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selected1 /Shan Declaration 1999...
Subject: selected1 /Shan Declaration 1999.....
(SHORTENED MEDIA VERSION)
January 1, 1999.
SHAN DEMOCRATIC UNION: A SHAN DECLARATION: YEAR 1999
At the dawn of the 21st Century, nations have abandoned the sword, except
in retrogressive regions like "Burma" where brutal barbaric Nazi-like
racists have seized political power at gunpoint. We, the peoples of the
Shan State, do clarify our position in relation to the Burmese State and
her people and their leaders.
The former "Union of Burma" has since 1962 fallen into the hands of
Burmese racial facists in uniform. These racists claim to have kept the
country together, kept the "Union" from being dismembered. They claim to
have restored the Burman race to its glorious imperial past.
Unfortunately, such racist sentiment is shared by some section of the
pro-democracy Burmese elites, in various forms, and to various degrees.
In its mildest, it is one that views the Burman as the most advanced and
is therefore rightfully entrusted with "national leadership", and the
Burman is regarded as a "paternalistic, compassionate Big Brother".
Such sentiments stems from what the Burmese elite's belief Burman
hegemony, established over this "golden land", it is claimed, since time
immemorial. We say that the claimed hoary Burmese hegemony is an
illusion, a sad and pathetic, psychotic delusion.
The "golden age" of the Burman were not golden. All Burmans were lowly,
powerless serfs of a series of despotic kings. There did not exist per se
a Burmese nation. There were, in those days, no sense or fact of
nationhood among the peoples of Southeast Asia.
There did not exist kingdoms in the sense that it is now generally
understood. Those kingdoms were not states, much less national. They were
personal properties of overlords ("greater kings"), "lesser kings",
ruling princes, and fiefholders. In fact, the Burmese "golden age in
history" was created by Western scholars and historians who transposed
their Western past and history to Burma, and generally to Southeast Asia.
Western ideas which followed the colonial flag and trade played a
crucial role in creating a sense of nationhood among the ethnic nations
of Burma. Thus there emerged the notion of a people as nation, with a
right to freedom and national self-determination.
We ask: who then is the Big Brother? Who then are the heirs of "great
empires"? Who exercised hegemony, cultural and political, over this
golden land? Our answer is: NO ONE.
We are all equal. We are all the product of colonial modernization and of
modern ideas and concepts that followed. Our golden age was in fact the
years of the Panglong Conferences, which led to the historic Panglong
Accord of 1947. Those were golden and glorious years because it was at
this time that Burman, Shan, Karen, Kachin, Chin and others -- who did
not know each other, met as brothers.
However, today the land of the Shan has been transformed into a
extermination camp. This is not an exaggeration.
We say this because the power that uniformed Burman Nazi-like racists
wield in our land and over our people is the kind wielded by
Hitlerites-racists over Jewish and other extermination camp inmates.
Uniformed Burmese racists kill on a whim with total callousness and
impunity. They need no reasons to kill, the desire to kill is reason
enough. They rape, murder, pillage and plunder at will. No one is safe.
We, like inmates of Nazi extermination camps are all vulnerable to
"state-sanctioned" inhuman atrocities and killings, dispossed and
displaced. Hundreds upon thousands of Shans are forced into beggary or to
live like hunted animals in the forests and deadly "free-fire" zones
while the world looks on impotently as it did in the years of the Hitler
holocaust.
We know and are aware that the Burmese nation as a whole, do not support
the uniformed brutal racist elements among them. We too understand that
the Burmans are also enslaved. A nation that oppresses another cannot
itself be free. Oppression is not without costs. The price paid by the
Burmese is that they are no longer free. They have, as in the days of
old, of despotic kings, become enslaved.
Thus we share with our Burmese counterparts a common human bond to aspire
to be free, to have dignity and security of person and property, to
possess human and other rights that are guaranteed to all peoples by the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and to be masters of our fate.
We -- as the 21st century dawns -- challenge Burmese leaders and elite to
renounce their delusionary and illusionary claim to leadership and
imperial overlordship overthe "Union of Burma". It is time that our
Burmese counterparts and their leaders and elites clearly recognize that
imperialism is dead.
We declare our cooperation with the Burmese and with our other fraternal
nationalities, to build a free, democratic, and prosperous future. Free
and equal in every way. This is not the time to quibble. It is the time
to revive the 1947 "Spirit of Panglong". Freedom is not negotiatable;
imperialism in any shape or form is absolutely rejected.
Shan Democratic Union
Shanland
January 1999.