And [Cyclone] Nargis victims, so UN government tell to them, to the other countries, “Okay, now we can help to them directly.” But they don’t. They cannot. Because at that time I’m in the inside, in Nargis victim area. A lot of people need water and food and medicine. They don’t help them. At the time we enter that area and very, very difficult. Some area we cannot enter because of military regime, cannot allow to enter that area. So very major problem.
They are always saying they obey also the military regime, whatever they say. Okay, military regime very clever how to say to the world, how to say to the UN also, how to say to another country’s government. So at the time they always telling to the world, because they are not shameful. So they always telling whatever is it, “Okay, now we help for the people. People are okay now. They have already enough food and built also, already renewed everything.” But not like this.
We know very well. UN and government and ASEAN: three groups, they’re based in my village. I know very well. Because they are only taking photo and, “Okay, we built, new.” Very few houses. A lot of people need, and they are only taking a photo. So you can enter to that place, I give the name. Our village is the Sawkanty village in the Kon Yangon township in the Yangon Division. Also in that area, can study and can ask villagers freely if they can say like that. They never get food from that UN and ASEAN and military regime. Only the private donators offered them that. So they need a lot. UN and ASEAN and government never help them, only talking to the world. We know about this very well.
International can help for the people is very few. They can help for the military government, we know. Because military regime says, “Okay, if you want to offer – if you want to support to the people, you need to support directly to [us]. So and then later we support to the people.” At the time very few, because not directly. They don’t allow directly to the people. So firstly, international NGOs need to support to the military side and then later to the people. So at the time the military regime take a lot of food to their dock. Very few to support to the people.
I want to advise to the UN, if they want to help for the people, need to help directly to the people. They need to enter to the inside directly, and they need to help directly for the people. It is more okay. Internationals enter our country. Now they help to the people. Yes, all right. But they can help very few. And now they are in our country, the Nargis victim, also they need a lot.
Because military regimes – okay for example, “Okay, we don’t accept when you associate with me, so we cannot allow to enter.” So that NGO and that international need to associate with the government. Government are, ”Okay, you need to go that place. You need to go that place.” They divide it and wherever, they cannot go there. Because some Nargis victims areas are very far from the Yangon side. They can go the nearest victim site. So it is not good. Far from that area, very very difficult. So I suggest to them, they need to tell directly to the government, “Okay, wherever we need to go there, so we need to – we want to help for the people directly.” So at the time they need to try to do like that.
Venerable Ashin Issariya (“King Zero”) is a Buddhist monk from Burma. In 2007 he was a principal organizer of the nationwide protests that became known as the “Saffron Revolution.”
After the Burmese military regime used violence to break up a peaceful march by monks who were calling attention to poverty and starvation in the town of Pakkoku, Ashin Issariya and other monks organized nationwide protests against the violence. Over 100,000 monks and tens of thousands of ordinary citizens demonstrated in Rangoon, Mandalay, and other places throughout the country, often chanting Buddha’s teachings on “loving kindness”. The government responded with more violence, killing dozens of monks and other protestors and inflicting serious injuries on hundreds more.
Ashin Issariya became widely known in Burma and around the world under the name “King Zero”— which, as he explained in his Freedom Collection interview, meant that Burma should have no kings and no dictators. But it took the government some time to uncover his real identity, so he was able to spend several months assisting victims of Cyclone Nargis before fleeing to Thailand in 2008. He now lives in a monastery near the Thai-Burma border and remains in close touch with democracy advocates inside and outside Burma.
Burma, a Southeast Asian country with about 57 million people, is ruled by a military regime that seized power in 1962. Although the reformist National League for Democracy (NLD) won overwhelmingly in a 1990 election, the country’s military rulers ignored the results and arrested NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 “for her nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights.” The military government held a referendum on a new constitution in 2008 and a parliamentary election in 2010, neither of which was regarded by international observers as free or fair, and both of which resulted in overwhelming majorities for pro-government positions and candidates. The military regime has committed widespread and systematic human rights violations, including extrajudicial killing, torture, rape, and denial of freedom of expression, association, assembly, and religion.
Throughout its existence, the regime has been at war with a number of Burma’s ethnic minority groups. Ethnic minority voters overwhelmingly supported the NLD in the 1990 election, and after the suppression of the democracy movement several of these groups continued or resumed armed resistance to the de facto government. Although the government signed cease-fire agreements with several of these groups ostensibly granting them autonomy within their respective regions, the Burmese military has used a range of brutal techniques, including the killing of civilians, forced labor, rape, and the destruction of homes, crops, and villages, in cease-fire zones as well as in areas where there is still armed resistance.
In 2007, as on several previous occasions, there were mass demonstrations throughout the country demanding freedom and democracy. The 2007 demonstrations were led by Buddhist monks and eventually became known as the “Saffron Revolution” after the color of the monks’ robes. The armed forces brutally suppressed these demonstrations—estimates of the number of protestors killed range from 31 to several thousand—and intensified popular dissatisfaction with the government by the killing, beating, and public humiliation of monks.
The nominally civilian government resulting from the 2010 election has been widely regarded as a façade for continuing military rule. However, in October 2011, the government released 206 of Burma’s estimated 2,000 prisoners of conscience. The next month, the government announced that it would soon release all remaining political prisoners. The NLD, which had declined to participate in the 2010 election, registered to participate in the next election and announced that Aung San Suu Kyi would be among the NLD candidates.
Although the military regime announced in 1989 that it had changed the English name of the country from Burma to “Myanmar,” the United States government and other international supporters of democracy in Burma have generally continued to call the country Burma because this is the name preferred by Aung San Suu Kyi and other democracy advocates who won the 1990 election.
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