In 1988, they protested in the streets of Burma for democracy. Some were jailed for their convictions. Some fought from the jungle against an oppressive military regime. And eventually, some escaped the government they hate and the country they love and desperately want to liberate.
Over the past three years, small communities of Burmese political refugees - - pro-democracy revolutionaries as well as ethnic minorities involved in the fight for their various states' independence -- have sprung up around the United States. Between 150 to 200 of them have found their way to the Bay Area,said Don Climent, the regional director of International Rescue Committee. The majority have settled in Oakland, but some also live in San Francisco, Daly City, Fremont, Antioch and parts of Contra Costa.
In some ways, this population looks like any new immigrant group that comes to the United States: They have few resources or friends and have to start over with limited English and skills that don't necessarily translate in a new country. What sets them apart is their dramatic -- and often traumatic -- history: their stories of protest, torture and paramilitary action in the name of democracy.
The adjustment for some of the refugees has been complicated by the fact that because they went from university to jails or to the paramilitary and then spent years in refugee camps, they had never held jobs or otherwise lived typical adult lives, said Sylvia Townsend, a case manager at IRC.
"The refugees are coming with nothing; they have nothing. They're adjusting every day in small ways," Townsend said.
FIGHTING FOR DEMOCRACY
Many of the refugees are still involved from afar in the struggle for democracy in Burma. For most, their political activity dates to 1988, when a pro-democracy coalition -- many of them university students -- joined a countrywide protest against the oppressive military junta. That uprising, spurred by the announced retirement of longtime despot Gen. Ne Win, was ultimately crushed by the army. Hundreds were killed; thousands were jailed.
In elections two years later, the popular Aung San Suu Kyi won in a landslide victory, and her National League for Democracy won 80 percent of the contested parliamentary seats. But the government invalidated the elections and began rounding up and detaining many of the elected party members. Thousands of protesters fled to the jungle, where they joined guerrilla armies of ethnic minorities who had long been fighting for independence from Burma.
Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, was under house arrest for much of the decade following her rise to political prominence. And the country is in terrible disarray. It's an economic disaster even in Rangoon, the once highly functioning capital.
Fearing more student protests, the government has shut down many of the country's universities. Moreover, AIDS is spreading in Burma at an alarming rate, and the World Health Organization rates the country's health system as the second-worst in the world (just ahead of Sierra Leone), said Chris Beyrer, a medical epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health who just completed a paper assessing the epidemic there.
The stories of Bay Area refugees are inextricably stitched to this troubled history.
Yan Aung, 42, can talk animatedly for hours about Burmese politics. He was a schoolteacher in a township 113 miles outside of Rangoon when the protests began. He joined the demonstrations, became a leader in the National League for Democracy and later worked closely with the officials who were elected in 1990 but denied their posts. When the army began to arrest democratic party politicians, Aung guided 23 of them into the jungle near the Thai border, in a perilous journey that took three or four days.
In the jungle, the dissidents built bamboo huts and survived off the land and donations from nongovernmental organizations. Aung ultimately rose through the ranks of the paramilitary force to command 70 soldiers.
Aung's wife, San San Win, 31, has an open, soft face and a quick laugh. She was 20 when she left her village for the jungle and took up arms with a resistance group in '88. She instructed her family to say she had run off with a boyfriend. Her parents were arrested anyway, and though they were eventually released, Win knew that for their safety, she could never return home."At the time, I'm not scared," said Win. "I'm so excited. I wanted to fight. " Because it was safer for women to travel, she became a courier for the underground.
Aung and Win were married in the jungle in 1993, and their daughter, Thunder Win, was born the next year. The guerrilla warfare carried on, but after several ethnic groups negotiated cease-fires with the military government and their "liberated area" was lost, the family made their way to a Thai refugee camp. In September 2000, they arrived in the United States and moved into an apartment in Oakland.
These days, the family lives with John Morton, an American who became friends with them when he was living in Thailand. Aung works at a factory in Marin doing machine maintenance. Win quit her cashier job when she had her second child and is taking classes at Laney College. Thunder, 8, recently completed a school project about her heroine: Aung San Suu Kyi.
MINORITY BATTLE
Way Nay Soe joined the ethnic minority Karen Liberation Army in its fight for the state of Karen's independence after his father was captured and killed by the Burmese military. Soe was 14. When he found his father's body several days after he was killed, it was so mangled he had difficulty identifying him.
In 1984, Way Nay Soe moved to the Karen headquarters on the Thai-Burma border. He studied there and learned to fight and sometimes battled the Burmese army on the front line. "Because," he said, "we need freedom and democracy."
More than a decade later, Way Nay Soe slipped across the border to Thailand where he worked as a laborer for a couple of years before landing in a refugee camp. He arrived in California with his wife, Kapru Lwe, and her family in 2001. They live in a two- bedroom house in East Oakland with their 3-year-old son and Lwe's brother and parents. Way Nay Soe commutes more than two hours each day to his job as a laborer at a concrete company in Brentwood.
Way Nay Soe's elder brother, who remains in a Thai refugee camp, was struck by a bomb and had to get his leg amputated. His youngest brother is in Thai prison -- for living and working illegally in that country."I want him to come here," said Way Nay Soe, 30, "but I don't know how to do that."
Aung Myat Soe was a high school student in '88. His father, a movement leader, was jailed for a year; later, his mother spent six months in prison.Aung Myat Soe eventually became a clerk for the military and, he said, smuggled information to resistance groups fighting for democracy and the independence of Arakan -- his native state in western Burma.
After helping his father escape to Thailand, Aung Myat Soe left for the border region. He spent two years in a camp there, making frequent trips across the porous Thai border for food and medicine. Ten of his friends were killed by the Burmese military during those two years, he said. Some, like him,
eventually left for Thailand; many are still fighting in the forest.
Than Wai, 37, was a university student in Rangoon studying geography when he was arrested for participating in the student protests. He spent one year in a notorious jail that had been cleared of criminals to make room for political prisoners, students and monks, he said. At times, he went without food and was subjected to electric shocks. Guards also tortured him by continuously dropping cold water onto his shaved head for days at a time. He once dared a guard to shoot him.
"At that time," Wai said, "everyone was thinking about death. Death is better than life."
When he was released, Wai went to Thailand and secured a job as an seaman on a chemical tanker. He spent 10 years at sea.In 2001, Wai was working as an engineer on a ship headed to the United States. When it docked in Richmond, Wai got a shore pass and headed for the immigration office where he applied for asylum. Eventually, he found and moved into the Oakland apartment of his old friend Aung Myat Soe. (They also live with with Aung Myat Soe's wife and son and another Burmese friend.).It took many months for Wai's working papers to get processed; he only began to work recently -- at a gas station. He still dreams of the water torture, he said.
FREEDOM REMAINS GOAL
Beyrer, the Johns Hopkins doctor who lived in Thailand in the mid-'90s, said he frequently made trips to the border to distribute condoms and medicine and met students and other pro-democracy insurgents living in the liberated territory.
"They had an extraordinary sense of mission and purpose," he said. "You'd sit around in the evening, and people would ask, 'Why is there a Senate and a House of Representatives?' They spoke about government and structure and how they would do it; how they would balance ethnic tensions. It was really extraordinary.
"Burma's best and brightest," he said. "It's absolutely tragic that they ended up not being able to contribute to their country more."
Instead, the small number who managed to make it to the United States are starting over -- learning English, taking driving tests, securing jobs as unskilled laborers. Initially, the challenge for some of the Burmese refugees, Townsend said, "was that they never really had a 'normal' life. Many of them never worked. Many never had to do things we take for granted, like pay rent and buy food and manage a budget."
The cultural gaps loomed large, too, especially at first. In Burma, many were accustomed to living in close quarters, Townsend said, and paying exorbitant, dot-com prices for a one-family apartment seemed wasteful to them. Others said they were puzzled in the beginning by sales tax or credit cards or the way BART travels under the bay.
"When I lived in the forest, I never thought of this kind of technology," said Aung Myat Soe, who has been studying computer science at Laney College and has created a Web site about Arakan.
San San Win has been was surprised by the differences between American and Burmese families: "In America, everyone is busy," she said, ready with her trademark giggle. "If you you want to see someone, even your dad, you have to contact before you come, make an appointment."We don't need appointment; just knock on door and we are so happy. Here, everyone is busy. Even family can't see each other." She laughed again. "When we became part of American life, we're also busy."
While many of the refugees have typical immigrant dreams for better jobs or for education for their children, others like San San Win and her husband, Yan Aung, are constantly looking over their shoulders toward the country they left behind. Win and Aung are active in the Burmese American Democratic Alliance, a local organization. They receive news from the border and are in contact with old comrades who made their way to other countries around the world. They worry about the friends they left behind, about soldiers who fought alongside them but weren't granted refugee status.
It's still too dangerous for them to enter Burma, but perhaps one day, they can return to Thailand and continue the struggle there, they said."Every time, we think: How to help my people?" Aung said. "How can we go back?"