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Posts tagged ‘Kachin people’

Aug 28

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Playing it fair, or remaining a bully

Life should be a little more fair for people like her.

Having had kids for a while, I have learned some things. One of them is that you have to play fair. There are rules to all games, and if somebody breaks them, he or she cannot be trusted. And kids don’t want to play with the ones who don’t play by the rules. I think this is pretty straight forward. 

Unless you live in Burma. 

Like so many you too may think that things are moving forward at the pace of success in Burma now. The reports I have been getting the last few days are anything but good. In some ways it is worse now than ever.

Because while villages are starving in Karen State because their rice crops have failed again, nobody knows. (We have received requests to help with food/rice for 3620 starving people)

While thousands of Kachin refugees who had to flee to China due to the heavy fighting in their villages are forced back to their villages where the fighting still continues, nobody seems to take notice. Read more here. (Again, Partners staff is there doing what we can to help. We have been able to provide food and shelter among much more.)

While soldiers are shooting at civilians in Karen and Shan State, although there supposedly is a ceasefire agreement in place, the media is suspiciously quiet.(This has been communicated with us by the Free Burma Rangers, but the report is still not available online)

While young girls are forced into prostitution because their families’ land has been confiscated by big international companies governments just continue their investments to “help develop” Burma.(Again, there are no official news about this, so you just will have to trust me and our staff who have been in the areas and seen the situation for themselves. They have interviewed and documented.)

While thousands are killed and forced to flee in Arakan state, the government of Burma is sadly passive, and the world don’t seem to care about a people who has nowhere to go. Read the report that my friend, Matt, wrote here.

You think I am just making this up? I wish that was the case, but I am not. This is all happening right now, as we speak. While countries are excitedly moving into Burma to get their piece of the cake. Follow the links I have given you, and comment, share and spread the word. 

Also, pray for and give to Partners who is trying to do our best to help in this mess. 

Got to go now. I need to figure out what more I can do…

 

May 13

Mothers carry the world

As we celebrate Mother’s Day in many parts of the world today, our thoughts and prayers turn to the thousands of moms who have been displaced from their homes in Burma, struggling to care for their babes every day in IDP and refugee camps. We honor these moms and say a special prayer for each one! To help their plight, give at Partners website

 

May 11

Thoughts around scones

Today I got up, made some scones for my family (I had forgotten to buy bread yesterday, and in this country one does not eat breakfast if one has no bread.)

So I made if from flour I had in my shelves, some dark and some white. I put it in my oven when the temperature was right and waited for the timer to go off. We ate them fresh and warm with butter, cheese and marmalade.

There is still more food in my fridge.

I am planning on eating lunch, dinner and probably a snack too.

There is even food in my freezer if I need some more.

And it is likely I will go to the store today because we are out of yogurt and green apples.

Now I am by my desk doing my work (which can be compared to racket ball. My job is the ball, bouncing all over the place, and to many it looks like it is bouncing randomly too. But there is a plan and there is a strategy. Only thing is I may be the only one who knows what it it. Well, enough of that.)

So here at my desk I read about children in Burma being malnourished and sick. I read about charities who have dropped their support to the ethnic areas of Burma, because, presumably, there is peace now. The thing is that just because peace agreements have been signed, it does not mean that people all of a sudden have food. Also, even if  nobody is shooting you in your village, there are still no schools. It may be that the soldiers in the area will not rape the young girls (truth is, though, that in many places they still are), but there are still no medical facilities.

Kachin State. Photo by Leah, Partners Relief & Development

And then, don’t forget: In many places the same violence is still going on. The thing is that it is so far away that the news media and the investment-hungry companies don’t see it. In Kachin State, for example.

So, today, while drinking my coffee and enjoying my life in freedom and abundance, I want to send a note of thanks to my friends at Partners Relief & Development who still work as hard as ever to give food, medicine, education, love, hope and dignity to the people of Burma. And I was wondering: Perhaps you would want to join us? If you still have some food in your fridge you are richer than the kids I read about today. So why not share? Watch this movie and then make up your mind!

Have a happy weekend. :-)

May 10

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How do you rate your happiness?

Happiness in a refugee camp in Kachin State, Burma. Photo by Leah.

Some weeks ago, while I was in Rangoon, Burma, I had dinner with two people from Kachin State. While feasting on yummy Kachin food, the lady, Grace, talked about her dreams and fears for the future. 

She has grown up in one of the world’s poorest, and most oppressed nations. She is from an ethnic minority that has been discriminated greatly. Now we were talking about the changes coming to the nation and how that will affect the normal people on the grass roots. 

Grace was worried about the greed she saw—in her own people, and in the thousands who are waiting to start investing in the international community.

“You know, I am not so sure that we want to increase our Gross National Product (GNP),” she said. “Are we so sure we will be happier if we are richer?” 

She continued: “I would like it like it is in Bhutan. They don’t have GNP there. They have GNH? Do you know what that stands for? Gross National Happiness.” (I have no idea if this is true or not. I have not bothered to check because I like the idea so much that I will be disappointed if it is not true.)

“And isn’t it so much better to measure people’s happiness instead of how much money they have? Wealth is not always what makes people happy.”

Said she. Who has been poor her whole life, and who now was looking at the prospect of more wealth. She had understood something very valuable. I hope her country listens to her. And that the rest of the world will too.

Apr 14

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To be rekindled and to rekindle

“At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.”

Albert Schweitzer said that, and I recently read it on a blog I frequently read, ordinary courage. I like the quote because my light goes out from time to time. And then somebody comes along and adds a small spark to my dying flame, and, swoosh, I am aflame again.

There are many such people in my life. I can’t even start mentioning all of them, because there are so many, and knowing me, I will leave some out.

My kids are my biggest source of light. They rekindle me. To be fair, I have to admit that there are times they blow my fire right out too. Here we are getting lots of sparks on the beach.

My kids rekindle me all the time. Today, as I rushed off with Elise to a sleepover I felt a bit like a chewed toy. I was in my sweats, my hair had seen better days. I had not showered and I had worked out. I had made breakfast for five teens, and I had not slept much last night. The house looked like tornado Olga had hit it. There was no more milk in the house and I could not stop thinking of unpaid bills.

“You look so pretty in red lipstick,” said Elise. It was all I needed to hear to feel better. She did not point out the obvious, like the fact that I had worn the same sweats for a few days or that the car looked like somebody had used it to live in. She just said something really nice.

Albert S encourages us to think with gratitude of those who have lighted the flame in us. I agree. But I would like to add: Think about somebody who needs their flame rekindled today and be the spark that they need!

 

 

Apr 5

To be brave like chicken droppings

My courage necklace is a rod and a carrot

I have been thinking about what courage is. I want to be a courageous woman, but so often I am not. I am brave, but I am chicken shit, like Alanis Morisette says in her song Hand in my pocket. Around my neck I carry a simple silver necklace that Steve got me for my last birthday. It says: Courage. I like wearing it as a reminder to not give up and to not let fear guide me. Then there are the days when the necklace seems more like a joke. Like: Courage? Ha!

I want to be courageous. I am also fascinated with people who have shown great courage. Then I don’t think of top-level athletes who live in constant climate control, who get a diet planned just for them, who earn millions for their skills, and who have teams dedicated to serving them and making them excel. I think more along the lines of the ones who have all the odds against them, but still don’t give up.

I have met and been inspired by many such people over the years. Most of them I have met in Burma, or in the refugee camps:

  • The many men and women who have fought for their right to live for more than sixty years without giving up. 
  • The handful of women I met in Kachin State, Northern Burma, who is fighting a whole army (the Burma Army) by helping and sustaining the civilians who are on the run. 
  • The people I met in Rangoon recently who had risked their lives and freedom to speak against the regime, and many of them ended up in prison for doing so.

That kind of guts takes courage. None of them would have done what they did without a very solid portion of selfless fearlessness.

I have met courage other places as well. In Mother Teresa and in Nelson Mandela, in my mom and in my friends who are foster parents for a mentally challenged teenager. I have seen it in the dad who takes his adult autistic daughter for a walk in the neighborhood every day, no matter what the weather. I have seen it in cancer patients who let us see their head with no hair. I have seen it in teenagers who dare to be different, and in adults that don’t conform to the establishment, unless the establishment is doing something right.

I feel like a wimp compared to these. I feel like my courage muscles are so small I look like a stick man (woman). I feel like the necklace I wear is indeed a joke. I call it courage when I jump into the cold ocean on a chill summer day. Or when I say no to ice cream when everybody else is having some.

One needs to start somewhere to help the courage muscles grow. (Photo by: http://www.productiveflourishing.com/12-ways-to-practice-courage/)

But I guess one can get a little courage at the time. If one starts by doing small courageous things, then one will work the muscles so that they get a little stronger. And little by little they will be worked up the size of—not exactly Aung San Suu Kyi or Martin Luther King Jr.—but maybe as big as our elementary school teacher whom we adored so much when we were small because she saw a star in each one of us, or as big as a neighbor who reaches out to refugees or single moms.

The biggest hindrance to my courage, I have realized, is my own fear. My fear of not making it, my fear of losing control, my fear of what others may think. Fear has held me back from reaching the potential I have to change the world a little. Fear keeps me from speaking up against injustice. Fear keeps me from taking the side of those who are weak. Fear keeps me from sharing my belongings. Fear keeps me from getting close to somebody who may hurt me.

So as I am contemplating courage, I will also try to say No to the fear that is lurking.

I read this cool quote today, and I thought it was a good inspirational quote in my quest for courage:

Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.  Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle.The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours.    (Ayn Rand)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jan 12

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Words cannot express all

We are healthy because we eat a lot of vegetables

This is Rev. John Maw (Not his real name). He is 78. His wife is Pah Luu (Not her real name). She is 72.  They live in an abandoned cement building together with a few hundred others who recently fled their villages.

“We did not want to leave our village,” Rev. John says. “We love our home in the mountains and we have lived in the same village since 1965.”

“But we didn’t have a choice. We had to leave when the army started attacking us and using chemical weapons. It is not good for children and pregnant women when there are chemical weapons in the area. We are very sad that we had to leave our village.”

Rev. John has lived a long, eventful and sad life. He shares:

“From 1958 and many years I was a missionary. I was a missionary to Nagaland in India. After that we moved to our village that we just left. We had nine children together. Four of them died and we have five left now. This is what happened to my children:

In 1964 we had to flee from the army. We fled into the jungle without any food. My daughter died there because she had nothing to eat and she died from malnutrition.

In 1978 another one of my daughters got killed when a bomb exploded next to her.

I lost two of my sons too. Both of them were forced to porter for the Burma Army and they got sick and weak from the hard work and lack of food and rest. They had to porter so many times that they got sick and died. One died in 1977 and the other one died later.

I remember fleeing into the jungle many times. When we flee we have nothing to eat. I remember eating grass sometimes. It was the only thing we could find.”

Rev John and his wife Pah Luu are both sitting on the elevated board in the room they have been given. The room that is going to serve as their home now. They remind me of eagles that I have sometimes seen in cages in zoos. They are prisoners. They want to fly, but their wings have been chopped.

Entering into another kind of life. A life in captivity.

“You look so strong and healthy,” I comment. “We are,” they reply. “The reason we are healthy is that we eat mostly vegetables and very little meat, and we live on the mountain where we get fresh air all the time.”  I feel a sadness coming over me as I wonder if they will ever be able to return to their village and if the village is even there any more.

“I cannot express in words how I feel about our government,” sighs Rev. John. “They say they are our government, but they do such horrible things to their people. We suffer because of them. They oppress anybody that does not agree with them. The government we have now may have changed their uniforms, but they have not changed anything on the inside.”

As we walk out from the dimly lit room and into the darkness of the night I can’t shake my feeling of sadness. They are 78 and 72 years old. What kind of government makes old people run away from the homes they have lived in for more than 45 years, forcing them into an abandoned building that has more in common with a prison than a home. What government drops bombs on their own people, killing some, injuring others, and scaring the rest? It is the same government the world is getting ready to do business with, invest in, and commend for it’s good behavior. The world should visit Rev John in his dark and oppressive room.

Dec 22

4 Comments

We can not joy in Christmas Eve

I am so sad today.

It’s been weeks of frantic bustle. Getting ready for Christmas in Norway is not for the weak. In my business I have forgotten the meaning of Christmas. This, I am sure, is not a problem that only I have. How many of us stop and really ask ourself what is the meaning of Christmas? Oh, it wasn’t emptying our bank accounts in order to get meaningless stuff for our kids and family? Oh, it wasn’t to stuff ourselves with more food than our bodies can digest in a healthy manner. So if that is not it, then what is the meaning of Christmas?

Some Kachin children we met last month. What will Christmas be like for them this year? (photo by Leah, Partners)

The first thing I read this morning was an email from a dear, dear lady that I just met a month ago in Kachin State. She wrote:

We can not joy in Christmas eve, we are being busy and everyday we just got bad news. 
” I called Klara Lee (name changed) yesterday morning in phone. And I said Klara Lee” hello Klara Lee bad morning instead of I should say good morning. Because everyday I heard bad news. Yesterday, When I’d got up at 5:00 am, one of our staff called me to come ‘our’ clinics urgently. When I arrived to clinic, I saw one women who has four little children died already, She died after she gave birth, her baby also died. We did funeral services for her and her baby yesterday. She is refugee from Loi Kang, norther shan state. She has heart attack and got shock when she notice that her baby was not alive eventhoug nurse did not tell her. 

We are full of sorrow even in the ‘Christmas’ time. 

There are four orphans who just lost their mom and baby brother or sister for Christmas. They already lost their home, their school, their carefree lives in the village in the mountain. They are living in a temporary refugee camp that is under the threat of attacks from the Burma Army.What kind of Christmas are they going to have this year?

I have contacted my friend and told her I want to help the orphans as well as some of the other kids they have told me about who have urgent medical needs. I think I want to spend less on stuff we don’t need, and more on giving life to the ones who are afraid they will lose theirs.

I don’t do this often, but I will just this once: Do you want to help me? The four orphans will need longterm care. There are children who need surgeries that the parents can’t afford. There are families who have nothing to eat. There are siblings who are huddling together under one thin blanket, unable to keep warm in the cold nights of winter. They all need help.

This baby has a lung condition and needs medical help. (Photo by Leah, Partners)

If you want to help, go to our website and follow the instructions for how to give a donation. Make sure to specify if you want the help to go to the orphans, to sick children, or to the Kachin relief in general. Here is the link

OK, I am off to tell my kids about the four orphans. If I am lucky they haven’t spent all their allowance and they can give their contribution too.

Merry Christmas.

Dec 21

1 Comment

This world is messed up

My problem is that so much is happening all the time that I can’t find the time to write blogs. In my head I am blogging all the time. The problem is that I am the only one reading those brain blogs.

There is a butter crisis in Norway. There is no butter here and people are getting into fights about butter, others are selling the yellow stuff for way too much money on the black market. Some people are complaining that Norwegians are deprived. The government is not able to feed us. I want to send those butter-loving spoiled brats to a refugee camp!  The war is still going on in Burma, despite what the media and the nation’s leaders try to tell you. They teach sex for teenagers in national TV, during the time of day when families with young kids watch TV. They say sex has nothing to do with love. You are not allowed to wear a Santa’s hat at one school because the principal said it discriminates the children of different faiths. You certainly cannot talk about the birth of Jesus in public settings because that is very offensive and totally intolerant. People are on a low carb diet which means eating lots of butter and bacon and skipping the bread and porridge. Kids get free computers at school and feel violated when the teacher is able to watch what sites they surf during classes. The kids in Kachin state have to go to school in a run-down storage building and have no paper to write on. The world is discussing climate change, but none is willing to make lifestyle changes. The polar bears are dying.

The world’s worst dictator died. He has the lives and deaths of millions on his conscience and is responsible for unimaginable terror. People are falling over on sidewalks, crying for their great leader. Vaclav Havel died. A year ago I was in his office and marveled at his cool style in interior decorating. One of the world’s greatest leaders is gone. It is almost Christmas and my daughter says she doesn’t know if she believes in Jesus. It is almost Christmas and I spend more time shopping for gifts, baking, cleaning and stressing than time contemplating His birth and the circumstances around it.

What a messed up world we live in! How weird humans are, giving all our energies to trifles and forgetting about the essentials.

Nov 11

8 Comments

The World’s Burmese Daze

Photo by Kris Ryan. This photo was taken in a refugee camp in Burma where the political changes are not noticed.

For the first time in my life, my name has been in the Wall Street Journal. If only my grandmother had been alive to see that!

It was an article that I wrote that was pretty bad to begin with, then my friend Matt fixed it, then I added some more, then he fixed it some more, then the editor of the WSJ also edited it a bit. It was a team effort in the grandest sense of the word! The main thing, however, is not who wrote it, but that the plight of the Kachin and others in Burma can become better known. 

The Wall Street Journal wants people to pay to read their stuff. (Perhaps it has something to do with having to pay their staff) so it seems like most my friends are not able to download the full article for free. You can of course try here If you can’t open it, this is the article: 

Burma is closer than ever to winning its bid to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this week after supportive comments by Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa. Mr. Natalegawa says Asean members feel “positive” about the bid and many are impressed by the “trajectory of positive developments” in the authoritarian country.

Political liberalization is a positive sign, but Asean must weigh it carefully against credible reports of increasing human rights abuses in ethnic minority areas. Asean sends the wrong message by rewarding Burma while its army engages in widespread rape and murder.

A year ago this week Burma held its first elections in two decades, and recent political developments under President Thein Sein’s new semi-civilian government have been met with robust international praise. While there is an understandable optimism in lowland Burma, something entirely different has been happening in highland ethnic areas. There, civilians in the midst of an ongoing civil war face abuse from the brutal Burma Army , while humanitarian aid is insufficient.

On June 9, just three months after the new government formed, conflict resumed between the Burma Army and the non-state (ethnic) Kachin Independence Army in Northern Burma, ending 17 years of ceasefire. Prior to the conflict, a building tension in the area can be attributed to a controversial, State controlled, hydropower project being built in an area of mixed administration as well as the KIA’s unwillingness to surrender their arms and assimilate into a State controlled Border Guard Force (BGF).

Ethnic Kachin civilians numbering 30,000 are not only getting caught in the crossfire as they flee attacks by the Burmese forces, their rights are also being systematically violated.

The civilian toll from the conflict has been documented by Partners Relief and Development, which has staff operating clandestinely in Kachin State. Witnesses have explained how Burma Army soldiers arrived in their villages, opened fire on civilians, robbed and looted their properties and destroyed medicines. In one report, ethnic villagers from eight locations described how at least 80 local civilians were recently arrested without charges and—having not returned—are feared dead.

Credible reports from Partners document a strong sexual element in the violence. Numerous reports of rape and sexual assault by the Burma Army have emerged from Kachin State since June. Partners witnesses have seen soldiers hanging condoms in the trees surrounding Kachin villages, sending a clear message to local women that there is a sadistic sexual tone to their military domination.

The army has also failed its legal obligation to ensure the health of wounded citizens and prisoners of war. On Oct. 8, a bomb exploded near the home of 15-year-old Lahpai Kai Ra, an ethnic Kachin girl from Shwigu District in Kachin State. She suffered an injury to her leg, but Burma Army soldiers still forced her to walk to a local church along with her grandmother and five other women, where about 50 Burmese soldiers were waiting for them. In total, 33 civilian women and children were held captive under armed guard for three days. Fearing for their lives, they escaped to the jungle. Due to infections stemming from improper treatment, Lahpai Kai Ra’s leg will most likely have to be amputated.

While the Burma Army continues to neglect its duty to protect civilians, it has ramped up its use of popular torture techniques, sparing no one. In one village, soldiers put a plastic bag over a 15-year old boy’s head and waterboarded him in an attempt to find out if his father was affiliated with the KIA.

Instead of responding to these abuses, Burmese authorities are not allowing humanitarian aid to reach the 20,000 internally displaced Kachin who fled their villages to take refuge in remote jungle camps. Despite a shortage of food, water, medicine and proper sanitation in these camps, the United Nations and other relief agencies are not authorized to provide aid. Agencies instead have to resort to clandestine operations.

There is no lack of information about the situation in Kachin. Well-publicized reports from Human Rights Watch and others have steadily emerged since June. In his September report to the U.N. General Assembly, Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Burma, referred to the plight of the displaced Kachin populations as “perilous.”

Yet the international community remains fixated on high-level political changes in the capital. Repeated calls by the U.N. special rapporteur for a U.N.-mandated Commission of Inquiry into crimes against humanity and war crimes in Burma has fallen on deaf ears. Only 16 U.N. member-nations have expressed support for the proposal.

If Asean wants to support the people of Burma, it should acknowledge that any positive political changes in lowland Burma coexist with a rapid increase in severe abuses in Burma’s ethnic areas. Meaningful political and legal reforms in the country deserve support, but they cannot come at the expense of parallel practical efforts to end abuses and hold perpetrators accountable, including a formal commission of inquiry.  Before that happens, the chair of Asean is a reward Burma does not deserve.

Mrs. Gumaer is the International Advocacy Officer and a founder at Partners Relief and Development, a non-governmental organization. Partners works with communities impacted by war in Burma and has staff in the conflict zones in Kachin State.

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