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ABBREVIATIONS
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
BA Burma Action
CCSDPT Committee for Coordination of Services to Displaced Persons in Thailand
DKBA Democratic Karen Buddhist Army
FBR Free Burma Rangers
HRD Human rights documenters
IDP Internally displaced persons
ILO International Labour Organization
IOM International Organization for Migration
KMT Kuomintang
KNLA Karen National Liberation Army
KNU Karen National Union
NGO Nongovernmental Organization
NLD National League for Democracy
SPDC State Peace and Development Council
TBBC Thailand Burma Border Consortium
UNHCR United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund
1 Later, when Htan Dah and I were watching a pirated Angelina Jolie DVD, I pointed to the steam filling the screen as she stood sexily under a showerhead. “Look,” I said, “hot shower,” and his mouth dropped open with sudden comprehension.
2 In addition to describing the Burman ethnicity and attendant language, “Burmese” also refers generally to people from Burma, including members of other ethnic groups. Although my BA housemates would never refer to themselves as “Burmese,” despite its technically being their nationality, for consistency and simplicity I’ll use “Burmese” to mean nationality and “Burman” to specify ethnicity. As for the name of the country, though the military junta switched it to the more formal “Myanmar” in 1989, the junta sucks, and activists and pro-democracy advocates therefore refuse to recognize its right to do so.
3 It’s all relative. Living in the jungle isn’t all glamorous, for sure: It’s far from impossible that a Karen State-dwelling Htan Dah would be illiterate, and malaria-ridden, and could be bitten by a Chinese ferret-badger or Javan mongoose or something, in which case his village doctor would make a poultice out of all kinds of crazy shit, including, quite possibly, actual shit, which may or may not result in a serious infection, from which he may or may not die.
4 Also making a splash in publications like the Pall Mall Gazette: Burma’s Kengtung had as many tigers as people!
5 Okay, this guy’s name isn’t really Eh Kaw. This is where I tell you that a few of the names from now on have been changed for the safety of those individuals who are still refugees and could be deregistered or deported for having gallavanted, however gallantly, outside camp in Thailand. So this is a good time to confess, too, that Burma Action is not called Burma Action. The organization asked me not to tell you what it’s really called, either, since it illegally houses a bunch of illegals, whom it employs to do illegal activities in two countries.
6 Incorrectly.
7 “Four hostile newspapers,” he actually said, “are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.”
8 And not just the Karen; several ethnic groups joined the Allied side. The British recruited and armed an entire fighting force of Kachin, for example, under whose direction some Allies adopted the practice of lacing the roadside with hardened, pointed, shit-smeared bamboo spikes and covering them with vegetation so that the Japanese would be impaled and, if they lived, infected when they dove for cover at the sound of gunfire.
9 It’s kind of weird that Burma has largely been forgotten in the popular World War II narrative, given its strategic importance and the staggering casualties there. The theater was Japan’s greatest Pacific War defeat: Three out of five of the three hundred thousand soldiers who entered it never went home. More Japanese died there than in the bombing of Hiroshima, even factoring in the radiation-exposure casualties of the following several months.
10 ?!
11 The PATRIOT Act made it illegal, additionally, to even try or verifiably want to provide material support to a terrorist organization. Thus were two Iraqi Kurds living in upstate New York convicted for conspiring to provide material support. “If a terrorist came to Albany,” the US attorney leading the prosecution said, “my opinion is that these guys would have assisted 100 percent.” The men were sentenced to fifteen years apiece.
12 Some other specifications of the law: Section 31: Whoever imports or keeps in possession or utilizes any type of computer . . . without the prior sanction of the Ministry of Communications, Posts and Telegraphs shall, on conviction be pu
nished with imprisonment for a term which may extend from a minimum of 7 years to a maximum of 15 years and may also be liable to a fine. Section 32: Whoever sets up a computer network or connects a link inside the computer network, without the prior sanction of the Ministry of Communications, Posts and Telegraphs shall, on conviction be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend from a minimum of 7 years to a maximum of 15 years and may also be liable to a fine.
13 When he eventually found out what was really going on, he resigned. It wasn’t until more than a decade later that the Americans actually admitted to the Burmese government what they’d done.
14 They weren’t really wild about the Reds either: The leader of the Communist Party of Burma had called revered Karen leader Ba U Gyi a “lackey of imperialism,” as communists are wont to do.
15 Nor was that the end of the KMT’s role in history. Throughout their tenure in Burma, they’d been dragooning villagers as workers in a burgeoning opium trade, and after their defeat, plenty of KMT stayed behind to build a hulking narcostate, some of them joining forces with Zhang Qifu, better known as Khun Sa, a.k.a. the world-famous Opium King.
16 Thailand may not have signed the UN refugee convention, but it did sign the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states, “In accordance with their obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population in armed conflicts, States Parties shall take all feasible measures to ensure protection and care of children who are affected by an armed conflict,” giving special protection to children who either have or are seeking refugee status and taking “all feasible measures to ensure that persons who have not attained the age of fifteen years do not take a direct part in hostilities.” Additionally, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which all UN members are bound, states, “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.”
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