Interviews with Cheery Zahau

Well, I got involved in the movement since 1999 when I left Burma and I came to the India-Burma border, and I joined the Chin Women’s Organization. They were doing summer school for children, Chin children, teaching about Burma and Chin State. So I was volunteering with them. And when I was doing that type of volunteering works with them, there was a huge deportation against Burmese migrants and refugees leaving the India-Burma border by the Indian kind of NGO youth organization who are very much anti-Chin, anti-Burmese group. And so 20,000 people were deported back to Burma, especially in Chin State.

People died on the way and many children and women came to our office asking for help because they could not go back at all in Chin State. So I start complaining that these people will face prosecution if they go back to Burma, and India should not do this kind of deportations, mass deportations. So, yeah, that’s how I got involved. Especially in campaigning on the basic rights of the people, refugee rights of the Burmese people in India.

Going back further than that, when I was high school in Burma I asked questions. Some historical lecture that learned and some of the ideological teachings.

And there’s a huge teaching like in Burma — the message from our teachers and the education system in Burma is silence is golden, which means never speak against the oppressors or the authorities. And I didn’t like the idea of, you know, putting people silent. Not being able to raise the questions in the classroom. So my activity started from high school.

Through all my high school, my teachers were very closely teaching me and guiding me. They always said I should not live in Burma because I will end up in jail. And also I know some of my friends’ brothers, sisters, they got arrested because of their activism. And I’ve seen the 1988 student uprising in Burma when I was seven years old, which I joined with my auntie. So I’ve seen if you talked about politics, human rights, democracy, we will be in jail. We can face serious problems. So, that’s what I’ve seen and I’ve witnessed.

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.