Human Rights Education and Burma: Part I

It is at times extremely frustrating to teach human rights law to people in a situation like those of my students. As they belong to ethnic minority groups from Burma such as the Mon, Karen, and Kachin, they face a double dose of human rights abuse. In the first place, they suffer the same egregious violations confronting the entire population of Burma at the hands of an unaccountable military junta that uses forced labour, torture, rape, arbitrary imprisonment and forced relocation as regular policy tools. In addition, they are discriminated against as minorities, forced to abandon their cultures through a government sponsored process of Burmanization. As a result, many have fled and sought refugee status in Thailand, China, India and even Bangladesh. Approximately 140 000 live in make shift camps here along the Thai-Burma border.

It is with weary sadness that I must teach them about the inadequate enforcement of human rights law and the seemingly insurmountable failure of the international community to cooperate. Let me assure you, answering the question: “Yes, but what can we do if the government violates refugee/civil and political/economic, social and cultural human rights law,” is a disappointing exercise when your students face this situation daily. Perhaps what angers me more than the recalcitrant attitude of the Burmese military junta is the complicity of the neighboring states, such as Thailand, who have sold their dignity in exchange for cheap natural resources and a supply of energy to fuel their own economic growth. For example, Thailand happily invests in dams and the lumber industry in Burma while its own citizens will not permit it to do so within its own territory. Moreover, the direct abuses of refugee rights in the Karen refugee camp, for example, are shocking and will be the subject of my next addition to this blog. China refuses to help and western corporations still profit in conjunction with the Burmese military junta. Our group discussions inevitably conclude that this is the case and I must face the student’s disenchantment directly.

But all is not lost; we take inspiration form the power of human rights education. There has been a remarkable change in the disposition of the students here. Young men and women who were terrified to speak out and had no concept of critical thinking or voicing opinions now challenge everything they are told and ask endless questions triggering discussions that often run late into the night. The students themselves cannot get enough knowledge of human rights and have begun to develop ideas about ways to convey this empowering information tot their own communities. Songs are being composed, plays written and posters designed all putting forward the notion of human dignity as a human right. They have also begun to apply a human rights based approach to their own organizations that are the only groups operating here on the ground. The students insist on participatory and accountable systems, sometimes confronting the established communal hierarchy in the process. They insist that a rights-based approach starts with them and only once it is established can they move on to advocacy. Of course, advocacy means something totally different here, where you take an enormous risk even criticizing the government.

I do my best to explain that human rights have come a long way in 60 years. International law is a slow process that hopefully increases awareness of the issues they confront and forces states to come to the table and discus them; something unimaginable just two generations ago! Great inroads have been made into the notion of unlimited domestic sovereignty and even the Burmese military regime is forced to temper its own violent responses to calls for basic human rights. I try to point out improvements elsewhere in the world and note that nearby places in which advocacy was equally dangerous only twenty or thirty years ago, such as Cambodia or China, are now allowing for civil society action at least in limited forms. Everyday I learn how human rights education empowers, which is in stark contrast to the complete failure of human rights law’s enforcement mechanisms in Asia.