‘Everyone Wants Change in Burma’: Village Chief

If the villagers want you to be the chief, then you have to be the chief

U Than Nyunt grew up in a village near Belin in Mon State with his parents and four siblings. When he was nine years old his mother sent him to school, and he got a chance to attend until he was 15 years old.

At that time going to school cost a lot of money and my parents had to pay for everything… When I finished 6th standard my parents couldn’t afford to pay me to go to school anymore. I wanted to study but I couldn’t. So I worked in my family farm for the next three years.

While living in his village, U Than Nyunt also got married and had four children. Life in the village was getting increasingly difficult as Burmese military began employing Four Cuts policy, often visiting the village and abusing the villagers.

Four Cuts was hardly a good time to be chosen to be a chief. Village chiefs had to encounter extremely challenging situations, negotiating with Burmese soldiers and trying to keep the villagers united and safe while also trying to fulfill Burmese soldiers’ unreasonable and dangerous requests. When asked whether one has to become a chief if one is asked to be one, U Than Nyunt says: If the villagers want you to be the chief, then you have to be the chief. It’s not about people asking you, it’s about the villagers wanting you to be the chief. Then you really need to do it.

While U Than Nyunt was the chief, the Burmese military came to his village very often and tortured the villagers.

Every time the Burmese military came, they asked me to get porters for them. Sometimes they wanted to eat something and I had to arrange a pig or chicken for the troops. Because I was the chief I had to do this.

In order to get porters, U Than Nyunt frequently held unpleasant meetings with the villagers, explaining them the situation and asking for help.

The villagers understood the situation, they all tried to work together and were prepared to help and go to porter for the Burmese military. The villagers understood the situation and they helped. Everyone worked together.

U Than Nyunt explained that when the Burmese military needed porters, they took women if no men were available. He was well aware of the atrocities that women porters faced.

When women go to be porters the soldiers torture them and rape them at night…That happened especially when Manerplaw fell, they used a lot of Karen girls as porters and they tortured and raped them… Burmese soldiers don’t care about anyone, they have no sympathy. They only know how to torture, abuse and oppress people.

U Than Nyunt added that only the Burmese military did this, not other armed groups.

 

It is better for women to be chiefs because the

[Burmese] soldiers don’t treat women chiefs as badly… But, many women chiefs have also been tortured

For nine months, U Than Nyunt did everything he could to cope with the demands of the Burmese military. Many villagers in and around their village were already fleeing as the situation was becoming increasingly unbearable and threatening.

At the time of Four Cuts policy Burmese troops came to the village one battalion after another. Every time they came they asked the villagers to be porters and every time they took some people with them. They were also torturing the villagers a lot.

U Than Nyunt said that sometimes there were no people left to porter but that wouldn’t stop the soldiers from demanding them. One day, Burma Army came and asked U Than Nyunt to give them 30 porters. He couldn’t get them because other troops had already taken so many porters. Some people were also attending to their farms but the soldiers couldn’t wait for their return in the evening.

I couldn’t find 30 villagers so the Burmese soldiers got angry and hit me four times. I got angry and didn’t want to stay there anymore. That was midday, in the evening I left the village with my family.

U Than Nyunt left his village secretly and didn’t tell anyone that he was planning on leaving. He later heard that as the village was left with no chief it was almost destroyed. U Than Nyunt said that they just couldn’t take the abuse anymore.

It was 2003 when U Than Nyunt left the village and arrived to a KNU (Karen National Union) controlled area on the border, as did thousands of others who had fled abuse.

Because of the Burmese military abuse of villagers, scores of people fled to the border, not only us. People from different places in Burma fled to the border and a lot of them were protected by the KNU.

When U Than Nyunt arrived to the border, there was no village there. As more and more people started arriving, KNU and the villagers began building a village that eventually consisted of about 30 houses as well as a school, a church and a hospital. U Than Nyunt was again appointed the village chief, and it was his responsibility to keep the villagers united and to look after them and the village. For the next five years, U Than Nyunt and almost 200 villagers lived peacefully in their picturesque new home. It was much easier to be the chief on the border; I didn’t have many difficulties being the chief, not compared to being the chief inside Burma.

After U Than Nyunt became the chief on the border, he traveled back to his old village to help them find a new chief.

KNU encouraged me to go back and help the village find a new chief. They knew how important chiefs are for Karen villages and their survival.

U Than Nyunt thus went back and had a secret meeting with the villagers outside his former home village. With village men reluctant to take on the role, they selected a woman to be the new chief.

During the Four Cuts policy a lot of men didn’t want to be chiefs, they wanted to avoid becoming a chief because the Burmese soldiers just want to find trouble with them. It is better for women to be chiefs because the soldiers don’t treat women chiefs as badly as men chiefs…But, many women chiefs have also been tortured.

 

If it is good then it will be good for us together, if it is bad then we suffer together

The peaceful life in the village on the border was abruptly interrupted in 2008 when DKBA (Democratic Karen Buddhist Army) and Burmese military attacked the nearby KNU military base. Many villagers around the area were afraid of fighting and some moved to other villages in Burma while others fled to Thailand. U Than Nyunt said that there used to be many villages on the Burmese side of the river but many of them have now been relocated to the Thai side. U Than Nyunt thinks that KNU didn’t want to fight DKBA as they are also Karen.

When the DKBA came the KNU had to leave. We didn’t know what to do so we fled to the Thai side.  They don’t want to fight them so they left their military camp and moved away. DKBA thus got their land and their camp.

The villagers collected all their belongings, including pigs and chickens and everything they could carry and crossed the river that marks the border between Thailand and Burma.

None of the villagers from their village went to refugee camps. They all went to different places along the border. U Than Nyunt explained that they didn’t go to camps because the camps are far away, and one has to pay for a car to get there. He never even thought about going to a camp.

I wanted to live in a village not in a refugee camp. Whatever refugee camp it is, I don’t want to go there, I want to survive on my own.

After the villagers fled to different directions on the Thailand-Burma border, U Than Nyunt was determined to unite the villagers again.

If it is good then it will be good for us together, if it is bad then we suffer together.

It took me one year to collect all the villagers to live together in a new village on the Thai side of the border… Although they fled to different places in Thailand, one day they came back and that’s how this village was formed.

When they first formed the village on the Thai side of the border, they were helped by a foreigner for one year. Now, they get no outside support and they have to work to earn a living. Most of the villagers work in the nearby towns and villages as daily workers, getting paid 125 baht per day. One bag of rice costs over 800 baht.

While they were living in their village on the Thai side, DKBA lived in the former KNU military base camp. U Than Nyunt says that DKBA didn’t torture the villagers, force them to work, or ask them to be porters. They did, however, destroy the village in order to make a profit. They dismantled the school, the church and all other buildings in the village in order to sell the wood. U Than Nyunt said that DKBA troops stayed at the camp for less than a year. When KNU moved back to the camp a year ago, the villagers decided to move right next to the river and build a new village on the riverbanks on the Thai side.

Whoever it is, whether the soldiers or the villagers, all of them want peaceful and safe lives…Everyone wants change in Burma

U Than Nyunt now has five children, three sons and two daughters. Two of his sons are already married while the other three are still very young. They all live together in the village. The village might be poor but at least they have each other to lean on. The village is also located in a beautiful setting next to sandy riverbanks and green lush mountains of both Burma and Thailand. The villagers were recently able to build a small school for about 20 children where two villagers work as teachers.

I don’t know if things are better in Burma now but I have heard on the radio that the government says it is changing. But a lot of people don’t believe it. I don’t either because I haven’t seen anything change yet.

I have no hope to go back. I want to stay in my village together with my family.

U Than Nyunt explains that the villagers in the village follow him; if he goes back the villagers will come with him but if he stays the villagers will also stay. Although U Than Nyunt says he never wants to go back, he adds that if the situation truly changes, he will go back.

If Burma really changes one day and there is no fear then I will go back to Burma. Whoever it is, whether the soldiers or the villagers, all of them want peaceful and safe lives, they want change in Burma, something better. That’s what they want and hope for. Everyone wants change in Burma.

U Than Nyunt’s story is based on an interview with him in his village in April 2013. Written by Burma Link.