Burmese woman tells of atrocities, her fight for rights

Ohmar Khin can still recall, in vivid detail, how her country's military government brutally crushed a nonviolent student demonstration in March 1988. "There was blood all over," she said. "[The students] were beaten and they were actually drowned into the lake [by the soldiers]. I was screaming." Khin, a self-described "student-in-exile from Burma," discussed her involvement in efforts to achieve democracy and human rights in the Southeast Asian nation Friday. Khin's speech was the main component of the University's observance of International Women's Day. The program, entitled "Human Rights & Women's Issues in Burma: The Impact of Dictatorship," took place in Houston Hall. Penn Women's Center Associate Director Gloria Gay opened the event by praising International Women's Day -- a national holiday -- commenting that women throughout the world face very similar issues. Second-year Social Work student Yunju Nam, an intern at the Center and the event's organizer, then presented a short video called Burma: State of Despair. The video, produced by the British Broadcasting Company, depicted government-sponsored forced labor on infrastructure projects. Its narrator called Burma a "vast slave labor camp." The video also explained the plight of Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Known in Burma and throughout the world simply as "The Lady," Kyi was finally released from house arrest in July 1995 -- "released into a prison," according to Khin. The prison, Khin said, is Burma itself. The State Law and Order Restoration Council, which has ruled since September 1988, still closely watches Kyi and denies Burmese citizens the freedoms of assembly, speech and the press, Khin added. In 1989, the Council officially renamed the country Myanmar, but many people and organizations still refer to it as Burma. Khin's intense account of her own experiences as a revolutionary held rapt the audience of about 40. "Before 1988, I had no idea that my life would be changed in a totally different direction," said Khin, who was then studying chemistry at Rangoon Arts and Science University. Khin said she met several students who troops had beaten. Those students quickly convinced her to join the nascent student democracy movement. At the March 1988 demonstration, she fortunately managed to escape the chaos, watching the massacre from a nearby house. "[The soldiers] had the order to shoot," Khin said. "I witnessed the brutality of our own government on the younger generation." Khin added that on August 8, 1988, known as "The Four Eights," the government killed at least 3,000 people. "Thousands of people marched in the streets, calling for democracy and human rights," she said. "The response that we got from our own government was shooting and killing." Khin left Burma the next month, after the Council came to power and "started arresting students." She stayed in a student camp on the Thailand-Burma border before arriving in the United States in May 1990, as "one of the first two Burmese refugees that the U.S. government accepted." Khin is now active in publicizing the Council's human rights violations and the predicament of Burmese women. "We have thousands of Burmese women who are forced into prostitution in Thailand," she said. Three of Khin's friends also briefly discussed their harrowing experiences during Friday's event. Additionally, members of Amnesty International at Penn talked about their letter-writing campaign asking President Clinton and American corporations that operate in Burma to recognize the human rights violations occurring there. Nam said that as a result of Friday's event, she plans to involve herself in the "Free Burma" movement. "I was very impressed by [Khin's] speech," she said, adding that as a Korean, she felt an "obligation to support" the cause for Burma.

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