Myanmar expatriates raise awareness of oppressed nation
Thursday, December 27, 2001
By MICHELLE HAN- Staff Writer
The Bergen Record
They are far from the ancient cities and rural mountains of Myanmar, but a small group of young expatriates in North Jersey are keeping ties to their homeland alive.
Whether collecting books to send to their native country, meeting with United Nations officials, or organizing cultural programs at a local college, the members of the Myanmar Youth Association are bound together by a cause. Their mission is to increase awareness about the plight of the uneducated and poorly served citizens of Myanmar (formerly Burma) who live under strict military rule. At the same time, they are raising money to send overseas and unifying expatriates who have migrated to North Jersey.
"I take every single opportunity to go out and meet people from my country," said association Vice President Myint Wai, 24, whose mother, father, and five brothers and sisters live in Myanmar. The organization also gives Wai a channel to educate others about Myanmar, the beautiful but embattled Southeast Asian nation whose recent history has been roiled by dictatorial rule, rebel factions, and drug barons. Opposition leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, have been imprisoned.
But there is another side to his beloved nation, Wai said. "Most Americans don't know what Burma is," said Wai, using the former name for a country of about 50 million known for its strong family ties and friendly people. "But give us a chance."
Much of the momentum for the group comes from Win Win Kyi, 50, an energetic personality with established roots in Myanmar and an open-door policy toward anyone looking for inspiration or help. An international student counselor at Bergen Community College in Paramus, she has close ties to some officials at the United Nations, where her father was a diplomat and her sister works as a population specialist.She recently took a group of association members to Washington to meet Myanmar's ambassador to the United States. And she uses her community ties to solicit books from friends, libraries, schools, and co-workers to send to Myanmar.
So far the group has sent two shipments -- nearly 2,000 books in the summer and 3,000 this month -- including textbooks, novels, and encyclopedias for all age groups.
With her sisters and mother in Asia, Kyi also operates Project Pencil, which distributes No. 2 pencils to students and helps build schools throughout the countryside in Myanmar. Kyi -- the name is a common one in Myanmar -- first came to Oregon to study more than 30 years ago and empathizes with newcomers from faraway lands who are committed to life in America but often feel a sense of confusion and isolation.
"Instead of having the best of both worlds, you can have the mess of both worlds," she said. In 1999, Kyi was one of 12 selected to attend the Asian Pacific American Women's Leadership Institute. After the program, participants are required to complete an "impact project" that will improve the lives of at least 25 people. The Myanmar Youth Association became Kyi's project. "I thought, 'Why can't we do something to bring the youths together?' " she said.
One winter night at the beginning of 2001, she gathered relatives, colleagues, students, and friends at her apartment on Hackensack's Prospect Avenue.Kyi, who is also part of the summer faculty at Yale University and completed a one-year midcareer fellowship at Princeton, lived alone there in a warm, one-bedroom unit decorated with tapestries, vases, and other ornaments from her homeland.
The gathering was a simple get-together with lots of food and conversation about forming an organization. "They hear there's a Myanmar professor and they want to meet me," she said. Now the association has a house on Washington Avenue in Hackensack, which Kyi proudly dubs "The Myanmar Youth Association International House."She lives on the second floor. A longtime friend from Myanmar, Thet Sanda, lives on the third floor with her three children. Two students also live in the house, where meetings and dinners are held.
The network of Myanmar natives in New York and New Jersey is small. According to the federal Immigration and Naturalization Service, fewer than 300 people immigrated to New Jersey from Myanmar from 1990 to 1998, the most recent year for which statistics were available. About two dozen people attend the association's gatherings, coming from as far as Queens and New Brunswick and from as close as Hackensack, Bergenfield, and Fort Lee. Still others come from Parsippany, Morris Plains, and Morristown.
Their homeland became the subject this month of an international protest marking the 10th anniversary of Aung San Suu Kyi's Nobel Peace Prize.Nobel laureates signed a letter to Gen. Than Swe, the military ruler of Myanmar, demanding her release, as well as the release of all other detainees. Among those who signed the letter were the Dalai Lama and Elie Wiesel, the author and Holocaust survivor.
For the fledgling Myanmar Youth Association, success comes in small steps."It took a while," the group's president, Myo Myaing, said of his responsibilities, which include a lot of paperwork and organization. "I learned slowly through trial and error." But the opportunity to help, even in small ways, keeps the members going.
In the United States, children are at ease with computers in elementary school, noted Wai, who majored in business and finance at Fairleigh Dickinson University and now works as the office manager for a construction firm in Englewood Cliffs. "Back home, they don't even touch a keyboard, and they don't know what e-mail is like. I thought, 'This is not right.' "