Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Kawthoolei with newshole

Kawthoolei
An Outer Voices Documentary
Produced by Jack Chance

Billboard 1:00
SFX: Karen Traditional Music

Host: For nearly 60 years, Burma has been at war with itself

SFX: machine gun fire

H: Political repression and ethnic cleansing are a way of life in the country now known as Myanmar

KWO Anon: They came and destroyed our school, our church?

Lydia: ?the women and the children, they make them walk in front to be the minesweepers?

H: Neighboring Thailand plays host to an ever-increasing number of Burmese refugees

Cynthia: 1 million Burmese people are living in Thailand illegally

H: In between are the Karen, an ethnic group struggling for survival and an independent homeland called Kawthoolei

Lydia: Kawthoolei is a place where there's no bad things, it's all things pure

H: In the midst of the world's longest running civil war, we talk to the women working for peace.

Zipporah: Someday, our country will be called Kawthoolei

H: Coming up, Outer Voices presents Kawthoolei

Segment A: 13:00

SFX: River and children laughing, Karen drum and horn music
SFX: KWO worker speaking (in Karen language) about resettlement

Zipporah: the children were born, where there is no country. They are waiting for the peaceful country, when will there be peace in Burma

KAREN GIRL?S VOICE: I want to tell you about Burma. I want to tell you about the longest civil war in the world. I want to tell you about the Karen people.

Lydia: They don?t know about the Karens, wherever I go, you know I tell people I?m Karen, not Korean! So I want them to know about our struggles, to know something about us.

Zipporah: the Karen are one of the ethnic groups, which is the largest ethnic group in Burma.

SFX: Kawthoolei children's song

Zipporah: Someday our country will be called Kawthoolei.

SFX: Thana harp music

H: You?re listening to Kawthoolei from Outer Voices. In the next hour you?ll hear about the war between the Burmese military regime and the Karen people. You may not have heard of it, but they've been fighting for nearly 60 years.

SFX: Thana Singing

ASSK: For millennia women have dedicated themselves almost exclusively to the task of nurturing, protecting and caring for the young and the old, striving for conditions of peace that favor life as a whole

SFX: Thana harp music

H: Perhaps you remember Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel prizewinner and the democratically elected president of Burma.

ASSK: To the best of my knowledge, no war was ever started by women, but it is women and children who suffer most in situations of conflict.

Kawthoolei principal: I think Aung Sang Suu Kyi's very brave, and very intelligent. Through her, many people get to know Burma.

H: But "The Lady" remains under house arrest, completely isolated from the outside world.

Meanwhile, two Karen women, Zipporah Sein and Dr. Cynthia Maung, are also working hard for civil rights and democracy. Both have been nominated for the Nobel Peace prize. Outer Voices traveled to the Thai - Burma border to record their stories.

SFX: Gong procession

H: I?m Jack Chance, and you?re listening to Kawthoolei from Outer Voices. Outer Voices is a series of audio profiles of women peacemakers in Asia and the Pacific Rim. These are the women of Kawthoolei?

SFX: Karen mandolin music

Zipporah: ?My name is Zipporah Sein and I am the secretary of Karen Woman Organization and I am working for empowerment and education.

Cynthia: In Burmese culture, women are not supposed to be outspoken, so this makes women feel a little bit inferior all the time.

Kawthoolei School Principal: I feel like I?m double oppressed. I?m a woman and also I?m an illegal person.

SFX: Bullhorn broadcast

H: There are many illegal things in Burma. Stepping on a landmine will get you a heavy fine. Talking about HIV can get you fired from your job. It's a country where George Orwell once worked as a police officer. Big Brother is alive and well. Today in Burma, a secretive military junta strictly controls technology, information, and people.

Joseph: In every quarter in every street, they have their informer.

Lydia: Everything is at the gunpoint, you cannot say anything bad, all the taxi drivers all intelligence, you have to be very careful about that.

H: Beneath the authoritarian surface, several ethnic groups are struggling for independence. The generals controlling the government are from an ethnic group called the Burmen, but in Burma there are also?

Saw Hte Hte/Violet (alternating): The Karen, the Shans, the Mons, the Chins, the Arakans, the Karenni, the Kachins, the Palaung, the Nagas, the Padaung, the Was, the Lahu?

H: And then there are the Karen?

Joseph: Actually We the Karen are a little bit different than the other minorities.

Narrator: Karen refugee Joseph Tamlawah

Joseph: According to our history, we came from Babylon, coming to Tibet and then to Mongolia, and lastly we came to China and from there we enter Burma, at that time there is no Burma.

SFX: Karen Choir

We have been told by our ancestors that we have lost a golden book, and it was taken by our younger brother the white people, so when the American missionary came and when they spread the gospel, we the Karen feel that it is our lost book this bible, so many are willing to accept Christianity like that.

SFX: Burmese instrumental music

Saw Hte Hte: Burma, for hundreds of years, was ruled by the Burmese kings, and all of the ethnic peoples are under their rule.

Lydia: When Burma become a British colony, the living standard is quite good.

H: Lydia Tamlawah of the Karen Women's organization

Lydia: No need to fear or anything, Oh, you have a free life, you can travel freely, you can communicate with everybody. It's democracy everywhere

Hte Hte: for the first time the ethnic people feel they have some equal treatment, job opportunities, education...

H: Saw Hte Hte of the Karen Refugee Committee

Hte Hte: But then during the second world war, there was nationalism, for burma to achieve independence from british rule

Lydia: Burma sided with the Japanese and the Karens are loyal with the British

Hte Hte: The Burmese, from their side they see the Karens sided with the Imperialists, the british

Lydia: And so there is a conflict between the Burmese and Karens from then onward.

Hte Hte: when Britain was about to give independence to Burma, they know very well that there will be trouble

Lydia: the Karen when they ask for their freedom, they ask for their own state. And the Burmese said if you want your freedom you have to fight

H: The British promise of an independent Karen homeland was forgotten once Burma gained independence in 1948. Civil War broke out as more than half a dozen ethnic and political groups took up arms against the newly formed government.

Most ethnic groups eventually signed ceasefires and were disarmed by the Burmese military. But the Karen continue their struggle for Kawthoolei.

Hte Hte: Let's say there's ceasefire talks, but the picture is that its a military rule...

SFX: loud artillery fire and Karen mandolin music

H: While the population remains poor, Burmese generals have spent fortunes building up their armed forces to control rebel ethnic groups like the Karen National Union. An estimated half million soldiers are under the command of Burma's State Peace and Development Council, the SPDC. They frequently target Karen civilians.

Zipporah: when the SPDC came to the village, all the men run away and the women have to stay and have to face the soldiers... many women also were forced to carry the weapons, ammunition for the soldiers and many women were raped,

H: Amidst the chaos of guerilla war, the Karen Women?s Organization was formed, supporting women as they began to organize and assume new roles.

Zipporah: the men, usually they were threatened and they were killed and they were tortured, and they were arrested being the head men, so the men were frightened of take the role, so many women became the head of the village? It is difficult, but I think they have the strength, they know how to negotiate, and so it?s easier than men.

SFX: Mandolin
SFX: Mae Sot street market

H: A few miles east of the Burmese border is Mae Sot, Thailand. Not the friendliest town; there's a civil war right across the river. Burmese artillery occasionally lands in Thai territory. People call it the ?wild west? of Southeast Asia. It?s a hot and dusty border town, not the Thailand you see in postcards.

SFX: Mae Sot voices

H: In Mae Sot there are refugees, migrant workers, former political prisoners, off-duty rebel soldiers, and the occasional Burmese spy; as many people from Burma as from Thailand. A walk through the street market is a mix of smells and flavors exotic even to the Thais.

SFX: highway trucks

H: We're on our way to the Karen Women's Organization. You can see overburdened trucks flying past on the Asia Highway. At checkpoints and clandestine border crossings, bribes are quietly paid as jade, rubies, sapphires, guns, drugs, and people are all smuggled in and out of Burma.

SFX: cut cars

H: We turn down a small alley. There are a few wooden buildings but no signs. A quick look at the hand drawn map and we walk through the unmarked door.

SFX: Door opens
SFX: KWO class ?the word work has many meanings??

H: The Karen Women?s Organization is holding English classes and public speaking workshops for a group of young women. In KWO?s office there are stacks of aid packages full of soap and baby supplies, as well as books on political activism. KWO's work ranges from teaching the fundamentals of democracy to handing out diapers.

Zipporah: KWO provide a different training for the women, like literacy training, organizational skill and women?s right, and also skills, vocational training, like sewing, traditional way of weaving.

H: Zipporah Sein is the secretary general of the KWO

Zipporah: So we have seen our people suffering, I feel like this is my responsible to work for my people, as long as our people is still on the struggle, so whatever I can do, I have to work for my people.

KWO Anon: Human right, environment, management, and then, accounting leadership, basic first aid, and then political, basic fundamental of federalism

Zipporah: It's good for them also to exchange their experience and their knowledge. And now they feel stronger learning about their rights, learning to work together

ASSK: The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just, and peaceful life for all.

H: You are listening to Kawthoolei, from Outer Voices. Coming up: we meet Dr. Cynthia Maung and visit the refugees at the camps along the Burmese border.

Segment B: 19:00

Music: Burmese Prison Song

ASSK: The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity.

SFX: Burmese radio and speech excerpts

H: You're listening to Kawthoolei, from Outer Voices. I'm Jack Chance.

SFX: demonstration chants and sirens

H: On August 8, 1988. Burmese students and activists took to the streets of Rangoon demanding democratic reforms. The military government responded by opening fire on the crowds.

The regime changed the name of the country to Myanmar, the pre-Colonial Burmese kingdom.

SFX: ASSK demonstration chants

H: Activists formed the National League for Democracy, and their leader Aung San Suu Kyi was thrust into the international spotlight.

ASSK: The people of my country want the two freedoms that spell security: freedom from want and freedom from fear.

H: In the 1990 elections, Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy won 80% of the votes. Burma's military ignored the results; instead of seats in parliament, the elected officials were sent to prison.

SFX: Burmese Prison Song - Women's chorus

ASSK: women with their capacity for compassion and self-sacrifice, their courage and perseverance, have done much to dissipate the darkness of intolerance and hate, suffering and despair.

H: As the regime continued its crackdown on activists, thousands fled to Thailand where another woman, a young Karen Doctor named Cynthia Maung, stepped forward to help the traumatized.

SFX: Thai instrumental music

Cynthia: during 1988 uprising in Burma I fled to the border to respond to the emergency medical assistance

SFX: clinic baby crying

Cynthia: This is not only the medical center. People who work here-is like their place for safety and learning center.

SFX: clinic voices

H: Down another unmarked alley in Mae Sot, the Mae Tao Clinic looks more like a village than a hospital. Kids juggle soccer balls, teenagers dance to Burmese hiphop and young mothers wait for infant vaccinations.

Cynthia: Mae Tao clinic provide health and social service for migrant workers and internally displaced people.

H: Fleeing military attacks on their villages, Burma's displaced people often travel through the landmine and malaria-infested jungles for several days to reach the clinic.

Cynthia: Every day about 400-500 people crossing the border. They can get free service here, which they could not get inside Burma.

The people never have reproductive health information, never heard of HIV?

SFX: Karen medic:"plasmodia falciparum?"

Cynthia: Malaria is about 20% of the cases treated on the border. And we have increasing number of children with malnutrition

H: Dr. Cynthia's clinic, as the locals call it, treats over 50,000 people per year.

Cynthia: Sometimes people end up here and they?re afraid go back Burma after coming to Thailand-?and then also some of the patients, they leave all the documents, medical records here, because if they go back, they ask many questions, ?Why you go to this clinic??

H: The clinic is technically illegal since patients and staff often cross into Thailand without documents.

Cynthia: About 1 million Burmese people are living in Thailand illegally, Local Thai hospitals and officials know that the situation is not getting better,
We coordinate vaccination, public health information,?so we have positive relationship and we help each other

What we cannot learn in burma we learn here, we can share alot
How can we strengthen and em power each other?

We seen many bad things, but many people are working towards peace and human rights and democracy and to network or support each other.

SFX: sawngthaew

H: I'm riding north in the back of a sawngthaew, a pickup truck with benches in the back, packed with maybe twenty people. Someone asked if I could deliver some medicine to a relative in one of the refugee camps. Travel restrictions mean many refugees cannot access health services in Mae Sot.

SFX: Sawngthaew horn

H: I hop off the truck and walk through a gap in the barbed wire fence surrounding Mae La refugee camp. A man is waiting for me. He has an infected gunshot wound in his thigh.

Anon refugee: (HOST VOICEOVER)
He says Burmese SPDC soldiers shot him three years ago, after forcing him to work as a porter. He would like to go to Dr. Cynthia's clinic, but without an ID card, travel is illegal.

H: There are thousands of similar stories in the camp.

KWO Anon: I left Burma when I was 4 years old, 1984. me and my family, we live in Karen state. We live in the jungle? they came and destroy our village, our school, our church, everything, and also they also burn the rice, so we cannot live there. So my father and my mother leave the place and then we became refugee people until now.

Scarface: my grandmother told me she came here when my father died, when the Burmese and Karen have a battle, my mother also die of the artillery, you see my face, you have a sign, a piece of artillery.

SFX: refugee camp ambience

H: Mae La is the largest refugee camp on the Thai/Burma border. It?s a bamboo ghetto, a city of tightly packed huts, perched beneath steep limestone cliffs. Inside the barbed wire, this one camp is home to 50,000 Christian, Buddhist, and Muslim exiles from Burma.

SFX: camp sounds, water splashing, sweeping

H: Refugees fill old petrol cans with water from a well and bags of rice are divided into rations.

SFX: rice distribution

SFX: walking

SFX: kids playing music

H: There are thousands of children. Playing games along the narrow paths. Strumming guitars in the shade. And goofing off in open-air classrooms.

SFX: school ambience

H: Burma once had the highest literacy rate in all of southeast Asia. Now Burmese refugees make do with dozens of these crowded schools.

SFX: Campfire guitar

SFX: walking

H: High on the hill above the camp, a group of boys ride pieces of flattened bamboo down a steep dirt track. They tell me they?re skiing.

SFX: "skiing" and laughter
SFX: Thai Pin Pia music

H: The Thai authorities permitted these camps to be set up as temporary shelters. That was more than two decades ago. Nowhere in the world, except in Palestine, have refugees waited this long to go home.

Sally: Initially, when refugees came, there were 300,000 Indo-Chinese refugees on the Eastern Thai border from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, under very high profile programs

H: Sally Thompson from the Thailand Burma Border Consortium:

Sally: The whole policy with the Burmese refugees was that they should remain low-profile. Refugees were allowed to cross over into Thailand to set up their own village-like encampments and they were encouraged to be as self-reliant as possible. The only thing they weren?t allowed to do was to plant rice, because the situation was seen as temporary and it was assumed that they would go back after a short time, but that didn?t happen. The situation in Burma continued to get worse and as more people lost their lands, we saw more and more new arrivals coming into Thailand.

SFX: rhythmic loom

H: Inside the camp office of the Karen Women's Organization, Women are hard at work on wooden looms, producing colorful fabrics, one of the few ways refugees can earn money. But the KWO is about much more than handicrafts.

SFX: camp ambi

Sally: The great thing about KWO is they just got engaged to everything... they don?t just walk away and say, ?It?s none of my business.? They make it their business... They educate themselves... so that then they work out the strategy of how to deal with it.

H: As more and more people left Burma, the Karen Women?s Organization was reborn in the camps along the border. While refugees wait for change back home, the KWO trains young women here to be the future leaders.

Ganyo Paw: My name is Ganyo Paw. I am working with KWO and I am the coordinator of human rights and democracy. We're educating the young people in refugee camps?

Wah Ko Shi: My name is Wah Ko Shi and I?m working for the Karen Women Organization?I believe in nonviolent struggle ?my father works as a soldier and I work as a politician, but we have the same goals.

We are a network group with other women?s organizations and we also travel abroad to lobby the international governments and try to involve in the decision making,

Sally: I?m inspired every time I go into a refugee camp really.
They all have remarkable resilience, remarkable creativity... You know, some people come by and say, ?Oh, it?s awful. It?s hopeless. It?s terrible,? and you say, ?Well go back, take a look at what people are doing with what they have and you?d be amazed,?

SFX: Lydia's students: "if at first you don't succeed, try try again?

Lydia: as for our Karen people, we have the landmines all the time, so we have lots of amputees.

SFX: photo album page turning

Lydia: ?These are the pictures, I try to encourage them?

H: Lydia Tamlawah, of the Karen Women?s Organization, shows us photographs of the amputee Special Olympics. She organizes it each year in the refugee camps.

Lydia: I have sports for them, they are very very happy, they feel like they are not left behind? (cut pauses and repeats)

SFX: page turning

Lydia:?no eyes, both hands amputated., no feet, it?s not so pretty , but they are stronger than ordinary people with both legs.
?and they have football, tug of war, high jumps, volleyball, football, there?s a goalkeeper, only one hand,

SFX: photo album page turning

H: Throughout Mae La camp, faded posters identify different types of landmines.

SFX: camp sounds

H: Both the Burmese and Karen militaries use landmines, so Burmese soldiers often force Karen villagers to work as human landmine detectors.

Lydia: one is 17 year old woman... in the daytime she has to carry a shell, big shells, 3 shells, and that's very heavy, big shells, very heavy. (pause) and in the nightime they were raped. You can imagine this single girl how she will suffer you can imagine that.

SFX: music (Greg's disc)

They told me Auntie, we don't know whether we are pregnant or not we don't know. As for our people, it's a great sin to have an abortion, so its very hard I cannot give them an answer, I'm so sorry for them

SFX: music (Greg's disc)

Zipporah: the message sent by the high official, the SPDC, to the soldiers in front and the officer in front they can do to the Karen people, they can do whatever they want, they can kill, they can rape, they can loot, and whatever they want.

Zipporah: They use it systematically, and as a weapon, its not only in Karen state, but Shan State, Mon state, Lahu areas, and other ethnic areas as well.

H: Zipporah and the Karen Women?s Organization produced the report ?Shattering Silences,? which documents rape cases by Burmese SPDC soldiers against Karen women.

Zipporah: Traditionally the Karen women did not want to speak out for their suffering. It's kind of shameful for them?it's very difficult to collect the information.

Let Let Win: (ENGLISH VOICEVOVER) If the Karen have a problem we'll face it together.

H: KWO's Let Let Win was appalled by Burmese soldiers raping women and forcing villagers to carry their weapons, she organized a women's defense group.

Let Let Win: (ENGLISH VOICEOVER) When I fought the SPDC soldiers, they ddid not dare do anything to the women in my village. But they threatened to kill my family, so I came to the refugee camp to work for women?s rights.

H: Let Let Win no longer carries a rifle, today she helps Karen women in cases of domestic violence, organizes income generation projects, and coordinates care for orphans, widows, abused women, and the elderly.

SFX: music

Ganyo Paw: So we came to understand a lot of Burmen also suffer under the military regime, and we have a lot of ethnic groups sharing the same suffering, so now we came to understand each other more and I think, ?if we have Burma full of different ethnic groups its so rich and its so beautiful having different people working together,,,

Zipporah: Like in the refugee camp? women have more opportunities to be together, learn together, and share their experience,

Zipporah: Because we are not legal, this is difficult for us, because even we live in the town, or we live in the Thai territory, we worried about our security, because you can be arrested at any time, and you don?t have any document to travel.

H: The 1951 Geneva Convention states that refugees should be given freedom of movement and the right to wage-earning employment.

But Thailand never signed the convention, so it does not recognize those who seek shelter within its borders.

Elizabeth: They are facing immediate security problems, so repeated arrests by the police. They have no legal right to work.

H: Elizabeth Kirtin from the United Nations High Commission for Refugees:

Elizabeth: The people who are in camps at this point amount to about 140,000 people in all nine camps, so although they are provided with basic assistance, it?s a very restricted life which has now been going on for 20 years for some people.

Sally: Thailand still has an open door policy for asylum seekers.

H: Sally Thompson

Sally: if you look at Thailand?s record over all, it has a good humanitarian record. It has hundreds of thousands of refugees that have been given asylum in Thailand, many other countries who are signatory to the convention certainly do not have such a good record.

Scarface: In the camps, very boring because we can't go on like education, we don't have freedom, we have to stay here like people live in a jail.

Cynthia: If you go outside the camp you can be arrested or deported

H: Dr. Cynthia Maung

Cynthia: The population is growing and the camp is very crowded, make a lot of pressure.

SFX: river

SFX: Karen singing Rivers of Babylon

KAREN VOICE: I want to know how long will we have to wait here. Our home is right across the river, but we cannot go. How long can we survive without a country, without work, without a future?

SFX: sawngthaew

H: At the end of the day, I leave the refugee camp and catch a ride back to Mae Sot?

SFX: Thai authorities: "passport please"

H: I show my blue American passport to the Thai Army, the border patrol, and the cops. Others aren?t so lucky. At one checkpoint, half the passengers are removed by police.

SFX: sawngthaew

H: This is Kawthoolei from Outer Voices. Coming up, we'll take you across the border into Burma.

Segment C: 19:00

SFX: Karen music - Greg's disc

H: You're listening to Kawthoolei from Outer Voices. I'm Jack Chance.

Zipporah: Kawthoolei, that means a place with honesty and without blacklist.

Lydia: Kawthoolei is a place where... all the black things disappear, its all things pure

Zipporah: ?Someday, in Karen State, our country will be called Kawthoolei

SFX: bridge and river

H: A rickety bamboo bridge spans the Moei River. We walk across, from Thailand into Burma, and on the other side, a Karen soldier with few teeth in his smile greets us at the wooden gate.

SFX: Karen Soldier: "Good Evening"

There's a brightly painted sign overhead. It reads Welcome To Kawthoolei.

SFX: bullhorn, rifles at attention

H: We're inside a military base of the Karen National Union, one of the the few pieces of land the Karen still control. The rebel soldiers watch a steady stream of Karen villagers arriving. These newcomers have walked here from deep inside Burma.

SFX: people talking

H: Many look sick from malaria and dengue fever.

SFX: rape victim interview, Karen language

H: Their stories are gruesome. This village burnt, this many raped, children executed, rice farmers ordered to pay for the landmine they stepped on...The kinds of things you'd call ethnic cleansing if your UN representative were allowed in the country to see it.

SFX: people walking

H: These homeless villagers are called Internally Displaced People. For months they've been on the run from the Burmese military.

Cynthia: People just moving place to place for survival? (COVER WITH SOUND at beginning only, then lose it - CUT easy pauses/phrases)

H: Dr. Cynthia Maung of the Mae Tao Clinic

Cynthia: There are about 1 million internally displaced people, so they cannot access health service.

SFX: walking through grass

H: A team of men and women carrying huge bags full of medicine are preparing to leave for some distant Karen villages.

Cynthia: Currently we have 70 teams providing medical care... for about 150,000 population.

H: Dr. Cynthia helped found the Backpack Medics, a tough group of aid workers who trek illegally back into Burma.

Cynthia: this... include medical care as well as training for the community volunteers, and school health and water sanitation

SFX: Girl Backpack Medic

H: This medic tells me many displaced people lack even basic health information, On her missions, she gives reproductive health training to displaced villagers.

H: Wearing cheap plastic sandals, the Backpack Medics travel for months at a time through landmine-infested jungles; sometimes only to find their makeshift hospitals have been destroyed by Burma's SPDC soldiers.

Backpack Guy: (ENGLISH VOICEOVER)
This medic says The SPDC mistook a Karen villager for a rebel soldier, they came to the village, shot the man, and took the medicine we gave them.

H: In 2005, Burma's State Peace and Development Council moved its capital from Rangoon to a remote location near Karen territory. SPDC soldiers are securing the new capital by clearing ethnic villages, stealing rice harvests, and killing civilians. More than 15 thousand new Karen refugees are on their way to the Thai border. More than half a million are thought to be homeless in the jungles of Eastern Burma. The struggle for an independent homeland has become a fight for survival.

SFX: Huay Hee woman song

Zipporah: If they change and they restore the country into democracy, the people will be happy to go back.

H: What happens if the Burmese military regime does loosen its grip? Zipporah Sein and the Karen Women's Organization are preparing for that day.

Zipporah: the country should be planned ahead...
So when democracy restored... the ethnic people will have self-determination in their own state, in a federal system.

We try also to encourage the leaders that women participation is very important, so in the future Burma we also try to set up at least 30% of women should be involved in each decision making level.

H: And what about Kawthoolei, how would a democratic federal system be accepted by Karen rebels, who've been fighting for independence for generations?

Ganyo Paw: we will still call Kawthoolei, but by Kawthoolei we think Burma

H: Ganyo Paw of the KWO

It's possible for independence, but right now we can work together with other ethnic groups, as long as we have the autonomy, and...our Karen leaders that will govern the Karen people

H: Burma's State Peace & Development Council ignored requests for three-way talks with ethnic leaders and democratic groups. Instead the regime sponsored the National Convention, which promised a new constitution representing all ethnic groups.

Zipporah: the National Convention is organized by the SPDC and it is not the will of the people ?

Zipporah: the ethnic people... participating in the convention, they do not have the right to say and they do not have the right to ask and to request what they want. ?the SPDC pick the person that they want to participate.

Lydia: It?s up to the SPDC, the Burmese government. Now people try to negotiate try to have peace talks, tried again and again already

H: Lydia Tamlawah of KWO

Lydia:As for the Karen, the military, they don?t want to fight anymore, they want peace, they want democracy, but the thing is that we have to resist. When the Burmese attack, we just retain our arms and ammunition, just for our survival.

But if there is peace, really peace, today tomorrow we will all go back. But the Karen never lay down their arms, cause if you lay down your arms, as if you are going to cut off your head.

SFX: Salween River

H: While the Karen rebels try to hold off an army more than 20 times their size, thousands of displaced people have gathered at a new camp near the Salween River, a sacred river for many ethnic groups. But the SPDC, in cooperation with Thai and Chinese energy companies, is planning to clear construction sites for a series of hydroelectric dams on the Salween, threatening more villagers from their homes.

H: The Karen have an old folk song that predicts the Salween River will run red as rich men dam the river. For the Karen villagers escaping to the border, these words may be coming true.

SFX: Kway See Salween Song

H: The dream of Kawthoolei is all but extinguished. While the Karen Women's Organization lobbies for change, and Dr. Cynthia's Backpack Medics help Karen villagers to survive, for those in the Thai refugee camps, life is prolonged exile.

SFX: campfire guitar

H: We're sitting at a campfire back in Mae La refugee camp.

SFX: campfire laughter

H: The teenage refugees are cheerful but tonight they?re saying goodbye. In the morning one of them will receive a bus ticket to Bangkok, spend a night in a hotel, and take a plane to Australia to start a new life, far away from the Burmese military or the Thai refugee camps. After two decades of uncertainty, the camps are buzzing with talk of resettlement.

Saw Hte Hte: Refugee camps are temporary shelters, but what we see is the Thai Gov. would want refugees to go back, but if that is not possible, they would like to see them accepted by third country.?

Elizabeth: Many governments have wanted to offer resettlement to Burmese refugees but have not been able to get access to the camps. So it's because of a change in Thai Government policy.

H: Elizabeth Kirton of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees.

Elizabeth: This is a way for other countries to share the burden, this is a way to resolve some of the problems that Thailand has faced in hosting refugees

H: The United States even waived parts of the Patriot Act and agreed to accept nearly 10,000 Burmese and Karen refugees. Thousands more are preparing to be resettled in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and half a dozen European countries.

SFX: music and camp ambience

Saw Hte Hte: As refugees there?s no future, and inside there?s no future, resettlement may be some kind of a future for them

H: Saw Hte Hte of the Karen Refugee Committee

Saw Hte Hte: we will have difficulty finding replacements for school teachers, medics, nurses, social workers, health educators.. still people have their choice, they can apply... but we see that young knowledgeable people will be drawn out.

H: Western countries tend to favor educated refugees, inadvertently causing a brain drain among refugee communities.

Zipporah 258: The good thing is that they will be free from worry, receive freedom and safety? the children will receive education. they will receive education, but if we look as a Karen, not very good. We will lose the young people, the new generation.

H: When educated activists leave for democratic countries, who will be left to fight for democracy in Burma? Could the good intentions of the United States and other countries ultimately slow down the resistance to the Burmese military regime?

Zipporah: The people who left behind will be like the disabled or the illiterate people. because people who were trained, who were well educated will go away, so it feel a little bit like we have to start at the beginning again.

Anna: ?I can completely understand why people want to leave this situation, the future is so uncertain?

H: Anna DeGuzman works at the Burmese Medical Association, another of Dr. Cynthia's programs.

Anna: but I think it?s really tough, they know its not the promised land, going to the US or Norway or wherever they go, they have very meaningful work here and they end up working in Walmart or something,

H: Between the Burmese Medical Association, the Mae Tao Clinic, and the Backpack Medics, nearly 80 health workers and medical trainees have left for resettlement. Dr. Cynthia Maung

Cynthia: So this hard time, in this situation... the people who continue working here, or also to maintain the quality of the services?hard time.

Saw Hte Hte: People don't want to be refugees, people don't want to be displaced, but we see our people are almost destroyed.

As a refugee, what would be your choice?

SFX: Karen guitar music, female vocal

Zipporah: Everyone think that when they go they will come back, but we don?t think that it will happen. One person in a hundred will come back. They didn?t know the situation how the things that will make them change,

SFX: ?now what do you know about Australia??
SFX: "does anybody know where it is?"
SFX: "somewhere in the world"

SFX: resettlement song

H: Walking through Mae La refugee camp, we meet an old man, who?s teaching traditional Karen music to a group of teenagers. He says this song is fifty years old, it says the Karen people will soon be scattered, far from their homeland.

SFX: resettlement song

Zipporah: When I first arrived abroad, I feel freedom, it's ahh the freedom that we want, you don't need to worry about anything, you are not afraid of police, soldiers, and you can travel, but I feel very bad about that this freedom should be in our country, you know? The first time I cried every night, I was sorry about my people, we don?t know when they will experience about this kind of safety and freedom,

SFX: "whisky?"

H: Back in Mae Sot, I go down to the concrete bridge that officially links Thailand to Burma. Kids with blackened teeth hawk cigarettes while their mothers beat laundry upon the river rocks. Groups of migrant workers sit in neat rows on the sidewalk. They were caught without papers and wait to be deported back to Burma.

SFX: under the bridge

H: In Thailand there are smooth paved highways and fast internet connections. In Burma roads are built with forced labor. People die in prison for owning unregistered fax machines. In between is the war you don't hear about. In between is Kawthoolei.

KAREN VOICE: I want to thank you for offering me a place in your country, but I want you to know that my heart is in Kawthoolei, with my Karen people.

Let Let Win (Violet Voiceover): If the Karen people have a problem, we will face it together.

Cynthia: How can we strengthen and empower each other

Ganyo Paw: Dam Wu Dae Kuu. Yeah, that means peace.

ASSK: These magnificent creatures, how much could they not achieve if given the opportunity to work for the good of their community and the world.?

Zipporah: My dream is I don?t want myself to be happy, I want all my people to be free

SFX: children laughing/music
SFX: Karen language message to resettled Karens
SFX: music

CREDITS

Major underwriting for Kawthoolei was provided by The Open Society Institute and The Ford Foundation.

Additional funding was provided by the Pohaku Fund, the Lucius and Eva Eastman Foundation, American Friends Service Committee and other generous donors.

Kawthoolei was produced by Jack Chance
Executive Producer was Stephanie Guyer-Stevens
Edited by Barrett Golding
Mixing Engineer was Robin Wise

Production Intern was Cathy Hoang
Research Assistant was Karoline Kemp

Sound recordings by Emily Polk, Jack Chance, Cathy Hoang, Hsamu, and Megan Hauser

Traditional music recorded by Gregory Scarborough, Jack Chance, Hsamu, the Karen Youth Organization, and Nicole Huck.

In Thailand, thanks to the Karen Women?s Organization, the Mae Tao Clinic, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, the Thailand Burma Border Consortium, the Karen Refugee Committee, the Center for Internally Displaced Karen People, the Karen Student Network Group, the Burmese Medical Association, the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners, Burma Issues, the World Education Consortium, Tim Syrota, Phil Thornton, Violet Cho, ALTSEAN, Images Asia, and the Foreign Correspondents? Club of Thailand.

In the United States, thanks go to the American Friends Service Committee-Golden Gate Chapter, the World Affairs Council San Francisco, Friends of the Karen, the Burma Scholars program of the Open Society Institute, Dr. Ben Brown, Planet Care and KGLT-FM.

Many other people have contributed to this program, and who, for the safety of their families, must remain anonymous.

Kawthoolei is the third in a series of audio profiles on women activists in Asia and the Pacific Rim, produced by Outer Voices. To obtain a copy of CD of this program, please call 415 497 0563, that's 415 497 0563. Or visit us online at www.outervoices.org.

SFX: Thana solo

--fin---

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