Peaceful Burma (ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာ)平和なビルマ

Peaceful Burma (ျငိမ္းခ်မ္းျမန္မာ)平和なビルマ

TO PEOPLE OF JAPAN



JAPAN YOU ARE NOT ALONE



GANBARE JAPAN



WE ARE WITH YOU



ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ေျပာတဲ့ညီညြတ္ေရး


“ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတာ ဘာလဲ နားလည္ဖုိ႔လုိတယ္။ ဒီေတာ့ကာ ဒီအပုိဒ္ ဒီ၀ါက်မွာ ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတဲ့အေၾကာင္းကုိ သ႐ုပ္ေဖာ္ျပ ထားတယ္။ တူညီေသာအက်ဳိး၊ တူညီေသာအလုပ္၊ တူညီေသာ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ရွိရမယ္။ က်ေနာ္တုိ႔ ညီၫြတ္ေရးဆုိတာ ဘာအတြက္ ညီၫြတ္ရမွာလဲ။ ဘယ္လုိရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္နဲ႔ ညီၫြတ္ရမွာလဲ။ ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ဆုိတာ ရွိရမယ္။

“မတရားမႈတခုမွာ သင္ဟာ ၾကားေနတယ္ဆုိရင္… သင္ဟာ ဖိႏွိပ္သူဘက္က လုိက္ဖုိ႔ ေရြးခ်ယ္လုိက္တာနဲ႔ အတူတူဘဲ”

“If you are neutral in a situation of injustice, you have chosen to side with the oppressor.”
ေတာင္အာဖရိကက ႏိုဘယ္လ္ဆုရွင္ ဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီး ဒက္စ္မြန္တူးတူး

THANK YOU MR. SECRETARY GENERAL

Ban’s visit may not have achieved any visible outcome, but the people of Burma will remember what he promised: "I have come to show the unequivocal shared commitment of the United Nations to the people of Myanmar. I am here today to say: Myanmar – you are not alone."

QUOTES BY UN SECRETARY GENERAL

Without participation of Aung San Suu Kyi, without her being able to campaign freely, and without her NLD party [being able] to establish party offices all throughout the provinces, this [2010] election may not be regarded as credible and legitimate. ­
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon

Where there's political will, there is a way

政治的な意思がある一方、方法がある
စစ္မွန္တဲ့ခိုင္မာတဲ့နိုင္ငံေရးခံယူခ်က္ရိွရင္ႀကိဳးစားမႈရိွရင္ နိုင္ငံေရးအေျဖ
ထြက္ရပ္လမ္းဟာေသခ်ာေပါက္ရိွတယ္
Burmese Translation-Phone Hlaing-fwubc

Thursday, October 29, 2009

'Jungle girl' gives voice to oppressed

'Jungle girl' gives voice to oppressed
Zoya Phan is the face of the Karen people

Peter Goodspeed, National Post Published: Thursday, October 29, 2009

Zoya Phan may be destined to become as famous as Burma's detained opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

The tiny, soft-spoken refugee is rapidly becoming the best known spokeswoman for the Karen people, Burma's second-largest ethnic group.

The author of a best-selling autobiography, Little Daughter, she has been a guest speaker at British political conventions and is a regular panelist on news shows, where she calls for international pressure to topple a military dictatorship that has ruled Burma since 1962.

Journalists and book reviewers describe Ms. Phan, 28, as "an icon of a suffering land" and "the voice of an enslaved nation."

This week she is touring Canada as the guest of Montrealbased Rights & Democracy.

Like Ms. Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burmese independence hero Aung San, Ms. Phan is the daughter of freedom fighters. Her father, Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan, was secretary general of the Karen National Union, before he was assassinated last year at his home in a refugee camp inside Thailand.

"He was my hero, my leader," she says.




"He was humble, a man of principle, committed to human rights and democracy. He was killed because they feared him and what he stood for."

Her mother, a gentle woman who constantly "adopted" needy children, was a former guerrilla who told her children she once killed and skinned a python to feed her platoon.

For most of her childhood Ms. Phan lived an idyllic life in bamboo huts by the banks of the Moei River.

"I was a jungle girl," she says.

Life was simple but harsh. The closest medical clinic was kilometres away and she foraged for food in the forest with her brothers and sister to supplement a diet of rice and fish paste.

But danger lurked in the shadows.

In her book Ms. Phan describes the day she discovered the bloated corpse of a slave labourer floating in the river. A Karen tribesman, forced to act as a porter for the Burmese Army, had been beaten till his back was shredded and thrown into the water.

When she was 14, the war that had raged between the Burmese Army and Karen nationalist guerrillas since 1947 finally caught up to her. Soldiers attacked her village, torched its houses and destroyed crops.

She ran for her life as mortar shells crashed nearby, then spent two years hiding in the jungle with thousands of other displaced people.

Ultimately, they ended up in a refugee camp inside Thailand.

"The camps are like prisons," she says. The Karen are not allowed to leave, to work or to farm. There is little education and food is rationed.

Ms. Phan won a scholarship from a foreign aid agency and went to university in Bangkok and later to the University of East Anglia in Britain.

"I am very lucky," she says. "Many of my friends in Burma and in neighbouring countries have had to work as prostitutes in the sex industries."

After her mother died, and she and her father escaped two separate assassination attempts, she fled to Britain, where she claimed political asylum.

"It was a big shock," she says. "A girl from the jungle stepped into the big city. It was a cultural shock, a language problem, a technology shock. I didn't even know how to use a kettle."

The change had benefits. Ms Phan learned more about Burma.

"Under the military dictatorship the practice was to divide and rule," she says. "The state owns and operates all the news media, and the people of Burma know very little of what is going on in their own country."

"It sounds strange, but I knew almost nothing about Aung San Suu Kyi," she says. "I had heard about her and seen her picture but I didn't know who she really was."

Now, Ms Suu Kyi is her hero. "She's a role model not just for women, but for the people of Burma," she says. "The strongest army in southeast Asia is afraid of her because she represents freedom; freedom of fear; freedom from ethnic cleansing; freedom from rape as a weapon of war ..."

While attending a Free Burma demonstration outside the Burmese embassy three years ago in London, Ms. Phan, dressed in traditional Karen costume, was plucked from the audience to give a speech.

Her eloquence endeared her to the news media and she became an overnight sensation.

She met Gordon Brown, the British Prime Minister, and addressed the British Conservative party's annual conference in 2006 and 2007.

In the absence of Ms. Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest for 14 years, she has become the voice of Burma's opposition movement.

But she says, "I just see myself as a refugee and I just want to go home. I want to see peace in my homeland."

pgoodspeed@national post.com

0 comments: