Lway Chee Sangar: Reclaiming Rights After a Childhood of Labor, Hardship, and Conflict

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By H. Paladino / Burma Link

“We had never heard about human rights in the village,” Lway Chee Sangar tells me at the Palaung Women’s Organization (PWO) office in Mae Sot, Thailand. Sangar is 23 years old. The ethnic nationality group to which she belongs, called the Palaung or Ta’ang, has been caught in an armed struggle for self-determination against the brutal Burmese regime for the better part of the past five decades.

Sangar began working with the PWO about three years ago when her parents, desperate to give her an opportunity to improve her life, sent her from their tiny, remote village in the northern Shan State of Burma to the PWO’s former training center in China. It took her a combined six months of training at the PWO to begin to grasp the idea that all humans have rights.

Sangar’s story is speckled with brushes with conflict, starting from her birth. She was born on the run, when her parents had to flee their village due to an outbreak of fighting nearby. Today, the Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA), the armed wing of the Palaung State Liberation Front, is fighting off Burmese offensives and combatting opium cultivation in Palaung areas, according to their statement. Civilians are often caught in the cross-fire. Burmese forces have been known to use brutal tactics against civilians in conflict areas, including deadly forced portering and forced labor, torture, killing, and extortion of money, supplies, and drugs.

Still, the challenges Sangar faced due to the conflict were secondary to those she faced as a result of growing up in a remote village with minimal resources, virtually no communication, and scant opportunity to improve one’s life. One of four children born to poor tea farmers in the impoverished Manton Township, she had to work to be able to attend school, and, at times, to help her family scrape by a living. She says her new knowledge about democracy and human, women’s and child rights has helped her put her challenging childhood into perspective. This is her account of that journey.

Lway Chang Sangar (LCS): When I was young, I started to go to school, maybe at six or seven years, I don’t know. I started to go to school in our village. We had a primary school in our village so I started to go to school. But when I was young, for our lives, for our food for our family, we did not have a lot of food or a lot of other things… I remember we’d have some rice and we would mix bamboo or pumpkin. Yes, we cooked a lot of soup. We’d just eat like this when I was young.

I didn’t have to live with my parents because at that time my parents would have to find work, sometimes they would have to go someplace else and they wouldn’t have a place to sleep, they’d sleep in the forest. Sometime, they would just go to another house and work on a tea farm to get money for food for our family. So I just was living with my grandfather. Now, there are only six people in my family including my parents. We are doing better now than we were when I was young.

I didn’t have many rights

… When I finished my primary school; I started go to Namkhan Township for middle school. I went from my village to Namkhan Township, after maybe two or three days I would arrive there, just walking. At that time we didn’t have money to take a taxi or anything, so I just tried walking to go to school. When I arrived at Namkhan I just lived with another family who had come to our village to sell clothes and other things, from Namkham, so I just went and lived with them, in their house.

Burma Link (BL): How old were you when you went to Namkhan for school?

LCS: Five standards. Yes, maybe twelve or thirteen.

So, when I lived in Namkhan I didn’t have many rights like other people because in my holidays, (Saturday and Sunday) I tried to work some jobs for some money. … a person who lived in our quarter made charcoal and called for workers to take charcoal and put it into a gunny sack, a big bag. So, when I had a free time (Saturday and Sunday) I tried to do it and I got some money from that job. Sometimes I got three hundred, sometimes five hundred Kyat, I used that money to buy books, pen, pencil, etc.

I didn’t have money from my parents. They couldn’t send any to me because sometimes, I think, they would have money but we didn’t have a way to get it to me. So I just tried like this. I didn’t have a holiday like other people. I just tried to work to get money. Sometimes I’d try to go to the forest to get

[spices] and vegetables to sell to other people.

Two years I lived in Namkhan. After two years I went back to our village. I didn’t want to go to town because I didn’t have money, so I just changed my school to one near our village, they had a big village. At this school, if we didn’t have money, it would be ok because I was near my parents. … Between our village and this village [where the school was], walking, maybe thirty or forty minutes there [downhill]. At that time I just walked, in the morning, seven, sometimes six a.m. We started school at nine a.m. In the evening, when we finished school, sometimes we’d finish and walking home would take maybe four hours, maybe five hours [uphill]. When I arrived in my village I would just have to try to help my parents, for the family. … We had to climb a mountain, a lot of mountain [to get home]. … It is easier to go down.

When I finished after two years in that village I had to stop my school for one year to work for my family. I worked as a tea farmer, and sometimes I had to work for other people to get some food to support my family.

I didn’t get any contact with my parents

In 2008 I stopped my schooling. 2009 I asked my parents, ‘I want to go to school again,’ and they just tried for me to get money and to send me to go to school. So in 2009 I started to go to school again for my high school (nine and ten standard) in Mogok.

…At that time we just had a little money. So I went to Mogok and I started nine and ten standard. Two years I had to live in Mogok. At that time, the same like when I lived in Namkhan, I didn’t have money. But I didn’t have a chance to get it from outside because we just stayed in a monastery. The monk, our monks, they didn’t let us go outside.

BL: You lived in the monastery so that you could go to school?

LCS: Yes. Because we can’t live outside. If we live outside we would have to pay a lot of money, so we just tried to live with monks in the monastery. In the monastery you don’t have to pay for food or living, we just had to buy our books and bag.

Two years I lived in Mogok. When I lived in Mogok, I didn’t get any contact with my parents. I didn’t know what was happening with them and they also didn’t know what was happening with me in Mogok.

Some people, when they visited to their children, when they met me and asked me ‘where are you from? When do you get contact with your parents?’ and I would just say, ‘No, none.’ Sometimes someone would give me money, like this. When I attended my 10 standard, I became a sick and our teachers who live with us in monastery hospitalized me in January or February 2010. I had to stay 4-5 days on hospital. So, after 4-5 days I left from hospital and lived with a person from our village, I called him my uncle. (That person move from our village to stay in Mogok since I was young). After a couple weeks I start.d to be better and tried to go to school. But, I couldn’t catch up because when I was sick our teachers passed through a lot of subjects. Then, after that didn’t recover, I got sick often, I couldn’t passed my 10 standard. At that time, my uncle (he is my mother younger brother) came and gave me some money for medicine.

After two years I wanted to go see my parents in my village. I didn’t have money to get a taxi or a car to go back. I tried to walk. Mogok to our village is maybe three or four days. At the time I walked with other people I didn’t know. I knew that if I walked with them I would be able to arrive in my village because they also lived in Manton Township, Manton is my township. So I tried to walk with them. Three or four days and I arrived in my village. They were an old man and an old woman so they took care of me. … Because it was very hot we had to sleep in the day and walk at night. Sometimes, two or three a.m. we’d start to walk. If the sun came we had to stop. Just walking like that and I got to my village, it was 2010.

BL: How old were you?

LCS: Nineteen.

2010, I couldn’t pass my ten standard [exam]. I tried to pass my ten standards but my family was not ok. I tried to ask my parents, ‘I want to go to school again, I want to try to pass my ten standard,’ but my family was not ok so I just decided, ‘I have to stop my school and I have to work for the family.’…That is my life when I was young.

I knew if lived in the village I wouldn’t have a chance for anything

LCS: When I stopped my school, I just worked in the village. But sometimes I would think, ‘I want to go outside, China, or another place, I want to work, I want to get money,’ and sometimes I wanted to make business. I wanted to take tea from one village and sell to another village. But my parents wouldn’t give me permission to go like this because they know it is dangerous for a woman, so they don’t give me permission.

I tried to work in the village. At that time, we grew rice and I had to take care for rice the whole year. I’d grow it, and after that I had to clean it and take it…

BL: And what did you do in the evening? When you were done with your work, did you do anything for fun?

LCS: When we were done it was maybe six or seven p.m. We would take a bath and maybe seven or eight eat dinner, and then I slept. I really wanted to sleep because in the morning I was very tired, so I had to sleep. The next day we’d wake up at five a.m., cook for the family, eat breakfast and maybe six or seven we’d go to work.

In 2011, Sangar wanted to return to school to pass her ten standard exam, but for lack of financial means, was unable. Still, she knew she needed to find a way out. In her village, opportunities for boys are prioritized over those for girls– and most girls marry young.

LCS: Some girls marry, as young as thirteen or fourteen years in the village, not only in our village, in our area, a lot of girls, they don’t have a chance to go to school. A lot are like me, they don’t have time to pass their ten standards. A lot of girls, [get to] maybe five or six standard, some have to stop at three or four standard. Some girls, they don’t have a chance when they are young, really. … The boys, they have more chances than girls. I know, in my village, a lot of boys can speak in Burmese and they can write and read. But for girls, a lot of girls, they don’t know.

Women also don’t have access to the same leadership positions. When the heads of village houses congregate to discuss management of the community, only men are allowed to participate. In fact, women can only attend if there are no men still alive in their family. Even then, they are not permitted to speak in the discussion. “They [the old men] don’t take responsibility for the women and youth,” Sangar laments.

And it’s women and youth who suffer the most. Sangar’s village, like many Palaung communities, is gripped by an epidemic of domestic violence. It is exacerbated, perhaps, by the recent swell of opium addiction in Burma. The vast majority of men in the northern Shan state are opium users, leaving their wives and children to support the family–and the man’s habit–while powerless to improve their situation. Sangar insists the drug problem in her village is improving, but no village is immune.

LCS: In 2011 my brother [friend in the village] who had joined the TSYO [Ta’ang Student and Youth Organization], I don’t know what he and my father talked about, but after they discussed my parents said to me, ‘You have to go with your brother, for your life and for your knowledge, you can improve your skills and everything. If you stay in the village you will get married early and if you get married in the village you will get a drug addict,’ because there are a lot of drugs in the village. Men use drugs and drink alcohol every day. My parents just told me, so I knew if lived in the village I wouldn’t have a chance for anything. I’d have to work every day, so I decided to go with my brother. … I’m not sure if they knew or not about the PWO. They just told me, ‘You should go with your brother.’ I asked them, ‘Where will I go?’ They didn’t know. ‘If you arrive at the place, you will know.’ … I think maybe they did know, but they didn’t tell me.

BL: Did they just tell you to go to China?

LCS: Yes, when I arrived in China. At the time, [there were] maybe two or three or four people in that place. Now [one of them] she is our secretary. But I didn’t know who she was, what they did. I just wanted to stay with them before we started training.

We had never heard about human rights in the village

BL: So when she first told you what the PWO is and what they do, what were your first thoughts, what did you think?

LCS: I didn’t understand! She had already said, but I just, I didn’t understand what she said and what she talked about. I just knew the PWO is an organization … After that we started training first, about human rights. But at that time I didn’t know, we had never heard about human rights in the village. Not only me. In our group of people, none of us knew what they were teaching meant. We were just listening. After three months they sent us to go back to the village. After two months, I lived in the village; they called us again for the second training. In the second training I started to know what human rights are, and I know that all humans, if we are human, we have rights. I started to understand. And women’s rights, child’s rights, a little, I started to know. After the second training I had to go back again in the village. On August 2012, they called again and sent us to Mae Sot for the internship, which was six months.

The PWO internship afforded Sangar the opportunity to continue learning about her rights, to learn about her Palaung culture and language for the first time, computer skills, and English. From here, she was able to earn a spot in the Political Empowerment Program (PEP), based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Today she is a staff member at the PWO, responsible for maintaining and updating the Burmese website. She will continue to work for the PWO at least through 2015. She sends the little money she earns doing this to her younger brother and sister. She hopes they will be able to study and pass their ten standard exams, unlike her.

Since working for the PWO, Sangar has returned to her village three times to see her family and conduct workshops on health, family planning, and the importance of good leadership. “I tried to give them [the knowledge] that if we see a leader, it’s not only a president, a chairman. We can see all people can become a leader, if we try,” she tells me.

I have to try to know about politics, to improve my life

LCS: I started to be interested [in politics] when we joined the internship. At that time we could use the internet, the computer. I started to read the news and other things in the internet, on websites. At that time I started to learn about the situation in Burma. I knew I also have rights. Because if we are humans, when we are born we have rights. But I never knew about this. I have to try to know about politics, to improve my life. So I started to be interested in politics, so I joined the PWO.

BL: Can you tell me more about the moment when you realized that you had rights? Can you tell me more about that moment when it clicked, or what it was like to learn about that?

LCS: When we started to intern?

BL: Yes.

LCS: Because at that time I knew the situation in my village and outside my village, in the township, and other women, I knew it was very difficult. Not balanced in our village and other towns, other places. So I thought, ‘I have lost my rights and my life, a lot, when I was young, until now. I didn’t know anything.’ I had to try and I had to know what happened in our village and in other places. So I have to know what happened in our village and in other places and what’s not the same.

BL: What rights did you feel like you had lost?

LCS: Because I know we have, if we are children, we have child’s rights, and we have women’s rights. But I never got those rights. Because when I was young I just faced a lot of work, and work for family, trying to go to school. Now I know, if we are children we can go to school, the government had to provide free school for basics, for primary school, they have to open for the children. I know that. But for us, we didn’t get that chance when we were young. We had to try to get money to go to school. And for education we have to try everything, so I knew I lost my life. Now, some children get the chance to go to school. A lot of women, now, it’s more balanced. We don’t have the same discrimination between sex and gender.

BL: So you see things getting better? You see things improving, for younger people?

LCS: Yes. Not in our village. But something is improving. Because we can see for children, now they also have, like me, boy or girl, they don’t have discrimination to go to school. Sometimes I also started to tell them in the village we should not have discrimination. Why is it boys have to go to school while girls have to work in the village? Because, as you know … we have to improve our situation. Boys are human and girls are also human. Girls can read and speak and write [Burmese] if they have the chance to go to another town, how can they go to another town? How can they ask for their life, then other people can understands their life.

I started to talk to parents in the village. So we have some little improvements to discrimination between boys and girls going to school.

… I want to go back to my village and I want to call people who will understand me and who will take responsibility for the village. I want to call them together and form groups and we have to take care of everything for the villagers. … I will work [for PWO] until 2016. After 2016, I am not sure if I will work or not. I know that if we work for our nation and for our people, we can work for our lives, for the whole life, but I must try to work for my nation and people because I love my nation and people.

This story is based on Burma Link’s interview with Lway Chee Sangar. More stories about Palaung women and the work of PWO coming soon!