Gender Specific Human Rights

One day, representatives from the Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN) came to Loi Kaw Wan on a regular visit. SWAN oversees various projects in Loi Kaw Wan, such as a sewing program for village women to earn money making clothes, and a kindergarten. SWAN works hard to help women on both sides of the northern Thai-Burma border. The women need it. Life is very difficult and abuse is common, whether women are still living in Burma or have moved to work (usually illegally) in Thailand.

As part of its visit to Loi Kaw Wan SWAN planned to hold a meeting for all interested women in the village. There, they could get news from Shan state, hear about the latest atrocities, discuss issues of work, family, sexual health, pregnancy, rape and women's rights. Two visiting female Canadian doctors were invited to participate. Reps were especially interested in sharing information about legislation in Burma that granted soldiers a “license to rape” women from specific ethnic groups.

The women who came varied. Old and young, some were shy, some apathetic, others outspoken, some keen to find out how to make their husbands happy without having anymore children and some clearly just happy to be doing something different.

Loi Kaw Wan's men grumbled. “What about men's rights?” asked Hsur, the school vice principal. “We have no club, no one comes to talk about our rights. Our life is hard too.” The answer was, as it usually is to that question, that men get every other club. In matters of “human rights,” men seem to collect on them first, while women continue to suffer. And internally, not always internally, we believe that they are only complaining because they fear uppity women; or simply fear the repercussions of women obtaining equality.

But even if women suffer more, admitting or addressing it does little to alleviate the men's suffering. Hsur was right. There is no similar club, no venue to unashamedly check the normalcy of their marriage, determine if there are particular rights that, for them, are disproportionately violated or escape even for two hours the drudgery of their lives.

While the women in the sewing project rightly complained that the town commander had forced them to sew army uniforms for 50 cents apiece, the men were compelled to wear them, and tour through the jungle in search of Burmese soldiers, or risk being run out of the village. This is a serious threat, since the village is an IDP camp. It was founded by refugees fleeing Burmese pogroms. To leave the safety of the rebel-held town could mean punishment, even death in Burma, or a life of wage slavery and racism in Thailand.

Rather than offer statistics-laden arguments about which gender suffers more, the men deserve to be acknowledged. Brushing them off for possibly suffering less will create resentment and frustration on top of the problems they already face. I agree with Hsur. The men should have something too. Something that can be used to explain the women's specific problems, why they have advocacy groups, and most importantly can be used to help the men address their problem with the same methods women are given. Surely they too would benefit from the chance to share their troubles with a group of peers. It would likely save the women from many men's suspicion that their wives and sisters are getting undeserved benefits and gossip sessions.

Yee Tip on SSA and amputees

Leung Yee Tip is a Shan who currently lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, where he works for the Shan Helath Committee. Among his many projects he supervises an amputee prosthetics clinic in northern Thailand. This is a transcript of a short interview on the subjects with him, February 2010.

Do you have an age in which people are allowed to work?

An age?

Yes, like children, or an age?

We don't use children.

How old are you in Shan to not be a child?

Eighteen. And also in the army too is 18.

How old is too old to be in the army?

Forty-five. Is mean that they can join between 18 and 45, and they can stay until 60 or 65. And also sometime, some of the children when they come with the SSA soldier they want to be a soldier, but we just send them to the school. Because some of their parents have been killed by the SPDC so they want to join the army.

Who is the funder for this farm project?

They is funder from CPI from America. (the anti-landmine organization Clear Path International)

How many amputees are there?

Here at this camp has 37 amputees. And then we choose from them who want to do this farming. And then we form a small company to look after this farm.

How did they become amputees?

Most of them are old soldiers from the MTA (Muang Tai Army, the predecessor to the current rebel SSA).

Land mines?

Land mines, and some in battle.

Do you get many new amputees?

Not, I did see a new one, some of them I think are new.

Does the SSA have people go out to look for land mines like in Loi Kaw Wan?

No here it's dangerous for them. If you don't know technically exactly how to search for land mines.

Htam Khur - On the Shan

An abridged version of an interview with the school principal of a Shan IDP camp, February 2010.

What's your name?

My name is Htam Khur, Sai Htam Khur. I'm 35 years old.

Are you Shan?

Yes.

Tell me about the Shan and Burmese.

Shan people, we have our kingdom in the past, and Burmese people they also have their kingdom in the past. And these two, our kings, they are always fighting. If the Burmese win the Shan people need to live under control of the Burmese, and if the Shan people win again the Burmese people need to live under control of the Shan people.

Burma became the colony of British in 1885, and Shan become colony of British in 1887. At that time Shan recognize their people by themself. If the British want to order the Shan to do something they just order to the Shan people directly, not to the Burmese.

When the time that our people need to get freedom from the British the Burmese they want to get the freedom also. General Aung San came to the meeting of the Shan people. If we will take the freedom together we will get the freedom very quickly from the British like that. And so some of the Shan people did not want to get the freedom together with the Burmese people, but some of the Shan leaders think that if we get together we can get the freedom quickly.

So at that time we took the freedom together with the Burmese, but we have agreement. We will organize the country together, during 10 years. After 10 years if the Shan people don't want to be in the union the Burmese, we can separate off by them to be Shan State. But, in 1962 General Nye Win became the dictator and take every power from the people and so until now we are under the Burmese.

Do the Shan still want to be a separate country?

Some of the Shan people want to get the freedom, but most of the people want the rights, the human rights. Rangoon is well developed and Shan state is not. But everything like the teak or the stone, they get it from Shan state or from the other states, but the states are not organized. And also the roads to go to Rangoon, from Daunggyi to Ga Lo the roads are not so good. But from Ga Lo to Rangoon is big road.

Where are you from?

I am from Taunggyi. I live in Taunggyi until 2003. When I finished university I get misunderstanding with my older brother, and I run away from my home to Tachilek. I heard they (Loi Kaw Wan) need a teacher to teach the children. The children are orphans, and people here is like the refugee and they are running away from the SPDC to build the village. So, I join with them and come here. Before I came here I am a shop keeper.

Are you a soldier in the rebel Shan State Army here?

Sometimes we are similar like the soldier, you know? Helping them. But really we are not. I am not a soldier.

Can you go back to inner Burma?

Yes, I can go back, but very dangerous because they (Burmese government officials) will ask me the information about this area. And even I answer them they will not believe on me, and they will put me into the prison. I just organize the school and the orphanage. About the (rebel Shan) army, I don't know many things about the army because I am not a soldier, you know? But the Burmese soldier will not believe on me.

How many students and orphans are here?

298 students. Now we have just 65 orphans.

Where do they come from?

The orphans are coming from near this area. In 1999 the SPDC (Burmese government) forced the people to move from their village, and when they run into the border they are far away from their father and mother and their father and mother don't know where are they. And some of their father and mother getting disease in the forest. And that time, if the people walking in the jungle met with the SPDC soldier, Burmese soldier, without question they shooting to the people walking in the jungle. Like that. So some people die during their running to the border.

Is it better now?

Now is better because not so much are fled from their village. Just in 1996 until 2001, very worse for the Shan people. Because at that time Burmese soldier force the people move from the village to live close to town, and the villager they don't have the money to stay near the town and don't know what kind of job they can do. So they are running to the border.

Tell me about LKW

LKW is an IDP camp. IDP is the internally displaced people. If they stay inside Burma the SPDC will force them to be porter and if they live inside Thailand they don't have the ID card. If they live among the SSA (rebel Shan State Army) the SPDC cannot come and force them to anything. And also the Thai people cannot make the trouble to them also. Yes, is small place.

Is the SPDC here in town?

No, just near our area they have their guard. And they cannot come into the village. But spy, we don't know about the spy. Sometimes spy can be Shan people. And can be Lahu, can be Akha, we don't know. Can be anyone. But even the people who want to come and visit the village if they want to like stay for one night or two night who will receive them to stay in their house, the village committee have to know about their background.

How many people live in LKW?

I heard from the village committee they said over 2,800 live here.

Do you think the SPDC could attack LKW?

Yes. Because it's a resistance group area. If the SPDC want to disappear the SSA, they will attack us.

Do you think it's dangerous here?

Not dangerous. I have lived here for seven years and I have seen no fighting during seven years.

Back in Shan state, in Burma, what does the SPDC do to the Shan?

Now? Now in northern Shan state is very worse for the people. I have a, sometimes I call to my house with my mobile, and sometimes I'm asking about the people who live inside Shan. They said northern Shan state is very worse for the people because now is like ceasefire group and SPDC. SPDC want the ceasefire group to be the border guard, ceasefire group did not want to be the border guard. Ceasefire is not over, just depend on the Burmese. The Burmese want to go around all the ceasefire groups, and they sent their troops every way to the ceasefire group. If the Burmese soldier group is going into the forest they need a porter.

Why do they force civilians to act as porters?

They don't want to carry their things, you know? Because they want to disappear the ceasefire group, and if they are matched against the ceasefire group they want the porters to be their cover. Put the porter in front of them and the ceasefire group cannot shoot them, you know? Ten years ago the same thing, you know? When the Burmese attacked the Muang Tai Army in Hong Mung they bring many Shan people, Shan porter from Shan state. And cover in front of them. And put the porter go first, put their uniforms on the porters and force the porter to go first. The porter, mine, pew! Like that. Is for them, for save their lives they get many porter for them.

Did the MTA know those were porters, not soldiers?

The first they don't know. But when the first attack is finished, when they clean the attacking area they saw the people who die are the Shan people. It's very hard for the MTA to attack the Burmese soldier.

What year did this problem begin between the Burmese government and the Shan?

1947. But at that time most of the Shan people, most of the Shan leaders believe on the Burmese. After the 10-year agreement no Shan people believe on the Burmese.

Are the problems in Shan state worse now, or better, or the same?

The same. You know, during 1962 until 1990, that time the Burmese soldier they are force the people move from the village and burn everything in the village. And next let the people to stay in their village again. And after one and two years force the people out again and burn the village again like that.

The reason why they do like that is to destroy everything of the Shan people, like the history book. Because our culture we'd write our history book and put at the monastery. Who can bring everything? Can't bring everything, so after we move from the village they burn everything. And if we come to stay again we bring back that again and put at the monastery. And for us to move again, we cannot bring most of – you know? And we lose the history book and culture also. And if we mix, like, SPDC get married with the Shan woman, the salary will get higher.

Why is the Burmese government doing this to the Shan? What is the goal?

They want to genocide the Shan people like that. I have heard from the Burmese when I was a university student, “next 10 year the Shan people will be disappeared. No Shan people will speak Shan language,” they said. Some of the Burmese soldier they said like that. When I was a university student I don't know how to speak Shan language.

Not even at home?

Just little. Just get understanding. But when I need to explain something in Shan I can't, just explain in Burmese language.

What language do people speak in Daunggyi?

Mostly is Burmese language. And now, even now my nephew if I call to my house he can't speak Shan. Just Burmese language to me.

------formal interview ends. While walking to the school kitchen Htam Khur recounts how he made a point to learn Shan in university. After graduation he was contracted to teach for three months in a Shan village. After several weeks the local SPDC captain told him to stop the classes and return home. Htam Khur refused. Over a number of days the captain became more enraged at Htam Khur's refusal to leave. The situation came to a head one evening as he was walking home, and the captain stopped him in the street.----- At this point in the story I turned the recorder back on.

'Leave now.'

'No.' I said 'no' again. Yeah he is very angry. He feel very angry and take out a gun, and point to me, you know? And I still said no. We are talking is very loud, very loud. And the villagers heard that and I think 20 or 30 villagers running out from their home, and we two, and they surround all of us. And the Captain cannot do anything. He is very angry and he said to me “now I cannot do you anything, but in the future I'm not sure.” Again, you know?

And I'm coming back with the villager to my rest-house. And the villager said, “hey teacher, this is a problem. You need to go back.”

“No, I had the promise with all of you. I need to stay here. Even he is not allow me to stay with you I will stay here for three months. Because of the promise, and teaching is still running, not finished yet.” And the village is very worried for me.

But I'm a little bit lucky, you know? The battalion from the Daunggyi base, they visit the village. This battalion leader we are know each other. And he come and visit me with the Captain. This captain very afraid of me that time, you know? If I say, “this captain he doing to me.”

You told?

No no, I didn't. The Major, he's the leader of the battalion. I didn't tell to the Major anything. And the Captain feel a little bit good.

And the next day he come and visit me. The Captain, “hey hey, sorry, everything that I do on you.” If they have some people afraid they are very kind people, you know?

But the Major heard about us from the villager. And when the major go back to Loi Lem base he ordered to the Loi Lem leader, the Loi Lem leader changing the Captain to the other area.

Gwan Kham, Loi Tai Leng Orphan

22 years old. Recounts being 11 years old when his village was attacked and he became separated from his family. He now works as a teacher and English-Shan interpreter in Loi Tai Leng. -February 2010

“I was in jungle, I went to look after buffalo, and then I come back to my village I don't see anybody, just only like the burnt house.

Did you try to find them?

No. I was very afraid about this. So I went to the jungle, and suddenly the military, about the SSA, come to the near our village and I saw them. And because they can speak Shan, right? So they ask me 'why you stay here alone?' 'I don't know. Because my family no here.'

I didn't know anything, but I want to go. So they ask me 'do you want to go with us? OK, we have food, we have everything for you,' like this. I got here when I was 12 years old. I stayed in the jungle with the military for five months.

Why didn't they take you here fast?

Because there is very bad weather. They cannot come here, because the Salween is like, flooding.

Is it correct that you were alone for four weeks, and then the SSA came and found you?

Yes.

Do you know if your family's still alive?

I don't know right now. Maybe until now they are, I don't know. Maybe they already go away from our world.

What did you do when you came here?

Go to school.

Had you had much school before?

No. I didn't have money to attend the school until I was 11, when I was in the Shan State.

How did you learn English so well?

I like to learn grammar, and I love to go to another person when I saw foreigner, I would like to talk with them.

Are you still in school?

I'm finished and now I'm working in the school.

What do you teach?

Before, English. And right now history, because I love to teach history.

Do you get paid to teach?

Mm-hm. Two thousand (baht) per month. ($67)

Do you think you'll ever go back to Shan State?

I think so.

Would you like to?

Yes.”

Loi Tai Leng Clinic

Loi Tai Leng Clinic interview transcript with Head Medic Paw Shar Gay, February 2010

How many medics do you have here?

Here we have two medics, and the other people is me, Ba Tay is finished from Dr. Cynthia's clinic and then the other is finished the Siesta Blue training. Siesta Blue training Community Health Worker. Total staff at the clinic is 22 people.

How many patients do you get here per day?

One day is maybe 20, sometimes 30.

Are they mostly from Loi Tai Leng, or from inside Burma too?

Some people is from outside, some people is from here. But mostly IPD (In-Patient Department) is outside.

Loi Tai Leng's problem is ARI (acute respiratory infection), also skin infection is high. And rainy season is rain all the time, four months no sun. Sometimes is maybe one week or two week sun is come out. You know, our dress we make the fire wood and the fire make dry. The sun cannot make dry. And then UTI (urinary tract infection) is become high.

What do you do to help people prevent it?

Every year we plan to prevent it. Our clinic do like the home visit. One month we will going to section and home by home, give education. And then give information and vitamin A.

Do you see vitamin A deficiency here?

Sometimes we see like one year maybe one case or two case.

Do you always have enough medicine?

Enough medicine? Yeah is enough. Before the medicine did not enough and then we ask more money to buy the medicine. And the Partner did not came in here and also backpack, FBR (Free Burma Rangers) did not come in here. From outside, we take medicine here to outside and go and give the people who live outside Loi Tai Leng, like mobile team, and then our medicine did not enough.

The donor says 'Paw Shar Gay, you say every year medicine did not enough. How about this year, this is enough?' Last year he come back. And then I said, 'yes, before medicine did not enough, but this year enough.'

And then he laughing and said 'why medicine did enough this year?'

'Backpack is coming here, and then FBR is coming here and go outside outside, and same the Partner group is outside and then our medicine we use here not outside.' So here is enough for me.

Are there any backpack medics here?

Backpack medics is four, five people. Yes, sometimes if they come back from inside they coming here. If he going inside maybe two months or one month he will come back here.

Are people's gardens here big enough that their nutrition is good?

Yeah, we see now better than years before. And then we can get vegetables. Big garden (in reference to the sponsored one in the valley) but the vegetables is not enough. Some the shopping go down to Burma part and buy vegetable. Because you know here we can plant in the rainy season. This season no water. We can't plant, we have to buy outside. But in the rainy season is enough. We can buy here and sell here, in the garden. It's like, how do you say, save the money for us. But in the dry season is cannot save the money.

Do you have a computer?

Yeah. One computer is not so good. Internet if we going to the leader's house and check the Internet. But our computer is maybe five years. Is working very very slowly.

Do you see health here looks better now than when you began as a medic 14 years ago?

When I arrived here in 1999, no clinic. In 2000 one clinic. The people, the leader here is building the one clinic, like small like this, this room. We treat the villager, also the military. We treat both. And then clinic is very small, in Section 3.

At that time the people is not know about health. Not health education, they did not know about this so much. They did not know about the family planning. You know in the year 2000 we delivered 120 babies. At that time population is maybe 1,000. And now population is 2,600. More people here but the people know about the education and then they can provide and think. And this year is 42 babies delivered. Very different.

Then you know about the vaccine? Before two year, three year they don't want to receive the vaccine immunization, because the people said if they get the immunization her children is become sick and then is painful, cannot sleeping enough for the night time, because the baby is crying. Very painful, they don't want to come. The health worker is work hard, like go down and give education like this. Because immunization is very very important. But many people they also tell me, 'before we did not receive, we never receive vaccine. But we alive until now. We did not get other disease like you say.'

They ask me and then I answer, 'before is like the before. Before is the disease is not like this. So your baby, how do you say? Like, you is very old, and then you will dead. Your baby is growing and then in the future you will not see. Your baby, maybe your baby can get some anything you did not know about. If you receive the vaccine maybe the vaccine can help like the infection is coming less. Not 100 per cent. Maybe 50 per cent. Explain the parent about the vaccine. And then now, if we looking in the register book the vaccine is become improved. And many children is receive the full course of the vaccine, immunization. For me I think is improved.

And then the last one is education about diarrhoea. We need to boiling the water and then drinking. If you boiling the water, water will be safe for our life. Cannot get the disease easy like the diarrhoea, something like that. Washing the hands for you going to toilet, but if after you finish the toilet after you come back wash your hands before eating.

One man is very old, and then he ask me, because we give toilets, we have the budget for building the toilets. We ask to building the toilets and one man he ask me, 'Sa Mah,' they call me Sa Mah, 'I never believe about this because now my age is 70 and I never boiling the water and drinking the water because if you boiling the water, the water is not sweet. If you go to taking in the river and then drink, is sweet. And then sometimes we did not go in the toilet, we go in the forest. Sometimes we going pass stool in the river,' he said like this.

And then I'm about this question thinking, because I cannot answer yet. I thinking, and then I remember my Sir tell me that if you go in the community you will get many many problems. The people will ask you many questions. And then I remember. I ask that man, 'OK, you say is true. The water you carry from the river is sweet. If you boiling then is not so sweet, right, true. But at that time,' I call him uncle, 'Uncle, at that time how many household at that village?'

And then he answer me 'not so much.'

'And then you see now, many people in this village. And then if the one people going to pass stool at the river, and another people is going to pass, it will put a lot of things in the water. It will be clouding. If only Uncle you going to pass in the river maybe the river will pass stool with the river, but many people not so good.

And the pig, they did not make the pen, they did not have a pen for a pig, they will free for the pig. And then maybe that pig will go pass stool at the river. And then maybe the rabbit, some rabbit is move down to the river. And then this water is sweet. So then uncle is drinking some stool from the river, so become sweet. So that uncle not believe me. Only uncle can pass in the river, but for the other people I think it's not so good if you go down to pass in the river or in the forest. You need to build the toilet. The toilet it will save the stool and then not so smell.

Gong Mong Mung (Hill View Place) LDP camp

Gong Mong Mung is the newest of the SSA's IDP camps. “Mung” is the same as that in “Muang Tai,” the Shan's name for Shan State. The Shan call themselves the Tai. Mung means state, or place. Roughly translated, Gong Mong Mung means “Hill View Place.” It was established in 2007, but not as a result of the September 2007 monks' Saffron Revolution. Most of its 60 families came from a nearby Burmese town that was formerly the headquarters of the Muang Tai Army, until the MTA leader surrendered and the Burmese attacked. Life is still hard for them there because of that.

Unlike the other IDP camps, many of the buildings are adobe. It may be because there is a much larger than usual proportion of Wa and Pa'o mixed in with the Shan. The Commander's place is adobe, with a kitchen, a bedroom and a main room a quarter full with supplies like mosquito nets. He also has wood-shuttered windows, a well made bamboo gazebo, raised flower beds and bamboo fencing. Here, as in Loi Tai Leng, electric cables are strung down the street on sturdy poles.

The SSA commander is a strange looking man. Pale, broad faced, bad haircut and sores on his chin. He wears an expensive looking watch, a ruby ring and a “We Love Shan State” T-shirt.

It's a tiny village, with a tiny feel. For now there are only four orphans, only one land mine amputee. Most of the town sits in a bowl shaped valley perhaps half a kilometre across, surrounded by steep forested hills. At Gong Mong Mung's main entrance stands a blue oriental archway. Just a few hundred feet before that is the Thai-Burma border with a Thai military checkpoint, with a red and white striped barrier pole and just one young border guard manning the hut. The kilometre of dirt road before him is met by farmland, then a Chinese village on a lake. It's a beautiful, peaceful setting.

There are three teachers and 50 students in the school, between Grades 1-3. Higher grades will be added as the town grows, more teachers come, and the school adds more classrooms. It is currently quite small – one tiny class building one office building, one dining hut.

As in the refugee camps and other IDP villages many of the students were sent ahead to live with extended family. In Gong Mong Mung they can get better education than inside. The school teaches Thai, English, Burmese, Shan, History, Geography and Math. Later, their families may move here to join them.

Vice Principal Hsur

Hsur is the vice principal of the school in this refugee town in Burma. His English name is "James Fu," given to him when he was a student. Fu is his original surname, but that was destroyed a long time ago.

He's another refugee from deeper inside Shan state. A wiry, small-set guy who looks taller than his five and a half feet. He was born in Yunnan, in China. To all their misfortune his family decided to immigrate to Burma when he was a child. Hsur still speaks perfect Mandarin, using it with the odd Kumintang descendent.

His father died he was 17, so Hsur joined the Shan State Army. Once he became a soldier for these rebels his family destroyed his identification and pretended he was dead, to save themselves and him from the government wrath they would suffer if it was discovered he was a rebel. For 10 years Hsur was a soldier in the forest.

There was never enough food to fill him. From his looks there wasn't enough food to grow on. He looks like his body never met its potential. As a soldier it was always sleeping in the forest, hiking steep mountains with cheap Chinese army boots that fall apart in three weeks. Suffering in the rains from mosquitoes and malaria and mud. Always creeping after the Burmese army. He is dried sinew, not a 32-year-old man.

He's against using child warriors. He's fought against the Burmese' child soldiers, 15-year-olds. He feels guilty about that. Children don't know right from wrong. Adults do, and if an adult is given an order that is illegal, or wrong, they would know it, they can refuse. Children don't know. They just become killing machines that nobody wants to attack.

He's been in this town for seven years, working as this and that, now the vice principal, teaching classes and doing everything else. He's still an SSA soldier, waiting in reserve should they call him back to the forest.

When he gets a chance, he's eager to talk about intelligent things. About politics and language and how much money a person needs. About the similarities between Shan and Laos and Thai, about the Commander. Tells about the rebel Wa Army along the Burma-Yunnan border. "Go there," he says. "Go to the Wa Army near Yunnan. Yeah, they will talk to you."

He's friendly, and willing to work and talk, but he's sad. In a sad state. There is no wife, no family, not even his own grass hut. Just a bed in the office. He's in Shan country, but he's not a Shan. Everyone here dreams of their homeland, but his is one altogether different. Even when he laughs he looks alone.

The Commander of Loi Sam Sip

Another illegal trip into Burma, using what the local connection calls “positive corruption” (whiskey) another dusty refugee village, another SSA commander. 


Since the rest of the party moves like a glacier, and because I wander off without regard, I soon became separated from the others and didn't know where in the village I was or they were. Behind a weak bamboo fence was what was obviously a mini military compound, because it was painted. I saw a truck in there that looked like ours, so, well, they must have driven in and be waiting. There is a compound guard in a little thatched gazebo at the fence, with an MK balanced on his lap. When I walked in, surely the first blonde in months, he looked at me, and I looked at him, and neither of us admitted anything was unusual. There's an army troop truck inside, and a set of flags, so it's a place for some important person. 


After moseying around long enough a woman motioned me in to one of the hot, dark houses, or offices, or whatever. Inside was a man sitting crossed-legged on the raised floor, obviously eating his lunch—rice and dark brown stuff and dark green fluid with black mounds of stuff. He looked at me and I looked at him. I said hello. He said something authoritative to the women, who showed me to sit down, and scurried off. A walkie-talkie buzzed on the table in a corner of the room, which was heavily decorated with maps of Burma and pictures of military processions. I sat down across from him and we looked at each other. 


His English was laboured, but he was the only one around who could speak it, and the only man about the place. “What country you from?” “Canada.” “Hm. Canada.” A woman came with a bowl of rice, for me. “Nam nam nam!” he said, and she returned with a glass of water. I spooned the broth from the black stuff onto my rice, which made whoever this guy was laugh. It was strange him being here, since word was all the village men had left to work in the fields. “Yum, good. Thank you.” “You are medicine?” “Medic? No.” “No medic?” He looked at me sideways and I hesitated and looked at him sideways. “I'm...a...journalist. Newspaper.” He raised his eyebrows and frowned and looked at my camera. Then he laughed but not a happy laugh, rather a slow laugh. “News. How you come?” “Someone brought.” “Who brought?” We stared at each other. I shook my head. “I don't know who.” “Sai Sam?” “No. I don't know. You medic?” “Ha ha!” “You're a soldier?” “Hm, yes soldier.” The walkie-talkie buzzed intermittently, and I accidentally looked at it every time it did. The woman brought another dish, of green and red crusty stuff, and another bowl of rice. “For you, I can't eat more,” I told him, but he shook his head and waved me to load up. “OK, you're big, I'm small.” “Ha ha!” “I take half, you take half,” and I did. “You SSA soldier?” “SSA...You come Dr. Myron?” “Dr. Myron?” then I breathed relief. If he knew of Myron then whoever he was it was probably OK. I told him yes yes, with Dr. Myron. He asked how many of us came, whether we were staying the night, how I liked his food. I ate as heartily as I could to ease the long pauses between our exchanges. He told me Myron was coming to the compound, and I knew I just had to bide my time and so on. Of course, the reason this man was still in town when most others had left to farm, was because he's the regional rebel commander। He's running the place। Jeez, I'm glad he liked me, because eating with him even before I knew who I was with was a bit of a pickle.By the way, he gave me an SSA 2009 calendar.

Pre-election

February 2009
The election the SPDC has scheduled for spring 2010 hangs over this town like a doomsday. What is the SPDC's plan, because surely they have one. They know right now what the outcome will be, if only we did. I can guess. So can the townspeople. Homm wants to have a baby, but she and her husband are waiting until the 2010 election is in the past, just in case it brings war to Loi Kaw Wan, they'll have one less life to protect if they wait to have the baby. We're working to save money to buy Homm a Burmese passport. It will cost about $1,000. It's $1,000 if she mails her ID card into the government and they mail the passport back, about $650 if she travels to Rangoon and applies in person, plus $350 in bribes to get there safely. I don't want her to go to Rangoon. She lives here under an assumed name, but it's still risky to travel. What if there are spies who know her? What if it's enough to be Shan to get into trouble on the route she takes? We have to get her that passport before the election, just in case. Maybe anticipating the fallout of the election is the reason the Commander wants the hospital expansion to be so big. A lot of new people may be moving to Loi Kaw Wan. Maybe it's for them that he wants it big, but maybe he wants MMC to pay for an operations office for his army. We don't know and I'd have to visit with him every day for months before he'd tell me, and we only get one invitation a year to visit him.

Shan State Army

 They're peasants and teachers, spread too thin over too much jungle to scare anyone. Every man in the village owns a machete, but they're still just school teachers and skinny farmers in uniform. I would give a lot if I thought it would get me embedded with this army. Kang Hseng says growing up in Taunggyi he'd never heard of the SSA, not until it was time for him to pick a career and his uncle told him about coming here to be a medic, under guard of the SSA. They have few weapons. A pair of AKs seem to be floating around town for special occasions, that and gardening machetes is about it for Loi Kaw Wan. A radio tower, a small cinder block house for the Commander, one flat bed truck, that's all I've seen. 
Do they have international support? Why should they? They make money only from taxing the people they mingle with, and corruption, like opium traffic, maybe some lumber like all the others. Corporal Hsuo said he didn't know how many SSA soldiers exist. I guessed 25,000 for him and he agreed that was possible, and that 50,000 isn't possible. The vice principal says it's hard to get new soldiers, and I think it was hard to get them from the start. The intention is good, but with no pay, no food, no clothes, no strength, how many can they entice to join? That's why there's only 25,000 ill-armed farmers spread from Chiang Mai to Yunnan. Manyof the women here are married to a soldier, meaning most of the men here are soldiers, even the ones who look too old and hard-lived to be.

All day long they trickle by. One, ambling. Two if by motor bike. Sometimes wave, sometimes salute, and smile when they realize who they saluted. The SSA guard the Thai-Burma border before Loi Kaw Wan, posted in a sunny grass hut, with a lazy dog. I think they let anybody in, including the Thai guards. How can those two teenagers stop the Thai guards from walking down the road to take pictures of the whites in Loi Kaw Wan who aren't supposed to be here?

Bay Da

We arrived in Loi Kaw Wan in the afternoon. Once we came through town to the medic compound, we stood and looked around at things. Suddenly a tall young man running at full tilt leapt onto Dr. Semkuley and hugged him with his arms and legs. That's the most emotional reunion I've ever seen between two men. The man was Bay Da, whom everyone knows has the biggest smile since Eddie Murphy, and much nicer than Murphy's. Especially since the corners of Bay Da's mouth curve up, even when he stops smiling, which he eventually did. He smiled so much those first few days anyone would think he was the happiest man in the borderlands. Of course, his smile fell into disrepair over the next two weeks. It began with slow fractures, changing from joy at having Myron back, to worry, nervous smiling. Beaten dog smiling. Shorter smiles, frowning in between, right in front of us. It took two weeks for Bay Da to stop being formally gracious, open up, and say enough for me. Two weeks to say something to me that could make me cry. When the woman watching her mother die of AIDS in the clinic down the road only made me angry. Bay Da climbed down from the frame he and the others spent all day building to hold these mega big solar panels, so the clinic will finally have night light. We sat on the grass together and he took off his Chinese army boots, inside which his feet had stewed all day without socks. Man what a stink! Like grade C ham left under the deck for a week. I moved to sit up wind and we joked about the smell. He said I should write about how people in Loi Kaw Wan are too poor for soap so donors would send some for his feet. Then we headed off to bring the tools someplace for safe keeping.


“Sometimes when we walked in the forest for four or five...or seven days, very difficult to get clean. No soap and got very dirty.” “You mean you were in the forest for that long?” “Yes” “What were you doing in the forest for seven days?” “Hiding, from Burmese soldiers.” “Oh. You were one of those people.” “Yes.” “What would happen if they caught you?” “They want to make us porters. Porters carry their weapons and food, and big bombs. A big bomb... They burned my father.” My skin crawled. “They took cigarettes, pressed on his face. You know when cigarettes burn, and the end is red? They burned on his face, here,” he traced his finger along his cheeks, “here.” “They tortured.” “Yes, tortured. I was seven...or six. I never forget that in all my life.” Earlier we had also joked about how he would like to be president. The things he would do, notably enact litter laws. Bay Da is an environmentalist, dislikes litter, and takes the decimation of the local teak forests by the SPDC personally. As he should, the SPDC are raping his people in order to rape his land. Anyway, his president talk ends with a smile and he says “in my next life.” “I want to have some coffee.” “I want my freedom.” “And what will you do with your freedom?” “I will travel, and present about Burma's politics and the environment.”


I didn't expect him to have an answer so ready. After we put the tools away, and after he told me about his father's torture and I tried to keep my head tilted up so tears wouldn't fall out of my eyes and perhaps he was doing the same thing, he told me more. “I will tell you my real dream. This is real, what I wish. I want to go to a small village and teach English. Have maybe 50? students. I teach English and improve my English. At my home town we have waterfall,” he showed with his hands, “a beautiful waterfall. And land is flat and soil is very...good.” “It's no good here?” “No. Very hilly, and difficult to bring water.” The Shan aren't a mountain people. They are traditional farmers who are used to rich plains where they can grow just about anything. This place is Akha land. The Akha like the rugged land, but they had to move aside here to make room for the Shan refugees. 


“I want to have a house, and around the house, trees, because I like the environment. I would have trees. That is my real dream.” “Do you want this in Shan, or Thailand?” “Shan. If I can, I don't like in Thailand.” 


The whole time, his nervous smile would flicker by. It's surprising how a face constructed to fall so naturally into a wide grin can drop into such exhausted despair. He'd mentioned even on the first day that he doesn't think about worrying things because it would just make him depressed. But I knew when he said that, even though I didn't know him, that he must think about those things all the time.

Shan AIDS

Bay Da said in 2007 he saw about 10 HIV positive patients. That he generally sees “a lot,” and they are typically male, under 40, and soldiers. I don't know why he said “2007” instead of “2008,” unless he hasn't counted up the 2008 cases yet. The first AIDS patient I saw was on February 11. She was, well she still is at the moment, a 52-year-old woman who had been in the week before (although this one looks so shrunken that I find it hard to believe it's the patient they're referring to) with an infected tooth socket. This patient is very wasted, certainly under 100 lbs and probably around 75 lbs, black lips surrounded by sores. Her daughter is with her, a healthy-looking, distressed woman, also a young man and a bunch of same-aged kids who may just be in for the show. The daughter is so upset that she won't let me take pictures, Khang Seng is busy putting her IV in and he looks up to tell me to stop. So I'll wait until the family leaves the In-Patient ward for awhile, if they do at all. The photo is necessary Why is the photo necessary? Because she's part of her people's genocide। Burma has enough money to have kept her safe and well if it wanted to. Her death is a victory for them. Word is, the woman will die within days without medicine, which can only serve to hold her on a little longer, slow the deterioration. That much is probably obvious to anyone. Amy says that her daughter said that this woman's husband died a few years ago. 

“Of the same thing Mom has now.” The next day she's still alive. She has tuberculosis and pneumonia, and what all the medics call “CD4,” which is code for HIV. I ask Homm Noon if people here understand the phrase “HIV.” She says they do. I ask her if they've told the woman's daughter she has HIV. She says no. I ask her if it will embarrass the woman's daughter if they say “HIV.” She says like she always does when I wish she'd be precise. “Yeah sure.” “But they must guess that she has AIDS.” “No I don't think they guess it.” “Why did they bring her in?” “Some abdominal pain."

The air around her bed smells dangerously rotten। A terrible smell around her, but it's not that she's soiled herself. I don't know what can take the nasty smell of death off her body. It's not the same as feces or vomit. It's unnatural decomposition. Like something breathing of a dead body. Anyway. The next morning I come in to take her picture if I can. She's awake. She nods when I show her my camera, and she pushes down the comforter and lifts up her blouse so I can see her emaciation.

Shan Tattoos

Most of the Shan men have blue-black writing in Shan; one line of writing with other lines of writing branching off like domino chicken foot. Many of them have explained these tattoos to us. They are a magic charm that will protect them from violence; knives and bullets. 


They admit the charms won't really make them invincible, but they make them a little braver when they need it. They get them up at the monastery when they're teenagers. The women and the other ethnicities don't have tattoo charms.

Kang Hseng

Within three days of arriving in Loi Kaw Wan, we all had a Kang Hseng crush, and he knew it. Kang is hot to begin with, but being one of the few city boys in Loi Kaw Wan, he possesses unusual charisma. This is what he said: Kang was born and raised in the capital city of Shan state: Taunggyi (Dong-chi). He has two older sisters, both of whom have been to college and now have relatively good jobs in retail. His father was an opium addict for 25 years. He paid for his habit by dealing. It's a little fuzzy, but he may have been a bootlegger too. The work put Kang's family squarely in Taunggyi's middle class. When it was evident Kang was on the verge of growing up, he had to decide what to do with his life. He's Shan, but because they lived in the city and his father had a mind for business they never felt threatened by the Burmese. 


At first Kang wanted to be an engineer, but he fell 5 per cent short on the entrance exam. His uncle in Singapore offered him a job. “Come work for me in Singapore. I'll set you up with a position and you can make a good living here,” his uncle told him. No. Another uncle is a monk in San Francisco, but Kang didn't want to be there either. A third uncle told him about the rebel Shan State Army, which he knew nothing of before, and the medics who bring aid to the Shan huddled along the border. 


That was the job 19-year-old Kang took. When Kang first told me this I thought “well you're a good guy Kang, but you're the only one here who can go home anytime you want. It doesn't have to be a serious thing for you.” Then I realized how much it meant. He could have chosen so many other lives. He was one of the rare ones; safe, comfortable, educated. He chose to go in when the others ran out. Almost three years later. He likes Loi Kaw Wan. He's a good medic and when the supplies hold he's the town dentist. He'll only leave if he wins a spot in the Mae Sot training clinic. And after that he would come back. Plus, he's staying because he's fallen in love with a 20-year-old student down the hill. He's a clothes horse with a choker of black beads like the surfers wear, and a black motorcycle jacket. His motorbike lust is strong, but with the honorarium salary he gets it will take him years to save up for one. He has an elfish face, likes to smile and show-off. His anime haircut makes him look like Bruce Lee and he loves it when people tell him that. 


He has no desire to be a soldier, but he calls the SSA “our organization.” Many Shan change their names when they escape or become rebels. Kang didn't change his, because he wants people to know it's him doing these things. Dangerous. He has his own private house; a bamboo and thatch hut the size of a backyard tool shed, with a dirt floor. There's a bare light bulb in the thatch that works for the two hours a night the generator's running. Between the bamboo cot and the rest of the house is a rack of clothes that acts as a wall. The door hangs onto the upper corner of its frame literally by a thread. He loves his house, because it's his only private place. In a few months he and the other two single male medics will be moved into a dorm, and he's not looking forward to it. 


Early every morning he took Cody and Sanjeev down to the clinic yard to teach them kung fu. Now and then he'd find one of the medics' guitars and play, which he was good at, and sing, which he needs to brush up on. Every night when all the others went to bed, Kang and I stayed up together to talk. We would play cards and tease and flirt. He told me all his secret gripes about how the Commander runs the town when there are no strangers to see it. Talked about politics and the genocide in Shan and how it's all going to end. And what happens after the end. He reminds me so much of another friend.

Uncle Sam

“Don't take my picture. Don't say where I take you. Don't call me my name, call me 'Uncle Sam,' I have enough problems before with foreigners.” Uncle Sam began his life when he was born in Rangoon in 1951. That was before the junta. His mother was a midwife and his father was a health assistant for the government. Even though they were Shan, they had little to fear from the government because of their jobs, and because things weren't so bad then. 


When he finished high school and had to choose a career, Uncle Sam chose jade trading. Moving gem stones out of Burma was a popular business. His dad gave him some start-up funds, which Sam quickly ran through. The trade wasn't as easy as he thought, so rather than face his father with the bad news, Sam went to work construction in Bangkok for three years. His father wasn't an idiot. He entreated Sam repeatedly to come home and try something else.


“You don't have a head for business Sam. My friend will set you up with a job in the hospital mixing drugs.” Sam took the job. Although he wasn't impressed with the pay he found he liked being in Health. Eventually he became a health administrator for the government as his father had been. As such he was assigned to government convoys sent to the Shan countryside, forcing development projects along the way. Much of what employees like himself told the Shan about the projects and the benefits was just propaganda. They never got much. Shan nationalism was growing then. The people weren't happy, not with the government, not with the union, not with the starvation. Kun Se's rebel Maung Tai army was getting stronger, really at its peak back then. They had real weaponry, real training, tens of thousands of volunteers. And of course, such a charismatic leader. Uncle Sam began to help them secretly. As a government employee, the son of a government employee, from Rangoon, he was above suspicion. He wasn't counted among the Shan, even while he stole medicine from the government and gave it away. 


Things were going fine and he wasn't particularly worried about being found out, until Kun Se surrendered to the Burmese in 1996 and went into house arrest in Rangoon. The Maung Tai army broke into pieces, and in the crumbling Uncle Sam was ratted out. “Betrayed me!” he says. He fled to Thailand. 


When he arrived there he found a reunion of rebels. A little disoriented, he served briefly in what was left of the rebel army. By 1997 he knew soldiering wasn't for him any more than gem trading. He learned of the medic training centre in Thailand, further south along the border. The Shan sent him there, where he trained for two years to become something of a rough and ready doctor. He was good at that. And ambitious with it. Before too long he brought his skills to camps of displaced Shan scattered along the northern Thai-Burma border, where the Shan were pushed by a furious Burmese army. Those refugees are still there. Uncle Sam still sends them medicine. 


Today he lives permanently in Thailand, fat and loquacious. Canadians bought him a migrant worker ID, and as long as he has that he can stay. He is happy in his young career. He takes Shan teenagers and makes field medics of them. He butts heads with rebel commanders who stew along the border in new villages of displaced ethnic minorities. Butts heads with well-meaning foreign doctors who come to help him train. Can't ever go back. He betrayed the Burmese government, and then was betrayed himself, so he cannot go back and keep his life.

Burma's Thai Babies

The families in Loi Kaw Wan know there are advantages in their children having Thai citizenship. Citizenship isn't something countries just hand out, and in Thailand even the newborns have to work for it.

When we arrived in Loi Kaw Wan early Sunday morning, Homm Noon was waiting to greet us. She was at the end of her pregnancy, her face had become fat and freckled. The greeting was brief, because she was holding out just long enough to see us and then with her mom climbed into the tinny pick-up truck that dropped us off at the border post, and was driven away to the nearest Thai hospital to give birth.

Since she and her mother are the only trained midwives in the village, it made sense that she wouldn't want to deliver her first child alone in Loi Kaw Wan. The other benefits were realized later on. If Homm Noon's children are born in Thailand, they're Thais. In an area where you're either a Thai or an illegal refugee, the choice seems obvious.

It isn't a simple matter of being born in Thailand though – the babies need a Thai parent. There are men in Thailand, usually old men, who each take money to claim he is the father of a woman's baby. Homm Noon and her husband found such a man to do this for them, as did every other family in Loi Kaw Wan who's children are Thai citizens.

It must be a terrible choice for these families, for the father to give up any official connection he has to his own children, replacing his name with some grasping stranger's. Surely it isn't a secret either. The doctors who register the births can't believe for very long that the old men who come in with young Burmese women are really the fathers of all those children. The Thai government must be aware of the trick as well, still it continues. After the birth the women return home with a newborn, probably hoping never to meet the official father of their child again.

At the end of our time in Loi Kaw Wan we returned to Thailand and paid a visit to Homm Noon. She had delivered a baby boy and was resting in a safe house in Thailand until the baby could get some vaccinations. The safe house is used for Burmese patients sent to the Thai hospital. It's a small warehouse among a line of other warehouses and loading docks.

Homm Noon, her husbadn and the baby had blankets laid out on the floor of the empty storage unit, with some clothes hung up in the corner. She introduced her healthy little baby. We asked his name, and she gave one but said it's only his Thai name, for the birth certificate. He doesn't have a real name yet.

Shan Village Representatives Interview

Village heads from central Shan state travelled to the SSA camp for a secret conference on the future of the nation. Four of them agreed to meet for an interview, no pictures. With them at the table in a dark SSA hut was the English interpreter, two SSA soldiers who took thorough-looking notes, and me.

All of this entry is exclusively what they told me, drawn from my written notes of the interview.

The village reps all speak, often in unison, responding strongly to certain questions. They had come to the camp to discuss issues of Shan unity, and unity between the Shan and other ethnic groups fighting the junta. Unity, they explain, is one of the six policies of the Shan movement. The others are freedom, democracy, independence, development, anti-narcotics and peace.

They all want Shan state to be an independent country, as they claim was promised to them when Burma gained its independence from England. There are 26 ethnic groups in Shan State (the Shan compose about 60% of the population), but they have faith the 26 will cooperate to build a democratic country. They are even willing to work with the majority ethnicities of the other warring states: the Chin, Karen, Mon, to build a new country from all their lands. Any configuration is acceptable as long as it doesn't include the Burmese. This would result in a state shaped like a horseshoe wrapped around the Irrawaddy delta, but they are confident it can work.

They say it's always been the policy of the military government—the SPDC, to pit the ethnic groups against each other. Now that the election is coming and the SPDC needs to guarantee it will go smoothly, bribes are everywhere. Cars, houses, business opportunities and women all appear where the SPDC wants support. Suddenly, the SPDC has started holding weekly pep meetings in places they never visited peacefully before, laying out food and fine promises for all the villagers who turn out. The reps say everyone inside knows the gifts are meant to buy submission.

The same thing happened in 2008 before the constitutional referendum, in which nobody needed to vote and an appalling constitution was adopted.

They say they never see international aid, NGOs, or foreigners. Only in Taunggyi, the capital city of Shan where tourists are allowed to pass through on their way to Lake Inle, are foreigners ever spotted. But these men can't hang around Taunggyi, and they say they're alone out in the countryside. Not only does the SPDC forbid tourists from going anywhere they want to, foreigners are warned against venturing into the countryside, where they're told the Shan guerrillas will slaughter them.

The reps say come, someone please come and see the situation. They promise that a visitor would see the Shan aren't dangerous, they are friendly and ready to tell the truth. In particular, the men say, if a journalist comes that person would be worshipped for their daring.

One says the reason he came to the IDP camp conference was for the chance to meet a foreigner, and tell these things. They hope that in getting exposure, maybe humanitarian aid will come to Shan. They repeatedly ask the SPDC for health and education supplies, but nothing comes. Nothing but the army.

Since 1962 the army has always meant beatings, lootings, forced labour, extortion and death. If on their way home any are caught having come here they are certain they'll be arrested, they aren't certain of the consequences after that. Whatever happens, they say they are accustomed to being threatened with jail, injury, arbitrary fines and threats to their family. They will pass many checkpoints on their way back inside, and their only plan is to tell the military they were travelling to find work or visiting family on the Salween river.

It's common for Shan to cross into China, Thailand and Laos to find work, usually construction or farm labouring. This is because even without the military a family rarely makes enough at home to subsist on. So many people have crossed the border to work illegally that some Shan villages are made up entirely of old people. These village reps are trying to teach the youth about the independence struggle, but most choose to leave.

Another, almost final way to make enough money is to grow opium. After the fall of the Muang Tai Army in 1996, the SPDC took over the MTA's opium business, forcing farmers to continue growing it. and charging taxes on it. Despite its control of the opium trade the SPDC will also arrest people for it.

If life is hard without the SPDC at its worst, it's nearly impossible when it's on the attack. When the army arrives in a village without an outpost, it orders people away from their farms in order to act as slaves, building a base and carrying army equipment to the next site. It seizes food, supplies and accommodations, punishing anyone who opposes them. A few months ago the army burned two villages to the ground.

Rebel forces aren't thought of as a fighting resource equal to the SPDC. The SSA won't battle the Burmese near a village, as villages suspecting of helping rebels have been severely punished. Instead, rebels are all guerrilla fighters, ambushing government forces in the mountain forests. They say the SPDC hate the Free Burma Rangers the most, because the FBR carry a satellite Internet connection and post pictures of SPDC destruction online immediately after they find it. No matter what, the Shan reps feel like there is no way out. They believe their countrymen living a good life in Rangoon or Mandalay don't know the reality of life for the Shan, but they do know the SPDC are an evil force.

Why is the SPDC doing this? The consensus among the village reps is that this is ethnic cleansing. It always has been. The Burmese in power want the Shan and all the other ethnic groups to disappear, whether by assimilating, leaving or dying.

What the Shan want is the world to know, including the UN, so that they can get humanitarian aid, and eventually freedom. Some of the truth of what life is like in Burma was revealed during the democracy movement and massacre of 1988, but it's always been extremely hard for the Shan's voice to be heard. They say what the world sees of the Shan is just a shadow, not the body.