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.”

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.