Hlah Tay

Hlah Tay has a smooth broad face, thin lips and yellow teeth that seem to suit him. He's not tall but he doesn't look weak. He is Karen. He tends to wear a sarong and a tan Lufthansa cargo crew ball cap, the ABSDF has not made him rich. But his best feature is his bowl-cut hair. A full black helmet of hair beginning to show flecks of grey. His English is good, with just the slightest east-Indian accent to it compared to the others. He has a wife and a one-year-old son who live in Mae La Oon refugee camp, and he loves to play with his little son. When he's in camp he'll play with the baby until it's late at night, they see each other so irregularly. 


This is what he said: In 1988 Hlah Tay was studying botany, in his second year at Rangoon University. To the express disappointment of his family, he got involved in the democracy movement. He took part in the 1988 protests, and that is how the government came to know his name. When the protests failed Lhah tay ran for his life, never looking back. He ran to the border to hide escape the fairly terminal revenge the government had ready for him. He joined the All Burma Students Democratic Front as soon as it existed. From 1991 to 1998 he was a rebel soldier on the front lines. There he crept in the jungle, slept in a hammock, saw foreigners, rarely, who arrived to give military training, even a few video journalists. “They are very very strong. When they take video it's between the battle.” He was at Manipor. 21-years later he is still working for it, not tired, not disillusioned, even as it's membership has shrunk to a mere 1,500 scattered along the border. After the front lines he was recalled to teach in an ABSDF grade school. With nine years of that under his belt he has been assigned to be headmaster in the refugee camp, but before that must fulfill his duties at the office in Mae Sariang.


 He knows the War on Terror has made armed revolutionaries unpopular, but insists they are necessary. They are as necessary as is publicity and diplomacy in the struggle to free Burma. “I believe that we push at the same time as the armed struggle, the diplomatic ways, the media ways.” Only using every method at their disposal will they win this fight. He doesn't want to be hamstrung by only using peaceful demonstrations. Burma has had too much slaughter come of peaceful demonstration. The student uprisings of 1962, '74, '88. The workers' uprising in 1975. The monks uprising in 2007. “If you demonstrate, they kill.” 


He won't give up, he's not tired of this waiting. “No tired, because I believe that we must get democracy in Burma. But I don't know if quickly or slowly. But I believe that one day we will get democracy. Our people will live peacefully, with human rights...I understand that first we remove the military junta, then we establish the general federal union. At that time we'll have many problems with the ethnic groups and the general government. But I believe we can sit at the table and make the dialogue. If we sit at the table there can be understanding. But the first is we remove the military junta.” 


Hlah Tay has his own family now, a wife and son. He's dead to his past family. “I never contact with them, because I'm afraid if I contact with them the military generals will know...My mother, she is alive or not alive? I don't know. Also my sister and my brother, are they married or no? What is their situation, I don't know.”