People have been forced to survive on wild yams and roots, which cause various sicknesses including severe stomach pain, gastric problems and constipation. In addition to hunger and malnutrition, famine-related diseases such as chronic diarrhoea have increased, as has vulnerability to other illnesses. Children in many areas have been unable to attend school, because they are too weak, hungry and ill. The Chin Human Rights Organisation concludes that ‘government neglect and continued abuse; inadequately supported relief efforts; and pervasive hunger and food shortages have the potential for catastrophic humanitarian consequences’. The Chin people ‘are on the edge of survival now; but their struggle is far from over’.56
In 2010, I met some of the survivors of the Chin food crisis, who recalled their sense of despair that their suffering was largely unknown, and yet they expressed their gratitude for the few people who did know and tried to help. ‘We had no place where we could tell our difficulties,’ one man said. ‘We didn’t know anybody to whom we could speak about our suffering and starvation. For many families, the famine meant exodus, because of fear of starvation. Thousands left their villages to go to places where they could get food. They had no food left with them, and they had so many tears.’ Mothers were so malnourished that they were unable to breast-feed. ‘At night the village was filled with the crying voices of babies,’ he said. When help came, however, the situation changed. ‘After we got food, we became sure in our hearts that our village would not be destroyed by famine. We had peace, and we knew we could eat as a family. If you hadn’t given help, we would have died.’57
The lack of health care in Chin State is a particularly urgent concern. In the entire state, according to the Chin Human Rights Organisation, there are only eight permanent clinics, to serve a population of 500,000.58 There is an acute shortage of doctors, and a severe shortage of medicine.59 Even if medicine is available, it is unaffordable for most people and is of poor quality.
The majority of the Chin people therefore rely on their own resources: clinics established along the India–Burma border to provide help to those who can reach them, and backpack health workers who travel through villages, at significant risk to themselves. The Women’s League of Chinland told me that their health workers face the possibility of arrest every time they go inside the country. But, as one of their leaders said, ‘even though it is such a difficult situation, we want to keep going inside again and again. We know it is dangerous, but we want to keep going in.’
I met one female health worker in 2009 who had been caught by the Burmese police, and forced to pay a bribe of 20,000 kyats. Another was caught in Paletwa Township and interrogated for an hour about what she was doing. She was released when two village headmen arrested with her informed the authorities that she was carrying food supplies for them at their request. In another case, Tatmadaw soldiers found medicines which a health worker had left with a village headman, and took some for their own use. ‘There are two reasons we do not want to get caught,’ a Women’s League of Chinland spokeswoman told me. ‘Firstly, for ourselves, and secondly, for the sake of the villagers, because they are questioned so much.’
Relief workers travelling inside face other dangers besides the Tatmadaw. One health worker told me that she almost drowned crossing a river. And on 30 October 2008 a Chin human rights activist and relief worker, John Tuihing, died in a boating accident while delivering much-needed food aid to communities in Paletwa Township.
Community health worker training programmes are a vital way of addressing the health crisis in Chin State, as many people are dying of preventable or treatable diseases. The Women’s League of Chinland has run a number of training programmes, and the Chin backpack health workers raise awareness about basic primary health care needs. In addition, a Community Health Worker Training Programme has been started in a far corner of the India–Burma border, near a village called Chapi, by an extraordinary young Chin doctor called Dr Sasa.
Sasa was born in a remote village in southern Chin State, into the Mara community. Most of the villagers, including his own parents, were illiterate and he does not know his date or even year of birth. There was no electricity in the village, and many families could not afford candles. The Burma Army had a permanent base with sometimes as many as 200 soldiers nearby, so like most people in military-occupied areas Sasa was forced to porter for the military as a small boy, and his own sister was raped. And the predominantly Christian community was forced to build a Buddhist pagoda in the village.
At a very early age, Sasa’s profound intelligence became obvious and the village, motivated by his grandmother, pulled together to give him proper schooling. ‘It was very difficult – people wanted to study, but they had no school, no schoolteacher, no textbooks, no pencils, no exercise books,’ he recalls. When he was about thirteen, the villagers sent him to Rangoon for education, and the start of his epic life adventure. After walking for three days, accompanied by a pastor, he then travelled by bamboo boat, truck and bus for several more days to reach the city. The entire journey, Sasa believes, took about thirteen days.
After a few years in Rangoon, Sasa returned to his village and worked as a schoolteacher. It was during this time that his most formative experiences occurred, and they were to shape his life’s vision. Witnessing the deaths of villagers, sometimes his own students, on an almost weekly basis, Sasa began to question why he was burying people who were dying of treatable diseases. The village had no medical facilities at all and no understanding of primary health care. Sasa began to dream about becoming a doctor, although he says that at the time such an idea was as far-fetched as becoming an astronaut.
Sasa also began to develop an extraordinary wisdom about relationships with the authorities. On one occasion, the local military commander visited his home, and forgot to take his pistol away with him. Sasa instructed everyone to leave the gun untouched, and when the soldier returned to collect it, he was amazed. ‘He was about to cry because if he lost his gun he could not go back to his unit – he would be arrested. He was frightened,’ recalls Sasa. The brutality of the punishments within the Tatmadaw was shocking, so this soldier had every reason to be afraid. Two soldiers from the same area who tried to run away were caught, shot, and other soldiers were forced to eat the kidneys of the captured men as a warning to others. But Sasa recognised the humanity of some soldiers, and befriended the commander. ‘He started to share about his life. I realised that there are some good people in the army who want to do good things but are forced to do bad things.’
To realise his vision of studying medicine, Sasa’s village once again united, sold pigs, chickens and cows to raise money, and sent him across the border to India. There, he worked on a construction site to earn money, learned English, and studied in a college in Shillong. When he went for his first interview with the college principal he was rejected for being unable to speak English and being poorly dressed. In a testimony worthy of a stand-up comedian, Sasa recounts that because he was unable to afford a proper shirt and trousers, as stipulated by the college, he turned up in a ladies’ shirt several sizes too small, and green ladies’ Adidas tracksuit trousers, lent to him by a sympathetic woman. He claims he had not washed for months, and his shoulder-length hair was full of lice and dust. Standing under a ceiling fan in front of the principal, his hair started to blow. ‘Dust and all sorts of animals flew into the face of the principal and onto his desk,’ recalls Sasa. ‘I could not speak English, except for yes and no, so when the principal’s face looked positive I’d say “Yes, yes, yes” and if he looked negative I’d say “No, no, no”.’ The principal told him to go away, learn English and buy some proper clothes, and not to return until he had done so. Sasa did exactly that, was accepted into the college, and graduated as one of its top students.
From Shillong Sasa secured a place at a university in Armenia, and won funding from Prospect Burma. Although he admits he did not know where Armenia was, he chose it because it was cheaper than the United States or Europ
e. It meant, however, that he had to learn Armenian – his fifth language after his Mara village dialect, Chin, Burmese and English.
Before commencing his final year of medical studies, Sasa had a dream in which he saw starving people from Chin State reaching out their hands and crying for help. Reports of the chronic food shortage developing in his homeland were ‘heartbreaking’ he recalls, and so he decided to return to the India–Burma border to help. Over the course of two months, during his summer vacation, he treated over 2,000 patients before returning to complete his degree. After seven years of study, Sasa qualified as a doctor in 2009 and returned to the India–Burma border to fulfil his vision: the establishment of a community health workers’ training programme. Under a newly formed charity known as ‘Health and Hope’, Sasa has inspired hundreds of villagers to follow his example. ‘My motivation is clear,’ he says. ‘I believe in my people’s future. I want to help my people who are helpless, hopeless and voiceless. Love has no border, no hiding place, it cannot be hidden.’
In November 2009 I had the privilege of attending the opening of the ‘Health and Hope’ training centre, and a few weeks later I received an extraordinarily moving email from Sasa. Summarising the essence of solidarity, Sasa wrote: ‘I thank you for crying with me when I cried for my people, I thank you for feeling with me when I feel for my people, I thank you for studying with me with all you have when I studied medicine for my people who have suffered so much for so long. I thank you for graduating with me when I graduated for my people. I thank you for listening to me when I listen to my people’s crying and dying voices … I thank you for loving me and my people.’
A year later I returned to meet some of the trainees. Almost all have extraordinary stories of struggles for education and health care. One twenty-three-year-old woman recounted how she had studied in another village as a teenager, because there was no secondary education in her village. Each weekend she would return to her family’s home to collect food supplies. ‘We would walk the whole of Saturday, twelve or thirteen hours, stay the night, and then walk back on Sunday, sometimes through the night as we did not want to miss our classes,’ she told me. ‘We would carry heavy loads of rice back, usually between seven and twelve kilograms.’ When the time came to take exams, however, she had to walk four days to the nearest school where exams were held. Remarkably, she went on to university in Sittwe, where she worked as a cook for a family. ‘For three years, I woke up at 4 a.m., started cooking until 8 a.m., and then I was in college from 8 a.m. until 3 p.m. As soon as classes were finished, I went home and started cooking again, until 6 p.m., and then studied until 11 p.m.’ In 2008, she graduated with a degree in botany and then volunteered for the community health worker training programme.60
Another trainee had seen two of her siblings die because her mother was unable to produce breast-milk. A brother died of diarrhoea. Some of her other siblings suffered malnutrition, one of her brothers was born disabled, her father is deaf and one of her brothers was taken by the authorities and forced to join the police force. ‘He was taken away and we didn’t see him for fourteen years,’ she says. ‘He was a child soldier. Finally we heard he had run away from the police force and had come to India. He got sick … and then died.’ Recognising the value of education, not only for her but for her community, she worked carrying sandbags from the river, each one weighing twenty-five kilos, for six miles, three times a week for seven weeks to earn money for education. She was then selected for the health workers’ training.61
Another organisation that provides inspiring leadership for the Chin people is the Chin Human Rights Organisation. Founded in 1994 by student activists Salai Bawi Lian Mang and Victor Biak Lian, it plays a vital role documenting violations in Chin State and engaging in international advocacy.
Both Bawi Lian and Victor fled to the Indian border after the student uprising in 1988, and were originally involved in the armed resistance group, the Chin National Front (CNF). ‘I was an angry student after seeing unjust things done by the regime in 1988, and it seemed to me that the only option left was to fight the Burma Army through armed struggle,’ says Victor Biak Lian. Both Victor and Bawi Lian received training from the KIA in Kachin State, and endured arduous journeys through the jungle. ‘We marched to the China border and it took us eighty-six days,’ Victor recalls. ‘Then we came to Bangladesh from the China border, another 125 days on foot. We experienced starvation, ambushes by the Tatmadaw and many terrible situations.’ Bawi Lian became severely ill with malaria and jaundice, and had to be hospitalised for three months. Unable to return to the front line, he became a volunteer teacher in Manerplaw, the Karen headquarters, and established relationships with other ethnic groups. There he saw the work of other ethnic human rights organisations, and the vision for CHRO was born. ‘I spoke to the CNF leaders and said that we need to set up something. The world does not know what we are doing. Nobody can come to us so we need to tell our story to the media,’ says Bawi Lian. Human rights specialist Chris Lewa provided some basic training, and a donor gave one hundred dollars. ‘We had a two-hour training session in Bangkok, and money which we used to buy a tape-recorder and a camera. That was the beginning of CHRO.’
Victor followed Bawi Lian soon afterwards, swapping the life of a soldier for that of an activist. ‘In the jungle, I witnessed many things which made me think differently. I saw children dying due to food shortage, and I lost many friends in combat, some of them dying in my arms. All this made me realise that war is not a solution for the political crisis in Burma. I believe it is essential to tell the world what is happening among our people, by doing human rights documentation and advocacy.’
For the Chin people, wrestling with political oppression, religious and ethnic persecution, severe poverty, lack of education and health care and a famine, life is grim. Many have fled the country, to India, Thailand, the United States, Canada and Europe. At least 25,000 have gone to Malaysia, either as refugees or economic migrants. They go in search of freedom and better opportunities, but in Malaysia they find themselves trapped in another cycle of poverty, oppression, exploitation and victimisation.
I have visited the Chin community in Malaysia several times, and the conditions in which they live are little better than those they fled from. Many are hidden in cramped apartments in Kuala Lumpur, with poor sanitation, no health care and little food. One two-room apartment housed twenty-seven people from eight families, living in eight-foot by five-foot spaces blocked off with thin curtains or cardboard dividers. Others live in jungle camps on the edges of Malaysia’s capital, in conditions no different from the internally displaced peoples of eastern Burma. All of them run the risk of being arrested and deported by the Malaysian authorities – and brutally treated in the process.
The most vicious group among the Malaysian immigration and law enforcement bodies is the vigilante force known as RELA. No more than a gang of thugs used by the Malaysian police to do their dirty work, RELA terrorises the refugees and migrant workers. Regularly launching night-time raids armed with sticks and clubs, RELA is notorious for arresting people without concern for their circumstances. Elderly Chins, pregnant mothers and young children are beaten and taken to detention centres.
Once at the detention centre, they face even more severe treatment. On 9 October 2007, for example, a Chin pastor who had converted to Christianity from Buddhism in Burma was arrested by RELA. The regime in Burma had destroyed one of his churches. ‘We cannot worship freely in Chin State,’ he told me. ‘The SPDC tries to influence people to convert from Christianity to Buddhism. We face Burmanisation.’ Denied an interpreter in court, he was sentenced to two months in jail and a caning. Stripped naked, his hands and legs were tied to bars at an angle and he was blindfolded. ‘When they removed the blindfold, I could not see clearly. I felt giddy,’ he told me. He was caned on his backside, and he showed me the scar which remained, more than a year on. After the caning, antiseptic cream was applied carelessly to the wound. ‘They treated
me like an animal,’ he said. After fifty days he was deported to the Thai border.
Those who are deported to the Thai border then face a desperate struggle to get back to Malaysia and avoid being returned to Burma. Typically, if they can raise enough money, they can pay a trafficker to return them – but leaving themselves very vulnerable to exploitation. Even if they are returned to Malaysia, the whole cycle can start again.
One woman, who was half-Chin and half-Karen, married to a Chin, arrived in Malaysia on 13 April 2005 and was arrested the very next day. She was deported to Thailand, but managed to return to Malaysia, where she was once again arrested. At the time of her second arrest, on 13 October 2006, she was three months pregnant, but the Malaysian immigration authorities sent her to Semenyih detention centre for five months. She was transferred to another detention centre for a further five months. Although she had informed the authorities she was pregnant, she was still forced to work every day cleaning the rooms and toilets, and was denied adequate drinking water. When she complained to the UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) during one of their fortnightly visits, the prison authorities became angry and increased her workload. Denied proper medical treatment, fresh clothes or rest, she was forced to sweep the floors. When she went into labour, four women police officers took her to the prison hospital, and chained her to the bed. She gave birth on 5 April 2007, and five hours later she was taken back to prison. She was not permitted any visitors and even her husband, who was also in detention, was not allowed to see her or their baby. They were finally released when the baby was four months old.62 She wept as she sat in a bleak, overcrowded Kuala Lumpur apartment, told her story and pondered her future.
Few foreigners visit the Chin people, either on the India–Burma border or Malaysia. They are among Burma’s forgotten people. On my first visit to Mizoram, a Chin refugee told me: ‘Many foreigners go to Burma’s eastern borders, but until now no one has come to us. We used to pray for foreign NGOs to come to the western borders, and we used to weep when no one came.’ The Chairman of the CNF said: ‘Your coming here is a godsend.’ But even if visits can give the Chin some hope and encouragement, their plight is desperate and it will require more than just encouragement for it to change. One young Chin student, sitting around a dinner table in Aizawl, the extraordinary capital of Mizoram State perched on top of a mountain, looked into my eyes and said: ‘We have no hope for a future in Burma.’ In a depressing flash of harsh honesty, he said: ‘If we want to tell the truth, if we want freedom of speech, then everyone really worries about their life. The younger generation is willing to take risks, they want change, they want to find some hope from someone. Who can change our country? They want to sacrifice their lives. But the situation is hopeless. There is no future.’63 People such as Victor Biak Lian, Dr Sasa, Cheery Zahau and the Women’s League of Chinland offer their people some hope, and a future, and with the reforms taking place and a ceasefire agreed between the regime and the CNF in January 2012, perhaps the Chin people can have more hope than they had just two years before.
Burma- a Nation at the Crossroads Page 18