Interviews with Khin Ohmar

I do learn and cherish and take inspiration for my ongoing struggle from the struggle including South Africa and East Timor. And even though there are many differences of the struggles between Burma and South Africa and East Timor, the core of our struggle, the bottom line of our struggle, are all the same, is that the freedom, democracy, and human rights.

So I do look up to, starting from the very respectful leader, like Nelson Mandela, [former guerrilla leader and later President East Timor] Xanana Gusmao and [resistance spokesman and later President of East Timor José] Ramos-Horta. Those are people who I always look into how they also organize and mobilize their people, and led their people to lift up with this spirit for freedom, and continue their struggle and their fight for freedom, until they get to their day when the light comes.

And for me personally, now it’s 22 years. It’s quite long. I told my mother that “I’ll be back home in three months.” I had no idea where this is going to lead, and how long this is going to take. But you know, after 22 years, I look back, and I don’t regret what I have done and what I’m doing and how I will continue, you know, until the day that I die. Even if I don’t see the fruits of this struggle, I will still carry on.

Because when I think of what Nelson Mandela did, 27 years in prison, Xanana, and even particularly my personal hero I will say – I don’t even want to use the word as “hero.” But I would say my personal teacher is Aung Saw Suu Kyi because Daw Aung Saw Suu Kyi, I mean she’s a mother of two, you know? She was still young when she entered this whole movement.

When she started, she was only 45. I remember. And she didn’t have to, with her life, having a very comfortable life in England with her husband and the whole family, she didn’t have to do what she is doing for the people of Burma now. But she is doing that, and she has been.

And for me, whenever she had a chance to send a message out from that house where she lives alone, every single time she was able to send a message out, even with the time of [Ibrahim] Gambari, the UN special envoy, or meeting with this U.S. Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell or anybody; when you actually follow what she’s been saying, after all these years being in prison in one house alone by herself, it’s a spirit that you just can’t even imagine, you know?

I mean sometime, yes, I get disappointed and frustrated in this 22-year struggle sometimes. I feel like to the point of maybe that’s it, for me to even take a break, you know? I thought about taking breaks from time to time. But I don’t. And I can’t. And I’m not able to take a break. It’s because when I think of Daw Aung Suu Kyi still in prison; when I think of Nelson Mandela, 27 years, and now South Africa is free.

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.