Burma Link | May 30, 2017

Naw Lay Lit Ray Thaw comes from a Karen village in a non-government controlled area of Karen National Union (KNU) Brigade 6 in Karen State, southeast Burma, where she grew up with her parents and three siblings. Lay Lit is now 26 years old and takes responsibility as the Secretary of the Karen Student Network Group (KSNG). She grew up amidst conflict and came to Nu Po refugee camp when she was 10 years old. Every year, as part of KSNG activities, Lay Lit celebrates World Peace Day in a new place.  Last year, she organised the celebration with nine of her KSNG colleagues for over 1,000 residents from 10 villages in KNU Brigade 2.  Lay Lit and her team hosted World Peace activities, such as debates, improv speeches, poetry competitions and sports, at these annual events.  She thinks that these activities are important tools to help explain that peace isn’t about just one ethnic group, but rather about unity and every ethnic group.

Speakers at this year’s World Peace event included various Karen leaders, members of the Karen Women’s Organisation (KWO), the District Chairman, village chiefs, and local citizens, among others.  All speakers shared their thoughts about and commitments to peace.  The message of peace is so important to Lay Lit in large part because of all the fighting she experienced in her village as a child.  She fondly remembers a peaceful early childhood in her small village.  Once the Burma Army soldiers came, when she was 7 or 8 years old, they killed villagers and farm animals.  Lay Lit and her family had no choice but to flee.  She especially remembers how difficult their escape was; they had to face dangerous river crossings on foot, torrential rains and sleeping in whatever accommodation they could find.  She quickly grew to be afraid of dying.

In time, Lay Lit and her family were able to move back to her village, but it was never permanent.  Burmese soldiers would sporadically return and torture the locals.  Sometimes the men were taken as porters for the army; some men who were taken never returned.

While in her village, Lay Lit enjoyed going to school.  Her village school only went to grade 4.  At this time, when she was about 10 years old, she moved to Nu Po refugee camp to live and continue her studies.  She started grade 5 soon after arriving at the camp.  The main difference between her village school and the camp school was how teachers in the camp encouraged critical thinking and creative expression; these are skills that Lay Lit is grateful to have now as an adult.  Over the course of her school years, she upheld good study habits, did well in classes and developed strong ambitions for her future.  After graduating grade 12, she wanted to go to the IHE PDJC (Institute of Higher Education Pu Dooplaya Junior College) school, but she couldn’t afford school fees.  She spent the following year working as a teacher and saving her income before she became a student at IHE PDJC. She later graduated also from the Wide Horizons community development school in Mae Sot.

World Peace Day is a very important day to Lay Lit.  She wants to, of course, promote peace for the future, but she also thinks that it’s important to share the stories of her past.  It’s difficult for her to forget her experiences, and at the same time, it’s critical for her to share these stories with the next generation so that today’s youth can work towards a peaceful Burma. Even though the education Lay Lit has received in the camps is not recognised, she is grateful for having learned in the camp. One of Lay Lit’s biggest dreams is telling her mother about the education she has received in the refugee camp.

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The following interview is a compilation of several interview occasions (taking place between October 2016 and January 2017) that were conducted as part of the joint documentary “Unrecognised Leaders, Tomorrow’s Hope: Raising the Voices of Forgotten Youth” by Burma Link, Karen Student Network Group (KSNG) and Karen Youth Organisation (KYO), which was launched in a press conference in Rangoon on February 22, 2017, (Burmese version) and initially screened in Mae Sot on April 6 (English version). The 52-minute documentary amplifies the voices of displaced ethnic youth who live on the Thailand-Burma border, highlighting their calls for inclusion in political processes and recognition of refugee education certificates.

Burma Link started planning this documentary film project in August 2016, consulting numerous refugee-led organisations and other organisations working on refugee issues and producing advocacy films to set the direction for the project. Based on our positive experiences working with refugee youth along the Thailand-Burma border for years, we decided to focus on creating a film that would amplify the voices of the youth, share their stories, and enhance national and international awareness and support for the realisations of social and political aspirations of the youth. The project was planned and conducted in close collaboration with two local youth organisations: the Karen Student Network Group (KSNG) and the Karen Youth Organisation (KYO).  We also partnered with the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN) and Right to Play who support the distribution and advocacy of the film. The central role of education in the film grew organically during the filming and interviewing process, as did the youth’s strong pleas for national and international actors to recognise and support their education.

Burma Link’s team members involved in planning the project all have years of first-hand experience from the Thai refugee camps and working with young refugees. Over the years spent along the border area and in the refugee camps, we have developed a thorough understanding of the security context and how it has changed over time. This context has been given serious consideration ever since the beginning of the planning process, and appreciating its complexity and state of constant flux, we started the planning process by arranging meetings with central actors including various local organisations. Considerable time was spent in considering the security aspects about this project before the filming started. Everyone taking part was clearly explained about the project and that it will be spread to local, national and international audiences as widely as possible. Everyone taking part has been given the option to be anonymous and unidentified.

For more information and screenings, please visit the film’s website and follow the Facebook page.

The following interview is the first one in a series that Burma Link, KSNG, and KYO will be publishing in the coming weeks. This interview series is meant to give more in depth understanding into the situation of young ethnic refugees from Burma as well as refugee advocacy and Burma’s political situation. This interview is a compilation of several interviews conducted with Lay Lit over the course of the filming process. The text has been edited and some parts have been omitted for flow and clarity.

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World Peace Day: ‘Peace is not only for me, it’s for everyone to have peace’

We celebrated World Peace Day in Tongoon at Lwee Wah School this year. We at Karen Student Network Group (KSNG) celebrate it once a year and go to different Karen National Union brigades. We chose this area because we wanted to celebrate in an area where we hadn’t done so before.

The villagers and the students were included in this program. We had many people from different places, and we also invited Burmese soldiers who came and talked about peace. We especially invited local groups like the Karen Women Organisation, who work to promote peace and believed that the villagers would gain a lot of information as well. During the day, we did many activities like improv speech, sports, a poem competition, and a debate with the topic “development is more than peace”. The participants presented their ideas to the students and the Karen people.

We did this activity in a small area and we still had over one thousand villagers participate in this program. There were many local leaders and people who came and participated in the events and even our district chairman came and played football. We were very happy that our leaders supported us.

We really believe that after publicizing this event it will spread all over the world. Some of our people still don’t know what is World Peace Day, and others think that we celebrate it so that it will come true one day. However, we explain to them that peace is not only for one ethnic group, but that it should be for all. We hope that the people who came will share the information with everyone else, and that they remember to celebrate World Peace Day and can organize it by themselves.

My best memory from World Peace Day was when I witnessed many leaders come together, including both our Karen leaders and other ethnic leaders talking about peace. Though we have ongoing conflicts with each other, we can still come together to participate. We were very excited when we saw that everyone was focused on promoting peace.

According to my experience, peace is not only for me, it’s for everyone to have peace. We can have sovereignty and a stable livelihood without fighting. Peace cannot be created by force. Even though we all say so easily that we want peace, it is difficult to build it. However, in my opinion peace can carry a different definition for different people. For me, if there’s no fighting and no guns, we can live freely and we own our land and our animals…this is called peace. We want to do everything by ourselves and develop our community. But we cannot build peace in our community because we were tortured and killed. I would like peace regarding the environment as well, not only just for Karen but also other ethnic groups in Burma. Now many people in Burma have to face problems regarding their livelihood and survival. We don’t have peace because of the civil war.

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My childhood and the fighting: ‘My only thought was that I was afraid that I would die, because the soldiers had guns’

I have three siblings. My mom is still alive and in the village but my dad passed away. We lived in our village peacefully in the past.  We lived in rural areas with peace and justice. Our houses were very stable and made of wood. My family also had a few cows and after school we would look after the cows and then were free to leave the village. I felt very comfortable in my village because we had never seen conflict.

We were really afraid of the Burmese soldiers when they fought with the Karen soldiers in our village. Since the fighting started, Burma Army soldiers came to my village and killed our ducks, cows and even shot villagers.

I was around 7 or 8 years around when they came. I was hiding while my mom went around the house to check when the soldiers were coming. The first thing I felt when we were hiding was fear. My only thought was that I was afraid that I would die, because the soldiers had guns. I had no other feelings like revenge or anything, I was only afraid. I only knew that if the soldiers asked for something I had to give it to them. She

[My mom] never asked about what happened, and we never discussed the situation in the past together.

The soldiers all came to the village to kill or catch people. They attacked our village and killed our animals. When the fighting became stronger we had to flee, other villages did so as well. If we hadn’t left our village they would have burned it down. There is a big river between our village and the place we moved to. We couldn’t go across the river at night so we had to sleep by the river that night. There were many problems because it rained and we had to stay in other’s houses. After the fighting our new village land was covered by bushes so it was not easy to resettle.

Our new village was still not peaceful because the Burma army still came, we were still afraid even when we moved to other places. The Burmese army also came to this village. If they even heard a name of someone similar to the “Karen Army” they beat and tortured that person even though they were not from the Karen Army, their names were just similar.

When the soldiers came back to the village they took some villagers, especially men to be porters and the men just disappeared. There was never information about them ever returning to the village. When I compare my life before and after the Burma Army it is very different.

After I learned and got more mature, I came to realise that such consequences of the war make me feel very sad for the fact that the whole village had to be abandoned. I didn’t understand the politics or that anything was related to the political situation. I only understood that the soldiers came to our village to torture us. When I think about my childhood, it was not happy because I always had to move to another place. When I was young I thought that the Burma Army only came to my village. After growing up and having come here [the border] I came to realise that this is happening everywhere. Whatever happened, this experience will never disappear from my mind.

Although the soldiers say that they did not come to our villages, this is what I experienced. Now I am an adult and I can share my experiences. Those things that I have been through were real and true.

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Refugee education: ‘I knew that I couldn’t continue my studies in my village’

It was very small and we didn’t have a high school, only primary and middle school. Our village is located in a Karen village but we only have a Burmese government school. Also, the teachers were sent by the Burmese government. There were some people teaching from our village as well.

Before I came to the refugee camp, I lived in my village. I didn’t know that I would have to go to refugee camp to study later. I finished grade 4 in my village and continued to grade 5 in the refugee camp. I knew that I couldn’t continue my studies in my village because my family could not support me anymore financially. We also didn’t have grade 5 in our village.

That morning my mother had already packed the stuff for me. I didn’t know…”Poe Mu, you have to follow the teacher,” she told me. That teacher knew about the education situation in the refugee camps. Schools in the refugee camps offer free stationaries and clothes. Since my mother heard about this and wanted me to be educated, she gave me 20,000 kyats [15 USD] and I followed the teacher.

I was 10 years old when I came to Nu Poe refugee camp. We took the road on the bus for days and nights. I slept under materials in the car. I was very excited to travel so that I almost forgot about my mother but then, I missed my mother as soon as night came. Finally, I arrived in the camp and I was sent to an orphanage dormitory. When I attended refugee school I knew that I was not the only one trying hard in my studies. I already knew what I will do after I pass grade 12 and I have my goals in my mind.

I attended grade 5 right after I arrived in Nu Poe refugee camp in 2004, and after I finished my lower levels I went to Mission High School in 2014. The school was famous at that time. If you wanted to go to that school you had to try very hard in your studies, and the refugee teachers trained us very well- we had to do many different activities like group work to prepare us. When I graduated from Mission High School I wanted to continue my further studies in a school called IHE PDJC.

Students are supported before college with stationary and uniforms, etc. but in IHE we have to pay for these although the education is free. I actually passed the IHE entrance exam but I couldn’t study that year. I didn’t have the money to pay for this so I worked as a teacher. They have teacher training programs and I knew that my goal was to be a teacher, even if I didn’t have the money for further studies. I worked as a teacher at a primary school in Nu Poe for two years. By the time I had finished my teaching I had saved some money for my further studies to attend IHE the next year. I knew that I was ready to attend IHE school so I took the entrance exam again and passed.

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Refugee education: Letters to my mother

I had been living in the camp for many years and then when I learnt how to write, I started writing a letter to my mother when I missed her. I hoped that she was in good health, and mentioned that if I graduated grade 12 I was going to go to Bible School and try to speak in English.

If I was going to write a letter to my mother now, since she is not educated and has no knowledge about politics however I explained it to her, she wouldn’t be able to understand what I am doing. If there was a way to send the letter I would let her know exactly where I graduated and which community I’m working in now and that now I already graduated and work with the community, and everything about my organisation. I would also send her the pictures of my graduation. I think she will be very happy to see that.

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On education in the village and the camp: ‘We were closing our eyes and only being read to’

The education systems in the village and in the camp do have most of the same subjects, but History class is definitely different. We also never learned about the Karen language in the village.

The teaching systems are also very different. In my village for example, we were very afraid of our teachers and had to stay in the school and be very polite. However, if we see our refugee education teacher on the road we are very friendly, we are like friends. The social situation is much better in the camp because even if we cannot follow the lesson or make a small mistake the teachers don’t hit us with sticks like they do in Burma.

The education system is different in the refugee camp and my village because in Burma, the teachers are just teaching. They don’t let the students have any creative thinking. The lectures were all based on the government schooling. The teachers used the teacher centred system, they never asked the students to critically think and they make the students memorize by heart.

We were closing our eyes and only being read to, but the camp is not like that. The teachers let us read and let us think, we can write exams in a way that we understand. We can use practical thinking and don’t have to know every word, which develops our critical thinking. When I used to study at Wide Horizons [post-post-ten level school in Mae Sot], we learned about how to use critical thinking for community development. It is another way to the future, because when you work with organisations memorization skills are not helpful, everything you say and do depends on your critical thinking. If we have our own creative thinking, we also have the confidence to speak out our opinions. You are thinking on behalf of your community.

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Refugee Rights: ‘these are our human rights’

To me, the word refugee refers to people who cannot live in their country anymore because of war and the military taking power. If we talk about what a refugee means, I think they had to become a refugee to escape from the war and the military to another country. It’s important to give the refugees their rights and their freedoms. They were born with the same equal rights as those who are not refugees. We are all human beings, and these are our human rights.

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Repatriation process: ‘we involve the local people, research information, and share the knowledge with our people and government’

Currently, the situation of the Karen refugees after they [Karen National Union and the government] signed the [preliminary] ceasefire in 2012 is that the way is open, they have more people being sent back to their home. But after that, the refugees have more problems, like they have less support of rice and other foods. As we see whenever we have meetings, our leaders discuss the issue of refugee repatriation and they say that not all people are happy with sending refugees back.

In order to assess the political situation in Burma and help with problem solving, we need to make sure that we involve the local people, research information, and share the knowledge with our people and government. The most important people involved in this should be KRCEE, camp committee members, and UNCHR. They need to provide ideas and information to the refugees about the situation in Burma and what to do, how to live, and how to talk to each other. They are not doing that and they aren’t even close to it. Some leaders who are refugees from KRCEE said that we are not included in this process, and we are not even aware of it. They just do whatever they want so we feel like we are not responsible to them. I think the organisations should cooperate with the ethnic groups to change the constitution. To do it better I think the process for returning refugees back home must be more open and clear. The government or UNHCR should make sure that the refugees can go back, they need to improve issues with security.

If I get involved with this process I think I would help with the returning process. After returning, I want to see how many discussions are still held about the repatriated people and how many opportunities they will get. I don’t want to see the returned refugees have less education or less chances. That’s very important to me.

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Youth and political dialogue: ‘our leaders should find and open up opportunities for the youth’

In my opinion in order to have peace inside Burma and to have a better situation the youth should be involved with any activities. In my perspective, I see youth as the strength of the country to be the leaders. That’s why it is the time for young people to take up the responsibility for changing Burma to move towards peace. Our young people need to be smart and take up the responsibility of politics. For youth, if they’re able to participate in the political process they can join their leaders, but our leaders should find and open up opportunities for the youth. In my opinion, there are a lot of young people who want to be involved with political dialogue in Burma but it’s very difficult because the government leaders are over 50-60 years old. They follow the rules from the past and aren’t willing to change them, they don’t want to give a chance to the youth.

The most important way to ensure that Burma is free and a democracy is to include the youth more in political situations. They need to change and correct this constitution. The young people should be involved within the community activities because some of them are very active and intelligent.

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2008 Constitution and Change: ‘I hope everyone will be equal’

If I had to talk about the Karen political situation in Burma now, I think that everyone would have problems with the current situation. The government has taken power from the 2008 Constitution and controls everything. The civilians do not have equality. The government has control and power even over the education system, health, and natural resources for the youth. Even though they signed the ceasefire no one is satisfied. There are more ethnic groups inside Burma holding weapons and there is fighting daily.  There are more refugees as well, particularly from Kachin and Karen States and a lot of people are dying. I don’t think the political situation in Burma is fair for the civilians and satisfies anyone.

The most important thing for me is our country Burma. I hope we can use this country as a peaceful country for the future and that everyone will be equal. It’s my real dream. If I were the government in Burma, I would change the constitution first because of the current political situation. Then, if all the civilians liked and agreed with the constitution we could continue with our plan. I would like to tell the Burmese government that we want the equality for all. The constitution that we want is one that is accepted by everyone.

The message that I would like to give you [international community] is please help us in Burma because our government doesn’t provide us with an equal rights system yet. We believe you are the most important for us.

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For more information and screenings, please visit the film’s website and follow the Facebook page.

 

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