From Thai refugee camp to politics student in NZ

By Deirdre Robert: Pacific Media Centre

It has been eight years since Cicilia Dwe and her family left their United Nations refugee camp in Thailand and set foot on New Zealand soil.

The Burmese 18-year-old is now looking to the future with her eyes set on gaining a politics degree at the University of Auckland, beginning in July.

The road to a brighter future has led from a tumultuous past.

Her parents fled Burma in 1988 during the student-led protests for democratic change, in which 3000 people are believed to have killed.

Cicilia Dwe (pictured) says her parents feared the ruling military junta of Burma and felt it was not safe to stay.

“In Burma the government can take away anything you own. If they decide to develop an area they can just take away your land. You have no rights.”

Dwe has family in Burma she has never seen and may never get the chance to meet.

Even as New Zealand citizens, Dwe and her family are on the blacklist, meaning if they return to Burma they could be at risk.

Born in Thailand, Dwe’s move to life in a refugee camp was sudden.

One day her sister picked her up from school and they went straight to the UN refugee camp where they were joined by their mother, father, three sisters and one brother.

NZ home
The family spent two years at the camp before being offered a permanent home in New Zealand.
Dwe’s parents chose New Zealand because it provided better future prospects and opportunities for their children.

Culturally, life in New Zealand is very different says, Dwe.

If she were still in Thailand she would likely be married. In that country the focus is on “getting married, looking after your kids and being a housewife”.

She says in New Zealand there are a wider range of opportunities for education and career.

Being young proved an advantage to her integration into New Zealand society.

She was well received at primary school and had support from her fellow students from the start.

Family sponsors have also played a big role in the family’s settlement.

Local North Shore volunteer Catherine Geeves is one of the family’s main sponsors and was heavily involved in their integration.

She helped enrol the kids in school, found the family a local GP and negotiated with Housing New Zealand for a family home.

Rewarding role
Being a sponsor is “enormously rewarding”, she says.

She is extremely proud of the way Cicilia and her older sister Elizabeth have managed to get themselves to university.

“I think they are an inspiration and show what you can achieve if you work hard.”

She says the whole family is a huge asset to the community.

While being a sponsor is a very involved task, Geeves says it is a “two-way street”.

When her mother died later that year, the entire Dwe family prepared food for the funeral.

“There is a huge willingness to muck in and help,” says Geeves.

Dwe echoes these sentiments.

“The sponsors are part of our family and we are part of their family.”

Now firmly a part of New Zealand, Dwe is herself looking at becoming a refugee sponsor.

Beyond that, and with her life experience as motivation and inspiration, she envisions herself working for the UN or the Human Rights Commission as a social worker.

Deirdre Robert is a Graduate Diploma in Journalism student at AUT University.

End Burma's system of impunity

Burma's armed conflict cripples food supplies

Villagers who have fled their homes in eastern Burma keep moving. Many areas are dangerous because of landmines, military checkpoints and patrols.

By Violet Cho: Pacific Media Centre

Burmese civilians and internally displaced people in eastern parts of Burma are suffering severe food shortages due to the ongoing armed conflict and an increase of state militarisation.

“The food shortage is a serious problem among internally displaced civilians and they now heavily rely on eating bamboo shoots and other food sources that they can collect in the jungle for their survival,” says Saw Steve, an executive member of Committee for Internally Displaced Karen People (CIDKP).

The Burmese civil society group, based on the Thai-Burma border, is working to assist communities effected by the crisis.

Burmese rights organisations are expressing deep concern for the civilians who are suffering direct consequences from the conflict between state military and ethnic resistance groups.

They also condemned the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the ruling military regime in Burma, which has intensified their military operations in ethnic minority areas.

Local rights groups claim the food crisis is a direct result of systematic militarisation and exploitation by the regime.

Saw Albert, a leading member of the Karen Human Rights Group (KHRG), has been working on a recently released report on the crisis.

“The food crisis has been gradually worsening since the beginning of the SPDC's Northern Offensive in late 2005” he says.

“With increased attacks on village communities and an intensified forced relocation campaign over the last three and a half years, food insecurity is at an all-time high.

“In military-controlled areas, villagers struggle to both meet the constant demands of the SPDC and their allied military groups and provide food for their families.”

No hiding places
Because of the ongoing conflict and repression in the area, it is very difficult and dangerous to meet affected villagers and provide relief.

Villagers who have fled their homes never have a permanent place to hide – they are constantly moving so local NGOs cannot know where to find them. Many areas are dangerous because of landmines, Burmese military checkpoints and patrols and active combat with insurgent armies.

Despite these risks, CIDKP field staff secretly distribute much needed supplied to small communities hiding in the forests.

If caught with supplies like food and medicine, field staff can be killed by Burmese troops, who use a strategy of cutting supplies to insurgent groups.

It is even more risky to carry equipment like cameras and recorders, as they are only used by activists documenting abuses. KHRG staff secretly collect testimonies from villagers in hiding and photograph abuses, which they use for their reports and advocacy.

One villager explained the extent of the food crisis to an anonymous KHRG field worker: “Only two villagers out of 10 have enough rice. They are borrowing from each other just to stay alive.”

Another villager from Nyaunglebin District, in northeastern Burma, explained that villagers do not have a proper time to do their own work for their survival.

“The SPDC army camp is located beside our village, so we always have to do loh ah pay [forced labour] for them. We do not have much time to do our own work. Now we are doing their work, such as cutting bamboo poles and delivering them to their [SPDC] camp.”

Villagers in displaced areas are sharing limited food supplies with each other just to stay alive. Because they are on the run, they cannot plant crops like rice, which is their staple food.
Instead they rely on collecting food from the forest.

Paddy plants
A villager who is displaced by the on-going military offensive said that “every time when the Burmese [SPDC] soldiers have arrived at our villager, we have had to flee. So, we haven’t had time to take care of our paddy plants in the fields. They [the fields] are covered with weed. If the SPDC did not disturb us, we would have enough food every year.”

Burmese populations in eastern parts of Burma can be categorised into two groups: those living in the SPDC controlled areas and those who hide in the jungle, refusing to live in forced relocation sites under military watch.

Due to the combination of military demands in the form of forced labour, arbitrary taxation, looting and ad hoc demands for food, money or other supplies, have placed a dangerous burden on villagers' livelihoods.

The practice of land confiscation, restriction of movement (villagers are not freely allowed to go to their farm or plantation areas) and forced relocation exacerbate poverty and dramatically increase food insecurity.

Meanwhile, in areas not under the military control, the SPDC troops are forcing villagers into relocation sites through their common practice of attacking villagers and destroying food stores, burning rice fields and livestock.

Villagers who managed to escape the military attacks are facing further threats of food insecurity their unstable living condition in hiding side in the forest, according to the KHRG report.

The report also documented the regime government’s shoot-on-sight policy, planting landmines and restrictions on villagers to trade with each other also created an extreme difficult for villagers to leave their hiding site in order to collect hidden food stores, to work in their former fields or purchase food supplies.

A villager interviewed by KHRG staff, complained that they felt like they were not treated as human beings. “The SPDC doesn’t see us as villagers. They identify us as their enemy. So when they see us, they shoot to kill us all.”

By documenting the food crisis, KHRG is providing recommendations for the international community on actions that can be taken to ease the current crisis and prevent future abuse and malnutrition in rural Burma.

The recommendations include increased support for cross-border aid and local civil society organisations, which can access affected populations and support the local food security protection measures that villagers in rural Burma have already developed.

Humanitarian aid
KHRG spokeswoman September Paw called for increased humanitarian aid to villagers in rural Burma: "Villagers in Karen State are faced with a serious food crisis as the direct result of military abuse.

She explained how Burmese villagers have been trying their best seeking various ways to address this food crisis, to maintain their livelihoods and to resist military abuse. “Despite these strategies, there is a great need for humanitarian aid to be scaled up to reach these people.”

However, She confirmed that, “the locally-driven protection measures developed by villagers themselves should first be taken into account in order to effectively address this crisis.”

Like civilians in eastern part of Burma are now suffering form food crisis, Burmese people in western part of Burma, Chin State has been plagued by a severe food shortages due to the reduction of local harvest and food production.

The crisis was started in 2006 when a new cycle of bamboo flowering that occurs about every 50 years in the region.

This bamboo flowers are eaten by rats and triggering the explosion of rats population, which destroyed the crop.

This has caused serious food shortages for Burmese villagers, as they are primarily dependent on subsistence farming through shifting cultivation.

Violet Cho is from Burma and is the Asian Journalism Fellow with the Pacific Media Centre. She is is studying on the Bachelor of Communication Studies (Honours) programme. The picture of displaced Burmese villagers is from the Karen Human Rights Group report.

Food crisis: The accumulative impact of abuse in rural Burma

A tale of censorship crises – Fiji and Thailand

By Violet Cho and David Fisher: Pacific Media Centre

While the international media is relaxed about Thailand's Easter political crisis, condemnation is being heaped on Fiji's military regime. Thais and Fiji islanders have woken up to a new era of shadowy rule of law - a challenge for local and foreign journalists alike.

Geographically, Thai and Fiji politics are worlds apart - but the military dictatorship in Fiji and the barely democratic Thai government share a similar view towards independent and alternative media.

Both view media as a threat to their rule, and justify repression through maintaining stability.

Both countries are currently under a state of emergency.

In recent weeks, the fragility of democracy has again been on display in Thailand and Fiji, two popular destinations for Australian holidaymakers, noted the Melbourne Age, making comparisons between the two countries and censorship.

In Fiji, the “systematic dismantling of the planks of democracy” was certainly to the detriment of the country’s long-term interests. In Thailand, the “passionate supporters of the ‘real democracy movement — the urban and rural poor who form the bulk of the electorate” — had eased off their street protests.

On the April 10, Fiji’s President, Ratu Josefa lloilo, revoked the Constitution adopted in 1997. He repealed the state courts, postponed elections until 2014 and declared himself the head of the state.

Then he reinstated the coup leader Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama as prime minister and decreed a 30-day “public emergency” in Fiji.

Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva’s government also introduced martial law in Bangkok and areas around the city two days later on the April 12 after a massive protest asking him to step down.

Abhisit has been under pressure to step down from the United Front of Democracy Against Dictatorship (UDD), which is a major anti- government force in Thailand.

Emergency decrees
The emergency decrees highly affect people and allow governments to have full control over media by forcibly stopping publication or broadcast in justification to control the disorder in the country.

Since the state of emergency was introduced, at least five community radio and television stations in Thailand have been targeted with raids, arrests of staff and the confiscation of equipment.

This followed an order from the Internal Security Operations Command for community radio stations to stop inciting unrest or face closure, which was reported in Asia Media Forum.

Other stations in regional areas have reported various forms of threat and harassment by local authorities exploiting the current situation.

So far, one community radio station in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand and DStation TV based in Bangkok have been forced to close.

Under the name of state martial law, the regime in Fiji had threatened human rights defenders and government critics. The government detained and intimidated local journalists and deported three foreign reporters who were filing critical stories.

The journalists - Sean Dorney from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and New Zealand’s TV3 crew of reporter Sia Aston and photographer Matt Smith - were expelled from Fiji.

The regime detained local journalists who gave interviews to foreign media and news reporting about the situation in Fiji.

The regime also shut down two repeat transmitters belonging to the ABC in the tourist town of Nadi and the capital of Suva, forbidding Fiji journalists to speak to foreign media about the crisis in the country.

Mass resistance
Unlike the Fiji’s military crackdown on media, Thai government mainly targeted the media which clearly links to anti-government groups which – also unlike Fiji - have a presence on the street and are actively staging mass resistance.

DStation, for example, is an important part of the UDD propaganda network, as it is used to broadcast protests and speeches.

Partiality, of course, is no excuse to limit media freedom. What is alarming is how this crackdown on “pro-UDD” media and the UDD in general exposes the deep bias of the central institutions of the state, the monarchy, military, judiciary and bureaucracy, when dealing with political dissent.

No attempts were made to restrict the media of the People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), the yellow shirt group which occupied Thailand’s Government House for three months last year and Bangkok’s international airport for eight days, causing massive damage to an economy reliant on tourism.

There was never a crackdown on the PAD and there have been no arrests of their leaders, who are part of the Thai elite and have support from the powerful old guard of Thai society.

UDD or red shirt protesters are asking for a representative democracy, and challenging a system that gives huge power to unelected courtiers. They want a system that will provide services for the majority of Thai people, not just benefits for the rich.

In contrast, PAD want an end to representative democracy, replaced by a system where a large proportion of seats in parliament are appointed by the monarchy and military. This explains why red shirt protests are crushed by the military within days, while PAD alternatively have a free hand to protests for months.

Future in doubt
The current conflict in Thailand is a fundamental one: the monarchy is in crisis because the king is old and the crown prince is unpopular, which leaves the institution’s future in doubt.

Any discussion of the role of the monarchy and succession is strictly forbidden, enforced through a lese majeste law, which is the centerpiece of the Thai censorship regime.

The monarchy is a key battleground. The institution conveyed open signals in support of the 2006 coup that overthrew the populist elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra, and directly led to the current crisis.

Thaksin has now openly accused King Bhumibol of giving his blessing to military leaders before the coup and announced that two privy councilors were the masterminds.

The 2006 coup can be seen as a favour to the king, who was threatened by the grassroots popularity of Thaksin. The monarchy gave clear signals supporting the PAD, through Queen Sirkit’s attendance at the funeral of a protester who died during clashes with police.

There was also no dissent from any royals when the PAD in part justified their actions as necessary to protect the monarchy.

The Thai background is a long and complicated story, and is too often left out of mainstream media reports of the Thai crisis. There has been a lot of praise in foreign media for the Abhisit Government’s handling of the crisis, showing restraint and sparing civilian casualties.

But since local media reporting heavier casualties have been censored, and there are no independent investigation, who knows what the story really is?

Partial justice
The “restraint” shown must be seen in comparison with the lack of action against the PAD. It then becomes obvious that Thailand has a partial “justice” system – that goes after red shirts, Thaksin and his supporters and turns a blind eye to crimes carried out by the military (the 2006 coup being an obvious one) and yellow shirts.

Rarely is the term “monarchy” used in foreign media, without descriptors attached such as “much revered”, “Buddha-like”, “loved” and “immensely popular”. How can journalists know this when criticism can lead to long prison terms?

In contrast, international media overwhelmingly condemns the actions of the Fiji government.

Thai and Fiji islanders have woken up to a new era of shadowy rule of law. This is a challenge for local and foreign journalists alike, who will have to walk carefully.

Picture: Thai anti-censorship protesters at Pantip Plaza, a popular IT mall, during a previous rally. Photo: Global Voices.

Violet Cho is the Asian Journalism Fellow at AUT University’s Pacific Media Centre.

Karen journalist in critical force for change

Violet Cho, a 25-year-old Karen journalist writing for Irawaddy magazine and living in Thailand, has won AUT Pacific Media Centre's inaugural Asian Journalism Fellowship. The fellowship is supported by an Asia: NZ Foundation grant. She arrives in New Zealand today and will join the Bachelor of Communication Studies (Honours) programme and be a resource journalist with the PMC for a year. Here is her story:

By Violet Cho: Pacific Media Centre

I was born in Pa-an, Burma, in January 1984. My family were farmers but we didn't have money to cultivate the land. I spent the first seven years of my life in Pa-an and Loikaw until my family fled to Huay Kaloke refugee camp in 1991.

My father was already working for the Karen National Union on the borderline so we were in a dangerous situation Even though he had a low position in the KNU, if the military realised about my father’s involvement with the resistance, my mother, brother and I could be arrested.

Later, my father called us to join him for our security. So we escaped across the border into Thailand. At that time, I was still young and I was sent to Huay Kaloke refugee camp where I could do some primary schooling.

The experience living in the camp wasn't a happy one. Almost all the time we were afraid of Burmese military attacks because the refugee camp was close to the border and not secure.

In 1998, Huay Kaloke refugee camp was attacked and burnt down by the Burmese military. Our house and all our possessions were destroyed and there was a lot of shooting.

This was my first direct experience with military oppression and human rights abuses and it is a day that I always remember. I was afraid and angry too.

By the end of 1999, my family and lots of others moved to a new camp called Umpiem Mai, where I could go to school. I was really pleased at having a chance to study again, even though resources were small.

Teenage broadcaster
I first became involved in media when I was a teenager living in Umpiem refugee camp. I volunteered for a new community radio station under Karen Student Network Group (KSNG) which I helped set up.

KSNG is a student organisation that organises Karen students in refugee camps and in the border areas of Burma to work together for the aim to find opportunities for refugee students and people without access to education, to prepare them to be leaders, to preserve and maintain the culture of Karen people, to raise awareness about human rights among youth and to work for campaigns to protect environment and human rights, such as the current Salween Dam campaign.

In KSNG, I have worked in all of these areas with a focus on community media. Through KSNG, I got a chance to study at a journalism school organised by Internews. In KSNG, I have worked as a secretary and radio and print editor.

While full time working with the student organisation on the Thai-Burmese border, I used to do some reporting and file stories to Kwekalu which is a semi-independent Karen newsletter based near the border with Southern Burma. I also did some news reporting for Burmese independent media agency Mizzima which it is now based in New Delhi.

I also spent one year working as a features reporter for Radio Free Asia. I made radio features in the Burmese language that were broadcast to Burma through shortwave. It was good because I love working in radio. Some of my stories included the problem of domestic violence in refugee camps, the daily struggle of undocumented migrant workers in Thailand and the dreams of refugee youth.

Since 2007, I have been working for Irrawaddy Publishing Group, which has a daily news website and a monthly glossy magazine. It was started by Burmese exiles and is the most prominent Burmese exiled media organisation.

It is an exciting place to work and has allowed me to get a lot of sources inside Burma and internationally. I spend most of my time writing stories for the website but I do some commentary for the magazine too. I really like to try and do investigative reporting – but since I am working with a media organisation that is unregisterered in Thailand, there are so many security challenges.

Migrant issues
At Irrawaddy, I have been interested in reporting on migrant worker issues, environmental problems and the struggles of ordinary impoverished people. I also think media should be a watchdog of UN agencies and NGOs as they play an important role in my community – so I also have written some reports about their policies and actions that are problematic.

As a person from Burma, I have a high expectation about change. I do believe that the Burmese have to know their political destination and be working hard towards it.

As a person who has worked for the change of Burma as an indigenous youth activist and an independent journalist, I will continue working with free media and community organisations in exile.

Studying journalism at AUT University will greatly help my work as a journalist. To produce critical media, I need a stronger academic background in media and a theoretical framework.

I think I will grow a lot if I can also attend university and use the skills and knowledge to work to improve Burmese media so it can be a greater critical force for change.

Irawaddy magazine
Mizzima news agency
Asia: NZ Foundation profile