On October 11 my dad Bill and I hosted an interfaith community prayer vigil for Burma in my hometown of Auburn, CA. The vigil was held in honor my late mother who was born in Burma. Here is a transcript of my speech for that evening:
Thank you for gathering tonight to unite our hearts and voices with the people of Burma. My name is Grace Michel. I was raised here in Auburn, but my late mother, Esther Michel, was born in Burma. She was ethnically Karen, which is the largest indigenous ethnic minority group in Burma. Esther came to the U.S. with her family in 1964 to escape the political situation in Burma. They left Burma shortly after a coup overthrew the government and ushered in a military regime, which has continued in some form to this day. Esther lived in Auburn from 1986 until her death from cancer in 2000. Tonight we honor and remember her life by remembering the country she came from. We are here tonight to recognize the situation in Burma and to pray for peace in this country.
I want to give us some background on the history of Burma. This Southeast Asian country has been in the news a lot recently, because of the throngs of monks who have been demonstrating against the brutal military regime. The demonstrations started in Rangoon and other cities on August 19 when pro-democracy activists began to protest an outrageous 500% increase in the price of fuel imposed by the junta and its perpetual denial of basic human rights. Monks began to join the demonstrations in large numbers in Rangoon and other cities on Tuesday, September 18. Monks marched with their alms bowls turned upside down, a way of shaming the regime by boycotting alms from the military regime and its supporters. Other citizens of Burma joined the protests by forming human chains to protect the monks and to offer them food and water. On September 25 the military government began to crack down on the demonstrations and raid monasteries. Accurate information is hard to get since the Burmese media is completely censored, but at this time an estimated 3,000 monks and civilians have been arrested and an estimated 200 people have been killed.
These demonstrations are the largest public display of opposition to the military regime since 1988, when students marched in protest in large numbers. At that time over 3,000 activists were murdered and many more imprisoned and tortured at the hands of the regime. After the 1988 protests, the regime was worried that it could not hold onto power, so the ruling generals announced they would hold a democratic election. Aung San Suu Kyi and many allies formed a political party, which they named the National League for Democracy (NLD). The party went on to win the election in a landslide victory in 1990, winning an astounding 82% of the seats in parliament, even though many pro-democracy leaders were already imprisoned. Tragically, the regime did not permit the electoral winners to assume office. The regime has maintained its grip on power ever since. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest, and she has remained there for 12 of the last 18 years. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, and she is the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Prize laureate.
But there is another side to the Burma story that is closer to me personally, because it has to do with the Karen people, my mom Esther’s ethnic group. Just as in the United States we have many indigenous tribes such as the Cherokee, Navajo, and Maidu, so too there are many indigenous ethnic groups in Burma. The Karen are the largest of several ethnic minorities including the Shan, Kachin, Karenni, Mon, Chin and Arakan. The Karen are also one of the few ethnic minority groups that has a significant number of Christians. All groups have held a high degree of autonomy in their homelands for hundreds of years, and they are all currently experiencing severe persecution by the Burmese military. Here’s an example. Imagine for a moment that you are sitting in church. It’s Christmas Eve service. Parishioners are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. And someone throws a grenade into the worship hall. 80 people are killed in this single incident. This actually happened in 1948. These and other attacks by Burman militias on the Karen sparked an armed struggle that continues to this very day. It is the longest running civil war in the world.
Fast forward to 2007. As a result of this ongoing civil war, today there are over 600,000 Internally Displaced Persons [IDP’s] living inside Burma. Many fear for their lives every day. Internally Displaced means living on the run, being hunted by the Burmese military. Typically, they attack the village, shoot some of the people on sight, kill the animals, destroy the rice barns, and burn the houses. The soldiers then place land mines in the remains. The people are forced to either relocate to military-designated locations, where they are subject to extortion, abuse, and forced labor, or to flee into the forest, where they try to survive on what they can forage. Most people have made the latter choice, and now live as internally displaced people. This is just a part of an ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing being carried out the Burmese military against ethnic minorities. As a result there are over one million refugees living in neighboring countries such as Thailand, and over 150,000 live in refugee camps. Today the situation has gone from worse to beyond critical. In the past year alone the Burmese Army displaced over 25,000 people and destroyed 200 villages, bringing the total to 3,000 villages destroyed in the last decade. In addition to this there is a growing AIDS epidemic, perpetual use of rape as a weapon of war against ethnic minority women, human trafficking for the sex industry, and regular recruitment of child soldiers.
The information I just shared paints an extremely dismal picture of the current state of Burma. But we are not here tonight to hear depressing stories. We are here because we have hope. [Turn to your neighbor and say we have hope]. Many of the Karen people are Christian people, people of faith who put their hope in God to redeem their situation and their country. In recent days many of the Karen Christians in Burma have been fasting and praying for their people and their nation, taking up collections of food and money for those in need. There are also millions of Buddhists in Burma, including the courageous monks who have been peacefully demonstrating in recent days, and they are praying for their country as well.
I am here tonight because I believe that God is the only one who can and will bring peace and healing to Burma. I actually work for a human rights organization that is trying to encourage the UN Security Council to take action on Burma to bring about change there. While this political advocacy is valuable and important, and we can get involved in it, it is not enough to bring true peace to Burma. True peace, true healing, true reconciliation comes through a change in people’s hearts. Because I am a Christian, I believe that God is the one who changes hearts. I believe it is the love of God, embodied in Jesus Christ that overcomes death, overcomes evil, and penetrates hearts to bring light where there is darkness. I believe in a God that is bigger than injustice and oppression, bigger than the struggles in our own lives and bigger than the struggles in Burma. So, let us pray tonight in faith for the people of Burma.
