Interviews with Cheery Zahau

I think the Burma democracy movement, first we’re trying to do mass demonstrations, people’s movement, which has shown in the 1980s when thousands and thousands of students, monks and nuns and, you know, government services men and women came on the street and demonstrated and demanded political change. That we have seen. And in the 1996 students uprising. Happened again in 2007. The monks uprising happened again.

In between there are small demonstrations happening. In the whole Burma democracy movement historical background, so one of the strategies is a people’s movement. But the Burmese regime has never respected the people’s movement or the desire of the people. As a result of that, some people had to operate along the Burma border in Thailand, India, China, in different ways.

And at the moment we use two main strategies. One is capacity building for grassroots people. So we keep doing programs on human rights training, women’s right training, community development, leadership training. So that we empower people so that one day they will stand up for their rights. That’s one strategy that we’re using. And the other strategy is calling the international community to act on Burma – to do something about Burma. So I think at the moment we are focusing on these two strategies.

The democracy movement in Burma needs help from the world, the international community. Although some of the policy makers or some people would say, “It´s been too long. It doesn´t work this way. We should go in there. We should go in Burma.”

But two things that we need to remember: the democracy movement are representing the wish and the desires and the will of the people. They are not the rulers. They are not the government positions. But they represent the desires of the cause of the people in Burma.

So no matter how people see us, we are still representing what they want the world to do. What they wish the government of Burma to do. So we will keep doing this unless there´s a political change in Burma. That´s one thing that we need to remember.

Cheery Zahau is a human rights activist from Chin State, Burma, and is now based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. As a high school student, she was advised by her teachers that her independence and intellectual curiosity would get her into serious trouble if she remained in Burma. She sought refuge in India, where she became an advocate for thousands of ethnic Chin faced with forcible return to Burma.

Zahau also became a leader of the Women’s League of Chinland, an organization that works to call international attention to the situation inside Chin State, including the use of rape as an instrument of conflict by the Burmese military regime. She has spoken at the United Nations and in other venues around the world.

When Zahau relocated to Thailand, she began working as an advocacy officer at the Human Rights Education Institute of Burma, focusing on the U.N. Human Rights Council, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the ASEAN human rights process. She is also a management board member of the Network for Human Rights Documentation in Burma and is pursuing an advanced degree in international relations.