Interviews with Khin Ohmar

The advantages that we have as a movement is that we have the people with us, even though people may not go out to the street nowadays because they are really living in great fear. But they are with us. So how the military regime has treated the whole country, the whole population, has always been the weakness for them.

Because they only care for the gain of their power and their personal benefit out of the system. So that has become also an advantage for us. What we have is the people. What we have is our belief in justice and truth. And what we have is our belief in this democracy, and that we believe that all of us are entitled to enjoy our human rights.

And that no one can actually dictate and oppress us and imprison us for the rights that we are entitled. So those are what we have and our commitment, of course. But also, our advantage is that our movement, this Burmese democracy movement, is a movement where you can see a very clear line of the evil and what do you call it? I guess the truth and justice, I think.

So in that sense, in that case, yes, these are the advantages that we have. But on the other hand, what are the advantages that this regime has, that the military regime has, is that they still control the whole infrastructure. That includes all the money, of course, national budget, and all these natural resources they can take out and sell any time to China or neighboring countries.

And therefore, yes, they do have this and they have this large army that they have built. So they have the large army. And then they have the modern army that they have already upgraded. And they do have lots of money, particularly from the oil and gas energy sector, that they are earning.

So those are the advantages that they have. But these advantages happen to be very practical advantages for them: to continue to hang onto the power and keep oppressing the people, whereas our advantages are more of this moral, and where our mind, our commitment. And yes, we do have the support from around the world. And those are the practical advantages that we have: is like we have the support from the United States government, we have the support from other democracy governments from different parts of the world.

But then we still have disadvantages that, when it comes to the reality – when we have China on one hand and India on the other hand, other side of our country border – where both Asian powers want to eat every bit of our natural resources for their national interest. In that case, we are having a disadvantage from that.

Khin Ohmar is a Burmese democracy activist who lives and works in Mae Sot, Thailand. She is a leader of the Women’s League of Burma, the main umbrella organization for women’s organizations in exile and inside Burma.

Khin has served as a spokesperson for the Burmese democracy movement in the United Nations General Assembly and in other international forums. She also serves as coordinator of the Burma Partnership, a regional coalition of civil society groups supporting democracy in Burma, and she is an organizer of the ASEAN civil society and human rights consultation processes.

Admitted to the United States as a refugee after being persecuted for her participation in the 1988 student demonstrations, Khin became a United States citizen and worked for refugee and human rights organizations in Washington, D.C., before moving back to the Thai-Burma border area in the late 1990s.