Hi Everyone

From Refugee to 10 Downing Street

Today Zoya Phan, Campaigns Officer with Burma Campaign UK kindly shared with People in Common some of her extraordinary life experiences. A survivor of the Burmese military's policy of slow genocide of its own indigenous people, she is now a refugee and full time campaigner living in London, and an inspiration.

Zoya's Story

Zoya was just 14 when the Burmese military destroyed the village she had grown up in. She can still remember the black smoke, how she hid underground as the earth shook when the airplane bombs landed before hiding in the jungle with other survivors from her tribe, scrabbling for food to survive in the following days and weeks. Even today, one village is being destroyed by the military in every single week, with no media coverage. Fortunately Zoya eventually managed to get across the border and into a refugee camp in neighbouring Thailand. Basically a prison, she was nevertheless one of the lucky ones, managing to get an educational scholarship while in the camp to study in Bangkok, and from there onto England where she studied a degree in East Anglia before coming to London to work for the Burma Campaign group full time. As a refugee, life for Zoya in the UK has not been easy. Even now that she has gained asylum status (after three years in the UK) still she has to report to the police on a weekly basis, and it's a struggle just to open a bank account. But at least now she can work, and rent a place to live: until recently she could only volunteer and move from place to place staying with colleagues and friends on a temporary basis.

All in all an extraordinary journey that she has made, from the green jungle of the south east Burmese killing fields to the concrete jungle of Babylon. A week or so back, she even met with Gordon Brown at 10 Downing Street, where she spoke with him about the current priorities of the campaign, which I urge you to support:

(1) Humanitarian Aid - pressure on DFID required

The most vulnerable people in Burma are the refugees staying on the Thai and other borders, and the internally displaced persons. People who have been recently displaced as the military continues to kill the various tribes (other than their own) that make up the Burmese people and who are either in hiding in the jungle trying to avoid being shot or, if they're lucky staying in a holding camp or prison across the border. On the Burmese side the military are killing all tribal people, using rape as a weapon of war, among other awful things, while on the other side of border, nations such as Thailalnd and Vietnam are unwelcoming, and future precarious to say the least, with girls routinely ending up in the Asian sex trade, often propped up by British and other global tourists.

DFID (the Dept for International Development) curently give 8.8 million pounds a year in humanitarian aid to Burma - some of which goes to the refugees but none at all to the internally displaced. This amount is very small in comparison to the awfulnes of the situation in hand (by way of contrast they give 50 million to Vietnam, which is in a far better state) and also most of it goes to the wrong people, through the regime into the central area of Burma it basically fails to reach the most vulnerable.

Gordon Brown has said he is in favour of an increase in amount, and a prioritisation of the refugees and internally displaced as recipients but DFID are dragging their feet, saying its not practical. This is not true as the Canadian government are already getting the money to the internally displaced groups.

Please contact DFID or ask your MP to do the same on your behalf so that money can be used to help the most vulnerable of the Burmese victims.

(2) UK second biggest foreign investor - pressure for unilateral disinvestment

We were under the impression that the UK was not a big investor in Burma, so a surprise was Zoya's info that through money channelled via Bermuda and other unaccountable, tax free so called 'British Dependent Territories' the UK is in fact the second biggest foriegn investor in Burma. With this in mind and following on from the EU's recent commitment to sanctions against Burma in terms of gems, timber, metal (in part secured through the work of Gordon Brown and David Miliband) please also ask your MP to call for unilateral British sanctions against Burma to be imposed as soon as possible. Apparently when Zoya asked Gordon Brown for help here, he said 'thankyou for your opinion'

(3) Some High profile UK Companies investing in Burma who you may want to block, boycott and/or write to calling on them to disinvest include 3 Mobile, Supadrug and Kuoni Travel.

(4) The Effects of Asset Freeze & Targeted Sanctions

The US and the Australia have recently enacted an asset freeze on the bank accounts of some of the Burmese leaders, a quite effective form of targeted sanctions as, it hits the heart of the regime, as do the sanctions mentioned at (2) and (3) as most of the oppressed of Burma are involved in agricultural economy, so sanctions hurt the regime and the cronies who help to prop it up, mostly Chinese business and not the ordinary folk, unlike in Iraq where more of the overall population were involved in the mainstream economy.

(5) China

The topic of China is key. Economically (if not politically and militarily) Burma is not important to China though conversely China is absolutely vital to the Burmese military, for trade, arms and much else besides. Burma Campaign UK are now considering carefully the position in relation to China, and expect to formulate a clear position in the beginning of 2008.

(6) Aung San Suu Kyi

As reported in the press this week, Aung San Suu Kyi met with a member of the junta a few days back, but so far nothing is known about the outcome of this meeting.

Please forward this bulletin to others if you have a moment.

Thanks