Nowhere to be Home

• Published in: Foreign policy in focus 2011-03, p.N_A
• Main Authors: Lemere, Maggie, West, Zoe
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Dictators; Lemere, Maggie; Oral history; Survivor; West, Zoe; Writers
• ISSN: 1524-1939

My parents are Karen, but I cannot speak the language because I grew up in a community of mostly Burman people in Rangoon, which is far away from Karen State. When I enrolled in school I had to say I was Burman- if I said I was Karen, people would discriminate against me. There were around sixty students in my class, and more than fifty of those students were Burman, so there were very few ethnic students. I couldn't use "Saw" at the beginning of my name because that is what Karen people use, so I used a Burman name instead. But the students knew I was Karen anyway, so I was called "rodent Karen" and "smelly Karen." That's what they called all the Karen students. We had to learn about our enemies' backgrounds and histories, how they started, what their aims were, and what type of fighting force they were-their artillery, their mines, and defense strategies. We were also trained in psychological warfare-propaganda. We had regular training until six o'clock, and then we had the psychological warfare training. There were two main things that they trained us to do: one was to believe in the propaganda, in the policies of the socialist party, and the other was to follow orders. You could not ask any questions, you could only listen. They trained us very well. The military trains soldiers how to do psychological warfare campaigns-how to persuade someone who dislikes you to like you, and how to make things unclear. For example, if we did bad things in a certain area, we would make the people believe that we didn't do those things-that was part of the army's strategy in areas where we were active. It was important for us to understand how to make other people or groups look bad too. We had a very rational way of lying to the people for our benefit. We would be very friendly with some people and show them a lot of things they could believe, while we had a hidden purpose. Mahatma Gandhi fought the British by protesting only with his hands-no weapons, nothing. He went into the streets and boycotted everything, with millions of people in India supporting the fight for independence, until the British left. But if you oppose the SPDC, you need to have a gun to protect yourself and protect your country. If not, they'll kill you. If they catch a monk with a flower in his hand saying "Please forgive me, please don't kill me!" they don't care-they will kill you. They have even tried to kill people like [Aung San Suu Kyi], because she's very popular and the leader of democra