ABSDF: THE PLIGHT OF BURMESE WOMEN

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THE PLIGHT OF BURMESE WOMEN

Compilation of paper presented by Mi Sue Pwint Member of the 
Information Department and Editor of Dawn-Oh-Wai (Voice of Peacock) 
ABSDF's bi-monthly magazines to the International Burma Conference 
held in Berlin Germany from 16-18 April 1993 and an article written by 
Eugene Thaike Yawnghwe eldest son of Sao Shwe Thaike the first 
President of Burma.

Published by:
The All Burma Students' Democratic Front
PO Box 1352
GPO 10501
Bangkok, Thailand
Tel/Fax: (66-2) 587-2400


___________________________________________________________

ROLE OF FEMALE STUDENTS DURING 1988 UPRISING

The political movement and the struggles for national liberation and 
independence had a unique character in Burma. The intellectual students 
mobilised and led the peasants and workers and their struggle for 
freedom against the colonial rulers. The students' movements are 
inseparable from the historical struggle for the independence of the 
country.
  
In March 1988, we, young female students, along with other students, 
went to the street and took part in a series of anti-BSPP (Burmese Socialist 
Programme Party) demonstrations which spearheaded worldwide known 
1988 popular uprising in Burma. On March 15, thousands of young 
students rallied to demonstrate their solidarity with the students from 
Rangoon Institute of Technology. We marched out of the campus of 
Rangoon University (Main Campus) to join with the students in Hlaing 
Campus. When we reached on the Prome Road, near the "White Bridge", 
a barbed wire fence had been strung across the road in front of us. 
Soldiers armed with automatic rifles and aiming at us. At that time, 
trucks that carried hundreds of riot police in steel helmets and armed 
with clubs, rifles, and cane shields drove into the gathering. Riot police 
got down the trucks, rushed into the gathering and charged the students. 
Some of them concentrated on the female students; their jewellery and 
watches snatched. The riot police berated the students for daring to 
demonstrate, beat the girls and raped them ... the girls were so ashamed 
to tell anyone and some were in shock for four or five days. Some cried 
and requested to be sent to a nunnery without giving their parents any 
reason. About 100 students, including female students were drown in the 
Inya Lake. Some female students were beaten unconscious before arrest. 
When they came to again, they found themselves in a room without 
windows. Some were raped by the officials and then by the policemen 
one after another until the victims lost consciousness. Some of them 
committed suicide.  

Teenagers from high schools all over Rangoon, also flocked to the 
demonstrations. An increasing numbers of protesters were very young, 
and they were perhaps the fieriest of them all. For them there was little 
future under the present system. They had only to look at their elder 
brothers and sisters who had gone through university just to be faced 
with mass unemployment, or at best, the chance to do occasional odd 
jobs in an effort to contribute something to their families.  

At the high of uprising in August and September, even housewives were 
banging pots and pans to voice their demands for democracy.  

WOMEN'S ROLE IN THE AFTERMATH OF MILITARY COUP

In September 1988, Saw Maung led Ne Win's handpicked puppets 
cracked down the prodemocracy uprising and seized power to safeguard 
the then BSPP. In the aftermath of the coup, when the NLD (National 
League for Democracy) was formed, some women joined the party and 
could hold key posts in the Central Committee. The 1991 Nobel Peace 
Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi became the Secretary General and Daw 
Myint Myint Khin was elected as a member in the Central Executive 
Committee while Daw San San Nwe (Tharyarwaddy, Writer) and 
Shwegu May Hnin (Writer) were listed to the Central Committee. For 
township-level, many female intellectuals were in the leading role of the 
NLD.  

Out of (392) Members of the Parliament who won the seats in the May 
1990 General Elections, (15) were women. Six women MPs from NLD 
were arrested by Slorc under various self-declared laws and orders-.  

DAW AUNG SAN SUU KYI AND HER ROLE

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi became Secretary General and co-founder of the 
NLD on 24 September 1988. As a leader of the NLD, she delivered more 
than a hundred public addresses during extensive campaign tours. On 20 
July 1989, she was place under an indefinite period of house arrest by 
Slorc; recognised as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International. 
She won the 1990 Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize for Human Rights 
(Norway) and Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by European 
Parliament in 1991. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1993, she 
was awarded AIF Rose Prize from Denmark. Another prize, the 1992 
Award of progressive Women was jointly consecrated to Daw Aung San 
Suu Kyi and 1992 Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu by Spanish 
Federation of Progressive Women. Up to now, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has 
been already awarded 21 prizes and honorary awards including the 
Noble one.  

Mr Francis Sejerstad, head of the five members Norwegian Nobel 
Committee commented on her, "Suu Kyi's struggles one of the most 
extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades. She 
has become an important symbol in the struggle against oppression. She 
also emphasises the need for conciliation between the sharply divided 
regions and ethnic groups in her country.  

The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honour this woman for her 
unflagging efforts and to show its support for the many people 
throughout the world who are striving to attain democracy, human rights 
and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means."  

WOMEN'S ROLE IN THE ABSDF

After the prodemocracy uprising was cracked down and about 10,000 
activists were gunned down by the military on September 18, 1988, 
thousands of students left the areas controlled by the ethnic minorities 
who have been waging a civil war against the successive regime in 
Burma for their self-determination for 40 years. On November l of the 
same year, we founded the All Burma Students' Democratic Front, 
composed of people from all walks of life, different ethnicity and 
religions. 

Among 2,500 members in the Front, about ?OO are women. Since ABSDF 
was founded, we the women have been taking responsibilities in 
organising the people, teaching the children of the ethnic groups in the 
education sector to upgrade their future, as medics taking care for our 
own members and the villagers' health and social progress, as operators 
in the communication branch. As we have been working for the whole 
time, the Central Committee is much aware that we have been needed 
more training to be able to take part in the leading role of the Front. We, 
therefore, intend to implement projects and training relating to Women 
Empowerment, Maternal & ChiId Health Care and Self-reliance 
Programme (Sewing, wool knitting and etc.,). Women's lives in the Front 
is the same with the men. we have equal shares of food assisted by the 
NGOs. Those who go T married are involved in self-reliance programmes 
- livestock breeding and collecting dry leaves for roofing - and are 
provided proper assistance from the Front to solve their daily household 
problems.  

WOMEN IN BURMESE SOCIETY

In Burmese society, women play in a crucial important role in their 
households' works. They have to manage welfare of the whole family. In 
current society of Burma, the lives of women are in a very difficult and 
exhausted stage and they are the one who directly suffered the 
consequences of the high price of basic commodities for everyday. In one 
family, the wife has to seek for a job to earn for her family as her 
husband does. Aside from that, women, as housewives, are also 
responsible for looking after their children until they are grown up.  

The infant mortality rate at 98 per 1,00 live births is more than what had 
been more than 2 decades. Maternal deaths of 58 women per week is 
40% attributable to illegal abortions, which in turn are caused by 
unwanted pregnancies and lack of affordable contraception.  

Under the reign of BSPP, although it was clearly stated in its constitution 
that women shall have equal rights with the men, it was just a 
propaganda. Women have been suppressed and oppressed by all forms of 
discrimination in all fields, especially politics. In Burma, women's role in 
the political life was made dim. Women's role in the decision-making 
process has not been accepted by the successive regime although it signed 
the "Convention on the Political Rights of Women."  

This can clearly be seen during the election campaigns in 1990. Daw 
Aung San Suu Kyi was prohibited from campaign tours and even barred 
from contesting the election. 

WOMEN IN BURMA'S EDUCATION SECTOR

Educational system in Burma discriminates men against women since it 
has been under the boots of military regime. No one has the right to 
education as the whole educational system has also been controlled by 
the dictatorship. Women have equal right to education only at the High 
School-level. After the high school final exam, although the numbers of 
women who pass are more than the men, they cannot choose the subject 
which they like. The entrance for the Universities and Colleges are 
divided by their marks. This educational system made women more 
suffering as they are again discriminated in accepting numbers of the 
students in certain courses. After finished their studies, women have little 
chance to get the jobs.  

WOMEN PORTERAGE

Because of the military offensives against the Democratic opposition 
groups, women have been suffering these consequences directly. In 
1991's dry season offensives, 10,000 civilians, including 3,000 women, 
were press-ganged into porterage by Slorc. Porters were not well fed on 
the way and ill-treated by Slorc soldiers. When they were tired and not 
able to carry heavy loads, they were beaten with bamboo sticks and rifle 
butts. Some were bayoneted and stabbed with knives. Porters who tried to 
escape were gunned down. Porters who suffered sickness on the way 
were left in the deep forest without any medical care. Female porters 
were not only forced to carry heavy loads all the day but also gang-raped 
at night.  

SEXUAL ABUSES

Most of sexual abuses and other sexual slavery are committed by Slorc 
soldiers or sponsored by so-called State Law and Order Restoration 
Council (Slorc) or military junta in Burma. In the areas of military 
occupation and militarisation, these abuses are common. Slorc military 
commanders frequently summon local women - at any age whether they 
were married or not - to their outposts for questioning and raped, at gun 
point. These women never have a chance to refuse because power is in 
the barrel of-the gun.- Sometimes, female civil servants and even wives of 
their comrades were raped. When those women got pregnant, the 
commander forced their privates to marry them.  

ABUSES IN THE NAME OF DEVELOPMENT

In the context of our country, the development models that have been 
adapted by the military regime led to impoverishment of women. In the 
name of so-called development programmes, women and children are 
not spared from contributing labour. They not only get any wage but also 
have to spend their own food.  

Furthermore, as they are forced to worked as labourers, they have to 
leave their own jobs which are the sources to get money to solve their 
households' problems. These consequences are to leave their children at 
homes or to bring along with them to the work site which led the 
children deprived of education. In the work site, both the children and 
their mothers were never received appropriate medical treatment, instead 
abandoned in uncertain conditions. Those who could not contribute 
labour had to hire other persons. When they could not go or hire, they 
were fined at the rated fixed by Slorc authorities.  

Many have been uprooted from their home communities by Slorc's 
relocation campaigns, herded into cramped, noisome concentration 
camps, sometimes separated from their families, often deprived of 
adequate food and clean water, and frequently subjected to beatings, 
back-breaking forced labour, devastating disease, and repeated rape.  

Providing a decent life for one's own children, the deepest wish for most 
women worldwide, is nearly impossible in the unstable environment of a 
civil war. Education, health care, proper nutrition, peace, safety, carefree 
play, and appropriate stimulation are longed for treasurers, often far out 
of reach of women along the border.  

Other women faced the experience of internal displacement, hiding out 
in the jungle, not knowing where to go next, or how to find food or 
medicine for the hungry and sick.  

REFUGEES

Among 60,000 refugees along the Thai-Burma borders, most of them are 
women. They are suffering from various difficulties and hardships. Their 
lives are familiar with these difficulties. The death rate of women 
refugees is very high. They died of mostly from readily preventable or 
treatable diseases like malaria, diarrhea, cholera and because of shortage 
of essential medicines and lack of medical treatment. Some were died of 
malnutrition. Women and their children in those refugee camps are in a 
hopeless condition. Because most of their children were infected certain 
diseases since they were born. The children were lack of education as 
they have to carry their families' burden since they were young.  

On the other hand, as most of their mothers were uneducated, they do not 
know how to bring up their children to higher standard, including right 
to education.  

These children were grown up and enjoined among the animals bred by 
their parents instead of concentrating on education. Because of lack of 
teachers in their areas where civil war is waging on, and of their parents 
and relatives' persuasion to go to school.  

When these women could no longer bear such sufferings, they usually 
leave the camps to seek for better jobs which can earn for their living and 
their households as well. They work as cheap labourers - housewives, 
bricklayers and workers at construction site where they can get only a 
small wages. Although they had to work very hard, not only their wages 
were exploited but also they were oppressed. These injustice social system 
and unfair wage have been paving the way to be prostitutes.  

WOMEN TRAFFICKING, HIV AND AIDS

A junta officer in 1992 told a UN representative that in Rangoon alone, 
about 1,000 people were HIV positive. It is possible that AIDS reached 
Burma from the border towns of Thailand, through the international 
trade in women trafficking and heroin.  

These are about 40,000 women and children, mostly aged between 10 
and 16, have been kidnapped in Burma and trafficked to the brothels in 
Thailand. With the collusion of police and military personnel from 
Burma and Thailand, traffick young victims across to Thai border towns 
like Chiang Mai, Mae Sai, Kanchanaburi, and Ranong, where they were 
sold at the price of US$ 100 to US$ 560 and forced into prostitution. The 
slave-prostitutes include ethnic Burmese and other tribal people. The 
girls were forced to have sex under life-threatening conditions and 
tortured frequently. When the owner knew their attempt to escape, they 
were confined in a room at basement, without giving any food, beaten 
and sometimes even killed. They are fed only a little food (1 plate of rice 
and curry) for two meals.  

When their customers did not come on certain days, they were forced to 
work at their owner's house as slaves. They were not spare from working 
even at the time of menstruation. Those who are suspected of HIV 
affected were killed. Every time when the police doctor came and 
checked the disease, the owners always hid the affected women.  

In June 1991, the Bangkok Post news-paper reported a raid on a brothel 
in Kanchanaburi, in which four young Burmese, including a 13 year old 
girl, were rescued and found to be "suffering from several diseases." In 
1991 a rescue of 19 teenaged girls from Burma's Shan State in a Chaing 
Mai brothel, stating that "none of the girls had any often, prostitutes 
diagnoses with HIV or AID were simply sent back to their home villages 
in Burma, where they might continue to spread the disease due to 
ignorance of the means of infection. Very few were ever "rescued" or 
"saved" from the brothels where they were confined.  

Forty-three Burmese women taken from Thai brothels in September 1992 
by police and sent back to Burma had been found to be infected with the 
HIV virus, Slorc Deputy Foreign Minister said on November 18. Ninety-
five Burmese females, most of them no older than 20, were taken from 
brothels in Thailand during various police raids in earlier 1992. They 
were handed over to Slorc officials via Mae Sai checkpoint in September. 
Out of them those who were affected HIV virus were sentenced to 3 years 
in prison by Slorc upon their return, for illegally leaving Burma, and 2 
more years for involvement in prostitution (the normal sentence for 
illegal emigration is only 3 months) and some were injected with fatal 
doses of cyanide.  

In Burma, the liberation of women from the social injustice is intertwined 
with the liberation of the people from all walks of life under the 
oppression of dictatorial military regime, and with the restoration of 
democracy and human rights. It is indivisible.  

We, therefore, urge the international community,  

(1) To suspend seat of Slorc at the UN 
(2) To impose arms embargo  
(3) To impose investment sanctions
(4) To extend humanitarian assistance for women in Burma  
(5) To release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners  

(Paper presented by Mi Sue Pwint to the International Burma Conference 
held in Berlin, Germany, from I 6-l 8 April 1993)


___________________________________________________________

THE WOMEN OF BURMA: HOLDING UP TWO-THIRDS OF THE SKY

The women of Burma are definitely superior to men in organisinal skills. 
This is evident from the fact that in most Burmese families, it is the 
woman who manages and determines the family's destiny, although they 
are careful to give the impression, due to age-old cultural norms, that a 
woman is the "hind leg of the elephant", faithfully following her man 
wherever he may lead. The image of a woman, according to tradition, is 
that of a weak and shaky reed who, as a wife and mother, live solely to 
serve the needs and comforts of her lord-and-master and his male heirs.

However, facts belie this image. In a Burmese family, it is the mother 
whom the children, especially the sons, look up to. It is the mother who 
organises the family's needs and activities. It is she who manages the 
budget, and as well, supplements or stretches the family's income. It is the 
mother who weaves a wide network of kins and friends, cultivate a 
patron-client network (so vital to survival and success), not only for the 
advancement of the family as a whole, but also of her husband's career 
and/or business. It is the head woman of the family who plots and 
scheme, and implements plans for the sons and daughters, seeing to it 
that they get hitched to the right stars or land in the right circle.  

If one is able to look behind any successful man in Burma, one is sure to 
find a wise, efficient, socially skilled woman standing behind him. In 
almost all of such cases, one will find that when the man was a zero, 
eating dust and getting nowhere fast, it was his wife who not only kept 
the family afloat, but fortified him, and as well, got him started by 
opening doors and avenues that led to his success.  

Undoubtedly, the women of Burma more than, as goes an old Chinese 
saying, "Holding up one half of the sky". They, in fact, hold up two-thirds 
of it. And the vital role of women in the social, economic, and other 
spheres of life, is acknowledged, albeit silently, by even the most 
chauvinistic Burmese male. As a rule, even the most macho of them 
seldom make important decisions without consulting his wife, or his 
mother (rarely his father, because father-son relation in Burmese society 
is somewhat distant).  

However, despite the fact that the women in Burma are the engines that 
dynamise society. They have been excluded from politics. In the realm of 
politics, where social and management skills, wisdom, foresight, and 
brain-power are most crucial, those most gifted with these very skills 
have been most conspicuous by their absence (in modern times), until the 
appearance on the political stage of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in 1988.  

The reasons for this sad omission are many, but the male-oriented and 
male-dominated Burmese cultural tradition must largely share the blame. 
In Burmese culture, women are viewed as inferior because they are, 
among other things, viewed as capable of polluting the "Phone" ( power-
aura) of men. Additionally, they are, contrary to irrefutable facts, looked 
upon as treacherous, full of deceitful wiles, mentally underdeveloped,  
flighty, helpless, easily duped, over-emotional, etc.  

To reinforce the highly subordinated status of women, they are, 
moreover, brain-washed from very early on, by their elders, and 
unfortunately, by their grannies, mothers, aunts, etc. They are constantly 
told that they must sit in the back row in things concerning the public 
sphere, that politics is the monopoly of men-folks, and that it is too noble 
a calling for women.  

To further exacerbate matters; Burmese men find it very difficult to 
accept women as their superiors, especially where politics is concerned. 
It is not uncommon to hear snide remarks made by men about politically 
active women. Until recently, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been dismissed 
as a freak accident. Only after she won the Nobel Peace Prize, have 
Burmese men come to accept her unconditionally as a national leader.  

Accepting Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as a national leader is, however, only a 
very feeble step in the right direction. One women leader surely cannot 
undo all the wrongs committed over thirty years by the despot and his 
band of servile and faithful robbers. 

If Burma is to win, and as well maintain and sustain its second 
independence, Burmese women who hold up two-thirds of the sky, who 
have faced the despot's bullets and bayonets with equal courage, and who 
have joined in the fight for democracy in jungle camps and overseas ... 
they must be given the place of honour they rightly deserve. It is time we 
re-think our thoughts about the political role of Burmese women. Too 
much is at stake to exclude the vital dynamisers of Burmese society from 
the realm of politics.  

This means that we must treat women active in politics with genuine 
respect. It means that we must not be ashamed to serve under women 
leaders. It also means that we must welcome them, and encourage them 
to participate in politics ... not merely as clerks, cooks, or pretty faces, 
but as leaders, because they have, since time immemorial, proved that 
they abundantly possess the leadership and managerial skills which 
Burma desperately needs.  

The age-old notion that men are the "fore legs of the elephants" is, in 
reality, an empty myth, a hollow boast. It is this imagined superiority of 
men and the imposed 'inferiority' of women which is keeping those really 
skilled in the art of social and political management from contributing 
fully to the reconstruction, prosperity, and unity or Burma. At the same 
time, the women of Burma too must themselves break the chains of 
political paralysis which centuries of brain-washing have imposed on 
them and have thus, kept them from leadership roles in public and 
political life. They must realise that it is their exclusion from politics and 
public life, which has made it possible for men to make an unholy mess 
of everyone's life in Burma. It is now the time for Burmese women to 
come forward to clean up the mess created by men and save them from 
their own infantile foolishness.  

The democracy movement would be greatly vitalised and become more 
organised and more cohesive with the infusion of more women leaders 
and the formation of women organisations. We now have several women 
leaders and activists within the democracy movement, working 
anonymously behind the scene. It would be a good idea for these women 
activists/leaders to band together and mobilise the women of Burma.  

The mobilisation of the women of Burma, and the subsequent emergence 
of more women as national leaders, would go a long way in further 
invigorating and dynamising the democracy movement. There is no 
doubt that the appearance of more women leaders and women 
organisations would greatly boost the morale of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. 
There is also no doubt that she does need, and would greatly appreciate 
the active support of her own gender.  

(Article written by Eugene Thaike Yawnghwe)