"I was born on 6th May, 1953 and I have never seen freedom in my life. We can’t stay safely in our villages, homes, anywhere, because our lives are in danger. I have had to flee many times, but I haven’t died yet. But I have watched many people die, right before my eyes”. These are the words of Naw Paw Paw an IDP woman who teaches at the Thay Nye Khe School in Nyaung Lay Bin District, in northern Karen State. Even though she has only studied until the 7th grade in Htoo Wah Lu School, she has taught for 26 years of her life.
Four
Cuts Policy
The
military junta that rules Burma introduced the Four
Cuts policy in the 1970s. The policy aimed to undermine
the support networks of the insurgent groups by cutting
their access to information, supplies, recruits and
food. In order to cut these networks, the military
dictatorship targeted the civilian population. This
policy lead to increased militarisation, forced displacement,
human rights abuses and oppression of Burmese villagers.
After a military attack, a result of the four cuts policy (see box), in 1974 Naw Paw Paw set up the primary school where she teaches. In the school there are 30 students and she has taught them under difficult circumstances because the situation is very unstable. People are always on the run, and the students often have take exams in the forest under the trees. Also because their village is not very far from an SPDC military camp, the villagers never know when the SPDC will come. This means their daily lives are in danger and Naw Paw Paw always has to remind her students about this.
The parents of the students are physically and mentally tired because the SPDC often destroys their fields and houses and so when there is not enough rice or food they have to find something to feed the family. Some of the students have to take care of their younger brothers or sisters while their mother helps their father look for food. This leads to further problems. Sometimes parents do not return for a day and a half and the children have nothing to eat. Even though Naw Paw Paw sees this, she cannot help them because she is the same situation.
The health of villagers, according to Naw Paw Paw, is another big concern. She said “we lack knowledge about medicine, so we can’t cure people who are sick.” Sometimes, though, there are people who come and sell medicines. With some of these, villagers can read to find out how to use them to treat diseases. From time to time former medics or nurses also come and sell the medicines and give directions for using them. At her school, when there is no medicine available, the children have to take herbal cures such as tree and plant roots from the forest. Sometimes the children get better and can attend school. However the children who get seriously sick, often do not get better, and cannot take their exams, which means they often fall very far behind in their lessons.
Some of the children at the school have no parents and can’t afford to buy books. In this situation Naw Paw Paw will try hard to find materials from different sources, often refugee camp schools or other village schools. If they need extra chalk, though for example, they cannot buy it from a nearby town. In Burma there are very specific limits on buying school materials. For this reason, they use a stone from the river and sharpen it, so the students can write on the blackboard. This is a very big problem but as Naw Paw Paw says, the people really want the children to be educated people, who can write and read their own language.
Naw Paw Paw earns the equivalent of just 5,000 Thai Baht per year (US$130) and with this amount of money she has to take care of her family, to buy rice, salt, chilies and the basic need of the house hold. When she has fled, four of her children and her dad passed away. This was in 1997 and her father couldn’t run, because he was too weak so she had to leave him behind. She couldn’t go back because the SPDC were staying near him. He stayed alone and she couldn’t send rice to him. She had left some rice for him but there was no fire for the stove as the two matches she left for him would not light. It was about two weeks before they could return and as some of the people approached the village at night time they saw her father had died. Naw Paw Paw didn’t know where the SPDC was, so she was afraid to go back and bury him because when she climbed up the hill overlooking her village she saw the fields were burned down.
Four days later she went back and buried him, while the SPDC troops were still close by. She and some of the villagers quickly buried her father in this difficult and dangerous situation. For this reason it hurt her heart so much because her dad had been a British soldiers and he was recognized and respected by the British. Now all of the status he had was lost because of the SPDC. Not so long after her youngest baby got seriously sick and because there was no medicine the baby died. Previously, two of her other children had died on the same day.
Despite Naw Paw Paw’s experiences as an IDP, and even though she has faced many problems she has never surrendered and continues help her community as much as she can. Sometimes I wonder to myself “Are we always on the run….. Where can we find a comfortable life?” Unfortunately there are no answers that come to my mind.
To go to the other articles published in the March 2006 BI Newsletter click on the links below:
