Political work for Burma in Mae Sot, Part 2

http://www.vanderbilt.edu/travelfellowship/stephanie/?p=55

Posted by stephanie on Nov 4th, 2008 2008
Nov 4
I also had the opportunity to meet with the Members of Parliament Union (MPU) in Mae Sot. The MPU is composed of members of the 1990 government elected in Burma that are now living in exile. Members are from the NLD, ethnic-based political parties, and independent MPs. It was an incredible experience to sit in a room full of elected government officials who are being denied their rightful place in government, but who are working tirelessly to rectify this situation so that they can take over from the destructive military junta and restore the country that they all love and hope to return to. Many people in the room personally lived with Aung San Suu Kyi in the 90s when she was released from house arrest before being put under house arrest again. I was so fortunate to have been able to meet with them, and they are more than happy to share their stories and opinions so that more of the world may know what is happening in Burma.


The MPU works on monitoring the political situation in Burma and lobbying the international community to put pressure on the military junta. They lobby organizations such as the UN, EU, and ASEAN. However, the MPU and other organizations lobbying for Burma face challenges when trying to turn to the UN because Russia and China both have veto powers in the Security Council, and for China in particular, it gives enormous financial and moral support to the military junta in Burma because of Burma’s vast natural resources. It is sad that an organization founded on the principles of human rights, supposed to represent the best ideals of humanity, is an ineffective organization in stopping any of these abuses around the world. I cannot imagine the endless frustration of going to these organizations to try to get them to do something, with a majority of the countries of the world behind you, only to have your measures vetoed because of one or two nations. However, the people of the MPU and the other organizations continue to do it because they believe in the peaceful resolution of the situation in Burma, and that change will one day come. To the members of the MPU, they believe that the greatest freedom is political freedom, because from this freedom stems other freedoms. Without political freedom, they feel there can be no economic freedom, and without economic freedom there can be no sustainable, peaceful development.

Finally, I also visited the Burma Lawyers’ Council (BLC—www. blc-burma.org). The mission statement of the BLC is “By vigorously opposing all unjust and oppressive laws, and by helping restore the principle of the Rule of Law, the Burma Lawyers’ Council aims to contribute to the transformation of Burma where all the citizens enjoy the equal protection of law under the democratic federal constitution which will guarantee fundamentals of human rights.” The objectives of the BLC are to “promote and assist in the educating, implementing, restoring, and improving basic human rights, democratic rights, and the rule of law in Burma; assist in the drafting and implementing a constitution for Burma, and in associated matters of legal education; and participate and cooperate in the emergence of a Civil Society in Burma.” The BLC mainly works with Burmese migrant populations in Thailand, a doubly oppressed group that has had to flee their homeland in order to save their lives, but once they come to Thailand are often exploited by employers and have their rights stripped away once more. The migrant workers know that they are having many of their rights violated in Thailand, but they need the money to send back to their families. The BLC works to use the law and reform the law to bring change to Burma. I talked to the public relations representative for the organization who was a professor of botany at a university in Burma before fleeing Burma four years ago because it was no longer safe for him. He was telling me that before he arrived in Thailand, he had no knowledge of rights per se. However, he did know the difference between right and wrong, a distinction that if more people were able to make, we wouldn’t have these abuses and violations of each other, not only in Burma, but everywhere in the world.