Nu’s leadership abilities. Student leaders appealed to the politicians to form a government within forty-eight hours, but an agreement could not be reached. The political deadlock left a power vacuum that the military quickly filled.

On the morning of September 18, the military staged a coup against the ruling Burma Socialist Programme Party. The new military government named itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). By the afternoon, soldiers had been deployed across the country, breaking up strike centers and blockades. Anyone who resisted was shot. After two days, hundreds were killed and the uprising was crushed. The total number of killings during the crackdowns is estimated at around 3,000, though some put the number at 10,000.

In the aftermath, thousands of mostly Burman students fled to the jungles and formed student guerilla armies, including the All Burma Student Democratic Front (ABSDF), that fought alongside the Mon and Karen rebels. The unity of the groups was noteworthy—they were able to overcome the legacies of British divide and rule, and the subsequent divisive policies of the military government which had exaggerated and solidified ethnic differences.

1990: The Election—The 8-8-88 uprising led to an election during which the National League for Democracy, under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, won 80 percent of the parliamentary seats.

Days after the crackdown, the SLORC announced that political parties could register for the first time since 1964. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi traveled across the country, giving speeches in ethnic minority villages and wearing various traditional ethnic dress as a display of solidarity. Her tour was reminiscent of her father’s work to secure ethnic rights via the Panglong Agreement. The more popular she became with the people of Burma, the more threatening she became to the regime. Aung San Suu Kyi’s willingness to work with the rebellious students and ethnic groups motivated the military to detain her under house arrest in 1989.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s party continued to campaign despite her detention. Elections were held in May of 1990, and her party won 59 percent of the popular vote and 80 percent of the seats. From the beginning, the SLORC had been vague about what the elections were meant to decide, but it was widely believed that they were to form a transitional government. Yet after the results were revealed, the regime claimed that the purpose of the elections was to select delegates for seats at a constitutional drafting assembly. The regime would not surrender power until a new constitution was created. Aung San Suu Kyi and many NLD members remained imprisoned.

1991–2007 (Part I): Ceasefire Agreements—During the 1990s and 2000s, the regime signed ceasefire agreements with numerous non-state armed groups.

In the 1990s, the regime redoubled its efforts against the armed groups. This included the splintering of the Karen National Union. One branch, the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), split from the KNU and signed a ceasefire agreement. This allowed Burma’s army to seize the city of Manerplaw, which had served as a stronghold for the KNU and fighters from the ABSDF, the majority lowland Burman student resistance group. The regime continued its advances, fighting battles and signing ceasefire agreements with the United Wa State Army, the Kachin Independence Army, the Shan State Army-North, and fourteen other ethnic armed groups. By 1998, for the first time since the early days of independence, the vast majority of Burma’s territory was controlled by either the national government or a ceasefire group.

The government’s counterinsurgency efforts were marked by excessive violence and human rights abuses. The Thailand-based Thailand–Burma Border Consortium estimates that the military destroyed 3,500 villages between 1996 and 2009. Rape by Burmese soldiers, the kidnapping of villagers for use as porters or to act as human minesweepers, widespread use of forced labor, and extra judicial killings have all been documented by myriad human rights reports. Although less well documented, human rights abuses also occurred within the ranks of the ethnic armies, particularly the recruitment of child soldiers and extra judicial killings. Burma has frequently been cited as having the most child soldiers of any country in the world, with tens of thousands of child soldiers in Burma’s army and the ethnic militias.

As a result of the fighting, 250,000 Muslims fled Arakan State for Bangladesh, hundreds of thousands of Karen, Shan, and Mon relocated to Thailand to escape the fighting, and tens of thousands of Chin sought safety in India. During this period, many villagers suffered internal displacement as their villages were destroyed.

1996: Protests and the continued suppression of the democracy movement—Despite draconian laws, the democracy movement in Burma has persevered from the 1990s to the present day.

In 1995, the regime released Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. She immediately resumed her political work, giving talks to crowds of thousands in front of her lake-side home. Her house also became an organizing base for the National League for Democracy.

Students were energized by Aung San Suu Kyi’s release. In 1995 and 1996, students came to classes dressed in black to commemorate the anniversary of the first student killed in the ’88 uprising. In October, a few students from the Rangoon Institute of Technology got into a quarrel with auxiliary policemen at a local restaurant. The policemen beat and arrested several students. Protests broke out, demanding the release of the students and an end to police brutality. The students were released, but the victory was short-lived. More students were detained. In response, students gathered in the center of Rangoon to listen to speeches on the history of student activism in Burma. Late in the night, with speeches still going on, riot police scattered the group, beating and arresting those who remained.

After the 1996 demonstrations, the universities were again closed; most did not reopen until 2000. Although little changed, the demonstrations served an important role in sustaining the spirit of the democracy movement.

In 2000, the regime again placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. She was freed in 2002 and embarked on a tour around the country, delivering speeches in Rangoon and visiting the rural ethnic nationality areas. Everywhere she traveled, large crowds gathered to hear her speak. In 2003, her motorcade was attacked by a government-sponsored mob in an incident known as the Depayin Massacre. Aung San Suu Kyi’s driver managed to protect her, but dozens of her supporters were killed. She was placed back under house arrest soon after the event. Nobody was ever convicted for the attack.

1991–2007 (Part II): The Globalization of Burma—Both the regime and the democracy movement, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, took advantage of the rapidly growing global economy and information networks.

After the 1990 election, the regime began courting foreign investment, most notably by inviting foreign investors to create apparel factories for export to Western markets, and by signing natural gas pipeline deals with U.S.-owned Unocal and French-owned Total. During the years immediately following the ’88 uprising, the government struggled to pay its civil servants and solicited business deals with the West for money.

The democracy movement organized to cut off the military’s new revenue sources. Following the model of Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress that brought an end to white minority rule in South Africa, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD reached out to activists in the West to block the regime’s financial lifelines. In a 1997 New York Times op-ed, Aung San Suu Kyi wrote, “...[investment] only goes to enrich an already wealthy elite bent on monopolizing both economic and political power... Take a principled stand against companies that are doing business with the Burmese military regime.” Solidarity groups began to emerge around the Western world.

The U.S.-based Free Burma Coalition, founded in 1995 by a PhD candidate named Zarni, used boycotts to pressure American multinationals. They organized a vast decentralized network of activists to hold demonstrations at college campuses and shopping malls. The movement experienced its first victory when Pepsi agreed to cut its relations with Burma’s regime after college students across the U.S. convinced their schools to end contracts with the company in protest of their business with Buma’s regime. Levi-Strauss, May department stores, and scores of additional U.S. companies followed suit. After nearly all American companies had cut business ties with the military regime, activists pressured Congress to make sourcing from Burma illegal for all U.S. businesses, which became law in the 2003 Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act. Burma Campaign UK and other European Burma campaigns experienced many similar successes.

In the early 1990s, a recent graduate from University of Virginia Law School, Katie Redford, teamed up with a Karen activist, Ka Hsaw Wa, to use the law to target the regime’s financiers. In 2005, U.S.-owned Unocal settled out of court on a lawsuit that accused the company of using forced labor to build a pipeline in Karen State. The activists had resurrected a 1789 statute, which stipulates that U.S. companies can be sued for violations of the “Laws of Nations.” That same year Unocal sold their shares of the pipeline to Chevron, which still operates in Burma due to an exemption in the 2003 U.S. sanctions.

The regime’s base of support shifted with changes in the world economy. Throughout the 1990s, the regime financed its military with Western natural gas projects. As the Asian economies grew and globalized, more Asian companies joined their Western counterparts. Korean-owned Daewoo signed on to explore the Shwe Gas fields in 2004, and in 2008, the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a deal for the sale and transport of Shwe Gas to China via an overland pipeline.

In 2003, Zarni of the Free Burma Coalition participated in a joint study with other exiles, which concluded that the Western boycott could not bring an end to military rule in Burma while Thailand, India, and China continued to support the regime. Solidarity activists began to look for other strategies of influence. The plan formulated in 1990 had relied on a world in which the United States and Western Europe were the only major powers. By the mid-2000s, Western governments would have to find ways to work with Asian governments to exert influence on Burma’s ruling junta.

Global Burma solidarity groups increasingly took their work to the level of the United Nations. In 2008, the solidarity groups launched a campaign to bring Burma’s generals before the International Criminal Court (ICC) for their human rights violations in ethnic nationality areas. As of August 2010, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Czech Republic have endorsed this call.

2007: Saffron Revolution—A new generation of activists enter Burma’s political arena.

In September 2007, tens of thousands of monks marched down the streets of Burma’s major cities. They called for dialogue between the military government and the democracy movement, as well as an end to a price hike that was wreaking havoc on Burma’s poor.

In mid-August, the regime had unexpectedly increased diesel and compressed natural gas prices. Food and transportation costs rose, putting strains on Burma’s people. Students from the newly formed ’88 Student Group—activists who had participated in the 1988 uprising nearly nineteen years before—began marching in Rangoon, demanding a drop in fuel costs. The regime quickly arrested many of the demonstrators.

After the arrest of the ’88 Student Group students, a group of monks took over the protests. They marched through the streets of Sittwe and Rangoon, chanting the Metta Sutra prayer of loving-kindness and calling for the regime to lower prices. The monk demonstration took place in several cities. It was a huge public relations liability to the regime, which partly claims its legitimacy from being “good Buddhists.” On September 5, the authorities in Pakokku reacted harshly, tying up and beating some of the monks. News about the beatings spread quickly. Up until that point, the monk demonstrations had remained relatively small, but the authorities’ actions provoked many monks and laypeople alike.

On September 10, a newly formed group called the All Burma Monks’ Alliance (ABMA) issued a statement calling for the regime to apologize to the monks, reduce fuel and food prices, release all political prisoners, and begin dialogue with the democracy movement—or face a countrywide religious boycott where monks would refuse to provide their services to the military.

Eight days later, tens of thousands of monks marched down the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay, Sittwe, and other towns and cities across the country. Monks marched with their alms bowl upside down, symbolizing that they were refusing to take offerings from the military. The protests grew. Laypeople formed human chains around the monks. On September 22, the monks marched by the house of Aung San Suu Kyi, where she remained under house arrest. She paid the monks respect from behind the gates of her compound.

On September 24, the state-appointed monastic council, the Sangha Maha Nayaka, warned monks not to engage in secular affairs. The protesting monks did not submit to the warning and again gathered by the thousands in the street, singing the Metta Sutra prayer of loving kindness. Soldiers and military trucks were deployed in downtown Rangoon in front of Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma’s most famous religious site, which the monks were using as a base for their demonstrations. Commentators had been speculating for days about whether the soldiers would fire into a crowd of monks.

In front of the pagoda, the soldiers gave the monks one last warning to disperse. The monks stood fast and asked the soldiers to drop their weapons and join them. The soldiers refused, and instead began beating and arresting monks, firing tear gas, rubber bullets and—later that day—live rounds at the monks. Across the country the protests were broken up in the same way.

After cracking down on the protests, the regime cracked down on the monasteries. Many of the activists involved in the uprising were given long jail sentences of up to sixty-five years in prison; in the months following the demonstration, the number of political prisoners in Burma doubled to nearly 2,100. Monasteries were raided and some left nearly deserted as monks were either imprisoned or fled to the jungle or to neighboring countries. However, many hold that the demonstration was not a failure.

The uprising gave rise to a new generation of activist groups, such as Generation Wave, which uses hip-hop and graffiti to spread anti-junta messages. Perhaps most significantly, the uprising destroyed any public image of the “consent of the governed.” Images of soldiers beating monks on the street quickly shattered the regime’s claim of being “good Buddhists.”

2008: Constitution and Referendum—Five months after cracking down on the monks’ protests, the regime announced it had finished the constitutional drafting process that it embarked upon in 1991. The new constitution was “approved” by the people of Burma in a process that Burma experts consider fraudulent. According to the government, the popular referendum on the constitution was approved by 92.5 percent of voters, with a 98.1 percent voter turnout.

Many of the provisions in the constitution have caused uproar among Burma’s democratic forces, ethnic minority groups, and the international community. Some of the key grievances include the following:

The constitution requires all ceasefire groups to consolidate into a Border Guard Force/Home Guard Force under the supervision of the national government—a request which has proven to be unrealistic.

It provides no civilian oversight of the military.

It specifies that those married to foreigners are not able to run for political office, thus barring Aung San Suu Kyi from the political process.

25 percent of the seats in parliament are reserved for the military. A 75 percent vote is needed to reform the constitution.

The military is allowed to dissolve the parliament to maintain the peace.

Despite these criticisms, those who believe that the constitution may be a small step in the right direction point out that:

The new parliament is partly federated, with seven ethnic states and seven Burman-dominated regions in central Burma all represented.

The new parliament will give a new venue for people to publicly air grievances.

The constitution also sets up regional parliaments, which, some argue, will make regional government more accountable.

May 2008: Cyclone Nargis—The deadliest storm in Burma’s recorded history shed light on the regime’s relationship to the international community, as well as its lack of strong institutions for handling emergencies.

When Cyclone Nargis ripped through the wooden homes and rice paddies of Burma’s Irrawaddy Delta in 2008, some 140,000 people were left dead. Below is a timeline of the events surrounding the storm:

May 2

Evening, storm makes landfall on the mouth of the Irrawaddy River.

May 3

Cyclone Nargis sweeps through Irrawaddy Delta with winds of up to 132 miles per hour and a storm surge of twelve feet.

May 4

The regime reports 20,000 homes destroyed and 90,000 people made homeless. Early death estimates are in the hundreds but are expected to rise.

The World Food Program and other aid agencies already on the ground in Burma are able to attend to some of the victims, but are unable to approach the worst affected areas.

May 5

The official death toll reaches almost 15,000.

The regime issues a rare appeal for foreign aid, provided the government be allowed to supervise its distribution.

French President Sarkozy denounces this condition of aid transfer as unacceptable. That same day, U.S. First Lady Laura Bush takes the opportunity to lambaste the regime for a litany of failings, including failure to issue a storm warning, proceeding with plans for a constitutional referendum scheduled for May 10, and continuing to hold political prisoners.

Aid groups criticize Bush, warning that a staunch political stance may increase the regime’s reluctance to accept aid workers.

At the same time, the U.S. gives a quarter of a million dollars in aid to be distributed by the regime.

Regime announces it will go forward with the referendum scheduled for May 10.

May 6

With global attention focused on Burma, the U.S. House of Representatives passes a resolution condemning the regime for a number of its undemocratic actions, starting with Ne Win’s 1974 creation of the Burmese Socialist Party and ending with the referendum scheduled to take place on the May 10. The members of Congress state their hope for the resolution to dissuade the regime from holding the referendum.

May 7

Indian and Bangledeshi airplanes land in Rangoon with aid for the delta.

The regime accepts the aid but refuses to grant visas to aid workers.

France calls for an international humanitarian intervention.

France’s request for a UN Security Council–led discussion on intervention is vetoed by permanent members China and Russia. The countries accuse France of making a dangerous attempt to expand the council’s mandate.

May 9

The regime states that it will allow aid supplies and money, but not aid workers.

May 10

The regime holds a referendum on the 2008 constitution in all but the hardest-hit areas.

May 14

Neoconservative thinker Robert Kagan publishes an article in the New York Times calling for armed intervention, which he openly hopes will lead to regime change.

May 15

The regime grants visas to aid workers from countries in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), but not to Western aid workers.

Forty-three members of the U.S. Congress send a letter to President Bush calling for a humanitarian intervention into Burma’s sovereignty.

May 16

Burma’s state television counts 77,738 dead and 55, 917 missing.

May 23

Regime pledges to allow aid workers from all nations access to the delta.

Following months

Debate rages in Western donor countries about the effectiveness of the aid given to Burma for the cyclone survivors.

Humanitarian aid groups working in the disaster zone note the growth of civil society as Burmese citizens mobilize their own networks to deliver aid. These breakthroughs are documented in reports by Refugees International and other humanitarian aid organizations.

Workers providing aid are subject to crackdowns by the military government. A report released jointly by Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Human Rights Clinic and the Thailand–Burma border based Emergency Assistance Team Burma (EAT Burma) documents multiple human rights abuses, including forced relocations and ethnic discrimination in aid distribution.

 

IX. THE THREE PRIMARY ACTORS:

THE NATIONAL LEAGUE FOR DEMOCRACY

THE NON-STATE ARMED GROUPS

THE MILITARY GOVERNMENT

Burma’s democracy activists and solidarity groups call for “genuine tripartite dialogue,” or a discussion between the three primary actors in Burma’s politics: the democracy movement, the ethnically based armed groups, and the military. Below is a brief sketch of these actors.

The National League for Democracy (NLD) and Aung San Suu Kyi—The decisive winner of the 1990 elections, the National League for Democracy seeks national reconciliation.

Although the party is dominated by the valley-dwelling Burman majority, their leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has made strides toward gaining the trust of Burma’s many ethnic groups. She is considered a national icon, as was her father General Aung San, the hero of Burma’s independence movement. Many inside Burma and around the world hope that, if she remains free, she can help build trust between Burma’s majority Burman population and the groups of ethnic minorities that have been at war with the central state for decades. She was released from her term under house arrest on November 13 2010. She has stated that her first step is to “listen to the people.”

The NLD had operated legally in Burma since the 1990 election, with NLD offices serving as hubs of anti-dictatorship speech despite the regime’s continued crackdown against its members. The party was officially banned and its offices closed in May 2010, after the NLD’s Central Executive Committee voted to boycott the 2010 elections. This boycott was in response to the regime’s refusal to allow political prisoners to run for election. This left the NLD, whose key leaders are often in and out of prison, in a difficult position. The NLD also wanted changes to be made to the 2008 constitution before they would run in the election that was to put the constitution into practice. Some have speculated that the NLD’s newly banned status will re-invigorate their underground organizing efforts.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD’s General Secretary, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and is an international icon for peace and democracy. The National League for Democracy has enjoyed strong support from Western governments, with the United States as one of its strongest backers. Aung San Suu Kyi’s name has been mentioned over 1,000 times on the floor of the U.S. Congress, and she is the recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor—the highest award Congress can bestow on any civilian. The U.S. has also helped to keep Burma on the international agenda in the UN and other international venues, such as US-ASEAN summits. Numerous countries in Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as Western donors, aid refugees and political dissidents on the Thailand–Burma border. The voices of exiled members of Burma’s democracy movement are broadcast into the country over Western-funded Burmese-language radio services such as Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and the British Broadcasting Corporation, which reach millions of listeners.

The Ethnic Armed GroupsBoth ceasefire and resistance ethnic nationality movements are concerned about autonomy.

Most of Burma’s major ethnic groups have at some time since independence been organized around armed resistance movements. In general, the leaders of these movements seek autonomy within a federated, democratic Burma. However, many of the groups have their roots in secessionist struggles, and independence sentiment remains strong within their ranks.

Mizzima, a Burmese exile media outlet, identifies nineteen major ethnic nationality armies, all of whom signed ceasefire agreements with the regime between 1990 and 1995. These groups include the Shan State Army-North, United Wa State Army, and Democratic Karen Buddhist Army. Mizzima also identifies five non-state armed groups who are still fighting today: the Shan State Army-South, the Karen National Liberation Army, the Arakan Liberation Army, the Karenni Army, and the Chin Liberation Front.

The government has called for the armed groups to reconstitute themselves into Border Guard Forces and Home Guard Forces under the command of the Burmese military. As of November 2010, only a handful have complied with this order. This situation has led to high-profile standoffs between some of the ethnic groups’ militaries, particularly the Kachin and the Wa. Some analysts have questioned what this will mean for the long-term stability of the ceasefire agreements.

The Military RegimeThe military regime seeks to consolidate its power over all of Burma.

Burma has been ruled by its military since 1962. It has one of the largest armed forces in the world. The state spends about 40 percent of its budget on the military and less then 3 percent on healthcare in a country where an estimated 32 percent of children are born moderately or severely underweight. The World Health Organization ranks Burma’s healthcare system 190 out of 191. Rampant human rights abuses, such as extrajudicial killings, arbitrary incarceration, impunity for rape, the use of child soldiers, and forced relocations have all been well documented by human rights groups.

A few years after Burma’s independence in 1948, the country was destabilized by non-state armed groups and divided leadership in the central government. Many of the armed groups, such as the KMT, the Karen National Defence Organization, and the Red Flag Communists, were in some way supported by foreign powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and the People’s Republic of China, respectively). Burma’s ruling generals began their military careers fighting in Burma’s jungles against these non-state armed groups. Battles raged though the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. It was not until the 1990s that the regime signed ceasefire agreements. The current government sees this as its accomplishment, one that it believes is secured with force. The military also claims success in improving the government’s financial stability though natural gas extraction.

Some have speculated that in the wake of the 2010 election, new political groups will emerge and Burma watchers will need to reconceptualize Burma’s primary actors. Since Nowhere to Be Home is going to press only shortly after the elections, it is still too soon for this book to discuss whether this will be the case.

 

X. BURMESE IN THAILAND

MIGRANTS FROM BURMA IN THAILAND

by Soe Lin Aung, MAP Foundation

Some 2–4 million migrants from all over Burma have chosen to live and work in Thailand, their migration rooted in decades of political and economic stagnation inside Burma. In a range of sectors and occupations, and in many different parts of Thailand, migrant communities help drive the country’s economy, and in many places have become part of the fabric of everyday life. Thailand’s export industries, long the cornerstone of the Thai economy, feature high concentrations of migrants from Burma, especially in factory-based garment and textile manufacturing. Many migrants also work in construction and agriculture, in domestic work, in the sex and entertainment industries, on plantations, in the seafood industry, in small-scale shops and marketplaces, and as restaurant workers and waste-pickers. While Thailand has sought to increase migrant registration and formalize migration channels in recent years, these attempts have seen only limited success; the vast majority of migrants remain undocumented, with restricted access to healthcare, education, and legal justice. Working conditions, labor rights, and wages are substandard in many migrant communities, while the constant threat of arrest, detention, deportation, and extortion serves to compound the challenges migrants face every day. Still, migrants and their families have drawn on strong community networks to maintain a resilient sense of social dignity and cultural pride, thereby challenging their victimization and making progress in their communities.

BURMESE POLITICAL GROUPS IN THAILAND

by Thelma Young

After the fall of the armed resistance headquarters of Manerplaw in 1995, many people from Burma working for democratic change began to set up offices along the Thailand–Burma border. The Thai town of Mae Sot holds the greatest number of organizations and offices. Other ethnic democratic and social organizations opened offices in Mae Hong Son, Mae Sariang, and Sangklaburi, where they are geographically closer to their ethnic communities in Burma. These organizations, if based in Burma, would face severe oppression and debilitating restrictions. Even operating in Thailand, they have to maintain a low presence and work below the radar for their security, so as not to garner attention that would impact Thailand–Burma relations.

The network of Burmese human rights and democracy organizations along the Thailand–Burma border, as well as on the China, India, and Bangladesh borders with Burma, constitute an extensive and developed underground civil society. There are a significant number of organizations; most ethnic groups have at least a youth group, a women’s organization, a political organization, and other social development organizations. Though their offices are based on the Thailand–Burma border, these organizations do substantial and covert work inside Burma. They help their communities inside run social and democratic programs, and share information that would otherwise be completely blocked. Though the border organizations are widespread and diverse, almost all share the common goal of bringing democratic change and national reconciliation to Burma, and in recent years there have been extensive efforts from organizations to cooperate more toward these goals.

BURMESE REFUGEES IN THAILAND

There are approximately 150,000 refugees from Burma living in nine official refugee camps on the Thailand–Burma border. Refugees living in the camps are supplied with basic housing and food rations, as well as access to education. However, the refugees are not given freedom of movement. They are “warehoused,” meaning they are not permitted to leave the camp they live in. Some refugees have been born inside the camps, never allowed to leave, or have otherwise been kept inside for up to twenty years. The United States has started an ambitious resettlement program which resettled nearly 17,000 refugees from Burma in 2010 alone. However, resettlement does not necessarily mean a decrease in the refugee camp population; conflict in eastern Burma is ongoing, and the possibility of resettlement may attract refugees to live in the camp as opposed to other options like migrant work. Thailand—along with Malaysia, Bangladesh, and the United States—is not one of the 141 nations that signed the 1951 refugee convention.

 

XI. MAE TAO CLINIC

In the narrative that appears on pages 87 to 93, Naw Moe Wai describes her experience being helped by a free clinic called the Mae Tao Clinic, and a special program set up through the clinic called the Burma Children Medical Fund (BCMF). To find out more about the vital work of these two organizations, please see: www.maetaoclinic.org and www.burmachildren.com.

Naw Moe Wai is one of many people who, due to lack of access to adequate healthcare inside Burma, go to the Mae Tao Clinic each month for free or greatly reduced treatment expenses. The Mae Tao Clinic was established in Mae Sot, Thailand in 1989 to meet the needs of Burmese migrants in Thailand and internally displaced people in Burma. Its founder is Dr. Cynthia Maung, a Karen doctor who fled Burma along with many of her compatriots in 1988. According to the Mae Tao Clinic’s 2009 Annual Report, the clinic saw 75,210 total patients in 2009 and had 153,703 total visits to the clinic within the year. In 2009, the Mae Tao Clinic’s caseload experienced a 24 percent increase from the previous year, and it only continues to grow.

Because the Mae Tao Clinic does not have the funding or resources to perform major surgeries, Naw Moe Wai’s daughter Phyu Phyu is currently receiving treatment through the Burma Children Medical Fund (BCMF). The BCMF was set up in response to the increasing number of children at Mae Tao Clinic who require surgery that neither the clinic nor Mae Sot Hospital can provide. Often the only chance these children have to undergo surgery is to be referred to Chiang Mai Hospital or another major hospital.

 

XII. THE ROHINGYA: STATELESS PEOPLE

by Chris Lewa

Adapted from an article titled “North Arakan: An Open prison for the Rohingya” that appeared in Forced Migration Review issue 32, online at: www.fmreview.org/statelessness.htm.

Many minorities, including the Rohingya of Burma, are persecuted by being rendered stateless.

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya people have fled to Bangladesh and farther afield to escape oppression or in order to survive. There were mass exoduses to Bangladesh in 1978 and again in 1991–92. Each time, international pressure persuaded Burma to accept them back and repatriation followed, often under coercion. But the outflow continues.

The Rohingya are an ethnic, linguistic, and religious minority group mainly concentrated in North Arakan (or “Rakhine”) State in Burma, adjacent to Bangladesh, where their number is estimated at 725,000. Of South Asian descent, they are related to the Chittagonian Bengalis just across the border in Bangladesh, whose language is also related. They profess Sunni Islam and are distinct from the majority Burmese population who are of East Asian stock and mostly Buddhists. Since Burma’s independence in 1948, the Rohingya have gradually been excluded from the process of nation-building.

THE 1982 CITIZENSHIP LAW

In 1982, Burma’s military rulers brought in a new Citizenship Law which deprived most people of Indian and Chinese descent of citizenship. However, the timing of its promulgation, shortly after the refugee repatriation of 1979, strongly suggests that it was specifically designed to exclude the Rohingya. Unlike the preceding 1948 Citizenship Act, the 1982 law is essentially based on the principle of jus sanguinis and identifies three categories of citizens: full, associate, and naturalized.

Full citizens are those belonging to one of 135 “national races” settled in Burma before 1823, the start of the British colonization of Arakan. The Rohingyas do not appear in this list and the government does not recognise the term “Rohingya.” Associate citizenship was only granted to those whose application for citizenship under the 1948 act was pending on the date the act came into force. Naturalized citizenship could only be granted to those who could furnish “conclusive evidence” of entry and residence before Burma’s Independence on January 4, 1948, who could speak one of the national languages well, and whose children were born in Burma. Very few Rohingyas could fulfil these requirements. Moreover, the wide powers assigned to a government-controlled “Central Body” to decide on matters pertaining to citizenship mean that, in practice, the Rohingyas’ entitlement to citizenship would not be recognized.

In 1989, color-coded Citizens Scrutiny Cards (CRCs) were introduced: pink cards for full citizens, blue for associate citizens, and green for naturalized citizens. The Rohingya were not issued any cards. In 1995, in response to the UNHCR’s intensive advocacy efforts to document the Rohingyas, the Burmese authorities started issuing them a Temporary Registration Card (TRC), a white card, pursuant to the 1949 Residents of Burma Registration Act. The TRC does not mention the bearer’s place of birth and cannot be used to claim citizenship. The family list, which every family residing in Burma possesses, only records family members and their date of birth. It does not indicate the place of birth and therefore provides no official evidence of birth in Burma—and so perpetuates the Rohingyas’ statelessness.

The Rohingya are recognized neither as citizens nor as foreigners. The Burmese government also objects to them being described as stateless persons but appears to have created a special category for them: “Myanmar residents,” which is not a legal status. However, on more than one occasion, government officials have described them as “illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.” In 1998, in a letter to the UNHCR, Burma’s then–Prime Minister General Khin Nyunt wrote: “These people are not originally from Myanmar but have illegally migrated to Myanmar because of population pressures in their own country.” And a February 2009 article in the government-owned New Light of Myanmar newspaper stated that, “In Myanmar there is no national race by the name of Rohinja.”

Deprivation of citizenship has served as a key strategy to justify arbitrary treatment and discriminatory policies against the Rohingya. Severe restrictions on their movements are increasingly applied. They are banned from employment in the civil service, including in the education and health sectors. In 1994, the authorities stopped issuing Rohingya children with birth certificates. By the late 1990s, official marriage authorizations were made mandatory. Infringement of these stringent rules can result in long prison sentences. Other coercive measures, such as forced labor, arbitrary taxation, and confiscation of land, also practiced elsewhere in Burma, are imposed on the Rohingya population in a disproportionate manner.

RESTRICTIONS OF MOVEMENT

The Rohingya are virtually confined to their village tracts. They need to apply and pay for a travel pass even to visit a neighboring village. Travel is strictly restricted to North Arakan. Even Sittwe, the state capital, has been declared off-limits for them. Their lack of mobility has devastating consequences, limiting their access to markets, employment opportunities, health facilities, and higher education. Those who overstay the time allowed by their travel pass are prevented from returning to their village as their names are deleted from their family list. They are then obliterated administratively and compelled to leave Burma. Some Rohingyas have been prosecuted under national security legislation for traveling without permission.

Rohingyas are also forbidden to travel to Bangladesh, although in practice obtaining a travel pass to a border village and then crossing clandestinely into Bangladesh has proved easier than reaching Sittwe. But, similarly, those caught doing so could face a jail sentence there for illegal entry. Many people, including patients who sought medical treatment in Bangladesh, were unable to return home when, during their absence, their names were cancelled on their family list. Once outside Burma, Rohingyas are systematically denied the right to return to their country.

MARRIAGE AUTHORIZATIONS

In the late 1990s, a local order was issued in North Arakan, applying exclusively to the Muslim population, requiring couples planning to marry to obtain official permission from the local authorities—usually the NaSaKa, Burma’s Border Security Force. Marriage authorizations are granted on the payment of fees and bribes and can take up to several years to obtain. This is beyond the means of the poorest. This local order also prohibits any cohabitation or sexual contact outside wedlock. It is not backed by any domestic legislation, but breaching it can lead to prosecution, punishable by up to ten years imprisonment.

In 2005, as the NaSaKa was reshuffled following the ousting of General Khin Nyunt, marriage authorizations were completely suspended for several months. When they restarted issuing them in late 2005, additional conditions were attached, including the stipulation that couples have to sign an undertaking not to have more than two children. The amount of bribes and time involved in securing a marriage permit keeps increasing year after year.

The consequences have been dramatic, particularly on women. Rohingya women who become pregnant without official marriage authorization often resort to backstreet abortions, an illegal practice in Burma, which has resulted in many maternal deaths. Others register their newborn child with another legally married couple, sometimes their own parents. Some deliver the baby secretly in Bangladesh and abandon the baby there. Many children are reportedly unregistered. Many young couples, unable to obtain permission to marry, flee to Bangladesh in order to live together.

EDUCATION AND HEALTH CARE

As non-citizens, the Rohingya are excluded from government employment in health and education, and those public services are appallingly neglected in North Arakan. Schools and clinics are mostly attended by Rakhine or Burmese staff who are unable to communicate in the local language and who often treat Rohingyas with contempt. International humanitarian agencies are not allowed to train Muslim health workers, not even auxiliary midwives. Some Rohingya teach in government schools, and are paid in rice-paddies under a food-for-work program, as they cannot hold an official, remunerated teacher’s post.

Restrictions of movement have a serious impact on access to health and education. Even in emergencies, Rohingyas must apply for travel permission to reach the poorly equipped local hospital. Access to better medical facilities in Sittwe hospital is denied. Referral of critically ill patients is practically impossible. Consequently, patients who can afford it have sought medical treatment in Bangladesh but are sometimes unable to return to their village. Likewise, there are few secondary schools in North Arakan and pupils need travel permission to study outside their village. The only university is in Sittwe. After 2001, most students could no longer attend classes and had to rely on distance learning, only being allowed to travel to Sittwe to sit examinations. Since 2005, however, even that has been prohibited. Not surprisingly, illiteracy among the Rohingya is high, estimated at 80 percent.

For the Rohingya, the compounded effect of these various forms of persecution has driven many into dire poverty, and their degrading conditions have caused mental distress, pushing them to flee across the border to Bangladesh.

IN EXILE

In Bangladesh, the 28,000 Rohingyas still remaining in two camps are recognized as refugees and benefit from limited protection and assistance by the UNHCR, but it is estimated that up to 200,000 more live outside the camps. Bangladesh considers them irregular migrants and they have no access to official protection.

The combination of their lack of status in Bangladesh and their statelessness in Burma puts them at risk of indefinite detention. Several hundred Rohingyas are currently languishing in Bangladeshi jails, arrested for illegal entry. Most are still awaiting trial, sometimes for years. Dozens have completed their sentences but remain in jail—called “released prisoners”—as they cannot be officially released and deported, since Burma refuses to re-admit them.

Tens of thousands of Rohingyas have sought opportunities overseas, in the Middle East and increasingly in Malaysia, using Bangladesh and Thailand as transit countries. Stateless and undocumented, they have no other option than relying on unsafe illegal migration channels, falling prey to unscrupulous smugglers and traffickers, or undertaking risky journeys on boats.

In December 2008, Thailand started implementing a new policy of pushing Rohingya boat people back to the high seas. In at least three separate incidents, 1,200 boat people were handed over to the Thai military on a deserted island off the Thai coast and ill-treated before being towed out to sea on boats without an engine and with little food and water. After drifting for up to two weeks, three boats were finally rescued in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India, and two boats in the Aceh province of Indonesia. More than 300 boat people are reportedly missing, believed to have drowned.

The issuing of a TRC to Rohingyas has been praised as “a first step towards citizenship.” On May 10, 2008, the Rohingya were allowed to vote in the constitutional referendum, but the new constitution, which was approved, does not contain any provisions granting them citizenship rights. Although they were also permitted to participate in the controversial general elections on November 7, 2010, there is no political will for the Rohingya to be accepted as Burmese citizens in the foreseeable future.

“We, Rohingyas, are like birds in a cage. However, caged birds are fed while we have to struggle alone to feed ourselves.”

—A Rohingya villager from Maungdaw, North Arakan

Chris Lewa is coordinator of the Arakan Project, a local NGO primarily dedicated to the protection and promotion of human rights for the Rohingya minority of Burma, through documentation (including first-hand testimonies) and research-based advocacy.

 

XIII. REFUGEE RESETTLEMENT TO THE UNITED STATES

The United States accepts more Burmese refugees than any other country. Other countries to which Burmese refugees are resettled include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the Nordic countries. Unlike Finland, Norway, and Canada, which seek the most trained and educated refugees and rank applicants according to integration potential, the United States does not rank refugees based on their level of education and professional potential. According to UNHCR guidelines, refugees are not able to choose the country to which they will be resettled.

The United States has implemented an ambitious resettlement program; the number of Burmese refugees resettled to the United States has increased exponentially since 2006. In 2006, approximately 1,000 people were resettled from Burma. In 2007, the number was increased to 13,000. The total number of Burmese refugees resettled to the U.S. in 2010 was 16,693. In 2011, the U.S. plans to admit 18,500 refugees from Burma.

In order to qualify for resettlement in the U.S., a refugee must a) belong to an ethnicity considered a priority for resettlement by the United States, b) be referred by a U.S. embassy, the UNHCR, or another non-governmental organization, c) meet the U.S. definition of a refugee as determined by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) / U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (USCIS), and d) not possess a number of criteria for exclusion. A refugee must also have access to a U.S. refugee processing post or USCIS/DHS officer and not already be resettled in another country.

The U.S. has a system for ranking importance for resettlement. Those who have been identified by the UNHCR, an NGO, or an embassy as individuals who do not have other safe options are put in the first priority group. The second priority group, referred to as “P2 groups,” is for entire groups of people that the U.S. has identified as particularly vulnerable. From Burma, ethnic minorities that live in Thailand’s refugee camps and ethnic minorities that are currently in Malaysia are both classified as P2 groups. The third grouping is focused on family reunification (spouses, unmarried children under twenty-one, or parents); the application for resettlement must be initiated by a family member living in the U.S., and is only open to certain nationalities.

The U.S. identifies a number of grounds for exclusion: health-related grounds (certain communicable diseases or mental and physical disorders), criminal/moral grounds (persons convicted of multiple serious crimes, drug trafficking, or prostitution), and security grounds. Waivers can be used to circumvent grounds of exclusion, except in the case of participation in genocide, conviction of a serious crime, membership in the Nazi party, and drug trafficking.

As of May 31, 2010, over 6,200 Burmese refugees successfully used waivers to be cleared of terrorist-based exclusion. Many of Burma’s non-state armed groups fit the U.S. definition of terrorist groups, and many individuals among the ethnic groups seeking to be resettled have engaged in acts that the U.S. defines as providing “material support” to terrorists. These offenses range from acts as small as providing a member of an armed group with food or a place to stay, to more significant connections, such as membership in one of the armed groups.

When refugees arrive in the United States, they are placed with private and state agencies (known as VOLAGS, or “Voluntary Agencies”) that have signed cooperative agreements with the State Department to provide services to the refugees for the first ninety days they are in the U.S. The organizations (which include the International Rescue Committee and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, among others) often work with refugees’ relatives who have filed sponsorship papers. For refugees without friends or family, an agency often contacts an individual, church, or outside group for additional sponsorship.

Refugees are eligible for a number of benefits upon arrival. They are granted eligibility for Welfare and Medicaid programs for the first eight months after they arrive, at the discretion of the state in which the refugee is a resident. After seven years, refugees become ineligible for most benefits if they do not acquire citizenship. Refugees are also able to attend public schools, but must pay tuition charges for most public universities. They are also granted employment benefits, but cannot work for the federal government until they are granted citizenship. Refugees can apply for a refugee travel document which allows them to leave the U.S. for up to one year. One year after arrival, refugees are eligible to adjust their status to permanent resident; five years after arrival, they can petition for naturalization.

Overseas Processing Entities (OPEs) handle refugee cases and facilitate aspects of U.S. refugee processing, specifically ensuring that refugees fit within the United States’ processing priorities and are from a designated nationality accepted by the United States. OPEs assist refugees in their interviews with the DHS/USCIS, and after DHS/USCIS approval, OPEs work to arrange medical exams and transport to the U.S., as well as coordinating with a VOLAG about resettlement. The International Rescue Committee operates the OPE in Bangkok, Thailand which processes Burmese refugees from Thailand.

 

XIV. BURMESE REFUGEES IN MALAYSIA

by James Meisenheimer

Burmese refugees have been seeking safety within Malaysian borders for much of the past two decades. However, in recent years, the number of refugees fleeing to Malaysia has increased dramatically. The UNHCR officially recognizes that there are some 83,000 Burmese refugees and asylum seekers currently living in Malaysia. However, it is estimated that there are an additional 200,000 to 500,000 refugees in Malaysia who remain outside of the UNHCR’s protection.

The vast majority of Burmese refugees enter Malaysia by land through its northern border with Thailand. Having come without passports, visas, or any other form of documentation, they often pay exorbitant sums of money to be smuggled into the country. Once they enter Malaysia, the refugees scatter to various parts of the country, mostly relying on networks of friends or relatives to find accommodation and employment. Unlike Thailand, there are no refugee camps in Malaysia. Multiple families often share single-room apartments in Malaysia’s capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Living without documentation, Burmese refugees in Malaysia face constant security threats including arrest, detention in abject conditions, and deportation; they therefore must keep as low a profile as possible, in some cases rarely leaving their living quarters.

IMMIGRATION LAW ENFORCEMENT IN MALAYSIA

Despite persistent advocacy by Malaysian NGOs and international organizations, the Malaysian government has yet to ratify the 1951 UN Convention relating to the status of refugees and its 1967 Protocol. The Burmese who flee to Malaysia are classified as undocumented. The number of undocumented migrants in Malaysia has swelled to between 2 and 4 million as the country’s economic growth has spurred increased demand for workers in the construction, manufacturing, fishing and service industries.

In 2009, the Malaysian government arrested 26,545 individuals for illegal entry into the country. The autonomy of the Malaysian police, immigration, and enforcement agencies has resulted in extensive abuses during the arrest operations of refugees. Instances of physical and verbal abuses, as well as monetary demands, are commonly reported, regardless of which agency is administering the arrest. The agencies are also able to determine procedures that follow after an arrest.

While Malaysian law requires that all individuals be brought to court, many are immediately brought to one of Malaysia’s Immigration Detention Centers (IDCs). Forgoing the legal process makes it more difficult for the UNHCR and refugee community organizations to track and help individuals who are arrested. If a refugee is brought before a court, they are usually charged and found guilty of illegal entry and unlawful presence in Malaysia under the 1959/63 Immigration Act. This offense is punishable by a sentence of up to, but not exceeding, five years of imprisonment, six strokes of cane, and a fine of 10,000 MYR ($3,300 USD). In June 2009 the Malaysian government announced that they had sentenced 47,914 migrants—including both men and women—to be caned since the amendments took effect in 2002.

PROLONGED DETENTIONS, DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES

Malaysia’s immigration policy uses the fear of arrest, detention, and deportation as a deterrent to undocumented migration. The biggest fear for refugees in Malaysia is a prolonged sentence of detention in one of Malaysia’s seventeen Immigration Detention Centers.

Until 2009, detainees were commonly trafficked to the Thai–Malay border, where they were either sold to human traffickers in Thailand or had to buy their freedom for 1,200–1,800 Malaysian rinngits ($400–600 USD). But after international criticism escalated, including the release of a report by the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, trafficking practices have decreased. Unfortunately, this has led to an increase in lengths of detention to an average of six months, as well as greater overcrowding of IDCs.

Increased detention in substandard conditions has led to more deaths in detention centers. In 2009, it was reported that around 1,300 migrants and refugees had died while detained in IDCs since 2006.

The deaths of detainees in IDCs are directly linked to overcrowding, lack of medical access, and inadequate standards of accommodation, nutrition, and cleanliness. The duration of detention varies according to the ability of the UNHCR to interview and identify individuals who may be considered refugees. The more refugees are detained in IDCs, the harder it becomes for the UNHCR to conduct interviews quickly. In July 2009, there were 2,765 Burmese nationals held in Malaysian IDCs. For almost all of these individuals, the UNHCR offers their only hope of release.

REFUGEE COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS

Refugees in Malaysia are not allowed to work legally, travel freely or obtain access to healthcare and education. The UNHCR helps those who are registered under its protection in some of these regards, but for the other 200,000–500,000 refugees there is little they can do. Filling this void are a number of refugee community organizations that provide shelter, education, health access, and a loose network of employment. The organizations are divided along ethnic lines, with each ethnic group having one or more representative organizations, but most—with the exception of the Rohingya—are unified in the Coalition of Burmese Ethnics in Malaysia (COBEM). The refugee organizations are almost entirely self-sufficient and funded by the communities themselves.

By virtue of these organizations’ existence, thousands of refugees have been resettled to third countries, and and thousands more have been able to survive in a country which deprives them of many human rights.

During 2009 and 2010, James Meisenheimer worked closely with the Arakan refugee community in Malaysia, documenting abuses and helping find legal assistance for refugees detained in Immigration Detention Centers.

 

XV. EDITOR’S NOTE FROM LAW EH SOE’S STORY

Law Eh Soe’s story raises larger questions and concerns about freedom of the press in Burma. Reporters Without Borders ranked Burma 171st out of 175 nations in their latest worldwide press freedom index, and reported that there are currently twelve journalists imprisoned in Burma. Freedom House gave Burma and North Korea the two worst ratings in their report “Freedom of the Press 2010,” and wrote of the ten worst-rated countries: “In these states, which are scattered around the globe, independent media are either nonexistent or barely able to operate. The press acts as a mouthpiece for the regime, citizens’ access to unbiased information is severely limited, and dissent is crushed through imprisonment, torture, and other forms of repression.” The report also stated that “the Burmese junta was continuing to monitor internet cafes and that at least seventeen journalists were arrested and imprisoned by the end of last year [2009].” The military-run Press Scrutiny Board wields a heavy hand in censoring all publications, creating an environment in which many journalists censor themselves.

 

XVI. LEARN MORE ABOUT BURMA

NON-FICTION

—Christina Fink, Living Silence: Burma Under Military Rule

—Pascal Khoo Thwe, From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey

—Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear

—Emma Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma

—Bertil Lintner, Burma in Revolt: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948

—Thant Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma

—James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed

—Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity

—David Steinberg, Burma / Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know

—Sean Turnell, Fiery Dragons: Banks, Money Lenders and Microfinance in Burma

FICTION

—Amitav Ghosh, The Glass Palace

—George Orwell, Burmese Days

BURMESE LANGUAGE

Burmese By Ear by John Okell, the world’s leading Burma language instructor, course available for free download: http://www.soas.ac.uk/bbe/