The Karen National League, as a non-armed Karen organization, seeks to uplift the lot of the Karen people and bring about the rule of law and true democracy to Burma. It engages in any and all lawful activities incidental to the foregoing purposes.

Violence, Rape, and Psychological Impact on Women: The Situation of Women in Burma by Naw May Oo

For this semester, I have been reading the three profound books: I, Rigoberta Menchu, the autobiography of an Indian woman in Guatemala, Shattered Lives: Sexual Violence during the Rwandan Genocide and its Aftermath, a report by the Human Rights Watch, and We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda by Philip Gourevitch. Two of the three books I am reading for the 3rd time and still I feel an icy cold touch inside and always discover the revelation of womenness in the world of chaos and conflicts.

There maybe only a little to compare about the situation of women in Burma and of the Rwandan women. The Rwandan women have gone through so much and they are still undergoing tremendous amount of consequences after the genocide, there is no doubt about that. And the international community has been blamed for "shamefully [standing] by at the height of the genocide." Today, I would like to invite you all to see Burma as just a place on earth and the women of Burma as just the people. One sure thing is the call for action by our situation in Burma allows us much more time to prepare, to implement, and to successfully accomplish our mission - justice and equality for women.

Based on our more or less experience working in this particular field, we all know that there are always greater impacts on women and children whenever conflicts exist such as genocide, the "ethnic cleansing war." Some of us have studied through, some of us may have lived through, and some of us may still be undergoing such situation, and we all would presumably have idea what it is like after all. There are some specific accounts that I would like to share with you today in the case of Burma's women, and I choose these accounts based on two simple factors: (1) It is from my birth place which I know the area very well and (2) It is possible to get documents and other necessary evidence for research compared to other places in Burma. My intention is solely to inform you of our situation and to somehow support what my colleagues have said in their presentations.

Under the Burmese military regime, State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), lives are unbearably miserable for both men and women. However, for women, it doubles the suffering and creates traumas. We do not have any customary law that will "legally" prohibit women from rights to possession or anything like that, but the unwritten restrictions on women spell out death or eternal suffering for them if they brake such restrictions. And there is nothing to be surprised that we do not have any law that will protect us from any undignified assaults whatsoever.

According to the most recent analysis from Karen Human Rights Group, an independent human rights documentation center on Thai-Burma border, 35 villages in Shwegyin (Hsaw Tee) township alone had been completely destroyed in 1997. Finding itself unable to suppress Karen resistance activity in the eastern hills of Nyaunglebin district, in early 1997 the SPDC (then named SLORC) began a campaign to wipe out all Karen civilian villages in the hills. Where villagers could be found they were ordered to relocate westward into the plains; where they could not be caught, their villages were shelled without warning, looted and then burned to the ground, while villagers found afterwards were shot on sight. When the SPDC guerrilla retaliation units suspect someone, they kill them without any interrogation, often at night. Some have been shot, some stabbed to death. Afterwards local villagers have been ordered not to touch, cremate or bury the bodies. The troops have thrown some of the bodies in the river, and have also on several occasions cut off the heads of their victims after killing them. After executing two farmers from Myeh Yeh village, the troops cut off their heads and hung them along the path between nearby villages. Such violent actions leave women with an enormous scar inside, a trauma that one can never fully understand to heal. This is just like a Rwandan widow who said,

"we are widows like other widows, but we have things that are particular to our group. Our situation is different. Many of us never found the bodies of our husbands or children. We have never buried them. We have never mourned them. There has been no funeral. We are left wondering about his last moments. How was he killed? Was he hacked to death? Was he shot? Was he eaten by dogs? This isn't like regular widow. You can't describe us in banal terms and say we are widows like any other widows."

One SPDC guerrilla retaliation unit found 4 Karen men and one woman from Twa Ni Gone village staying at a hut with some rice while they fished at a large pond, released the woman and executed the 4 men with no questions asked. One of the units responsible for some of the most brutal attacks is commanded by a Sergeant who was reportedly interested in an 18-year-old schoolgirl in Lu Ah village of Mone township, so she fled the village. In response he threatened to kill her parents and the village headman if she would not return and marry him, so she reportedly returned and they are now married. This reminds me of what I read about a Rwandan woman who was abducted and married to the militiaman said, "I knew I am condemned to this? I thought this is a death, like other deaths? I thought to be taken as a wife is a form of death. Rape is a crime worse than others. There's no death worse than that. The problem is that women and girls don't' say what happened to them." These thoughts and words of women clearly show us where they are and what they feel.

In a situation of armed conflict, sexual violence against women and girls has been "the least condemned crime" as well as "a bitter reality." Unfortunately, Burma - my country - falls into that reality. Not only that sexual violence leaves our women so physically injured that they may never be able to bear children, but many women have died in the course of or consequent to such violence. I have seen a woman who was raped by the Burmese soldiers, and her legs were burned with plastic bottle because she refused to have sex with the soldiers. The popular sex industries in Thailand, especially in the border towns, employ many Burmese women and girls who are in Thailand as political/economy refugees.

Burma's women population, likewise in Rwanda, constitutes more than half of the entire country's population, and there is no doubt that women are the one who will be building the country from many aspects. However, what could we possibly expect from a woman whose life is psychologically and physically damaged? In this case, we are talking about a country's half populace. In the midst of violence, rape, and armed conflicts, our women from all backgrounds - be they Burman or Karen or Shan or Buddhist or Christian or Islamic - suffer from most irreparable damages. Even though I would like to emphasize the impacts on women in armed conflicts, women who by no means can escape violence and rape, I have no intention to leave out our women - the wives and daughters of the SPDC soldiers - 400,000 + men. When moment for reconciliation comes, we will have to face them. And we must realize that damages have been done to them as well, but in different course. We all are facing problems because of the upheaval caused by the armed conflict, the genocidal war against the ethnic people, and aggravated by our generally disadvantaged status as women.

I need not to mention the traumas faced and suffered by our women. Like in Rwanda and elsewhere, we do not wish to be saying at one point that "it is better to live through a war than after a war." We do not want to regret for surviving. A woman bears the dilemma whether to give birth to a child or to abort since she was raped. For those women who were raped, there is always a question in terms of what to say to their children. One physician described his experience with rape cases of Rwandan women: "?you cure direct illness, but psychologically, they are not healed. These women are profoundly marked psychologically. Medically, they are healed, but they continue to be sick." Many of our women in the country have to deal with isolation and ostracization. As stated by one Rwandan woman: "When they kill your husband and children and then leave you, it is like killing you. They left us to die slowly. I wish everyday that I was dead." Just as the Rwandan women were told that "[they] will die of sadness," many ethnic women are being told by the SPDC soldiers that they will suffer and die of sadness by watching their husbands and sons being killed. This affects me and affects every woman of my country.

Dear friends and fellow women, the time is not too late for Burma. Although it is approaching us very quickly, we also have time to help our women of Burma in many ways. Please, from you own corner, help us free ourselves from this indecent suffering. Sadly enough, Rwanda has been the perfect example for all of us. The delay can do an enormous damage to the entire women population as well as to a country. And our prompt actions will also make a tremendous difference for the women and for the country. I sincerely hope that, one day, all women will be able to sing a song of love - freedom from fear and traumas.

Naw May Oo is the president of the Karen National League. The paper was presented before the UN?s Commission on Status of Women, 43rd Session, March 1-12, 1999, New York, NY.

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