Interviews with Cheery Zahau

I found there’s a weakness of the UN [United Nations] programs all over Burma, especially in Chin State where I have access to talk with the people. In one of my trips in Chin State, one teacher came up to me with the UNICEF [United Nations Children’s Fund] box. And he was very upset and angry. And he told me, “Saya Cheery,” Saya Cheery is like Teacher Cheery, “Tell the UNICEF not to send us this box anymore.” And I was very surprised. I was, “Why? They are trying to help your village and your school?” And the school is torn apart in that particular village. It’s bending. So he said, “We have to pay 20,000 Kyat for this piece of box.

And I looked at the box. It’s the curriculum, a little bit of pencils and, you know, exercise book and stuff like that. And so basically the UNICEF, from maybe their Rangoon office, had sent those boxes to Chin villages for free. But the education department, in different levels, has collected tax or charge for any supplies that UNICEF has used. So that becomes a big burden for the villagers, especially in that particular village.

The kids, who are 13 and 14 years old, who are supposed to be in school, have to go and work at the farm in order to earn 20,000 Kyat. That means that when UNICEF supplies a box, they are having to work in the farm. They didn’t go to school. So there’s only one example. There are so many other examples that I can illustrate. So there’s, in my opinion, there’s a huge lack of proper monetary mechanisms, how their supplies, how their help has been carried out in a very ground level, in a very grassroots level. And which we don’t see at the moment yet.

Chin State is facing terrible food crisis which happens every 50 years. And of course the Burmese military regime does not prepare anything to help the people. And some of the UN agencies have tried to help the local people. But some of the cases that we found out is the program they call Food for Work. And so they come up with rice bags in a village, but then the villagers have to work to make the road, to make some certain works, and to earn the food. And to some extent it looks okay, because people, you know, should work hard and they should not be lazy. They should be independent.

But there’s a problem with widows and elderly people and the most vulnerable people in the village because, for example, when Granny cannot work, she cannot earn any rice. Or when the parents get sick in a very remote area in Chin State, the children have to work. I’ve seen many children working in that kind of Food for Work, which is against the UN law under the CRC [Convention on the Rights of the Child].

So the UN programs, the implementing agencies, should really think about how their programs [are] being implemented. Are they being in comprehensive with the UN laws that prevent child labors, prevent any kind of forced labor?

In Chin State some of the UN [United Nations] programs – a year, two, or three years ago – one of the programs that they implemented in Hakha, like in a bigger city, was that they have some plantations. And in order to do that, they also have to hire a local staff. And apparently they hire women. At the same time, they also employ the Burmese military officials to work with their local staff.

Some of the UN programs in Chin State have caused some social problems because according to the UN principle, they also have to hire a woman and also someone who is from the local community, which they do. But the bosses or supervisors of the local staff are military officials. So the Chin women and military officials, who are mostly Burmans, are working together, whereas other Chin boys or young educated people are left out without job. So it creates social tensions in some of the communities.

And with this Food for Work: although SPDC [State Peace and Development Council, official title for the military regime in Burma at the time of this interview] Burmese military soldiers do not come and ask for forced labor, the UN office has asked people to make the road. And the road is very useful for the villagers, for them to be able to travel, to export their farm products. But it also helps the soldiers to go from one village to the other village where they can control the population. So who is really benefiting from these road constructions? That’s a big question mark.

Cheery Zahau is a human rights activist from Chin State, Burma, and is now based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. As a high school student, she was advised by her teachers that her independence and intellectual curiosity would get her into serious trouble if she remained in Burma. She sought refuge in India, where she became an advocate for thousands of ethnic Chin faced with forcible return to Burma.

Zahau also became a leader of the Women’s League of Chinland, an organization that works to call international attention to the situation inside Chin State, including the use of rape as an instrument of conflict by the Burmese military regime. She has spoken at the United Nations and in other venues around the world.

When Zahau relocated to Thailand, she began working as an advocacy officer at the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, focusing on the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the ASEAN human rights process. She is also a management board member of the Network for Human Rights Documentation in Burma and is pursuing an advanced degree in international relations.

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.