Interviews with Wai Wai Nu

We should ask why these people have to suffer these kinds of serious situations, for example forced labor, arbitrary arrest, extortion and torture. Those kinds of situations. Why we have to suffer as human beings. And also, when I talk with my grandparents and my father, they say [that] before the situations were not like that.

They have had dignity. They had respect in the past. They were not put in jail without any reason. They did not to do forced labor before.

Even after the situation in 1990 things became worse and worse [Burma’s military regime ignored the results of Burma’s 1990 elections in which a coalition of democratic parties won a parliamentary majority.]

So for me, since I was young, I had those experiences. And also I myself faced unjust situations in my young life. And also I had experienced my brothers and my sisters being involved in the student movement in 1996 and 1997, 1998. And I was thinking: what is wrong with the system? At that time I was 10 years [old].

And I was thinking: what happens with this? Why are they doing these activities? I heard since that time that we were ruled by the military and also [that] we were ruled by a dictatorship. [Between 1996-1998 Burmese student groups staged a series of demonstrations protesting the military government.]

So we don’t have freedom. We don’t have any opportunities. So [something] is wrong with the political system. It is wrong. What I want is justice for everyone. I don’t want the other people facing human [rights] violations and [being] put in jail without committing crime and losing their houses, and facing torture and also [being] put in camps. I don’t want that kind of situation in the country.

So I want peace in my country. I want Myanmar [Burma] to be a place where all people can live together in justice, with freedom and with dignity. What they [the regime] need to do to change is to bring a genuine change to democracy. They say they are changing into democracy but we don’t see any characteristics of democracy.

So they need to bring the genuine change to democracy. They need to stop arresting innocent people, activists. And also, they need to stop the violence. They need to stop fighting against the ethnic minorities.

To bring real change, first they need to stop the violence. They need to impose the rule of law. And they need to do negotiations with the ethnic groups opposition.

Wai Wai Nu is a Burmese freedom activist. She’s a former political prisoner and the co-founder of Justice for Women. She is also the founder and director of the Women Peace Network Arakan.

As a teenager, Wai Wai Nu was arrested and imprisoned by the government because of her father’s political activism. During her seven-year incarceration, she reflected frequently on the injustices she experienced as a political prisoner and the general state of freedom in Burma.

Since her release from prison in 2012, Wai Wai Nu has dedicated herself to working for democracy, human rights, and women’s rights. She has worked on behalf of marginalized women and in support of equality and justice for all women in Burma. Through her two organizations, she leads women’s empowerment trainings, women’s rights trainings, basic legal education, and peace-building activities.

Wai Wai Nu recently earned her law degree and is focusing on justice issues for women. She was also a member of the George W. Bush Institute’s inaugural Liberty and Leadership Forum.

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.