Interviews with Khin Ohmar

Basically what happened was that those demonstrations and peaceful march and protest on the streets didn’t get to the point of bringing down the military regime. And my opinion and my reflection of why is there are a few reasons, really. Of course, one is because the military might is so powerful that they don’t care, you know; that they will do whatever it takes to keep their power at the expense of people, anybody, really. So that is, of course that’s a major key factor here, why the peaceful demonstrations on the streets were not successful yet.

But on the other hand, the fear has been greatly entrenched in people’s daily life – even far more than the time back in 1988, I will say. On the other hand, the military regime, to me, there are two very core means the regime continued to hold onto the power or oppress the people: one is by this guns and the army and the fear, of course; on the other hand is the economic situation. They intentionally keep the people suffering in this poverty, even though the Burmese people don’t deserve to be in this kind of poverty because we are rich with all kind of natural resources, you know?

The Burmese people used to be able to hold their heads up in the whole region and around the world. But now, the way Than Shwe [Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)], the Burmese regime, continues to oppress is intentionally making the population live in this dire severe poverty. And therefore, people will not take their heads up to resist their power.

Saying that, back to 2007, what really happened then? We were able to get to the point, when I look at it, that the monks and the students were able to get to the point of this waves of people on the street and more and more people joining them. But what happened then is that our nonviolent struggle, in terms of the tactics that we use or that we have been using, we seem to be continued to cling onto this one basic tactic of bringing people to the street.

But yes, bringing people to the street is important. But you need other ways and means and strategies to increase or intensify, to mobilize the people further. In that case, the young monks and the young activists at that time in 2007 were not able to use enough of that tactics to bring the movement to the next level, I will say.

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.