The Christian Science Monitor/ Time Magazine
November 02, 2005
Charm Tong's parents were so concerned for her safety in Burma that they sent their daughter across the border into Thailand at the age of 6, where she grew up in an orphanage - never to return home to Shan State.
Over the years, atrocities against the Shan and other ethnic minorities by the Burmese military regime have produced a steady flow of refugees across the border. Charm Tong, as witness to these women and children, began to advocate for their rights as a teenager. Now, at 23, she is a veteran activist and a winner of the 2005 Reebok Human Rights Award.
Three years ago, she started a school to educate Shan refugee children and before that, at the age of 16, she joined with others to establish a network to support Shan women escaping violence in their homeland.
But it was a report called "License to Rape" in 2002, which she helped publicize, that brought to international attention the Burmese military's routine use of gang rape. It detailed 173 cases in which 625 women and girls were raped by Burmese soldiers, according to Reuters.
"The report gives a chance to tell the world what's really happening on the ground with the women in the ethnic areas," Charm Tong says, "and how women suffer systematic brutal violence, even torture."
Her organization, the Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN), uses the report to educate local communities about sexual violence. "Women get punished twice," she says, because the communities often blame the women and consider the rape a stain on the family. What the women need, she says, is protection and support. It's the Burmese military who "should be ashamed of what they have done."
Despite the report's wide release and positive international and local response, the situation on the ground has not changed. If anything, it is worse, Charm Tong says.
In February, in a followup to the original report, her group recorded scores of additional rape cases.
"The rape cases we are able to collect might be only the tip of the iceberg," she acknowledges, representing the women who are willing to come forward and testify with their family members about what happened. At the same time, she says, the Burmese military harass and intimidate villagers not to speak out about rape. They try "to block the flow of information," she says, even from refugees coming across the border.
The regime in Rangoon has consistently denied the rape charges and "until now, there is no punishment against the rapists," Charm Tong says.
What further complicates SWAN's work is the illegal status of those who slip across the Thai-Burmese border. Not officially recognized as refugees by international authorities or the Thai government, they receive no shelter, food, healthcare, or education and often get exploited as illegal laborers, Charm Tong says.
"Because of their status, they have to be afraid all the time," she says. "They might be easily tracked down and arrested by the authorities and pushed back [across the border]."
The Shan, the largest ethnic group in Burma, make up 9 percent of the 43 million population. Charm Tong's father, who died last year, was a colonel in the Shan State Army. Many Shan and ethnic leaders were arrested in February and remain in prison, Charm Tong says, part of a long-running regime of oppression that has failed to yield to international pressure.
Reebok's recognition of her work brings with it a $50,000 award, which she will receive Wednesday at a ceremony in Los Angeles. The prize will help fund her school and women's network, she says.
"I would say we have achieved a lot in supporting the women, the refugees, the young people's education," she says. "On the other hand, we also have to look at the root cause of the problem."
. "My voice was shaking," says Charm Tong, now 24, and already a seasoned and celebrated campaigner for Shan state's embattled people. "But I thought, 'You have to do this. You don't get so many opportunities to tell the world.'" So she made an impassioned speechthe presence of Burmese officials only emboldening her. "They were forced to listen to what I had to say," she says. Three years later, aged 20, Charm Tong set up a unique school for young Shan in northern Thailand, which is now training a new generation of human rights activists. She is also a founding member of the widely respected Shan Women's Action Network (SWAN), whose meticulous reports have documented the rape of hundreds of women and girls by Burmese soldiers.
Charm Tong's political education started early. She was born in Burma's central Shan state, home to the country's biggest ethnic minority, and where killings and mass relocations of civilians wereand still areshockingly common. Charm Tong was about six when her parents sent her to a Catholic orphanage on the Thai-Burma border, where she was brought up with 30 other children by a Shan nun. She saw her parents once a year. "I cried a lot," she remembers. "I was young and didn't understand why my parents had sent me away. Now I appreciate it. They thought I'd be safe and get an education."
She was a voracious learner. Charm Tong rose just after dawn for English lessons, attended Thai high school during the day, and took Chinese classes in the evenings. Weekends were reserved for studying her mother tongue, Shan. She was also schooled in the suffering of refugees who poured across the nearby border into Thailand to escape persecution or poverty. Unlike Burma's other ethnic minorities, the Shan have no refugee status in Thailand, and therefore no official protection or support. Many risk arrest and ill-treatment as illegal manual laborers, while women are often trafficked into the sex industry.
At age 16, Charm Tong began working with human rights groups, interviewing sex workers, illegal migrants, HIV patients and rape victims. The following year, she spoke in Geneva on their behalfand still speaks, in four languages, with the poise and confidence of a mature woman.
In 2001 she set up the School for Shan State Nationalities Youth. Mostly funded by private donations, the school is located in a modest rented house in northern Thailand. Not only Shan students attend, but also Burma's other ethnic minorities, such as the Palaung, Akha and Pa-O. Due to the Shan's shadowy legal status, the school's exact location is secret. The young students, who sleep on the floor in spartan dorms, cannot leave the grounds unescorted during their nine-month term. "They're all under house arrest," jokes Charm Tong. Each year more than 150 young people apply; the school can accommodate only 24.
Survival comes first for many Shan, says Charm Tong, learning only a distant second. Even outside the conflict zones, Burma's education system is a shambles; untutored, even the brightest youths end up in menial jobs. "I was very lucky to get nine years' education," says Charm Tong, whose school is an attempt to rescue some of Burma's so-called "lost generation." Students study English and computing, and receive training in human rights action, such as how to collect testimonies and write reports, from Charm Tong and other local activists. Most of the school's 90 or so graduates now work for youth or women's organizations as teachers, human rights defenders, health workers and community radio broadcasters. "The idea is that they use their education to promote other people's rights," says Charm Tong.
When not at the school, Charm Tong lends her energy to SWAN, a small but vocal women's group whose "License To Rape" report enraged the junta. "Rape is still widespread and very systematic," says Charm Tong, who co-authored the report. "It's used to terrorize communities." Burma's generals, who dismissed the report as "fabrications," regard SWAN as an enemy of the state. Charm Tong is unfazed. "The generals are the enemy of the people," she shrugs.
So who are her own heroes? Her father, who died last year, was a commander with the Shan State Army, an insurgent group still battling Burmese government troops. Her heroine is "Teacher Mary," the Catholic nun who raised and educated her, and who gave her the strength and self-esteem she now imparts to her own students. Charm Tong is like "a candle in the darkness," says May, 19, a girl from Burma's northerly Kachin state. "She never behaves like she's superior or better. She is like our sister, and the school is our family."