Zoya Phan

Kaowao Newsgroup recently interviewed a young Karen activist named Zoya Phan. Zoya is an International Coordinator for the Burma Campaign UK and co-founder of the Phan Foundation.  She is also a Coordinator for the European Karen Network, a board member of the Austria Burma Center and Secretary of the Karen Community Association UK.  Her autobiography, “Little Daughter,” was published by Simon and Schuster in April 2009.

Both Zoya Phan’s mother and father were involved in the Karen resistance movement. Her father, Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan was Secretary General of Karen National Union. He was assassinated by agents of the Burmese military dictatorship in February 2008 at his home in Maesot, Thailand.

KW:     Can you tell us how you came to the border and about your life there?

ZP:       I grew up in a small village in Manerplaw, Karen State. Although my family didn’t have much, we lived in a community where people helped each other and shared what they had with other people. Life was very natural, as we didn’t have electricity or running water. When I was 14, Burmese soldiers attacked my village, forcing my family and I to flee for our lives. We hid in the jungle and eventually ended up in a Thai refugee camp.

KW:     Can you talk about the campaign work that you do?

ZP:       I joined the Burma Campaign UK in 2005. Working with other organizations, we successfully campaigned for the UK government to double its aid to Burma, including increased British aid to the refugee camps where I once lived, and Dr. Cynthia Maung’s health clinic, which saved my life many times.

We have been campaigning for the release of all of political prisoners in Burma, including democratic leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. We support a global signature campaign led by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

Currently, we are working on a campaign in Eastern Burma. It is so sad that generation after generation is forced to flee their homes. This is never ending. Eastern Burma is one of the largest unreported crises in the world. Attacks on ethnic people, especially the Karen, have been going on since Burma’s independence in 1947. It is in Eastern Burma that the worst human rights abuses are committed.  We have been campaigning for the European Union to impose targeted financial sanctions on insurance, financial transactions, banking and investment in Burma.

The human rights violations committed by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) in Eastern Burma are both war crimes and crimes against humanity. We have called on the UN to impose a global arms embargo against the regime, and ordered a commission of inquiry to gather evidence leading to prosecutions against the Burmese regime.

KW:     Can you describe the abuses in more detail?

ZP:       Rape is used as a weapon of war. Hundreds of thousands of people are used as slave labour – often as porters for the military. They are also used as human minesweepers, made to walk in front of Burmese Army columns, as they do not keep records of where they put landmines. More than a million people have been forced to flee their homes as a result, and more than 3,300 villages have been destroyed. The United Nations has accused the regime of crimes against humanity for its use of forced labour, and of war crimes for breaking the Geneva Convention by deliberately targeting civilians.

KW:     What are your thoughts on cross-border aid?

ZP:       There are almost half a million internally displaced people in Eastern Burma, and millions more living in extreme poverty. In large parts of this area, the regime allows no aid at all to reach the people. The only way to assist these people is through cross-border aid, but there is not enough funding to help even the 100,000 most vulnerable. We are calling on the international community to provide more cross-border aid to internally displaced people who can be reached only through the border because of the restriction of aid delivery by the Burmese regime.

KW: Have you been successful?

ZP:       UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon announced that the release of all political prisoners is a priority. We were excited to see that this was his top priority days before he was due to visit Burma.

I have also met with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other senior politicians from around the world to urge them to take action on Burma. 

KW:     What are your thoughts on the upcoming 2010 election and the Border Guard Force (BGP)?

ZP:       I see the elections proposed for 2010 by the Burmese regime as a step away from democracy, as they bring in a constitution that legalizes dictatorship, which has been the cause of increasing human rights abuses and instability in Burma.

The recent sentence of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to an additional 18 months of house arrest is part of the 2010 agenda. We have seen the number of political prisoners double, and new prisoners have been given prison sentences of up to 65 years or more. It’s clear the generals are sending a message that no dissent will be tolerated in the run up to the elections.

The dictatorship is also forcing some armed groups who have ceasefire agreements to give up their weapons, which many are refusing to do. Some groups have already started fighting again, while others could do so in the near future. Again, this is linked to the 2010 elections. Likewise, the attacks on Ler Per Her camp, the Karen National Union, and the attack in Shan State are also part of the 2010 agenda.

The dictatorship wants to crush the KNU and the Shan State Army-South (SSA-South), as they continue to resist the rule of the regime. As a result, we have 6,000 more refugees and IDPs in Karen State, 10,000 more in Shan State, hundreds of people used as slave labor, and women raped and killed, including an 8 month pregnant woman.

KW:     Can you talk about your experience living in the jungle of Burma?

ZP:       As a child, I wasn’t really aware about what was going on in Karen State until one day my sister, brother and I were playing by the river bank when we saw a dead body in the river – a porter (slave) killed by the Burmese Army.

I am very lucky that I was born in a Karen resistance area controlled by the Karen National Union. I was able to study the Karen language, learn about my own culture and practice my own traditions freely.

In the SPDC controlled areas, ethnic languages are banned in school, ethnic history is not taught, and ethnic people are discriminated against in employment, sometimes even having to change their names to Burman ones. The dictatorship wants to assimilate or expel ethnic people, to destroy their culture and traditions, and make them like the main Burman ethnic group.

KW:     How did you feel when your father was assassinated, and how you handle this tragedy?

ZP:       I was very sad and upset, but I also knew that I had to be strong. My father dedicated his life to the struggle for freedom, and always put the welfare of his people and his country before himself.

When the regime’s agents killed my father, they were trying to kill what he stood for, which is human rights, democracy and freedom. We must not let them succeed. We must carry on his work and this political struggle.

I am proud to be his daughter, just as all my siblings are proud of him. As his Daughter, I will continue his dedicated work towards freedom for the Karen people, for all the people of Burma, and for peace in our country.

My sister, brothers and I also created the Phan Foundation in memory of our father and mother. We will fund education projects and fight poverty in Karen state. We will have a special focus on youth, helping the next generation of young people who will work to help the Karen. Our father always encouraged young people to be active in helping their community. Donations can be made online from any country at www.phanfoundation.org

The Phan Foundation provides aid for the Karen people, protects Karen culture, and promotes human rights.

>> Part Two

COMMENTS Date: Sun, 13 Sep 2009 01:44:10 -0400 Name of sender: ဥကၠာ Email of sender: ougkar@gmail.com Comments: အေရဝ္မှိဟ္လတူေတံဟုီဒး၊ ဝါဒမဟာဂွ္ အပႜဲကေရင္ေလဝ္ႏြံ၊ အပႜဲကုႝစဿတ္တၛဲ ၁၆ ဂိတု ၂ -၂၀၀၈ ဂွ္ မန္ႏြံေမဝ္လ မှိဟ္ပိတၜ နာဲညာဏ္သုိက္၊ နာဲက်ဝ္ငၛဳ႙၊ နာဲဥတၲမ ေကာ္(စုိးေအာင္) ကေရင္ၐုင္ေထာံၾကပ္ခ်ဳိတ္၊ တုဲပၜန္မန္စုိပ္ ခါမ္အုမ္ဖါန္ ကေရင္ပၜဳီေထာံမြဲ အယုက္ ၁၄ သှာံ၊ တုဲပၜန္ကိစၥနာဲလွိင္တံလုပ္ခါမ္ ဒးဒုင္ပခက္ ကၜဳင္လဝ္နာနာသာ္ဂွ္ ထၞးသက္သ႘မူေရာေတွ္ မန္ဒးဒုင္မံင္သဿဝ္တဲ ကေရင္ပုဟ္ဂွ္ ဟြံသာပုဟ္၊ လေဆာဝ္မန္ႏြံရုင္စက္ ေအာန္ ကေရင္ဂၜဳိင္ပႜဲမာဆံက္ဏံဂွ္ေလဝ္ ေဍံဘပလတုဲ ပု႙ဒးအာဗက္ေသာင္တံဂွ္ေလဝ္ ႏြံဗြဲမဂၜဳိင္၊ ဆဂးေဍံဂြံေစဝ္လတူေတွ္ေဍံေကၜာန္မူပဟြံဂြံ၊ ဗုီဇဝ္ရာဖါန္ဂွ္ မန္ဍဳိဟ္ဟ္တံဟြံမြဲဟာ၊ ဟုီဟြံဒွ္ဟာ၊ ဟြံဂံင္လုပ္ဝုိင္ဟာဂွ္ မန္တံရဒးဂၜာဲသြဟ္၊ ဗုီကေရင္ဒွ္ဒုိက္ဂွ္ မန္တံေလဝ္ဍာ္စုိပ္မံင္ကအ္ဟြံေအာန္၊ ဗဿာဂွ္ဒုင္သၨိဳင္ကုႝဒ႘မဝ္ ကေရၿဇ႘၊ ကေရင္ဂွ္ဒုင္သၨဳိင္ကုႝ ရ႘ဖ်ဴဂ်႘ (Refugees)တုဲ ဂြံေစဝ္လတူညးတှဟ္ေတွ္ မန္ပု႙ေရာ ယဝ္ပမံင္သၠအ္ကုႝဂှ႘ရေတွ္ ဍဳင္မန္လုီပိဝါဂွ္ ဂၜာဲဆုႝညိဏီဟာ Date: Mon, 07 Sep 2009 19:07:19 -0400 Name of sender: Chan mon Email of sender: : minyarzar01@gmail.com Don't waste the time interview with her,karen problem is first importance to them. we know about life in jungle the same like her and then everytime when she met members of European she always talked about karen, not Mon.Her idea the same like Mon under Karen contro Date: Mon, 07 Sep 2009 12:52:26 -0400 Name of sender: Andy Sandilands Email of sender: andy.sand@hotmail.co.uk Zoya. Having just read your book, I would like to say well done. I did not know anything about The Karen until I was asked to visit one of the orphanages in the Thai/Burma Border 140km from Mae sot. I fell in love with the people and now I spend as much time there as possible. My son also lives in the orphanage a great part of his time and teaches the kids sports, particularly Muay Thai boxing. I plan to put all my experiences together and get some kind of output to the world, through media friends. It is a struggle for all the Karen, but people like you can help the world to recognise the genocide that is being portrayed on the Karen People. May God help us show the world what is happening and stop the killing. Keep up the good work ..., Andy Date: Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:12:59 -0400 Name of sender: Hayley Forsey Email of sender: hayleyforsey@yahoo.com Looking firward to reading your book Zoya. Much love, Hayley xx Date: Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:22:37 -0400 Name of sender: Nai Ought -PaMangKOhWarn Email of sender: oughtland@yahoo.com Thanks for your kindling news.i am mon from mon state.i would like to have some news paper from you.can i get it? now i still in phuket thailand. my adress is IED -HONGTHONG 28, SOI KARON 2, KARON BEACH MUANG, PHUKET,THAILAND 83100 MOBILE;081-691 0178 (NAI OUGHT) MANY MON NATIONAL IN PHUKET NEED TO READ THE NEWS PAPER FROM KAOWAO.WHOEVER PLEASE SEND TO ME ABOUT TWENTY OF NEWS PAPER AND I WILL RETURN BACK THE MONEY TO YOUR ACCOUNT. HAVE A GOOD LUCK TO ALL. BEST REGARDS NAI OUGHT-PAMANGKOHWARN COMMENT ခ်ဴပလံင္လိခ္ နကုႝ မန္ ဝွန္ (mon font) ဂြံမာန္ရ အႀကံျပဳရန္ ေဇာ္ဂ်ီေဖာင့္ျဖင့္ ေရးသားႏုိင္ပါသည္ Name: Email address: Comments