Interviews with Khin Ohmar

Yes, all along, ever since 1988, we have always been trying to reach out to those who are in the military or in those, you know, institutions or military institutions or supportive pillars. Back in 1988, we had a time where the army and navy and air force people, even police, join us on the streets.

And we had another time of the army people supporting democracy in 1990. When NLD, National League for Democracy, Daw Aung Saw Suu Kyi’s party, won landslide victory in 1990 elections, they got the votes not only from the general public; those votes included the votes from the army and their families.

So yes, we did get a lot of the support by then. But later, the way that I see is that the army has become more and more isolated from the general public for at least two reasons. One is because people also don’t like them. You know? General public just simply don’t like them.

But then you do have a larger population still associated to the army, one way or the other, because you have fathers who are in the army, or brothers, uncles in the army – I mean this is the largest institution in the country. So yes, all of us associate one way or the other to this particular institution.

But it’s difficult to associate with them now. For another reason is because, also in the army, you have a very clear structure gap or division, I would say. One is this rank and file soldiers, including those forced child soldiers who had to join the Burma Army by force. They happen to be the ones who are out in the field, at the front line, committing all kinds of human rights violations — and their human rights [are] being violated at the same time by the top generals or higher officers of their battalions.

When I say that, what it means is you have soldiers who are not able to have the ration that they should be having, or that you are having soldiers who have to commit human rights violations, such as killing and shooting villagers and burning the villages without even of their will. But they have to do it because of the order above. Basically is if they [don’t] do it, they will be also shot from the back by their higher officers. So which one would you choose? You shoot the other, or do you get shot by your higher officers? So they are also put into this very difficult position.

And then another is this economic situation. The soldiers’ families themselves suffer so much from this economy. So what you see is the general public and them are so far away – caught up in their daily, very simple two meals a day struggle, or the survival – and also, on the other hand, knowing the image of the army, no matter how the propaganda is nowadays. In that real deep part of the people’s mind, they are hated. So it’s difficult.

But saying that are we not doing? Yes, we are still doing. We are still trying to reach out to them by providing information of how the top generals are exploiting and abusing their power, whereas the ordinary soldier’s family, how much they suffer at the same time, like the general public are suffering. So we are still trying to reach out to them by different means possible, but it’s been quite difficult.

But in the army, now you have another class: more of an elite kind of class who have access to higher education, even abroad, studying in Japan and elsewhere, you know, Israel, Russia. And then who are having access to information technology and all kind of lucrative — including again even having access to some business opportunities and such.

And therefore the Burmese Army right now is different than back in 1988. Where you have a whole lot of large army soldiers at the bottom part who are in a very difficult situation, you have another upper class of the army soldiers who are enjoying so much of today’s modern world. With as much as the army generals are enjoying, these new ones coming in – new blood who’ve been highly educated with the outside world education – are also enjoying so much of this power.

And what we are seeing is that, in the coming time, these new blood army generals – who have already enjoyed so much of this wealth and benefit – are the ones who seems to be going to take the power, you know. That we don’t see there’s some people [who] say, “Oh, educated, young blood of the military people will be the one who will change for democracy.” But in case of Burma, we don’t think so. Because they are the ones who are reaping and getting all the benefits now.

Khin Ohmar is a Burmese democracy activist who lives and works in Mae Sot, Thailand. She is a leader of the Women’s League of Burma, the main umbrella organization for women’s organizations in exile and inside Burma.

Khin has served as a spokesperson for the Burmese democracy movement in the United Nations General Assembly and in other international forums. She also serves as coordinator of the Burma Partnership, a regional coalition of civil society groups supporting democracy in Burma, and she is an organizer of the ASEAN civil society and human rights consultation processes.

Admitted to the United States as a refugee after being persecuted for her participation in the 1988 student demonstrations, Khin became a United States citizen and worked for refugee and human rights organizations in Washington, D.C., before moving back to the Thai-Burma border area in the late 1990s.

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.