By Rina Jimenez-DavidPhilippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 11/16/2010
WHAT CAME to mind most vividly when I caught news that Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi had been freed from house arrest was an exchange last month between young Burmese activists and a senior Cambodian peace leader.
The Burmese women, all working with groups of refugees, migrants and cultural communities in the border between Thailand and Burma, and the Cambodian women, along with other women from East Timor, South Thailand, Aceh in Indonesia and Mindanao, were all taking part in a “People’s Democracy Training on Women’s Engagement in Peace and Decision-Making Processes” held in Bangkok.
Vannath Chea (pictured), a notable civil society leader in Cambodia with the Cambodian Center for Social Development, had just given an orientation on “Mediation and Negotiation Skills” for women working on conflict resolution in their troubled countries. Chea spoke of their own experience enduring decades of brutal rule under the Khmer Rouge, and the slow, painful steps taken after the holding of elections (under the auspices of UN peacekeepers) to establish democratic institutions and make these accountable to the people.
Established in 1995, the Center for Social Development, she said, was founded to “promote democratic values and improve the quality of life” of ordinary Cambodians. But realizing that democracy and development could not proceed apace without some form of national reconciliation, the CSD convened a “Forum on Khmer Rouge and National Reconciliation” that included representatives from all sides of the armed conflict, including some top Khmer Rouge leaders.
The dialogues were often painful, at times heated, she said, but eventually it led to the creation of some forms of co-existence, including joint moves to address underlying issues to the conflict: land ownership, corruption and even domestic violence and prostitution. Being Buddhists, Cambodian citizens were drawn to the peace and reconciliation movement by revered monks who led annual marches for peace.
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IT WAS at this point that a young Burmese woman spoke up. “Everyone wants peace,” she pointed out, “and it is all very well for you to organize and negotiate with the government to assert your rights. But we live under a military regime, and our people cannot negotiate with the government.”
It was easy enough to understand the frustration and indeed despair that lay beneath her words. After refusing to heed the results of elections in 1990, dominated by Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, the military junta placed Suu Kyi under house arrest, an incarceration that lasted 15 years.
Until her release a few days ago, Suu Kyi was the best known prisoner of conscience in the world. In 1991, she received the Nobel Peace Prize for urging her followers to follow a peaceful path. But the Burmese junta has not been as circumspect. In 2007, popular protests led by Buddhist monks protesting the rise in prices of commodities resulted in a bloodbath. It is believed that hundreds, perhaps thousands, died as a result of the military crackdown, although no one knows for sure given the way the junta clamped down on the media, including bloggers, while the protesters were being hunted down.
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GRAY-haired, with her face belying the decades of living under situations of war, violence and conflict, and devoting her life to forging reconciliation among Cambodia’s many warring factions, Chea seemed taken aback by the young woman’s vehemence.
But her voice was gentle when she replied: “You recognize the problem, so that means there is a solution. Situations evolve, they never stand still. Never did we dream in Cambodia that we would ever emerge from under the Khmer Rouge, but I can tell you the Khmer Rouge collapsed almost overnight. Burma’s plight is recognized by the rest of the world and by world institutions, I am sure they are working on the junta to institute greater democracy. All you can do is to keep hoping and prepare yourselves to work for post-conflict peace-building.”
Little did all of us know, in that small conference room in a nondescript hotel in Bangkok, that Chea’s voice was prophetic. That, less than a month after, we would be hearing news of Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from house arrest, heralding a new era for Burma. I am thinking now of those Burmese women in the conference, toiling in refugee camps and remote border towns, perhaps spending the last weekend celebrating for now the glimmer of hope on the horizon.
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NO ONE is saying, of course, that Burma is now on the road to full democracy. The military junta is still firmly in place and may take their “victory” in the recent elections—widely assessed as flawed and fraudulent—as a seal of approval that led them to confidently release Suu Kyi from her bungalow.
“The Lady,” as the Burmese call her, has certainly paid a high price for her involvement in her country’s politics. In the late 1990s, as her British husband Dr. Michael Aris petitioned to visit his wife after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, the junta refused to grant him a visa, saying there were not enough facilities in Burma to care for him. Instead, they urged Suu Kyi to visit him abroad, but fearing that once she left Burma she would no longer be allowed to return, she decided to remain in her country, even after Aris died in 1999. She continues to live apart from her two sons by Aris who live in the U.K.
It is a deep, painful wound that I am sure Suu Kyi continues to carry. But from a woman and a citizen of a country whose history has itself hinged on sudden, unexpected upheavals, I can only send her my prayers and a huge symbolic welcome hug back to the world of the free.
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