Burma’s Other Struggle

Those living in the badlands along the border between Thailand and Burma know the lean and lanky American as Tha-U-Wu-Pa. Given that he is an active player in the struggle against Burma's thuggish military regime, one might consider the name a nom de guerre. But he'll have none of the war talk, insisting that he's merely a Christian man driven by love and a desire to help relieve the suffering among Burma's oppressed ethnic minorities.

And he points out that those minorities need as much help as they can get—and a great deal more. While the world has been outraged by the Burmese junta's recent crackdown on monks and civilians protesting peacefully in big cities like Rangoon and Mandalay, away from the spotlight the people in the ethnic enclaves have been enduring the generals' persecution for decades. And for 10 years from their base in northern Thailand, Tha-U-Wu-Pa and his Free Burma Rangers have been slipping past Thai patrols and eluding heavily armed, trigger-happy Burmese Army units in order to bring emergency medical care and other assistance to people in the Shan, Karen, Karenni and Arakan ethnic states.

spacerThe 47-year-old expatriate, who grew up in Thailand and speaks the language fluently, has himself roamed across a thousand miles of Shan, Karen and Karenni territory on relief missions, often with Burmese soldiers no more than a few yards away. The Americans he leads are mostly Christian, and the man himself—let's call him Don for anonymity's sake—is a kind of modern missionary on steroids. He's seen some of the worst atrocities of the Burmese military. "When you think about terrible things, it's hard to quantify," he says, two days after returning from a cross-border relief mission. "What's terrible? People shot and killed instantly, tortured slowly, blown to little pieces, stepping on land mines …"

And yet Don displays the missionary's faith and optimism. "The love that ethnic people have given us has struck me most," he says. "This love gives us the strength to keep going and not worry about who wins and who loses."

By any practical measure the ethnic minorities are losing. While the protests in the big cities went on for several weeks, the government's campaign against ethnic people has been raging nonstop for 50 years, and some operations are ongoing right now. In Karen state in eastern and southern Burma, the State Peace and Development Council—which is to say the junta—began an offensive in February 2006 that had killed more than 300 men, women and children and displaced 25,000 people by February 2007, according to the Free Burma Rangers.

The group, founded 10 years ago by Don, compiles its numbers via the teams it sends into Burma on humanitarian missions. It says the Burmese Army built 33 new camps in the area, seeking to solidify its control. The military's 2006 campaign was the largest offensive in Karen state since 1997, says Don. The army's goal, he says, is to crush anyone living in those areas.