အေရးေတာ္ပံု ေအာင္ရမည္

(The Determination To Succeed)

The following poem is written by famous Burmese blogger and poet Ma Thadar. A brief translation is done for English readers)

၁၉၆၂ ကစ..
အေမွာင္က်လာတဲ့ ဘဝ
ေက်ာင္းသားမ်ားရဲ့ ေရႊေရာင္အိမ္မက္.
လူ ့အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ိဳးျဖဴဌက္..
သမဂၢအေဆာက္အဦးနဲ့ အတူ..
ေၾကြက် ေျမခ..
အမည္းေရာင္စ..သမိုင္းရဲ့ မွတ္တိုင္။

(1962 is the beginning of the dark era, when the students’ golden dreams for developing our beloved country had been razed to the ground, together with the Rangoon University Graduation Hall. No one realised then that we were all going to lose our basic human rights too)

ဦးသန္ ့ မွိဳင္းရာျပည့္.
က်ိဴၾကားက်ိဳၾကား..
အေရးေတာ္ပံုမီးစမ်ား..
ေျမ့ေျမ့ေလာင္ဖြဲမီး..
မ်ိဳးဆက္မ်ိဳးစဥ္ တဆက္ျပီးတဆက္
၈၈၈၈ အေရးေတာ္ပံု သို ့
ေသြး နဲ ့ရင္းႏွီးတယ္။

(Many other protests have been organized and held since, such as U Thant’s funeral and 100th Anniversary of Sir Hmine, but all were defeated too. However, these unsuccessful protests were vital and acted as cold fire, which passed on to the next generations, leading up to yet the biggest of all protests – The 8888.)

၁၉၈၈ ေနာက္..
ေက်ာင္းသား တပ္မေတာ္ေပၚေပါက္
တိုင္းျပည္အတြက္ အသက္ေပး
ေသလိုက္ၾကတဲ့ ျပည့္ရင္ေသြး။
လူမသိ သူမသိ..
ဒုနဲ့ေဒး။ အာဇာနည္ေသြးေတြ ..ေျမခေၾကြ။

(The Student Army was formed during the 8888 and thousands of young lives were lost in the battles for freedom and democracy. There were countless Unknown Soldiers and Warriors who willingly gave up lives for the country. It all happened behind the scenes and in secrecy but we all know about their fate because the ground is covered in our martyrs' blood. )

"ခြပ္ေဒါင္းစစ္မွန္..ေလဆန္ကိုသာ ပ်ံမဟဲ့
ခြပ္ေဒါင္းစစ္မွန္..ခြပ္ရင္းသာ ေသမဟဲ့"
ေကသရာဇာ..ဘယ္ျမက္မစားခဲ့
ေဒါင္းစစ္ေတြ က်ဆံုးေသေပ်ာက္
ေဒါင္းေသြးနီနံ..ခုထိမေျခာက္.
ေတာ္လွန္ေရးတစ္ေလ်ွာက္
ဝိညာဥ္မ်ားရယ္..ဒို ့နဲ့အတူတူေန
လြတ္လပ္မွသာ..အမွ်ေဝ
ၾကာခဲ့ျပီေလ..
အႏွစ္ (၂၀)ေျခာက္လွန္ ့အိပ္မက္ေတြ

(Pedigree fighting peacocks would fly against the wind, and would fight until they die. Lions never eat grass. Peacock soldiers died and the smell of their blood is still in the air. Their spirits have marched along with us in all of our battles. Twenty years of nightmares are still not going away. But there will be no memorial service, until we regain the freedom.)

၂၀၀ရရဲ့ ေရႊဝါေရာင္.ေတာ္လွန္ေရး
ေသြးညစ္ေထးတဲ့ သကၤန္း..
သာသနာရယ္ ညစ္ေပႏြမ္းေတာ့..
ေအာ္...ေရႊဗမာမ်ားရယ္..
က်ြန္ျဖစ္ခ်င္ၾကသလား..
က်ြန္သက္ရွည္ရေတာ့မလား။

(2007 saw the Golden Colour Revolution when golden robes got soaked in dirty blood. This time we lost our most treasured religion. Oh dear… Golden Burmese, it looks like you do enjoy being slaves ! Dear Golden Burmese, you are just doing everything to prolong your slavery !)

ကိုလိုနီ မ်က္ႏွာျဖဴကဖ်က္ေတာင္မွ..
ဒို ့ဘိုးဘြားလက္ထက္..မပ်က္ခဲ့တဲ့ သာသနာ
ဒို ့ေခတ္က် မွ သာသနာပ်က္..
ဗမာစင္စစ္က..ဗမာကိုဖ်က္
ဗုဒၶဘာသာဝင္စင္စစ္က..ဗုဒၶဘာသာကိုဖ်က္
ထြီ..ရွက္စရာ့
ရာဇဝင္ရယ္ ရိုင္းပါ့။
မ်က္ႏွာကို ဓါးနဲ့သာ နဳတ္နဳတ္စင္း
က်ြန္ပါး၀ ေသာက္သံုးမက်တဲ့ စာရင္း
က်မနာမည္ လည္း ပါတယ္။
သင္ေရာ..ပါေနသလား.????
သင္ေရာ..ပါခ်င္သလား.?????

We had never lost our religion, the precious gift of our ancestors. Not even during the colonial time. Now only in the junta time, we managed to destroy our priceless traditional culture. Only the Burmese who are destroying Burma ! Only the Buddhists who are destroying the Buddhism ! How shameful is that ? What disgraceful History is that ? There is only one way to save from this historical shame. Just slice your face with a knife. What loyal servants we have all become (to the junta) ? I was one too, who let the country (and the religion) down. How about you ?

ျမက္ပင္ေျခာက္ကေလးတပင္မို ့
အားငယ္မေနနဲ ့
တေတာလံုး ကိုမီးဟုန္းဟုန္းတိုက္မဲ့
ေလာင္စာျဖစ္နိူင္တယ္။

( Do not be lonely , only because you are a little dried grass. That’s all we need to start the forest fire.)

ပုဇြန္ဆိတ္ကေလး တေကာင္မို ့
အားငယ္မေနနဲ ့
သမုဒၵရာ ကိုလူးလားခတ္
ေက်ာ္ျဖတ္နိူင္တယ္။

(Do not feel weak, only because you are a little plankton. They are regularly crossing the oceans.)

အားနဲ ့သာခဲ တြန္းပါလွည့္
ဇဲြမာန္နဲ့သာ..ရုန္းပါလွည့္။
တေယာက္တလက္..စြမ္းအားထက္
မခိုကပ္ရင္..ဘယ္ေလာက္ခက္ခက္
ျပိဳင္တူတြန္းနိူင္ ေရြ ့နိုင္ပါရက္
က်ြန္သက္မရွည္ခ်င္..ၾကိဳးစားပါလွည့္။
ကဲ လာ..ညီညာတူညီ..
ျမန္ျပည္သစ္သို ့ရည္.
အေရးေတာ္ပံု ေအာင္ရမည္။

(Please grit your teeth and push. Please pick yourself up and struggle. Many hands will make one strong force. If we all take part and do our duty, we can conquer anything. If you do not want to live on as a slave , you must try with all your might. Our success only depends on our determination. Let us build Burma as we always wanted – free and democratic. )

မသဒၶါ (၈။၇။၂၀၀၈)

(Nay Chi U's translation)

Burmese ? Do Something About Your Country !!!

(Several Ways To Commemorate the 20th Anniversary of 8888 Massacre)

Whispers and rumours among the grown-ups of the arrests, torture and murder of any protesters and demonstrators, had become a fairly normal thing for kids to hear about in the 60’s and 70’s in Burma.

So many protests organized by the students and workers, were repeatedly and ruthlessly suppressed and crushed by the military junta since the infamous July 7th 1962 explosion. This bomb destroyed the graduation building packed with Rangoon University students protesting over the occupation by the military junta , immediately after the coup in March 1962.

Many protesters died, some were tortured or raped, or thrown into long term imprisonment. Except for a few of the students involved, who witnessed the fate of their friends and close relatives, people now tend to have forgetten the fearful events and get on with their lives.

Then came the 8th August, 1988 demonstrations, better known as 8888. This time, millions of people joined in and filled every street of every town in Burma. Aung San Suu Kyi was emerging as the best loved and most respected leader for Burma. People just felt good and happy and convinced that right would prevail at last. The expectation of freedom and democracy, an improving economy and the proper development of the country was high and everyone was an optimistic person. We would have the opportunity to be as good, or even better, than the neighbouring countries, after all.

Suddenly, the junta struck. Our own soldiers pointed machine guns right to the crowds of Burmese people and shot every thing that moved. The military with their convoys of trucks and tanks marched into the streets of towns and cities, treating their own people as an enemy. People dispersed in panic as the junta once again used unbridled military force power as they had always done since 1962; their most successful procedure was (and still is) to run down the crowds with tanks and overwhelming numbers of soldiers and paramilitary, arrest indiscriminately, interrogate remorselessly, and throw thousands into the long term imprisonment, in some of the most inhumane prisons in human history. The usual follow-up procedures to intimidate the rest of the country’s population are then carried out at leisure – picking up suspected protesters from their own homes like butchers picking up the chickens for slaughter, sending political prisoners to labour camps or remotest possible prisons so that families and friends find visits almost impossible.

It was obvious that the people of Burma were physically defeated again at the popular 8888 protest. Mentally they were also badly scarred, but the knowledge of the true nature of the now despised military junta, made them tougher as well as more bitter. Those millions of people who marched along the streets of the cities became the eye-witnesses of the junta’s ruthless brutality. The myths, legends and gossip of military junta’s arrests, torture and murder had become such obviously true stories of personal experiences.

Many people have fled the country since 8888. Most went to the Thai- Burma border. Some middle class families began to find jobs in developed countries and were able to settle as ‘expats’. Most interestingly, some of the officials of the military junta also started sending their family members to settle abroad, mainly in Singapore and the West. No doubt those officials sensed the hatred and the burning desire for revenge, that the entire public feel towards them. The overwhelming number of people who turned up to protest in 8888 to ask for freedom and democracy had clearly shaken them.

Twenty years on and the junta still has its boot on Burma’s throat. Crime after crime continues to be committed by the junta in the most brazen, shameless and cowardly manner. The country’s economy is completely corrupt and wholly subverted to the interests of the junta's small ‘élite’, so that they and their supporters have become dollar multi-millionaires. Even now, no one is able to exert political influence to do anything about this institutionalized criminality, including the UN.

The 8888 generations have become the middle-aged. The most courageous student leaders and the brightest of the politicians have been exterminated or are still serving long prison sentences as though they were the criminals. The humanitarian agencies are struggling desperately to cope with the number of refugees arriving at the borders.

This 20th Anniversary of the 8888 protest is a good time for every Burmese people to do self assessment.

• Are you Burmese or do you belong to an ethnic minority group?
• Are you a participant or a witness to the 8888 protests?
• Do you agree that the military junta brutally crushed the protests?
• Do you agree that the military junta is a terminal cancer within Burmese society, sucking out the energy and resources from the entire nation?
• Do you agree that the junta and followers are interested only in personal wealth and have no single interest in the real development of Burmese nation ?

If your answers are ‘Yes’ then you will want starting to do something about it. Here are some suggestions :

Make a list of the junta members that you know

You may have gone to school or college with family members of the military officers, or you might have had the pleasure of having to work with/for them. Record their names and addresses and publish them in a blog, or email to existing well-known blogs.

Expose the militia members (Thugs = Soon Arr Shin)

Do the same as you do for the military officers’ families. It is reported that 50 of those Soon Arr Shin thugs will be allocated in each quarter in Rangoon. Well, what is the population of each quarter ? It must be at least tens of thousands. You will know who the thugs are; record their names and spread the news quickly and widely as possible. If you are too worried about getting caught then write their names and addresses on paper and drop them on the street corners.

If you don’t want to get involved in dangerous spying games then simply just sit down and give a full bow (sheet koo) whenever the thug in your quarter walks by. Elderly people, children and even monks are most suitable to follow this tactic as no one can arrest you if you are only giving a full holy respect to the licensed thugs.

Expose brutal and corrupt prison and police officials

Identification of these criminals may be harder to carry out, but some names of local police officials may appear often in the newspapers.

For the prison officials, you may know their wives, you may be their doctor or a nurse who treated them, you may have been their teacher, you may know the schools they send their children.

Diplomats

Diplomatic staff represent, and are paid to lie for, the military government. They put on brave faces and cheesy smiles, covered themselves with skin as thick as crocodiles’, to hold on to their positions. Their rundown offices are not only filled with cigarette smoke but also with filthy jokes as their limited minds wander only between their knees and their navel. Staff at Bangkok and Singapore are possibly a little busier as they not only have to be vigilant of attacks and abuse from exiled Burmese, but have also to spy on them so that they can confiscate these bad people’s passports in revenge. Assignments are always carefully planned. The closer you are related to the junta, the better position you are likely to get and also what they considered as the best countries from the most developed and democratic world. Most self-made officials who have no good connections will always end up in the third-world countries and their careers also end just below the rank of Ambassador. Their only ambition is to get the next foreign assignment after suffering 3 or 4 years of misery in the ghostly city of Naypyidaw.

If you are an exile Burmese, find out who the embassy staff are and broadcast the information as best you can.

Students

Most military students are sent to countries like Russia and China to learn how to kill their own unarmed compatriots with the guns, so that they can become future members of the junta. Just as for diplomats, the selections are made carefully and later when qualified, the positions will be allocated according to the connections with the junta.

Private jets are hired to carry full loads of military students to places like Moscow every year, to be taught the skills of civil suppression at the feet of authorities such as the KGB. Find out who the future military criminals are. Always remember that their salary and scholarships come from blood and sweat of the Burmese public.


These are only a few examples to start you off, and you may well be able to think of much better ideas. If so, please let others know.

No one can deny that Burma continues to crumble and millions of its people are starving. The military government who still officially rules the country, takes no responsibility or interest to save the country from being the poorest in the world. Once their bank accounts are full, the top officers and their families will go abroad and start a new and comfortable life, while poor young Burmese girls are forced into prostitution and young boys forced to join the army as slaves for the Generals.

If you consider yourself a genuine loyal Burmese and would like to play a small part to help the nation, then please take part and do what you can to save our beloved country.

There is no better time to make your resolution to help the country than this 20th Anniversary of 8888 Massacre, when thousands of courageous students and civilians bravely gave up their lives for freedom and democracy in Burma.

Goldie Shwe