KSU Background

The Karenni Student Union was founded on April 1st 2000. There are over currently 800 members of the KSU and membership numbers continue to increase. The primary goal of the KSU is to help Karenni students gain the skills necessary to serve our community both now and on our return to Karenni State. About KSU

News in Brief

Photo News

This report was complete by Karenni research group..Please read more in detail...Dammed By Burma's Generals

School game competation of sport for students in Karenni refugee camps, which is supported by Mrs. Sally Steen, the Project Supprt for Refugee Burma(PSRB).

KSU's member Art and Science (Post-Ten) prepare for Prizes in Karenni refugee camp, site#1, on 16 November, 2007.

More photo news

Want to see you more images .....If you wish you see more photo activities of students

Statement

Statement and New Central Committee Annoucement

Karenni Students Union was officially established on the 1st April 2000 and the union has been going on for 7 years nowadays. After one year, it is started to elect central committee members who would directly represent for the union since then. It was also designated for two years term for every elected member. Nowadays it has been fourth term election in 2007. Therefore, Karenni Students Union Central office officially announces that any organizations have to contact directly with the newly elected central committee members for the specific work plan and other related activities with the union in the future.[More]

Commentary

Cease-fire talk is a "MUST" for armed conflict resolution

Karenni National Progressive Party, let by general secretary, Khun Rimond Htoo resumed the 1995's cease-fire talk agreement with military's representative, Col Myat Win of Burma’s intelligence body, Military Affairs Security, and four other government officials in Mai Sai- Tackchi lake,Thai-Burma Border last week, March, 23, 2007.[Read More]

Features

Unforgettable Journey “Home”

During Christmas break and summer holidays, while students from Canadian Universities and Colleges are excited about returning to their homes to visit with family and friends, I often wonder where my home is. While all of my Canadian friends get excited and ready to go home and party during their school break, I often end up at the same place for I do not have a home that I can go back to within Canada.

When we hear the word “home”, we often think of it as a place to rest, meet family members and feel secure. We miss home when we are far from it. A home is a place where we will eventually return at the end of our journey. As a human being, I also miss my home, a home where I spent most of my youth, a place where thousands of my friends and fellow country men and women were kept inside a tiny crowded camp, unable to move in or out; a refugee camp, my “home” in Thailand.

After living in Canada for two and half year, I was able to return to my “home” despite many frustrations and countless paperwork. It took me eight months to get the travel documents I needed, two weeks of running back and forth between Waterloo and Toronto to get my visa for Thailand and a transit visa for Hong Kong. After all the hard work and many appointments, I was able to get my visa for Thailand and one single entry transit visa for Hong Kong. This meant that I had to go to the Chinese embassy in Bangkok to get another transit visa for Hong Kong for my return trip back to Canada.

It was a very short trip but I was full of excitement and happiness for this was going to be my first trip back “home” after years and years of living away from it. Three Canadian friends came with me to enjoy their short reading break in Thailand. One of them, an Air Canada flight attendant, is a good friend who tirelessly tried to help me get all the paperwork done and provided me with a “free” ticket from Toronto to Hong Kong.

We left Waterloo on February 16 at 10 am on a unusually cold and snowy Canadian morning (classes were cancelled due to bad weather). We rushed to the Toronto airport hoping to catch a 1 pm flight to Vancouver. We flew on standby, which meant we were the last passengers to get on the plane only if the seats were available. Luckily, we were able to get on the 1 pm flight and arrived in Vancouver, one the most beautiful cities in the world, 5 hours later at 3 pm local time.

We left Vancouver at 12:55 pm local time the next day. As it turned out, at the gate check point in Hong Kong, I was asked if I would fly to Rangoon. Where am I going? How much money do I carry?... and so on and so forth. Being asked these questions reminded me of how often I am treated differently from my friends. My Canadian friends were not asked the same questions and never knew the feeling of being treated differently. This seemed to come as a very strange experience for them.

Finally we got to leave Hong Kong as planned and arrived in BKK on the 18 of Feb. at 11:45 pm. As usual, I was not so welcomed by the county (Thailand), which I had spent over 5 years because I was the citizen of Burma and now using Canadian travel documents. As the lady at the immigration counter looked at my document, she whispered “Khu Burma” to her friend, checked and scanned the document carefully before letting me proceeding through the gate.

After wondering around BKK for about 3 hours without finding a place to stay, I made a call to a friend (a Karenni student studying in BKK) and asked him to let us stay at his place for a night. He was hesitate to say ‘yes’ given that he had a very small room and it would not be convenient for us to sleep there given that there were 5 of us and the room would barely allow space for all of us to sit. Anyway, after 5 minutes of intense negotiation on the phone, thank God, he finally agreed to let us stay at his place for a night to resolve our temporary homelessness.

We left for Chaing Mai on the 20th of Feb and spent one night at Teacher Lyn’s house. We met so many interesting people in Chaing Mai and left for Mae Hong Son on the 21st of Feb at 2:15 pm and arrived in Mae Hong Son at 3 pm. With her usual habit, she (Mae Hong Son) greeted me with a smile, full of nice smells from the beautiful flowers. The moving of flowers that turned in accordance with the wind seemed to say “welcome back to Mae Hong Son” the town that I had spent over a half decade of my life as a refugee (person of concern) and now I could say “hi” back to her with confidence, knowing that I was a “human being” and had all the protection that every human being should have (and deserved to have) as a Canadian Landed Immigrant.

On our way back to section 20, we had so much fun on the motorbikes because we felt free and could enjoy our time in any beautiful place if we could pay to visit it. The entire families of my grandparents were full of happiness and excitements to see me, a man that used to be a refugee and now was free. They all rushed to me with their own questions, asking about my life in Canada and future plan, as well as some questions that I had a hard time to find the answers to, for the questions were full of emotion and complexities.

During my time at ‘home’ in the refugee camp, I tried to visit as many friends as I could and I spent as much time as I could with friends, relatives and my fellow country people. After a week, my time at home was over and I said goodbye for the second time to my friends, relatives and my “home”. I returned to Canada, a country that gave me a new birth, freedom, and provided opportunity for the future.

Although my trip back home was very short, the feelings, the emotions, the memories, the happiness and most of all, the suffering of my people are going to be with me for the rest of my life. Wherever life takes me, the refugee camp will always remained my “home” as long as we, the Karenni refugees cannot return to our permanent home, the Karenni state, our mother land, a place where we belong. Until the day when I can make my journey to my permanent home in the Karenni state, this trip will remain an unforgettable journey back “home.”

Hidden sicknesses in our dark society

When you first enter Karenni Refugee Camp, Site One, you are met by a large flat open space where children play; but if you step beyond the volley ball court you enter a dark, overcrowded place. Houses made of bamboo are packed tightly together on narrow strips of flat land, linked by muddy rutted lanes and fetid streams. Other houses cling precariously to the steep mountains which predominate on the site, but there at least the mass of humanity which throngs the flat areas, thins out. Over 19,000 refugees are hemmed in on these site15 kilometers from Mae Hong Son in northern Thailand. It has been likened to a concentration camp, for many of the residents have been unable to officially step outside its confines for more than a decade.

Visitors are immediately struck by the mass of young people, children and young adults, milling around, perhaps amusing themselves using the limited natural materials found on the site, strolling home from school, or playing sports; but other young people are excluded – they are the neglected victims who are unable to cope in these bleak conditions.

One moment witnessed by a Karenni humanitarian worker encompass the exclusion some young people are experiencing. As she waited for her transport at the Cooperation Centre building she witnessed an altercation between a teenage boy and girl. It was early evening when a scruffy teenage boy approached her, smelling strongly of alcohol, unashamedly holding out his hand to beg for money. Speaking through red stained teeth, he appealed to her:

“Give me money to buy Say Late called Cigarette. I need money to buy whiskey and wine. I’m sick of living in this camp. I have no hope. Once I went to Primary School but I dropped out as the teacher told me I am useless. Now what can I do? There is nothing for me in this life. Only drinking and smoking make me happy”.

The humanitarian worker’s attempt to caution him about the consequences of his addictions was met with abusive language and disrespect before he wandered off.

Moments later another teenager came by; a skinny girl clad only in a bright red longyi. She appeared to be about to take a shower, yet other onlookers were staring at her bemused by her behavior and state of undress. She also approached the NGO staff member, this time with a smile and spoke excitedly, explaining: “I live very far from this Section, I just came to visit and walk around”.

One of the onlookers, an older woman, explained that the girl lived with her brother and sister who were both deaf mutes. She added, “She roams wherever she pleases, nobody takes care of her. She has had mental problem since she was young”.

The girl then lent over and whispered: “I have no clothes to cover my body”, so the humanitarian worker took her hand and accompanied her to one of the camp shops to buy her some clothes.

While they were choosing clothes they were startled by the teenage beggar who had approached the worker earlier. Spotting them in the shop he suddenly rushed in to the shop and slapped the girl across the face. The fight was prevented from escalating by the humanitarian worker who intervened and came to the assistance of the girl. Meanwhile other onlookers just stood and watched, or muttered “Fools” and walked on by.

When things had calmed down the tearful girl explained to the humanitarian worker that this was not the first time the boy had attacked her; he struck her often, but no one ever interceded to save her.

Later, writing up her daily diary, the humanitarian worker mulled over what she has observed. Who can one blame? Is it the individuals who are wrong, or the society they are forced to live in that has made them what they are? These two are not the only seriously damaged individuals in the camp, but who should be take responsibility for them? How can NGOs ensure that people such as these get the care and support they need? Could it be that, with everyone concentrating on their own agendas, the ability to immediately respond to critical grassroots needs has been buried under a mass of bureaucracy and fashionable causes?

My Plea to the World

A student writes

We are human. We have our own land. We belong to the country that we were born in. We were born to be free and grow. However, right now it's as if we have no country. We don't want to be in this place, but we are. We burn. It feels like we are lying on a fire.

As a result of the powerful Burmese government looting our land our ethnic groups are massacred. There are extra-judicial killings, therefore we have a resistance. We are not fighting for business and to conquer new land. We are really fighting for our peaceful existence and to protect our people. We are not criminals. They shouldn't persecute us. Even though we are civilians we know about human rights. Why do they, who are the leaders, know nothing about human rights? These are more edible for me???

We miss our motherland so much. It has been waiting for us for so long, but we haven't returned yet. Nevertheless, we still have hope. Our life is like birds kept in a basket. We are waiting like pigs living in their sty. We were born to be free; we are not born to be abused. We are indigenous people. We want to stay in our own land to be free and have a right to property.

We don't only have problems in the refugee camp. They are also inside Karenni. We have many internally displaced people. They have their own house and their own villages. For the majority they are struggling for their life to survive. They work hard for day to day living. Their main problem is food. If they don't work hard they have no food to eat. On the other hand, the evil army came and destroyed the paddy. They disturbed them and burnt houses. They also put land mines in villages. In addition, they abduct people to be porters and they don't give them enough food. They carry very heavy things. Furthermore, when they are injured or weak they are killed without pity.

If the people don't want to be porters they have to hide in the jungle. When they hide in the jungle they have no opportunity to farm. Moreover in the jungle they don't have doctors. They don't have good places to stay in, especially in the rainy and cold seasons. When they become sick nobody takes care of them and there is no medicine in the jungle. Thus the young shouldn't die, but they die too early. The people become poorer and poorer. There are also no schools in the jungle.

If we look at education in Burma, there are many problems between the government and civilians. In school the teachers don't get enough salary so they don't teach well in school. The students have to study with them privately and pay a lot of money. If the students are poor they can't go to school. On the other hand, if we look at the military leaders, they send their children to study at special schools which cost a lot of money. As a result they prevent civilians from having an education. Education is only for their children. They want the country to be like a water cycle.

Therefore we can say they are inhumane. We live in our land, the land that a long time ago our grandparents left as a legacy for us. They are hostile invaders. We didn't loot their land. Nevertheless, we suffer and we are hungry. Is this our fault? Are we being punished for our sins? We need a judge to decide which of us is wrong.

I would like to tell the world. Are they sitting and looking at what the Burmese government is doing, or thinking about what they should do for us? I think any country which agrees with and supports the Burmese junta is worse than the Burmese government.

Anyway after we die we will be judged by two ways. Are we leaving the best history for the next generation? Will we go to heaven or to the opposite of heaven? We may die but our spring will never die. We need the world to help to save our people from darkness.

Saw Ko Poe Lo