Op-Ed
Right Here in Ithaca, Two Voices from Burma
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It’s not everyday that gross human rights abuses overseas are willfully ignored by the American people, as is the case in the ongoing genocide in Darfur. Sometimes, atrocities in foreign lands are so covered up by oppressive regimes that the Western world hardly hears about them. But in the case of Burma, what is happening there has been happening for more than a half century, and the story is available right here in Ithaca. So listen up.
In a nation so embattled that even its proper name is disputed — the U.N. recognizes it as Myanmar, but pro-democracy states like the United States and Great Britain prefer the original Burma — the fight for freedom, in the form of 100,000 protesters led by Buddhist monks, is on the march.
At the same time, the isolationist junta that controls the nation has clamped down on cross-border communications so that we in the West are hearing less and less about the gross human rights abuses within Burma’s borders.
News from Burma is increasingly sporadic, with numbers and figures that “cannot be independently verified.” While we know that soldiers fired on protesters in the main city of Yangon last week, the number of deaths in the crackdown — only nine reported by state television — is estimated to be much higher by exile groups.
One confirmed casualty was Kenji Nagai, a Japanese photographer who was shot while trying to document the protests — a death with both “symbolic and practical importance,” as a New York Times article noted Sunday.
Though the phone lines there have been disconnected, and access to the Internet is extremely limited, we have human sources here in Ithaca who can attest to the situation in Burma.
One is Paw Pah, 28, a Burmese refugee who came to Ithaca in 2004, and now works at Olin Library. When I spoke with Paw on Saturday, he had just returned from Trumansburg, where he had been splitting lumber for the University.
Another is Kyi Gyaw ’09, the daughter of Htun Aung Gyaw, one of the foremost critics of Burma’s current military regime. Kyi is a student in the School of Hotel Administration, and has been living in Ithaca since her sixth birthday.
Though their stories are different in many respects, both Kyi and Paw speak of exile from a dangerous and hostile nation.
Until 1997, Paw and his family lived in a small village three to four hours outside of the city of Tavoy by boat. Each year, Paw said, military soldiers came to persecute his village because they were part of the Karen ethnic minority, many of whom, like Paw and his family, are Christians in the largely Buddhist nation.
“If we stayed there, they would have killed our family,” Paw said, and thus they joined the millions of Burmese who have fled the nation for refuge in neighboring nations like Thailand and India.
For Kyi’s family, too, the imminent threat of death impelled their relocation.
Kyi’s father had been one of the leading students in anti-government demonstrations in the mid-1970s, and in the more recent protests in 1988, became the chairman of the Freedom Fighters for Burma. After the army attempted to capture Mr. Gyaw three times, he fled the country, fearing that like some of his fellow political allies, he would be shot by the junta. His wife, son and young daughter, Kyi, remained behind. In his absence, the government raided the Gway’s house each week, eliminating all photographs of Kyi’s father, and confiscating any mail from him.
Leaving their homes and families behind, both Paw Pah and Htun Aung Gway made their way to the Thai border.
In 1988, Mr. Gway arrived at the border of Thailand, where he formed the All Burma Student Democratic Front, leading 10,000 exiled students under his command. In the jungle, though, he caught malaria, and was captured by the Thai border police. Though the Thai government wanted to send him back to Burma — where by that time there was a death sentence on his head — the U.S. embassy and the philanthropist George Soros arranged for Gyaw’s relocation to the United States.
Nearly a decade later, carrying five of their brothers and sisters too young to walk on their shoulders, Paw’s family marched on foot for a full month to the same border, where they were processed in a refugee camp. Here, with little food or water, Paw estimated that five people died each day.
Soon, Paw linked up with God’s Army, a resistance group led by teenage brothers Johnny and Luther Htoo, rumored by the Karen peoples to have been born with black tongues and bullet-proof powers. Because of his affiliation with the group, Paw was forced to hide in the refugee camp for nearly four months, his whereabouts known only to his mother.
As the situation became untenable, Paw escaped to Bangkok without his family, and as part of a 2004 U.N. refugee program, he was able to enter the United States.
By 1993, Kyi was also able to relocate to Bangkok with her mother and brother, in hopes of reuniting with her father — a man she had not seen in six years. On Oct. 27, 1994, the night of Kyi’s birthday, the Gways were brought together in Ithaca with the help of the United States
“It is an indescribable feeling to explain to someone about how you can love a person so much the first time you see them,” Kyi said. “I didn’t know who my father was for six years, but the moment my father hugged me, I felt a connection with him and loved him without a doubt.”
Paw was able to bring the rest of his family to the United States two years after he arrived, and with the exception of his eldest sister, who had married a man with Thai citizenship, the family moved to Ithaca.
Today, Paw has almost no contact with his home country. He speaks with his sister in Thailand when possible, and the few Burmese people he still knows are all in refugee camps.
“You live in Thailand, not safe. You live in Burma, not safe. Here, it’s better,” he said. Once his English improves, Paw hopes to enroll in college.
Kyi is now a student activist for change in Burma, and she hopes to one day return to a democratized homeland to start her own business. Her father has been interviewed by many major news outlets in the U.S., and continues to rally support for the democratic cause in speeches across the country.
Major forces are at work to silence the protesters in Burma, from the oppressive regime that fires bullets on the peaceful monks to the American news agencies that relegate their stories to the back pages of the newspapers. Still, the voices of those who have escaped are heard — and in due time, perhaps their lessons will be heeded.
Rob Fishman is a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at rbfishman@cornellsun.com. Agree to Disagree appears Tuesdays.