Interviews with Cheery Zahau

There are times when I felt really unsafe living along Burma’s border. When I heard that SPDC has sent a spy. So for example, in 2007,they’ve got my name on the “New Light of Myanmar” saying that I’m trying to disunite myself and my other colleagues have tried to disunite the union.

And later on, they come to Chin State saying the Chin women do not face any problem. Chin women and men are living in harmony. So there are ways that they attack through newspaper, and sometime they also send a letter to the different departments in Chin State looking for me and trying to get my parents.

So yes, sometimes I felt, you know, a little bit unsafe. And there were times when I was living on India-Burma border where they send bad guys. You know, so I had to be very, very careful who is behind me, who is beside me when I’m walking on the street. And yeah, there are times like that. But I think that fears didn’t stop me yet because the cause that we’re doing is for justice and human rights. So we can overcome this fear.

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.