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Honoring Burmese women for democr
- Subject: Honoring Burmese women for democr
- From: moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 21 Jun 1999 13:44:00
Subject: Honoring Burmese women for democracy struggle
Published Sunday, June 20, 1999, in the San Jose Mercury News
,FLO
DENNIS ROCKSTROH
Honoring Burmese women for
democracy struggle
BY DENNIS ROCKSTROH
Mercury News Staff Columnist
TODAY is Father's Day, but in a corner of Fremont's
Central Park,
the tribute will go to women.
And, amid the honors and hors d'oeuvres, those
celebrating may even
speak of unpleasantries -- such as the thug
government that keeps them
in exile.
The world shudders at the horrors of the homeland.
The European
Parliament said that what is going on is ``a crime
against humanity.''
The Parliament condemned forced labor, ``massacres
and ethnic
cleansing and the destruction of food.''
Yugoslavia?
Nope -- Burma, a.k.a. Myanmar.
Without a lot of fanfare, Burmese exiles have been
escaping to the
United States over the past three decades. There are
an estimated
10,000 in the Bay Area and similar numbers in New
York, Chicago and
Los Angeles.
The Burmese are a deeply religious people, and there
are four Burmese
monasteries here: in Boulder Creek, Half Moon Bay,
San Jose and
Fremont.
The Burmese community will gather at 10 a.m. today to
honor all
Burmese women, but Aung San Suu Kyi in particular.
Suu Kyi is the national symbol of the democracy
struggle against the
military junta that runs Burma as a really mean
private club.
Suu Kyi is the daughter of Burma's national hero,
Gen. Aung San, who
helped win independence from Great Britain and was
assassinated in
1947. In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma from exile
to nurse her ill
mother. While she was there, a national uprising
against military rule
erupted. She emerged as the movement's leader. The
military crushed
the uprising, but in 1990 her party, the National
League for Democracy,
won a national election by a landslide.
The generals refused to recognize the election.
Even so, Suu Kyi has struggled to lead Burma to
change, employing
non-violent means. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize.
Still, the situation in Burma receives little
attention. And the Burmese
here lead quiet, almost unnoticed lives.
``Quite a few people tell me, `You're the first
Burmese I've ever met,' ''
said Robert Aung Myint, a member of the Burma
Association and a
retired U.S. Air Force technician. ``We are here and
would like
Americans to know that atrocities and ethnic
cleansing are not just
taking place in Kosovo.''
Myint said it is difficult to raise the ire of
Burmese back home. They
are overwhelmingly Buddhist and tend to tolerate
hardship.
Especially with a thug government.
``The Burmese are a docile people,'' he said. ``If
they demonstrate, the
military shoots 30 or 40 of them, and the rest are
scared.''
The world community continues to pressure Burma to
reform.
``Instead of yielding power, the military has abused
it, denying the
people of Burma not only democracy but virtually any
free expression
of political and other basic human rights,'' U.S.
Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright said in a radio address over Radio
Free Asia in
May.
``They have placed more than 150 democratically
elected members of
parliament under arrest,'' Albright said. ``. . . The
people of Burma are
paying a terrible price for the arrogance and
brutality of their leaders.''
Earlier this year, the U.S Embassy in neighboring
Thailand issued a
statement that read in part: ``Over the last eight
years, Amnesty
International has well-documented evidence of a
pattern of forced
portering, ill treatment and unlawful killing of
unarmed civilians during
counter-insurgency operations by the Burmese army
against ethnic
minority groups.''
The Thailand Times reported earlier this year that
more than 100,000
Burmese, the majority of them ethnic minorities, had
fled across the
border in recent weeks after a severe military
crackdown.
Engineer Richard Aung Myint, Robert's older brother,
said that although
the potluck celebration from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the
park near the
senior center is for fun, it is also a political
statement.
It is an unusual gathering for another reason.
``Religion is a big part of our culture,'' Robert
Aung Myint said. ``That's
the reason for most Burmese gatherings.''
And that, he said, leads to the principal Burmese
outlook on life: ``Live
peacefully in the world and with all living things.''