On women who seek equality in an unjust world, look to pressure patriarchal societies and empower sisterhood

AMITHA AMRANAND

Nobel Peace Laureate Jody Williams (left) and actor-activist Mia Farrow recently visited Thailand to speak with ethnic and Burmese women in Chiang Mai and on the Thai-Burma border.

There is a story of a Lahu woman who stood up to the Thai police when they, on a drug raid, invaded homes in her village. Nasae Yapa was arrested and spent eight months in jail. The once-illiterate woman is now a student of law and one of the village leaders.

There is a story of a Karen woman who lives in a culture where "women don't accept each other or support each other to become leaders", a patriarchal society that believes female leadership only brings trouble. Recently, Nau-ehri ran in a local election and lost. She laughed demurely but good-natured at her own account before adding, "I will run again next time."

Victims of Cyclone Nargis in various affected areas in Burma.

There are stories - largely unheard or ignored - of disenfranchised and discriminated ethnic and Burmese women in Thailand, who come together to help educate and empower one another, which prompted 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate, Jody Williams, to say with amazement, "It just gives hope for the day the military dictatorship is finally gone, however it is gone. With women like that, Burma does have hope in the future."

Actor-activist Mia Farrow, who considers herself a relative stranger to issues faced by women in this region, related the story of a woman in an interview with Outlook, which she also recounted in her blog on http://www.miafarrow.org/:

"One woman told us she went all the way to Bangkok to voice her grievances at the parliament. A male member of parliament advised her, 'Don't try to get out of the kitchen. Go home and breast-feed your babies. If your babies are healthy, consider yourself a success.'

"The woman replied, 'It's so hard for me. What I'm able to earn is less than what you pay to feed your dog.'

"Then she said to us, 'I hope this event will allow our voices to be heard and that, one day, there will be equality."'

Williams and Farrow are part of the 2008 Nobel Women's Initiative (NWI) delegation, whose journey began in Chiang Mai, continued to the Thai-Burma border, then South Sudan and concluded at Chadian refugee camps bordering Darfur. Other female humanitarian leaders joining the Asian leg of the journey included Dr Sima Samar of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, philanthropist and founder and CEO of a secondary finance company, Lydia Cladek, and Chinese labour activist Qing Zhang.

While in Thailand they met and spoke with women's groups and ethnic and Burmese women in Chiang Mai, and on the Thai-Burma border. They also attended the symposium, "Dialogue with Nobel Woman Laureate and Prominent Women Activists on Political Rights Crises" at Chiang Mai University, which gathered prominent and emerging ethnic and Burmese women activists. Their mission: To bring wider attention to the voices of marginalised women and victims of Cyclone Nargis, and press for local and international action against ongoing oppression by the Burmese junta and its interference with humanitarian aid.

"Aid alone will not solve Burma's problems. Unless political issues are addressed, this crisis will continue. Pressure must be maintained for genuine political change." Shan activist Charm Tong

"And also to make linkages. That's part of the reasons why this delegation is here. It's to understand how the ethnic situation crosses the border here, the same way it does in Chad and in Sudan ... and helping people understand those things happen all over the world that was colonised. And the more we educate ourselves as women who have access to media and people with all this power, we can help make the link so that people understand these are really global issues. Like what Dr Sima said, 'In this global body, if your fingernail hurts or if you break your little finger, the whole body is affected.' The days are long gone where we can pretend we're safe within our own national boundaries. Therefore, if we don't address the problems of everyone, everyone will be affected," said Williams.

Victims of Cyclone Nargis in various affected areas in Burma.

Williams doesn't mince words and the ones out of her mouth are abundant in ardour and humour. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her work in the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), she and the ICBL, through the concerted effort of 1,300 organisations and 95 countries, succeeded in its goal to ban anti-personnel land-mines with an international treaty signed in Oslo in 1997.

In 2006, the 10th female Nobel Peace Laureate, together with five of her sister Peace Laureates, Wangari Maathai, Mairead Corrigan Maguire, Betty Williams, Rigoberta Menchu Tum and Shirin Ebadi, founded the Nobel Women's Initiative.

The US activist and professor grew up in a small town of just over a thousand people, which she didn't leave until 25. Her father didn't live in a house with running water until he was 17. He married her mother at 19, and she 16. By age 23, her mother already had four children. "But I also grew up during the Vietnam War," she said. Williams protested the war while attending university and "... couldn't stop". Those were the details of her life she gave as an answer to one woman's question: What inspires a woman in a privileged position such as herself to fight for the rights of the less fortunate?

Williams added, "It's not enough to care about the world. Caring and feeling emotions is a waste of time and energy. Unless we get up and do something about the things we care about, it would be irrelevant."

Following their four-day visit to the Thai-Burma border, a delegation held a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand (FCCT) in Bangkok. Williams openly criticised the international community, which she doesn't "have faith in any more", pointing out flaws in the Post-Nargis Joint Assessment (PONJA) Report published by the Burmese government, Asean, UN agencies and national and international NGOs.

Victims of Cyclone Nargis in various affected areas in Burma.

"We certainly appreciate the fact that Asean is taking roles in a world where governments are trying to be generous to each other and not critical. Asean is willing to be a bridge and willing to facilitate aid to reach the people of Burma. And it's an impressive read. It reads really well ... and excuse me if I'm cynical, but I've been working in wars since 1981, and it read like a report that could have been written in New York with no one ever having stepped foot on the ground. And when I compared that reading with stories we've heard from survivors of Nargis ... I refuse to deny the voices of the people ... whom we had the opportunity to speak with ... we're supposed to believe the international community, the UN, the official story really gets it right and the people who've lived through it and are still living through it, somehow get it wrong?"

Williams also criticised some of the Joint Assessment's report recommendations for long-term rebuilding of affected areas.

"There's an interesting paragraph about working with ethnic nationalities to help them rebuild. Unless my memory of the history of Burma and the government is wrong, they have a bit of a problem with ethnic cleansing as far as I'm concerned ... given the history of Burmese military wiping them out, using rape as a weapon of war to destroy the fabric ... of family, the community, the society ... it is an ongoing, active part of counter-insurgency in Burmese military. Thousands of villages have been burned, destroyed. And yet we're supposed to believe that somehow the Burmese military were going to allow a situation where they're going to help them rebuild ethnic nationalities - their community, their culture?"

Farrow read a statement from a women's group recommending and urging the UN and international community:

1. To provide proper protection to women in cyclone-affected areas in order to protect them from sexual exploitation and abuse by authorities and undertake an official investigation of reports of sexual exploitations and abuses perpetrated against female survivors of a cyclone.

2. To provide protection for children orphaned by a cyclone. Reports are emerging of forced-recruitment of boys into the Burmese army.

3. To carry out an official investigation on reported cases of forced labour in cyclone-affected areas.

4. To empower independent, voluntary humanitarian groups by creating a safe working environment for organisations involved in the cyclone recovery and reconstruction process.

5. To assist in the establishment of an official monitoring mechanism inside Burma with a mandate to monitor and prevent instances of exploitations, abuses ... by local and national Burmese authorities.

The Burmese junta and the country's lack of political freedom remain a major impediment to the recovery of Burma after the natural disaster, which affected more than two million people and claimed more than 130,000 lives. So far, 17 Burmese have been arrested for aiding cyclone victims, among them a popular comedian, Zarganar, who gave interviews to foreign media, criticising the junta's response to the disaster.

According to activists of Women's League of Burma, the country's health-care system currently ranks 190th of 191 countries. Forty-five per cent of cyclone survivors are women, and 100 of them are giving birth every day. Many suffer miscarriages.

At the symposium, activist Tin Tin Nyo drew attention to female convicts who face significant health risks on a daily basis. They're raped by jail house officials and give birth in jail. Both the babies and their mothers suffer from poor health as doctors are not provided.

According to Shan activist Charm Tong, the use of rape as a weapon of war, arbitrary arrests, state-sanctioned violence and regime-sponsored organisations utilised to crack down on dissenters are rampant in Burma.

Exiled activist Thin Tin Aung, sombre-eyed and calm-voiced, called this current Cyclone Nargis atrocity a "man-made disaster", while Charm Tong emphasizes the urgent need for political change as a key to recovery.

"Aid alone will not solve Burma's problems. Unless political issues are addressed, this crisis will continue. Pressure must be maintained for genuine political change ... arms supplied to Burma need to be immediately stopped," said Charm Tong.

At a press conference, Williams and Farrow shed light on what survivors shared with the delegation on foreign aid.

"We're told food that goes to Rangoon gets stored in a warehouse of the regime. We're told that in order for people to get shelter, they have to check off their votes prior to the wonderful referendum, which I think the government got 90 per cent [92.4 per cent approved the military-drafted constitution, according to the junta], even though 2.4 million were devastated ...

"Asean and the UN should be using this opportunity to press the junta for political change ...

"What is the role of the international community? Propping up dictators? Not as far as I'm concerned. And from what we've found along the border, that's what we thought," said Williams.

"One woman said, 'Because of the cyclone, the regime is very rich now. All of the foreign aid went into their pockets.' And another said, 'It looks like the international community is supporting and protecting the regime. We know they sent support to us, but the regime, they're the people who are receiving it,"' recounted Farrow.

Highly active in her Darfur advocacy, Farrow called for a boycott on the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony, which she labels a "propaganda ceremony", as the Chinese government continues to underwrite the genocide in Darfur. In regards to Burma's situation, the actor-activist also calls for China's cessation of arms sales to the regime and urges other nations to use trade relationships to pressure for reform.

Williams, who was once a proponent of blanket economic and political sanctions against Burma, in the belief that external pressure would lead to internal reform, now sees targeted sanctions against the junta and businesses that support the regime as a more effective alternative.

Despite her strong criticisms of the UN, whom she worked with in 2007, leading a High Level Mission on Darfur for the Human Rights Council, Williams admits she would still advocate with the organisation as it is "all we have". The NWI plans to attend the General Assembly later this year, along with some of their Burmese colleagues. The UN remains one of the channels that can bring about change.

"But I think it's also working with governments who are willing to take a bit of a risk ... leadership comes with taking risks. I think there are other states we can work with to put pressure ...

"We succeeded in our campaign [to eliminate land-mines] because thousands of people around the world shared a common goal and worked together collectively - internationally, nationally and regionally. We pushed our own governments. We pushed the UN. We pushed regional bodies. The best campaigners were government officials who looked at their humanity - individuals who cared and worked with their governments to bring about change," Williams said.