Mission & Justice

Wa Wa Kyaw; 30/12/09

Early on September 3, my phone rang. I picked up, thinking it might be my fiance, Nyi Nyi Aung, who was visiting family in Bangkok, Thailand. But it was Nyi Nyi’s brother. Nyi Nyi, he said, had boarded a plane to our native Burma earlier that day, hoping to visit his mother, who has cancer. But according to friends waiting at the baggage claim, he never arrived. In all likelihood, agents of the military junta seized him. Nyi Nyi is an American citizen, I thought. How could this happen? Then, it hit me: I might never see him again. I called the US embassy in Rangoon; I wrote to our congressional representatives. And I waited. On September 20, 17 days after Nyi Nyi disappeared, the junta acknowledged his arrest. The charge, according to the state-run newspaper, was “plotting riots and sabotage”. I felt sick but not surprised: although Nyi Nyi has always been a nonviolent activist, the junta will say anything to justify its actions. Then, after the embassy was allowed a brief visit, I learned the worst: he was tortured. He was denied food for over a week. Kicked in his face. Beaten on his back. Not allowed to sleep.
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3/10/09

Judges have rejected an appeal by pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi against her extended house arrest. A divisional court in Rangoon upheld the Nobel laureate’s conviction in August over a bizarre incident in which an American man swam uninvited to her home, earning her an extra 18 months in detention. ”The appeal was rejected but we will take it to the High Court,” said Ms Suu Kyi’s lawyer and the spokesman for her National League for Democracy Party, Nyan Win. In August, a court at Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison sentenced the frail 64-year-old to three years’ hard labour but junta chief Than Shwe reduced that to 18 months’ house arrest.

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Kaitlin Barker; 1/8/09;

Kaitlin Barker is editorial resources assistant for Sojourners. Before I met a refugee family from Burma, I was mostly unaware of the south-east Asian country. For a year of Sunday afternoons, I taught this family English, took them to the library, and helped them apply for green cards; they taught me courage, hope, resilience — and the story the newspaper headlines hadn’t. All four children were born in a Thai refugee camp, where the parents had lived the better part of their lives, nearly 20 years.One afternoon they slipped a video into their church-donated VCR and implored me to watch with them. “This Pop’s village,” the oldest girl told me as a lazy river lined with men fishing and women chatting appeared on the TV. Then her face grew serious. “We can’t live there again:’ she said.

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