Thai Church

Yesterday, I headed out to the great suburban unknown - Virginia - to hit up Thai church. The great thing about Thai church is that I think it's literally called Thai Church. So while some friends mock me for coming up with overly generic names for the places I frequent ("Cheap store," "Southern church," "Black church", "Liturgy church," "Long church", "Smoking house"), in this case, my generic name is coincidentally used by all.

Thai church is a fascinating place. The worship portion of the service is apparently sometimes led by a black pastor who speaks English. On my first visit, just when I started questioning whether Thai church used any Thai at all, the Thai pastor came up to the front and started chatting away in Thai, talking all about how Christians should be more devoted. To demonstrate this point, he played a random youtube video posted by a Russian showing how some Russians stop their cars to help the elderly cross the streets. All Christians should be like that, he says, helping Russians cross the streets.

Duly noted. 

Luckily a friend from high school who spent a lot of time in Russia is currently in town, and he has explained to me all about the Russian territory system. Next time we meet up, I'll ask him about Russian street-crossing.

The pastor and his wife moved to DC to help shepherd Thai Christians who had moved to the US but didn't have Christian communities. Some of the people at the church are nomadic, not US citizens but coming through for school, university, marriage, or what have you.

Thai church is respectably Thai in that it serves a meal after the service. I've never been to a Thai church that didn't do this. Thai church is also respectably Thai in that it has no vegetarian food. I'd expect no less.

After service, the women marveled over my Thai, and a couple kids who have grown up in the US said my Thai is better than theirs, but I know the truth: my Thai is slipping, and my pronunciation is not what it used to be. On one hand, I understood a lot of what the pastor was saying during his sermon, which surprised me, because it was really hard for me to do that even last fall when I left Uttaradit. So my listening skills are oddly better than before. I attribute this to watching Thai TV, which I've started doing since returning to the US. 

But my conversational skills aren't as smooth as they were. I don't speak as quickly or fluently, and my sentences seem forced. It's painful to me to know so much time was invested in something that can be lost so easily. It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important, goes the Little Prince.  

Luckily, Thai church has adopted me and everyone promises to be my friend so I will be able to speak Thai more (and be a devoted Christian having friendships for the sake of love, not personal gain, of course).  

I met a (ethnically Bengali, for those following the Rohingya crisis) girl in the foreign service this week who is being stationed at the US Embassy in Burma for the next two years. I tried not to be jealous of her (varying levels of success) when she told me that the Foreign Service Institute has trained her five hours a day in Burmese since August. That's insane!! Five hours of Burmese language class every day for 9 months. And that was her job! What a wonderful job if you forget the fact that this is US taxpayer-funded and it'd be easier and cheaper to train those who are Burmese-American for these jobs. And it's interesting that it's taken that long for her to become conversational...wouldn't it be faster to train while actually living in Burma? Perhaps in a remote village where there is no vegetarian food and you live in a snake-infested house? I mean, that works too.

A Prayer for Burma in a DC Burmese Church

<sup>Yesterday, Ler Htoo, an extended family friend and pastor, invited me to talk about my time in SE Asia at his Burmese church in downtown DC. I began speaking Burmese and Karen but ended up flowing into English for obvious reasons (Bama zega nei nei byaw da ba dae. Ma lwe bu!). 

It was so cool to stand in a room with people who knew me, even though they did not know me, and could understand me, even though I can't usually understand them. That sanctuary, full of people from all different ethnic tribes, was a precious haven for me to whisper the stories of my heart and shout the blessings of my soul that so many people in Burma and Thailand gave to me.

There is such great joy that so many ethnic tribes from Burma can worship together in the US in peace. I have such hope that someday, Burma will know peace and that joy and gladness will reign without end. Ezekiel 37: 26-28 tells us of God's promise to those in Israel. This promise is my prayer for Burma:</sup>

²⁶ I will make a covenant of peace with them; it will be an everlasting covenant. I will establish them and increase their numbers, and I will put my sanctuary among them forever. ²⁷ My dwelling place will be with them; I will be their God, and they will be my people. ²⁸ Then the nations will know that I the Lord make Israel holy, when my sanctuary is among them forever.

Escalating violence in Burma reveals the government's systemic abuse of power and impunity

The Rohingya are people split by a border. People on both sides look the same. They have the same religion. Speak the same language. Have the same color. The same culture. They have the same face.

In Burma, we are accused of being Bangladeshi, and because of that, they torture us. 

          - Jubair, a 66-year-old Rohingya man

Such begins "Exiled to Nowhere: Burma's Rohingya," the newest gallery in "Nowhere People: The Global Face of Statelessness," Greg Constantine's beautiful photograph collection of the world's most persecuted people. It is a powerful reminder of the need to keep asking the US government to pressure Burmese authorities to hold people accountable for their acts of violence against the Rohingya.

Aung San Suu Kyi, once known as Burma's top defender of human rights, is now ignoring the plight of the Rohingya and Kachin and compromising with the military - the very same people crushing dissent brutally and without mercy across the country. Suu Kyi's popularity has plummeted, and in fact, now not only the ethnic groups but also Burmese people - like those involved in recent mine protests -  feel deeply betrayed by her. To understand the changing tide of sentiment toward Suu Kyi, watch this very, very well done short Australian News report video. 

On March 20th, anti-Muslim violence erupted across central Burma.  It displaced 12,000 people and left over 40 people dead, and more than 1,300 buildings in Mandalay Division were destroyed. There were far from enough police officers on the ground to control the mobs and protect its victims. Moreover, reports maintain that in some cases, the police actually handed innocent Muslim civilians over to the mobs. In one town on March 27th, the police opened fire on a crowd of 500 people. Take action here on the US Campaign for Burma's site, and demand President Obama investigate the government's role in escalating violence against minority Muslims.

On March 28th, Tomás Ojea Quintana, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Burma, said that he had "received reports of State involvement in some of the acts of violence, and of instances where the military, police and other civilian law enforcement forces have been standing by while atrocities have been committed before their very eyes, including by well organised ultra-nationalist Buddhist mobs. This may indicate direct involvement by some sections of the State or implicit collusion and support for such actions.” Read the entire report, which details all the most recent human rights abuses by the Burmese government, here.

In light of reports from on the ground and the aforementioned report from the UN Special Rapporteur, it is clear that the Burmese government has committed and condoned violent acts against its people. Furthermore, it has failed to provide a system of legal recourse and redress for victims of this violence.   

The Burmese government rarely sees value in restraint and is predisposed to use violence to control violence - a tactic that results in further impunity and injustice, which in turn fuels more violence. The government has most recently wielded its abusive power not only against the minority Muslims, but also the Kachin and Letpadaung mine protestors. Impunity and shameless disrespect for the rule of law must no longer be tolerated by the international community. In order to attain peace, people in Burma need justice and accountability from their government, not imposed states of emergency and threats of military force. The international community must push for justice and accountability in Burma to stymie future violence and ensure a system of legal recourse and redress for victims. 

This investigation is necessary not simply due to government involvement in the violence against Muslims in central Burma. Rather, this investigation is necessary precisely because we are not looking at an isolated incident. The use of government force, torture, arrest, and violence as a problem-solving tool is a systemic abuse of power in Burma. The government establishes, time and time again, a system of impunity for those who commit acts that are in alignment with the state's ideological views. Our request for an investigation into whether the Burmese government has violated international human rights and humanitarian law is imperative because Burma routinely and injudiciously uses violence as a mechanism to control, terrorize, and suppress its people.

The international community has a responsibility to the people of Burma if 1) the state was involved in violence against its people, 2) the state abdicated its responsibility to protect a certain group of people (e.g. the Rohingya, the Kachin, the Letpadaung mine protestors), and 3) the state withheld justice and accountability for victims of violence. But our responsibility cannot be fully realized without a first step investigation on the part of a responsible foreign actor to determine the extent to which the state has committed violence, condoned violence, and/or provided a system of impunity for those who committed violence.

It is necessary that the international community be able to intervene swiftly and effectively in providing a channel for violence prevention and justice. The first step is for the US to commence an investigation into the Burmese government's role in recent conflicts.

Burma's own government continues to deny any reports of wrongdoing, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Instead of investigating government complicity, President Thein Sein threatened to use military force to stop the violence. In his own words: "I will not hesitate to use force as a last resort to protect the lives and safeguard the property of the general public." President Thein Sein's willingness to employ force is ironic in light of his systematic unwillingness to pursue justice and accountability for those already implicated in unjust actions against people across Burma.

It's no secret that President Thein Sein would ship the Rohingya out of Burma entirely if he could convince the UNHCR to do so for him. He quite candidly replied to UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres' concerns for the safety of the Rohingya by saying that if the international community had a problem with how Burma treats its minority citizens, then the UN should just arrange for 800,000 Rohingya to be placed in refugee camps or deported. Indeed, President Thein Sein views this as the "only solution" to the Rohingya situation.
 
President Obama sent the wrong message when he lifted the US investment ban a mere twelve hours after President Thein Sein said that the "only solution" to the Rohingya crisis is to deport the Rohingya and/or put them all into camps. The Burmese government made no allusion to the duty of a state to protect its people - President Thein Sein and the Burmese government time and time again wash their hands of the safety of minority Muslims.

But there is a very real allusion to the sad events of World War II, when Jews in Germany were also told that their only option was to move to camps. Such a comparison is not made lightly; there are very real similarities between the deep racism toward Jews in Nazi Germany and the deep racism toward Muslims in Burma today. Recent reports sent to the Special Rapporteur maintain that government authorities are employing religious and ethnic profiling to arbitrarily arrest and detain people. In contrast, high-profile religious leaders, Buddhist monks, those affiliated with the National League for Democracy, and government leaders engaging in hate speech against the Rohingya face no threat of arrest. We would never tolerate such actions in the US today; why should we condone them by means of our foreign policy?

In November, US Campaign for Burma's joint Letter to President Obama regarding his trip to Burma, along with earlier Special Rapporteur's reports, predicted that the crisis in Arakan State would spread across Burma if the international community did not pressure the Burmese government to pursue justice and accountability. Indeed, the international community has not acted sufficiently and the violence is quickly spreading. The international community must investigate the Burmese government's refusal to pursue justice and accountability with anti-Muslim mobs, law enforcement, actors inciting violence, and the Muslim-persecuting Na Sa Ka border guard. The international community should demand the release of the hundreds of Rohingya in Buthidaung Prison. The international community should also demand just practices particularly in regard to Kachin men being detained and tortured because authorities accuse them of being affiliated with the Kachin Independence Army. We must also demand fair tactics toward Letpadaung mine protestors and demand that peaceful protestors are released from prison. The list of abuses that the international community must address is long, and such length is indicative of the state's continual abuses of power and its failure to provide redress to its victims.

The latest victims of the government's failure to recognize the rule of law are 13 boys who died when anti-Muslim actors in Rangoon set ablaze a Muslim school. Instead of immediately condemning the attack and pursuing justice, authorities at first intentionally and dishonestly attributed the fire to an electrical accident.

Police guard the Muslim school where 13 boys were killed

The march to Yangon Cemetery for the funerals of the 13 boys from the Muslim school burned by anti-Muslim extremists

Ethnic groups in Burma talk reality - peace isn't just around the corner (or even in sight)

 

Khin Maung Win/Associated Press

In today's NYT article, "Myanmar’s Ethnic Minorities Grow Pessimistic About Peace," Bangkok-based Thomas Fuller reports back from his Yangon interviews with ethnic group leaders, who expressed their deep distrust in Burma's supposed peace process. Last week, a Buddhist mob went on a three-day rampage in Muslim neighborhoods in central Burma's Meiktila, killing over 30 people. On Saturday night, 55 houses in a Muslim neighborhood were burned down. The government has declared a state of emergency in and around Meiktila, but what does this really mean? Violence continues against religious and ethnic minority groups, and few government officials condemn the persecution or purport to be figuring out a solution.

One-third of Burma's people are ethnic minorities, and they control over half of Burma's land, including the most profitable, resource-rich areas. Land-grabbing in favor of foreign investment is becoming standard practice in the ethnic territories, not to mention the current full-out war against the Kachin in northern Burma. While President Thein Sein maintains that peace is on the top of his agenda, little has changed in reality. And the government's peace deals want ethnic groups to essentially roll over and play dead - they give no promises of increased independence or substantial participation in the political and educational process.

International investment and attention in Burma is creating a facade of peace when outside of the tourist-approved trails, the military sustains its struggles against the ethnic groups. Here are a few words from ethnic leaders interviewed by Fuller:

“The mistrust is so high that every nationality is on alert with arms in their hands,” said Hkun Htun Oo, a former political prisoner who leads a political party from the Shan ethnic group. “It’s very unlikely that they will trust the Burmans quite easily again...The government is talking peace, but the army is fighting,” Mr. Hkun Htun Oo said. 

... “Our expectation three years ago was that when democracy arrived, things would change for the better,” said Zau Ba, the academic dean of the Hanson Baptist Bible College in Myitkyina, the capital of Kachin State. “We expected to be equally treated as citizens,” he said. “And we expected to get some religious freedoms. We expected too much.” 

...Mr. Zo Zam [a leader of the Chin ethnic group based in western Burma]protested this month when a government newspaper reprinted a story by a famous Burmese writer who died more than 70 years ago. In the story, Chins were described as wild beasts and cannibals. “It’s better to be bitten and crushed by an elephant than to be with the Chins,” a character in the story says. 

Mr. Zo Zam wrote a letter of protest to President Thein Sein asking why a state-run newspaper should reprint such an offensive article. “We see this as state-sponsored racism,” he said in the letter.

Nouwen on compassion

Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering. What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. As busy, active, relevant ministers, we want to earn our bread by making a real contribution. This means first and foremost doing something to show that our presence makes a difference. And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer. Those who can sit in silence with their fellowman, not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life in a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears in grief and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken.

           Henri Nouwen

Karen rap

This is Karen rap. Spokane-style. It went on for hours. Literally.

#KarenNewYear2013

UN aid convoys reach Kachin state

The UNHCR has finally been allowed to send aid to areas affected by the fighting between the Burmese military and the Kachin Independence Army. The KIA has been fighting for autonomy and peace in their state. Over 80,000 Kachin people have been displaced since the 17-year ceasefire between the Burmese government and the KIA broke in June 2011.

(For those who have read "Nowhere to be Home", a collection of oral histories from the people of Burma, there is a story of a KIA officer told by his son. The father dies after the ceasefire agreement ends the years of struggle and steps of progress the KIA has supported. He and his colleagues spend their final years heartbroken, lamenting the decision to stop fighting and surrender to the Burmese, who immediately begin persecuting the Kachin and forcing them to agree to ridiculous compliance demands. They feel that everything they have fought for has been reversed, that the KIA is no more.)

Aid workers were sent to Hpakant two days ago, an area previously controlled by the KIA that fell to the Burmese in January. 5,000 Kachin refugees are now living in small camps in the Hpakant region. Hpakant and nearby Kamaing are isolated regions in thick jungles that are almost impossible to reach in the monsoon season. Hpakant is host to many of Kachin state's jade mines, and much fighting has taken place around the mines.

According to the article published on the Democratic Voice of Burma website, 10 trucks carrying personnel and aid material from the UN Refugee Agency, the World Food Programme and the UN Development Programme successfully arrived at Hpakant and Kamaing. 

As of yet, no aid has arrived in KIA-controlled areas, where most people have fled.

New ceasefire peace talks will be held in Chiang Mai tomorrow, February 20. While Aung San Suu Kyi offered her negotiator services, the Kachin did not invite her to be part of the peace talks. Aung San Suu Kyi has been fairly silent on the plight of the Kachin, and many ethnic groups are beginning to reevaluate her role in the democratization of Burma. After all, Burma needs new leaders, young leaders, more leaders. Suu Kyi is a powerful woman, but she cannot represent everyone. Some people are asking why is she now being considered as a mere impartial negotiator when the ethnic groups have historically expressed faith in her as a leader and defender of ethnic groups who would undoubtedly take their side against the regime?

The peace talks are probably largely at the urging of the Chinese government, which isn't too happy at the prospect of Kachin refugees flooding into its borders. 

Karen state in photos

I love these photographs from Karen state, Burma. The introductory text is a bit obnoxious, but the pictures of KNLA military training surprise me - the soldiers look good!

Swagger

On the ride home from tutoring last night, Sa Gar, a middle school boy who came to the US three years ago from Bhutan, tells me that when he's 18, he wants to go back to Nepal. I asked Eh Clar, a Karen 12-year-old who thinks he's the absolute bomb.com, if he'd ever like to visit Burma. "No! Waste of money." Eh Clar instead hopes to move to "LA or Miami" when he's 18 so he can meet girls and live on the beach.

"All the girls love me," he explains. "At school, they are just winking and waving and I don't want that, but what can I do? I can have chocolate, vanilla, and the red fruit kind. Next I'll have a Mexican girlfriend. There's a girl in my class and she is, I mean she is so cute. She lives over there [pointing to a house we pass]. I know because that's her mom's car."

He soon gets distracted and blows a kiss out the window at a girl sitting in the backseat of the car next to us at a red light.

Sa Gar is sitting in front of Eh Clar and me. Trying to get on my good side, he turns around of his own accord and tells Eh Clar, "I want a girl who loves Jesus Christ. And I will like her mind. That is good because we can talk. And she is smart."

Without skipping a beat, Eh Clar replies, "That's good for you. But all these cute girls at school, they like me. And on the beach in Miami there are so many cute girls who want to be my girlfriend. What can I do?"

Karen New Year

Here are some photos from Karen New Year's celebration here in Spokane.

Notice the backwards American flag. 

After lectures on Karen history and traditions, and a massive meal, things devolved into Karen rap zone.

Zomia: The ethnic groups of South and Southeast Asia defend their right to self-govern

If I had to choose a favorite territory on earth - besides the land of the free - I'd throw my chips on Zomia.

Scott's Zomia

Zomia is the zone of the self-governing, the nexus of the diverse, the highlands of the ancients. It is, and is not, a real place. There are, and are not, real boundaries between the ruled states of the lowlands and the ethnic groups of the mountains. Zomia covers 2.5 million square miles, which is roughly the size of Europe. It houses around 100 million people [Scott]. While originally coined by Dutch historian Willam Van Schendel in 2002, the term "Zomia" was cradled by Yale professor James Scott in his 2009 book The Art of Not Being Governed. Scott is a bit confusing in his portrayal of the highlanders - are they really not governed? Or are they ethnic groups that have resisted being enveloped into external rule in favor of self-rule and maintaining their own traditions? In 2013, it is difficult for us to imagine a period of time when most people spent their lives outside of the political state, when independence and security could be attained by other methods, when sustaining the traditions of the community and ancestry were far more important than bowing to the growing empires of the Khmer, Bamar, Thai, Han, etc. ethnic groups. But until 1000 years ago, the state was the novelty.

Can these highland groups maintain their cultural integrity? In these big states we call countries, we are forever falling over the term "diversity". But do we defend the decisions of the world's ethnic groups to remain unincorporated and rule themselves? It is the entities we could call the most diverse - the ethnic tribes of Asia - that are most pressured to become "diverse" sub-cultures only in the framework of the state. We want them to maintain their own culture, but we want them to do so under the restraint of being enveloped into a society of many other cultures. Perhaps our love of the word "diversity" sacrifices the very groups diversity purports to uplift. We want diversity organized, we want multi-ethnic societies at the expense of there being no uni-ethnic society.

In Zomia, there are hundreds of people groups struggling to maintain their uni-ethnic societies; they ideally want complete freedom from the state. And in the case of countries like Burma, the construct of diversity is hardly valued, and the dominant ethnic group - the Bamar - is hellbent on its ancient quest to subjugate the minorities. If this were to happen in the west, would we allow it? In the US, we have already bulldozed our own tribal minorities - the Indian tribes - in the name of progress.

There are still opportunities to fight for true diversity on this earth, to allow ethnic groups to self-govern, to retain their cultures, their languages, their traditions, their beliefs, their lifestyles, their farming practices, their nomadic patterns, their natural medicines, their freedom. The global transition toward statehood as the organized social unit has wiped out so many of earth's cultures.

Wade Davis, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, who gave the most spell-binding anthropology talk - Dreams from Endangered Cultures - through TED, writes,

The world in which you were born is just one model of reality. Other cultures are not failed attempts at being you. They are unique manifestations of the human spirit.

These ethnic groups are not attempting to fit into our rubric of statehood. They are not attempting to operate at a lesser level of civilization or aspire to a simpler form of what we do as states. They are operating in a different framework with a different view of society.

Davis attempts to boil down what our world is facing in loss of cultural diversity. In his TED talk, he explains,

Just as the biosphere is being severely eroded, so too is the ethnosphere, and if anything at a far greater rate: No biologist would dare suggest 50 percent of all species or more of them are on the brink of extinction, because it simply not true. And that, the most apocalyptic scenario in the realm of biological diversity, scarcely approaches what we know to be the most optimistic scenario in the realm of cultural diversity. The great indicator of that is language loss...Of the 6,000 languages spoken in the world today, more than half are no longer being whispered into the ears of children, no longer being taught to babies, which means effectively that unless something changes, they're already dead.

What could be more lonely than to be enveloped in silence? To be the last of your people to speak your language? To have no way to pass on the wisdom of the ancestors or anticipate the promise of the children? And yet that dreadful fate is indeed the plight of somebody, somewhere on earth, roughly every two weeks because every two weeks, some elder dies and carries with him into the great the last syllables of an ancient tongue. And I know that some of you say that "Well wouldn't the world be better place if we all just spoke one language?" and I say, "Great. Let's make that language yours." And you'll suddenly discover what it would be like to be unable to speak your own language.

To defend diversity, we must recognize, support, and afford political respect to ethnic minority groups that struggle to retain self-government in lieu of being vaccumed up into the movement of statehood. The incorporation into statehood of every person on earth is inevitable only in the sense that we lazily give it an assumption of inevitability. I want to believe that there is space for people on earth who choose self-governance. Frank Jacobs writes in his NYT blog "The Undiscovered Country,"

Zomia’s external border is inherently unstable. The borderline that separates law from lawlessness, or freedom from control, can’t remain fixed forever. It becomes more porous and permeable, and will eventually collapse. Which side will win?

The refugees from Bhutan and Burma are pouring into the US as a result of state force. Groups like the Karen and Kachin fight for their autonomy but are given only the slightest international respect. They should be the flagships of any call for diversity on our earth because they are willing to state the truth: there is little dignity in being melted into another culture, in being forced to adopt a different language in your own schools, in being hunted due to your lineage. And there is maximum dignity in defending your land and your culture despite international calls to just get along with the very people who want your heritage to fade into obscurity.

So while Zomia is a loose construct, and the diversity of the region makes it very difficult to even define it as a region of self-government or statelessness, I want the people groups of Zomia to garner deep respect in the hearts of those who have been born and raised in states and cannot fathom another way of life.

When Van Schendel began studying "Zomia", he was originally talking about an area that included

Tibet and other southwestern parts of China, northern and northeastern parts of India, most of Nepal and Myanmar, all of Bhutan and Laos, and bits of Thailand and Bangladesh. [Jacobs]

As Jacobs writes in his blog,

By proposing Zomia, Mr. Van Schendel highlighted a transnational area that is marginal to all the states that nominally control it. Few things unite it, except its diversity — religious, ethnic, cultural, linguistic — born of Zomia’s geographical character, dominated by the inaccessible Himalayan highlands and Tibetan plateau. Zomia is a sanctuary, a refuge for isolated, unassimilated communities.

Mr. Van Schendel’s geographic construct might have been destined for the dustbin of hoary theory, but instead it took off: first among academic circles, then journalists, travelers and policy makers. In 2007, Mr. Van Schendel broadened the geographical scope of Zomia, extending it westward and northward to include large areas of Afghanistan, Pakistan, northern India (Kashmir), Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and western China (Xinjiang). The western extension of Zomia brings into focus even more strikingly the rebellious, anticentralist, nature of much of this zone. Underpinned by Zomia’s physical geography, its human geography is authority-averse and continues to defy central governments — most violently in Afghanistan, but also in the tribal areas of Pakistan, in Indian-controlled Kashmir, in tribal-controlled areas in northern Myanmar and in Chinese-controlled Tibet. Other potential conflict zones within Zomia are the border disputes between India and China [6], and between India and Pakistan [7].

Schendel's Zomia

The scope of Schendel's Zomia is contested by historians, but his and Scott's identification of Zomia as one of the world's most unique and freedom-loving regions is to me spot-on. I have never met anyone in the US who loves freedom more - or understands freedom better - than the refugees from the Karen state in eastern Burma. Those who know true freedom, true self-government, true independence from the demands of the state, are not anarchists (as Scott's thesis wants to make them out to be), but truly free peoples who can comprehend the risk of state incorporation much more clearly than those of us who have been raised to believe the state is the only entity that can provide security and independence. This belief comes at the peril of the world's truest freedom fighters who struggle to win peace for their people.

Proud to be Burmese

This adorable video, entitled "Proud to be Burmese," was made by four Burmese boys at the Best Friend's School outside of Mae Sot after a visiting Traveling Teacher Project presentation. The Traveling Teacher Project is an organization that gives digital production workshops to schools and organizations around the world as part of their "Tell Your Own Story" project. These little boys loved the chance to show off their games, clothes, and dancing.

Four older Karen guys made a video on the food rationing system in Mae La Oon camp in Thailand's Mae Hong Son province. While the Thai-Burma Border Consortium does a good job providing food to the camps, provisions are tight.

When teaching on the border, I probably ate worse than I've ever eaten in my life. Eating on the border is a big step down from the luxuries of the cheap Thai culinary life. Watching people eat yellow beans and rice for many meals on end and not have the mental advantage I did - "I eventually will go home and eat pizza" - killed me. My friend Ashley who teaches at Noh Bo Academy is a favorite of the Noh Bo students - she's the school's self-appointed ramen "mama" supplier. That's the kind of youth ministry that gets appreciation!

There's a whole list of videos made along the Thai-Burma border with the "Tell Your Own Story" project. They are super fun to watch. There's also a couple videos made by young people at The Hope Center, a home for people who tested HIV-positive in Myitkyina, Northern Burma.

US Halts Refugee Resettlement Program for People from Burma - Why?

Read this self-correction before you read the post:

The US State Dept. just released an internal memo to government-funded refugee agencies explaining the mistranslation of the announcement by Thai and Burmese news sources that the US is ending its refugee resettlement program on the Thai-Burma border (not shocking, I guess!). What is actually happening is that the US is ending priority 2 resettlement applications at only Mae La camp on June 5th. I think it's still preemptive and will be problematic ...if conflict is sparked again in that region because people who don't have official UNHCR cards won't be able to apply. But it's NOT as wide in scope as (I and) the SE Asian press mistakenly presented it as below. However, the US has decided it's time to start thinning out Mae La camp and encouraging people to make up their minds about whether to move to a third country or go back to Burma, which is challenging because people are going back to their burned rice fields and destroyed villages and will have to build a new life while navigating a very draconian and bitter government. But phasing out priority 2 is what is currently happening at Bhutanese camps, and it happened at another Thai-Burma border camp in 2009. Plus, this won't affect priority 1 cases (there is still some State Dept. haziness about priority 3 - family reunification policies).

The US is making a massive mistake in ending the US resettlement program for refugees from Burma, a decision announced by Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Robinson a couple days ago at Mae La Camp on the Thai-Burma border (near where I taught). Watch Robinson give the announcement here. For those in the US government who believe we can put a quota on human dignity, spend time with the Karen, Chin, Kachin, Karenni, Rohingya, and Burmese, all of whom have been chased from their homes and robbed of their basic freedoms. This policy splits families, and condemns thousands upon thousands to a dark, uncertain future characterized by fear and hunger. Using power to negotiate with people's lives is morally reprehensible.

I've spent the past month hanging with refugees here in Spokane, and I spent this fall on the other side of the world hanging with their families, and there were no words to express my joy regarding the US' willingness to help those in dire need. There are likewise no words to express my sorrow and confusion at this sudden political decision that damns the dreams of those I have come to know and love.

The US took the lead in refugee resettlement, accepting 2/3 of refugees from the UNHCR, and over the past 3 decades, the US has accepted more refugees than all other countries combined. While other countries hand-select their refugees, prioritizing those with education and special skills, the US takes those most disadvantaged, most in need. Why the change in heart? Burma hasn't changed. The government sends fighter planes into the Kachin state where tens of thousands of villagers are displaced, the Rohingya lay dead in international waters or abandoned and unrecognized in Bangladesh, the military is sending more troops and supplies into the Karen state despite the ceasefire, and the Chin are conscripted into work-to-the-death labor.

Goodness knows the US has much immigration drama - and much reason for that immigration drama seeing as it's the most open nation in the world, and one of the most sought after by those seeking better opportunities. And regardless of your thoughts on immigration, refugee resettlement is to me a moral imperative.

The announcement, which quietly transpired without any sort of official word from the State Department that may very well wish it to pass unnoticed, comes at an interesting time - President Thein Sein of Burma just proposed his plan to give over the Rohingya to the UNHCR and have them do as they will. UNHCR's Antonio Guiterres passed. It's almost laughable what Thein Sein proposes. Imagine the US president handing over the inhabitants of Vermont to the rest of the world, declaring, "Do as you will. These people aren't real Americans and we have no duty toward them." It's ridiculous. And yet Aung San Suu Kyi stays noticeably silent. Note that she did speak up in regards to the Kachin situation after being continuously poked, saying only that it's "up to the government.” Um? Earth to Suu Kyi. How do you think the Burmese government deals with people it hates?

When we're dealing with a country that disowns entire ethnic groups at will, the US should exercise more caution in ending a policy that has allowed many, many thousands a chance at a free life. Should other countries step up and accept more refugees? Absolutely. Should we be seriously invested in long-term conflict resolution in Burma? Absolutely. But do we pull out the rug under the people who look to the US as their only hope (even though the US and Britain are far from historically innocent in perpetuating Burma's ethnic conflicts)? Absolutely not.

Carlos Sardina Galache at the Democratic Voice of Burma writes that Burma's recent feigns toward reformation are simply moves to pacify the west and get some foreign investments so it can peacefully continue on its 'same old same old' track: 

The nature and character of these reforms are subject to much controversy, but it is likely that they are not the consequence of a newly discovered love for democracy among the men who have tyrannized Burma for five decades. Perhaps, the Italian writer Giuseppe Tomassi de Lampedusa said it best in his novel Il Gattopardo: “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

If the US is banking on real Burmese reformation in its justification to end resettlement programs, it is seriously misguided. Galache is not the first to say what nobody wants to hear: "The truth of the matter is that nobody knows for sure what future course Suu Kyi or her party envisage for Burma beyond some vagaries about “rule of law” and a barely defined idea of “democracy." Suu Kyi's popularity got her thus far, but her silence and unwillingness to defend ethnic conciliation is troubling at best. Galache argues that the National League for Democracy is as an organization subject to the same problem of severe loyalty as the Burmese government. There is little room for tolerance of dissent or democratic speech - the panoply of ideas that must flourish before Burma can right itself. Galache suggests that Suu Kyi, despite calls for a federation that gives ethnic groups rights, may favor Burman supremacy at the root of it all. 

And without Burmese people recognizing the rights of minorities, even those who call themselves most democratic, there is very little hope for change. So why the change in US resettlement policy? Are we pandering to Burma to show we believe in them? Is it a concession in exchange for being able to invest? It seems unlikely, but where is this unfounded hope in the Burmese regime coming from despite thousands of people still running from their homes?

Unfortunately, there are far too many refugees worldwide than is possible to even think about resettling. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates there are over 40 million refugees. A country such as Burma, which actively displaces its people, is one of the worst offenders. Take the Burmese influx into Bangladesh for example. While about 28,000 refugees from Burma are recognized by the UNHCR, another 200,000 languish outside the official boundaries of the camp. With the massive number of refugees spilling into Bangladesh, it's difficult for the UNHCR to keep up and even more difficult to convince the Bangladesh government to show a little hospitality. Even inside the camps, kids can't go to school beyond the fifth grade. Entire generations are born and raised effectively trapped in cages. They're not officially prisoners - but how can we see them as anything else? Unable to work, to travel, to study, to help themselves, these people are seeing the worst of the world.

It's easy to see refugees as a cost. It's expensive to support them, both at home and abroad. But these are people, no different than ourselves. They have dreams, hopes, and fears. They breath, they eat, they sleep. And they're in more danger than I can comprehend. This week, I met a hilarious Chin 16-year-old girl who came to the US three months ago. She's enrolled as a freshman in a local high school, but she's hardly literate in even her own language. When her family fled to Malaysia 3 years ago, she fell behind in Thailand and was caught and then detained in a children's center for 3 years where she couldn't speak to anyone until she gradually picked up Thai by ear. By the grace of God, her family obtained UNHCR status and was able to find their daughter. They now live in Spokane, and I can speak Thai with her and serve as a mini-translator for their family. Because I speak conversationally with her, she opened up to me and told me her whole story. She's so precious, and because I'm a bad American, I've given her my old Mary Kate and Ashley chapter books from elementary school. She opened to the first page and read, "She put..." and then asked me in Thai to translate "put." She's got a long, long way to go, but she now has a home, doesn't feel the need to cry everyday, and has enough food to eat.

I recently read about Fatima, a Rohingya woman, in the book Nowhere To Be Home from the Voice of Witnesses project. Imagine owning your own business, working your rice fields one day, and the next day fleeing arrest and certain torture, possibly rape, possibly death, because your marriage license - which you purchased by selling your buffalo under total extortion - turns out to be a fake because the village chairman pocketed your money instead of paying off the border guard that carries out eugenic policies against you and has already arrested your husband for impregnating you even though you are his wife and has beat down the door to your family's house and dragged you kicking and screaming and you are lucky to be alive and your only chance at survival is escaping in a fishing boat that has a 50-50 chance of sinking into complete obscurity into a country that doesn't want you, hates your bloodline, and treats you like the scum of the earth.

These are the people America has helped, and can help.

If you escaped from Burma, are you interested in waiting 20 years for your government - still controlled by the same people - to prove its current fakes toward reformation to the (dare I say gullible?) west after 60 years of destructive and random attacks against its citizenry? No. You're interested in being able to sleep with two eyes shut. In being able to eat. In being able to provide your beautiful little children with an education. Because you're human. You can't wait 20 years to live. 

And the beauty of being human is that we have obligations to each other. That we are in life together and that there is solidarity in the fact that we have souls. 

But there are thousands of people who stay on the run in Bangladesh cutting wood or gathering trash while other players sort out if they or their child will ever have a future. 

Enter refugee policy. Enter diplomacy. Enter the chilling reminder that we have totally failed the people in Burma with US foreign policy. Enter the deep reluctance of the American public to "interfere" in a nation's politics. 

Many Burmese and Karen I've spoken to have asked why I think the US never sent in the American military to put an end to the vicious junta. Vietnam, Iraq...these missions aren't known for their success. And how do you tell these people that most Americans don't even know they exist? But the Kachin - who the Burmese military is currently attacking - were promised independence from the US soldiers they helped fight off the Japanese. The Karen were promised independence by the British, who abruptly left Burma to sort out itself after WWII and quickly became one of the world's most brutal regimes. Remember our promises that we never attempted to keep.

The President works with Congress to set a refugee ceiling every year. According to this report from the Migration Information Source, the 1980 ceiling was a whopping 231,700 people. We're no longer quite that generous. From 2002 to 2007, the ceiling was set at 70,000 people. In 2007, the ceiling raised to 80,000 to accomodate refugees from Iraq, Iran, and Bhutan. 

In recent years, Burma has sent the most refugees our way (except that there were more Iraqi refugees in 2009 and 2010). 88,348 people from Burma came from 2002 to 2011, making up 17% of total resettled refugees in the US. To those who lambaste Americans (and Americans are the most guilty of this) for being self-centered and greedy and hated by the rest of the world, you've got to recognize that the US is the world's safe haven. Compared to the US, other nations hardly accept any refugees. Americans give more money, more effort, and more attention to the world's poor than any other nation. 

And here I'm saying, let's keep doing that. Because we all want to live with basic human rights, with food, with a place to call our own. Because we can.

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Resettled refugees build a life in the US

CBS News does a great job with this video on resettled refugees in the US.

Burmese soldiers destroyed Dr. Sang's clinic in Burma, forcing him to flee to the refugee camps on the Thai-Burma border. In the video, Dr. Sang talks about pursuing the American dream in Kentucky. "America is not perfect. But it is the best place - bar none - to live in this world," he says.

Also watch 16-year-old Karen refugee Eh Neh Taw introduce his Kentucky church, which helped his family resettle in the US. Eh Neh Taw spent 10 years in the camps after his family's village was burned. "God has sent a miracle for us and we have a chance to come here," he comments.

I can't figure how to embed this next video, but you should also check out the Ali family as they travel from Mae La Camp to New York by following that link. Before they hop on a plane, the IRC (an agency that helps resettle refugees) shows them how to navigate the typical American household. They learn how to use a western toilet (just as I had to learn how to use their toilets...) and scope out an oven. Trust me, there are no baked goods in Thailand. The youngest of the clan, the little daughter, expresses her skepticism when the IRC tries to give her a coat in the New York airport.

One of my Karen students from Noh Bo Academy will be resettling to the US next month. He's a baller soccer player who in my mind is way too cool for school (though he did insist all his absences were due to malaria...). Let's hope he can find a way to continue studying here.

Yesterday at New Vision Church here in Washington state, 15 refugees aged six to twenty-one showed up for weekly tutoring. I helped a twenty-one-year-old Chin girl prepare for an exam in her citizenship class. We got 97 out of 100 questions correct on a mock citizenship test. She was pretty happy with our (I mean her) score, but I'm apparently rusty on three American government facts, including when the Constitution was written. We chose 1789, but it's actually 1787. Fail.

Does this mean I only deserve to be 97% of a US citizen? Good thing I'm back in the US right now so I can brush up on American history. The glory days can't relive themselves.

On Sunday, Reh Mu, my Thai-speaking Karenni refugee friend at church asked me to translate the problems with her toilet to my dad, who as a pastor and World Relief employee, ends up serving as the middleman between the refugees and the landlord. We had to go into the church restrooms to communicate the technical parts of the toilet as clearly neither Reh Mu nor I are native Thai speakers or toilet experts. But I'd say we did a dang good job, mostly because Reh Mu has mad acting skills.

Later, I taught Sunday school to Chin, Karen, and Karenni teenagers who all speak different languages and very little English. Did I even leave Thailand?

En Route Home, Gaap Baan กลับบ้าน

I made a few stops in December. 5 countries, 20 towns/cities/villages.

Burma - Myawaddy, Karen state

Thailand - Mae Sot, Noh Bo, Chiang Mai, Mae Hau Pra, Bua Tong at the Mae Taeng National Forest Reserve, Chiang Rai bus station, Chiang Khong, Nong Kai, Bangkok

Laos - Huay Xai, Nam Lam Tha, Nong Khiaw, Muang Ngoi, Luang Prabang, Vientianne

Japan - Tokyo

US - LA, Salt Lake, Spokane

I said a few goodbyes.

To Shi Kang, aka Karen, my one true Chinese love.

At good old T-square in Beijing. This is political between me and you.

To Hla Tha, my military pants-wearing, pierced Karen brother at Noh Bo who tosses his head like a rebel when he translates for speakers at school assemblies, who wrote in a precious farewell note, "I love you like my sister."

Hla Tha and Me

Hla Tha and Me

To my grade 9 English class at Noh Bo that wrote essay after essay with only the incentive of thorough criticism, the magic love wand, and the occasional hokey pokey.

To my grade 11 Social Studies class that learned Burmese and Karen history and the forms and tyranny of government, and who never got a single question answered 'til they tried to answer it themselves.

To my grade 12 Speaking class that learned the value of knowing how to argue. "But teacher! Karen don't argue! We can't learn this," they cried. "You're arguing right now," I respond. "And now we're going to learn how to be convincing."

To Bu Thum, my 20-year-old student at Noh Bo, who when asked if he wanted to resettle to a third country, became quiet and said with serious eyes that his people in the Karen state need him. That as long as his people have no freedom, no safety, no citizenship, he will defend and protect them, lead and cherish them, working as long as it takes to create a better future.

Bu Thum is on my right

  A few pictures from Noh Bo:

The boys found this highly venomous snake (yet to be confirmed by online Thai snake expert) in their bathroom. They then smashed it dead and threw its still-twitching body into our Sweet December celebration bonfire.

Saw Christ (my 11th grade student) and his gang singing at the Sweet December celebration bonfire.

In Noh Bo village. Every walk becomes a sick round of Follow the Leader.

Garden work every Friday afternoon

Hills of the Karen state, Burma from Noh Bo

Noh Bo Academy beneath the mountains of Thailand and Burma, clouded in mist.

To the Thai military officer and his wife who drove me from a checkpoint near Noh Bo to Mae Sot, saving me from a debacle of songteow catching, because they also hail from Uttaradit.

To two little 4-year-old Laos boys at Muang Ngoi who adventured with me through the hilly forest into caves and rivers, clutching my hands tightly because ghosts won't come near foreigners. From 2 'til 6:30 we wandered, singing "Dam ruat kii maa"...police ride horses..."Dam ruat kii maa."

My two little 4-year-old brothers out on a hike. Village locals were pretty confused when they saw these 2 silly babes trampling about in the forest with a young American girl. I had to explain that their mothers threw them at me...no kidnapping included!

In a cave used for hiding during the Vietnam War. One woman hid here for years, only coming out at night to tend the rice fields.

Nong Khiaw, Laos.

On a boat from Nong Khiaw to Muang Ngoi...the only way to reach Muang Ngoi.

To Mai, a 24-year-old Luang Prabang bus station employee who shot the breeze with me for 2 hours on a quiet Saturday morning, leaning on the rails outside the ticket box. The breeze of education in Laos and America, rural trends, languages, siblings, bicycles, life.

To those who still believe Buddhists are peaceful...in one of the most tumultuous regions of the globe. 
 Asia is rich in people, rich in culture and rich in resources. It is also rich in trouble.
Hubert H. Humphrey

Rode out to a village outside Luang Prabang to chill with my peeps and sing some songs...and to be picked up by a local construction worker, who slowed down his big truck and asked me to hop in to his pick-up site in the mountains. 

To two young Vietnamese migrant workers in Vientianne, who came to watch the little boys play football in the park that stares out at the river separating Thailand from Laos. The older one is joking about women but he's skinny and malnourished, clutching the crucifix on his neck and stumbling over his Laos pronunciation and he's as much of a stranger as I am to this country, and he's just as far away from home.

To the woman who owns the streetside restaurant cart on Silom in Bangkok who fed me my last Thai fried rice and sat me - by necessity of course, as there is only one small table -  by 2 customers, one from Isaan and the other from Krabi, who found me to be the nearest a young American girl can be to the Thai working class and paid for my lunch.

To the men of the Mo Chit tuk tuk and taxi cartel, who, upon hearing my hodunk country dialect, described how I could find and take the public bus.

To the silk pillowcase salesman at the mad market that is the streets of Siam whose boss is from Uttaradit and thus gifted me a silk pouch.

To the Thai woman surveying foreign shoppers at a Bangkok mall who refused to include me in her sample because I'm "Thai from Uttaradit."

To the 3 women at a tailor's shop in Platinum Market, one Laotian, one Burmese, one Thai, each of whom I could talk with in their respective languages and who almost didn't let me go. Mai hai khun bai.

To the staff at a beloved Bangkok hostel, who had become attached to Ernie, who had sat in the hostel office for over 2 months waiting for me.

To the 25-year-old Korean man from Gangham district at the Tokyo airport who told me that all Koreans collectively turn one year older on New Year's. We slunk around in our hipster clothing eating my choco pies from Bangkok to be the last to board our flight and met again in LA customs awkwardly separated into 2 lines due to our nationalities, too far away from each other for normal conversation, but too close together to ignore the fact that our first moments in America are me standing in the white person line and him standing in the Asian person line. When a customs agent waved me out of line to cut due to my impending connection, I crossed the symbolic transnational and cultural boundary in the LA hallway and passed him a ripped piece of paper with a scribbled note, adding a great deal to the theatrics of the silent, staring customs hall.

To the blinged-out man - the largest person I'd seen since summer 2011 - in the LA airport who stood in solidarity with me and subjected himself to a full body search to avoid the freakish American anti-terrorism pornoscanners. "I'm not doing that f****** s***," he said. Never making eye contact, never turning toward each other, yet perfectly in sync, we fist-bumped.

And then I was in America. 10 pounds lighter than when I left it, 10 times more purposeful, 10 times more tired because of those individual TVs on the airplanes that reeducate you on American pop culture before landing. I said a few hellos.

To my mom, who likes Trollhunters.

To my dad, who thinks that the Ark in the movie Genesis looks like a floating barn. "You know, the Catholics convert the atheists but the Protestants convert the Catholics," he says to comfort himself.

To my sisters, the real, by-blood ones. To Emma, the youngest, who lets me sleep in her room because I don't know how to be alone.

To a shocking amount of non-rice carbs, sabai furniture (in SE Asia, I'm not tempted to lie down on most surfaces I encounter), and a snowy, freezing landscape with no insects to date.

To the Karen and Karenni in my church who connect what I left behind in the Karen state to whatever it is that greets me in the US. I can talk with them in their languages, in my language, about yellow bean rations, about the contrast between the all-purpose, Karen military-approved flip flop and what they now wear - the American high-heeled boot.

About their country, about my country, but we don't exactly know whose is whose anymore, and these blurry lines of identity obfuscate the distinctions of nationality that I had thought to be much more relevant a year and a half ago when SE Asia was still a stranger and I hadn't become an honorary 'Ditto in the sticky jungle that is teeming with creatures that crawl and a certain kind of communitarianism that renders a certain kind of individualism lonely and vain.

"All these boundaries - Africa, Asia, Malaysia, America - are set by men. But you don't have to look at boundaries when you are looking at a man - at the character of a man. The question is: What do you stand for?" - Hakeem Olajuwon