Interviews with Khin Ohmar

Basically what happened was that those demonstrations and peaceful march and protest on the streets didn’t get to the point of bringing down the military regime. And my opinion and my reflection of why is there are a few reasons, really. Of course, one is because the military might is so powerful that they don’t care, you know; that they will do whatever it takes to keep their power at the expense of people, anybody, really. So that is, of course that’s a major key factor here, why the peaceful demonstrations on the streets were not successful yet.

But on the other hand, the fear has been greatly entrenched in people’s daily life – even far more than the time back in 1988, I will say. On the other hand, the military regime, to me, there are two very core means the regime continued to hold onto the power or oppress the people: one is by this guns and the army and the fear, of course; on the other hand is the economic situation. They intentionally keep the people suffering in this poverty, even though the Burmese people don’t deserve to be in this kind of poverty because we are rich with all kind of natural resources, you know?

The Burmese people used to be able to hold their heads up in the whole region and around the world. But now, the way Than Shwe [Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)], the Burmese regime, continues to oppress is intentionally making the population live in this dire severe poverty. And therefore, people will not take their heads up to resist their power.

Saying that, back to 2007, what really happened then? We were able to get to the point, when I look at it, that the monks and the students were able to get to the point of this waves of people on the street and more and more people joining them. But what happened then is that our nonviolent struggle, in terms of the tactics that we use or that we have been using, we seem to be continued to cling onto this one basic tactic of bringing people to the street.

But yes, bringing people to the street is important. But you need other ways and means and strategies to increase or intensify, to mobilize the people further. In that case, the young monks and the young activists at that time in 2007 were not able to use enough of that tactics to bring the movement to the next level, I will say.

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.