TH #4 Welcome to the Club
Towards Home #4
Welcome to the Club
December, 1998
As long as even one person remains in Burma who refuses to give up the fight for democracy, I will not leave. I will not abandon the democratic cause for my own peace of mind.
– Aung San Suu Kyi
The Burmese democracy movement is in a lull. The call to convene parliament met with mass arrests in September and October. Not only the organizers but many of the rank and file have been detained, making any concerted push much more difficult. Consequently, the activists who have not been detained are lying low and not much news is coming out. I would have expected this lull to translate into a lull in my work, but such has not been the case.
My main responsibilities revolve around the management of two email distribution forums (called listservers). Managing burmanews-l entails compiling news, reports, and announcements and putting them into a 15-page daily on-line newspaper (called The BurmaNet News) that gets sent via email to over 900 subscribers. I hear from these recipients occasionally, asking, for example, to be taken off the list while they are on vacation or with comments about articles that I have included.
The other list, burmanet-l, is an alternative to burmanews-l. The 400+ subscribers can post messages directly to the list, so subscribers receive several messages per day and can distribute their own comments and analysis to the other subscribers. With burmanews-l, the readers trust me as the editor to post the most important and reliable news, which they receive in a concise format. Subscribers to burmenet-l, though they must sift through over a dozen messages per day, have (or "had," I should say … but I'm getting to that) the advantage of receiving unfiltered information and deciding for themselves the importance and relevance of each posting.
Beginning in the summer, that "open-forum" list became more and more acrimonious. Subscribers frequently accused others of obscuring their identities to attack others. Students who had been together in the jungle in the early '90's dredged up scandals from that time, "flaming" one another with biting accusations of self-interest and corruption. In late-October, the message contents of the list went the way of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, with sex gossip, character assassination, and foul language becoming standard fare. I finally intervened and started monitoring, imposing regulations that messages had to be free of personal attacks and profane language. At that point, each message sent to the list began coming to me first, and was distributed only after I gave approval. As a result, several Burmese exiles (most of whom are now in the US) cast me as evil incarnate, and I had to endure about a month's worth of daily testing, name-calling, and generally derogatory comments. I received these messages directly and also re-read them as they were posted on various other Burma-related listservers. Checking my email became a skin-thickening exercise.
I do not know personally any of the five or six most vocal individuals, so I can only guess why they reacted so strongly to this issue. Some colleagues here who know them have suggested that the internet is the main medium of involvement in the movement for these students who once dodged bullets in the streets of Rangoon and eked out survival in border guerrilla camps for years. They are frustrated with the movement inside Burma and here on the border – a kind of compassion or activism fatigue. But they made the decision to study abroad where their contributions, though important, are less immediately concrete. I imagine the loss of making concrete and direct contributions to an issue so close to their hearts is a constant source of anxiety. As a result, their political critiques, aimed at their former colleagues and sometimes quite valid, come across as emotional releases and have been dismissed by the majority of BurmaNet's readership.
The experience of being directly and publicly lambasted is not one I want to go through again. Because I work alone, it was quite difficult to keep perspective, and at times I started wondering if I could have handled the whole crisis more effectively. Daily escapes to the volleyball court, venting via email, and discussions with friends and colleagues kept me grounded. I began viewing this mini-crisis as a type of initiation (and the accompanying hazing). I have been involved in the Burmese democracy movement for about tow and a half years, six months of that here in Thailand. Those who have been involved since the 1988 demonstrations and before are a constant reminder of the need for patience and diligence.
One of my tasks at the end of the year is to compile a list of headlines from The BurmaNet News for 1998. As I have worked on this project, I have gone back to the headlines and stories from previous years. The consistent suppression of dissent over the last ten years leaves no doubt in my mind that the generals in Rangoon have no intention of handing over power, despite their rhetoric about being a "transitional" government. Over the past couple of months, almost 1,000 members of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party were detained. The military junta claimed the detainees "had been invited to guest houses" to exchange political views. Only those who have distanced themselves from the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's call to convene parliament have been released.
On October 8, 1998, 54 activists were detained for taking part in the demonstrations that occurred in August and September. Calling their actions dubious and seditious, the military junta gave the activists long prison sentences for "creating disturbances" and "destabilizing the internal situation." What had they actually done? They handed out pamphlets encouraging schools to be opened, calling for the election results to be respected, and appealing to people to stand up for their rights – legitimate actions protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and acceptable activities in societies with any modicum of openness.
The news of these activists' detention and sentencing was especially difficult to hear because one of my colleagues, a quiet and unassuming young man, was one of those detained. We lived in the same house for a couple of months when I first arrived, and I taught him English and ate several meals that he prepared. He sneaked back into Burma as the August demonstrations were being planned. The thought of him doing hard labor every day personalizes the daily reports I send out about human rights abuses, making them much more disturbing.
I was surprised that the reaction of my Burmese colleagues to this news, on the surface, seemed callous. How could they possibly go on with their daily tasks knowing that a close friend was probably being tortured and interrogated? When I broached the subject, they asked me if I realized how many of their close friends had been tortured, interrogated, and killed, and how hard it would be for them to break down each time they received news of this sort. This strikes me as a different form of compassion fatigue, not one that stops one from caring but a defense mechanism allowing one to keep going.
Often when I meet Burmese activists involved in the movement for human rights and democracy, they ask me how I got involved in this issue and how long I plan to stay, i.e. how committed am I? It is a question that could distract me unnecessarily, so I try not to dwell on it. Still, when I came under attack last month, I did ask myself how committed I was and how long I would last. (The Burmese were quite used to these types of attacks – "welcome to the club," they told me.) The past couple of months have provided me with a cup-full of coping strategies. I only hope I can take in the rich cream of inspiration off the top and leave the cynical and jaded dregs at the bottom.
Welcome to the Club
December, 1998
As long as even one person remains in Burma who refuses to give up the fight for democracy, I will not leave. I will not abandon the democratic cause for my own peace of mind.
– Aung San Suu Kyi
The Burmese democracy movement is in a lull. The call to convene parliament met with mass arrests in September and October. Not only the organizers but many of the rank and file have been detained, making any concerted push much more difficult. Consequently, the activists who have not been detained are lying low and not much news is coming out. I would have expected this lull to translate into a lull in my work, but such has not been the case.
My main responsibilities revolve around the management of two email distribution forums (called listservers). Managing burmanews-l entails compiling news, reports, and announcements and putting them into a 15-page daily on-line newspaper (called The BurmaNet News) that gets sent via email to over 900 subscribers. I hear from these recipients occasionally, asking, for example, to be taken off the list while they are on vacation or with comments about articles that I have included.
The other list, burmanet-l, is an alternative to burmanews-l. The 400+ subscribers can post messages directly to the list, so subscribers receive several messages per day and can distribute their own comments and analysis to the other subscribers. With burmanews-l, the readers trust me as the editor to post the most important and reliable news, which they receive in a concise format. Subscribers to burmenet-l, though they must sift through over a dozen messages per day, have (or "had," I should say … but I'm getting to that) the advantage of receiving unfiltered information and deciding for themselves the importance and relevance of each posting.
Beginning in the summer, that "open-forum" list became more and more acrimonious. Subscribers frequently accused others of obscuring their identities to attack others. Students who had been together in the jungle in the early '90's dredged up scandals from that time, "flaming" one another with biting accusations of self-interest and corruption. In late-October, the message contents of the list went the way of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, with sex gossip, character assassination, and foul language becoming standard fare. I finally intervened and started monitoring, imposing regulations that messages had to be free of personal attacks and profane language. At that point, each message sent to the list began coming to me first, and was distributed only after I gave approval. As a result, several Burmese exiles (most of whom are now in the US) cast me as evil incarnate, and I had to endure about a month's worth of daily testing, name-calling, and generally derogatory comments. I received these messages directly and also re-read them as they were posted on various other Burma-related listservers. Checking my email became a skin-thickening exercise.
I do not know personally any of the five or six most vocal individuals, so I can only guess why they reacted so strongly to this issue. Some colleagues here who know them have suggested that the internet is the main medium of involvement in the movement for these students who once dodged bullets in the streets of Rangoon and eked out survival in border guerrilla camps for years. They are frustrated with the movement inside Burma and here on the border – a kind of compassion or activism fatigue. But they made the decision to study abroad where their contributions, though important, are less immediately concrete. I imagine the loss of making concrete and direct contributions to an issue so close to their hearts is a constant source of anxiety. As a result, their political critiques, aimed at their former colleagues and sometimes quite valid, come across as emotional releases and have been dismissed by the majority of BurmaNet's readership.
The experience of being directly and publicly lambasted is not one I want to go through again. Because I work alone, it was quite difficult to keep perspective, and at times I started wondering if I could have handled the whole crisis more effectively. Daily escapes to the volleyball court, venting via email, and discussions with friends and colleagues kept me grounded. I began viewing this mini-crisis as a type of initiation (and the accompanying hazing). I have been involved in the Burmese democracy movement for about tow and a half years, six months of that here in Thailand. Those who have been involved since the 1988 demonstrations and before are a constant reminder of the need for patience and diligence.
One of my tasks at the end of the year is to compile a list of headlines from The BurmaNet News for 1998. As I have worked on this project, I have gone back to the headlines and stories from previous years. The consistent suppression of dissent over the last ten years leaves no doubt in my mind that the generals in Rangoon have no intention of handing over power, despite their rhetoric about being a "transitional" government. Over the past couple of months, almost 1,000 members of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party were detained. The military junta claimed the detainees "had been invited to guest houses" to exchange political views. Only those who have distanced themselves from the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's call to convene parliament have been released.
On October 8, 1998, 54 activists were detained for taking part in the demonstrations that occurred in August and September. Calling their actions dubious and seditious, the military junta gave the activists long prison sentences for "creating disturbances" and "destabilizing the internal situation." What had they actually done? They handed out pamphlets encouraging schools to be opened, calling for the election results to be respected, and appealing to people to stand up for their rights – legitimate actions protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and acceptable activities in societies with any modicum of openness.
The news of these activists' detention and sentencing was especially difficult to hear because one of my colleagues, a quiet and unassuming young man, was one of those detained. We lived in the same house for a couple of months when I first arrived, and I taught him English and ate several meals that he prepared. He sneaked back into Burma as the August demonstrations were being planned. The thought of him doing hard labor every day personalizes the daily reports I send out about human rights abuses, making them much more disturbing.
I was surprised that the reaction of my Burmese colleagues to this news, on the surface, seemed callous. How could they possibly go on with their daily tasks knowing that a close friend was probably being tortured and interrogated? When I broached the subject, they asked me if I realized how many of their close friends had been tortured, interrogated, and killed, and how hard it would be for them to break down each time they received news of this sort. This strikes me as a different form of compassion fatigue, not one that stops one from caring but a defense mechanism allowing one to keep going.
Often when I meet Burmese activists involved in the movement for human rights and democracy, they ask me how I got involved in this issue and how long I plan to stay, i.e. how committed am I? It is a question that could distract me unnecessarily, so I try not to dwell on it. Still, when I came under attack last month, I did ask myself how committed I was and how long I would last. (The Burmese were quite used to these types of attacks – "welcome to the club," they told me.) The past couple of months have provided me with a cup-full of coping strategies. I only hope I can take in the rich cream of inspiration off the top and leave the cynical and jaded dregs at the bottom.
posted by PeaJayPee @ 12:40 AM
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