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The Women Changing Myanmar Forever

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Photographed by Charlotte England

Often, all people in the West know of Myanmar is one woman: the impeccably turned-out, Oxford-educated, Nobel Peace Prize-winning, democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

On November 8, 2015, Suu Kyi’s once outlawed political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won an absolute majority in Myanmar’s most free and fair general election to date —further elevating her profile.

Suu Kyi’s story was compelling, even before the NLD’s incredible victory catapulted her to (tentative) power. The daughter of an assassinated independence hero, Suu Kyi spent almost 15 years between 1989 and 2010 confined to house arrest. While she was detained, her British husband, Michael Aris, died without the opportunity to say goodbye, and she drifted away from her two teenage sons. She sustained herself through playing piano under a leaky roof, as her house and life fell into disrepair around her.

But despite her impressive credentials, as one (exceptionally privileged) person Suu Kyi is far from representative of a large and diverse country. And while she is an inspiration to many Burmese women, she is also difficult for most to relate to. Unlike Suu Kyi, the average Burmese woman is still limited by restrictive gender norms. In terms of challenging Burmese patriarchy, Suu Kyi is far from the be-all and end-all — in fact, she rarely speaks about women’s issues. As Suu Kyi’s embraces party politics many people believe her commitment to human rights is being compromised too, leaving other women to take up the fight on the ground.

I spoke to ten Burmese women who you probably haven’t heard of, who are all defying convention to also lead change in Myanmar, often in radical, alternative and creative ways.

Cheery Zahau, 34, Human Rights Activist

In November, Cheery Zahau stood for election in her native Chin State, Myanmar’s poorest region, representing a small ethnic minority party.

“I have been involved in women’s organisations and human rights organisations for 14 years, and now finally the political situation is changing,” Zahau told me, as she manoeuvred her car skilfully around a mountainside. “I decided to get involved in national politics so I can use my experience to have more human rights friendly policies and gender sensitive policies in the government.”

After a bend the road widened slightly, and the rival NLD campaign team sped past on motorcycles, beeping combatively. “They all are all men and think that the political situation is like in 1990; they still haven’t changed their thoughts,” Zahau said, damningly.

While campaigning, Zahau spent months travelling by car (rarely), motorcycle (extensively), and on foot (where necessary) to 130 isolated villages. She didn’t win, almost certainly because of sexist bullying and dirty tactics from the NLD candidate, but in the process she educated thousands of people about democracy. I spent one day shadowing Zahau and became so exhausted after hours of motorbiking through the jungle along steep, muddy, cliff-edge paths that I almost fainted and slipped off. But Zahau remained poised and focused, explaining that since she co-founded the Women’s League of Chinland when she was 23 years old, she has had years of practice travelling over the tough terrain. “We delivered humanitarian aid and small development aid projects to a lot of different villages, so it’s not new for me” she said.

For over a decade, Zahau worked to educate ethnic minority women who had often never left their village about their rights, pausing only when in exile abroad. “We were travelling in a very dangerous, heavily military controlled area,” she told me, mentioning the risk of being arrested or tortured.

Indefatigable, Zahau is now researching and writing a report about the impact of a discriminatory colonial era law on LGBT people in Myanmar, for a Burmese NGO.

Photographed by Charlotte England

Htar Htar, 43, Sex Educator and Campaigner

“Especially for girls and women there is no way to learn about sex and sexuality. Many of us don’t touch or see or look even at our own body,” Htar Htar explained, sitting in her garden. “Ten years ago we had to shower, like, longyi[cloth robes] up to here [she gestures to her chest], and we never see our body; over 90% of the women never see our own female organs.”

Myanmar is changing fast, Htar Htar said, because people are going abroad, watching television and using the internet, “but still women and girls don’t have sex education. When we learn about our own body – very simple facts about our own body – we feel so empowered.”

Today, Htar Htar runs Akhaya Women, an organisation that offers ‘women empowerment through sexuality dialogue’ — essentially a safe and rare space in which women can meet to discuss sex, gender and their bodies. “We address practices, norms and beliefs that put women as second citizens, lower status,” Htar Htar explained. “For example, everybody in Myanmar thinks our menstrual blood is dirty. And we cannot wash our longyi together with men’s clothes, we cannot iron it together. If they touch, men will lose good luck. The message given daily is that women are low.”

Htar Htar’s activism began in much the same vein as it continues, with a group of ten women gathered together in her living room in 2011. “We started to talk about what happens on the bus,” she said, explaining that sexual assault and harassment is rife on public transport, and young women are often too shy to speak out. “These ten women started to say: ‘hey lets do a campaign!’”

At the time the Whistle Campaign launched, any activism was dangerous in Myanmar. But in the end the campaign was an immense success. “In three weeks time we’d already gathered over a 100 volunteers,” Htar Htar said, explaining that they distributed hundreds of whistles and flyers to women on buses quietly, before the authorities even noticed.

“Many people think that I led this campaign; actually, it was not me, but these ten women,” Htar Htar said. “But my nature is I want to take risks. I want to do something new or something that makes changes. It made me be in this group, and then Akhaya appeared.”

Photographed by Charlotte England

Ma Ei, 37, Artist

“At work, if a girl is sick, the boss might ask ‘what is wrong with you?’, and she will say ‘oh I have a stomach ache, a headache’. But she should be able to tell him ‘I am on my period, and I feel like this’,” Ma Ei said defiantly, sipping a smoothie.

Unlike almost every other woman in Myanmar, Ma Ei has no problem telling men when she has her period. Recently, she was so angered by the dismissive reaction of one male friend that she decided to spend three days lying in a blood-red room for a performance art piece entitled ‘Period’.“I wanted to remind men: ‘we have this, you should care, you should respect women’,” Ma Ei explained, adding that she also wanted to occupy a space and set aside a time for women to talk about an issue that is rarely discussed in Myanmar, where periods are considered unclean.

Although Period was the first time she tackled such a taboo subject, Ma Ei often channels her frustration at the routine subjugation of women in Myanmar into powerful performance art pieces. “I did a show where I dress like a man and then I cook. And sometimes I just put cooking utensils in front of me on the table and I don’t do anything, I just sit and watch,” she said, explaining that women of her generation were encouraged to marry young and to have babies instead of pursuing careers, and that at home women are expected to do all of the work. “Most of the women are just housewives. Even if they have a job, when they come back home women have to do everything, all the housework,” she said. “I hate that kind of thing.”

Photographed by Charlotte England

Phyoe Phyoe Aung, 27, Student Activist

“I’m really experienced because this is my second time being in prison,” Phyoe Phyoe Aung said, tearing herself away from the friends and mobile phone she had been deprived of all week in the cells to speak to me. “It’s not too bad. Sometimes, the water is a yellow colour, it’s not good for health and our skin. The rice is also very raw. But I’m ok.”

When Phyoe Phyoe Aung was arrested for the first time in 2007, together with her political activist father, she was only a teenager. As a young student activist, she had helped reform the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), and participated in the Saffron Revolution, a nation wide pro-democracy movement that was violently suppressed. She was apprehended after a period in hiding, on her way home from the delta region where she had travelled with her father to help bury bodies contaminating water supplies following the devastating Cyclone Nargis.

After three years she was released and quickly became Secretary General of the ABFSU. Last spring she helped organise a student march from Mandalay, Myanmar’s second largest city, towards Yangon, the main city, to protest against a restrictive new education law. The demonstrators were violently intercepted at Letpadan, 80 miles north of Yangon, after walking 365 miles. Many students were beaten and dozens were arrested, including Phyoe Phyoe Aung, who is one of over 50 students still in prison.

Phyoe Phyoe Aung faces more than nine years in prison simply for protesting, and Amnesty International are calling for her release.

When I spoke to her, Phyoe Phyoe Aung was implausibly optimistic, even when speaking about the impact it had on her that her father was detained for 15 years, from when she was 9 months to 16 years old. “My environment was a political environment because lots of my father's friends visited our home, and I could ask what happened in the past,” she said. “Some children couldn’t ask those questions, because there was a military regime in our country, there was no freedom of expression, no freedom of assembly. I was very lucky, I could ask lots of questions about politics and about my father and about other political prisoners and activists”.

Photographed by Charlotte England

Khin Khin Kyaw, Human Rights Lawyer

Khin Khin Kyaw is a member of the legal team defending 58 student activists who were arrested following the march to Letpadan last spring.

In September she was charged with ‘disrupting the court’ after the judge refused a small amendment to a motion correcting a minor error she had made. Khin Khin Kyaw allegedly argued vehemently until some students in the courtroom began chanting that they wanted a new judge. As a result, she faced six months in prison, fines, and the revocation of her legal license. Fortify Rights described the case as politically motivated and demanded it should be immediately dropped.

Refusing to be intimidated, Khin Khin Kyaw has continued to defend the student activists inside and outside court, recently arguing successfully that eight students with skin infections and upset stomachs should be transferred from Thayawaddy prison to Yangon general hospital for treatment.

Photographed by Charlotte England

May Sabe Phyu, 39, Director of the Gender Equality Network

May Sabe Phyu is quietly commanding. As director of Myanmar’s Gender Equality Network, she is deferred to on women’s issues by almost everyone I spoke to in the country.

“Myanmar women are perceived as enjoying equality in society,” she explained, “but the majority of decision makers in parliament, in the judicial systems, in the administrative bodies [are men]. We see very few women obtaining leadership positions.”

“And there is the issue of widespread violence against women in the country: there are no specific laws against domestic violence. Rape is not [necessarily] considered as a crime. A husband beating a wife is considered normal personal conflict between the husband and wife.”

With GEN, May Sabe Phyu is working to introduce a law to protect women against violence. Meanwhile the organisation are at the forefront of opposing another set of laws, which restricts who women are free to marry: the Race and Religion Protect Laws, lobbied for by far-right, ultranationalist monks to deter interfaith couples.

May Sabe Phyu says she was interested in inequality because of her Kachin ethnic minority heritage. “The issue of ethnic armed conflict in our country is mainly an issue of justice and equality,” she said. “So when I am talking about equality, I mean not only between men and women but also across the ethnic groups, religious minorities and for all the marginalised people. Being from an ethnic minority, being a Christian, and being a woman, you are triple discriminated against by your society.”

Photographed by Charlotte England

Wai Wai Nu, 29, Rohingya and Women’s Rights Activist

“My father is a politician, he was allies with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Him and the rest of the family — including me — were arrested in 2005 to 2012, for seven years. I was 18,” Wai Wai Nu said, remaining composed and somewhat brusque. She had to go to the United States the next day to attend a ‘Global Thinkers’ awards ceremony, and she had little time spare to chat. “That shaped my life and my thoughts. I decided that I shouldn’t be tolerant of injustice. When I came out I entered many types of activism.”

Wai Wai Nu is ethnically Rohingya, part of a stateless Muslim minority group of 1.3 million people who may be facing genocide in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state. Following anti-Muslim riots in 2012, many Rohingya people were confined to IDP camps, where they remain today, with insufficient food and sanitation, limited access to healthcare and to education, and restrictions on their movement.“I went back to Rakhine state in August for the first time in 20 years,” Wai Wai Nu told me, “the situation was very shocking, very bad. I cannot believe how much segregation is ongoing and how much discrimination. Their situation is worse than animals, they are degraded, with no respect.”

Because their citizenship was revoked shortly before the November election, most Rohingya were denied the right to vote. Wai Wai Nu kept her passport and vote only because she lives in Yangon, far from Rakhine state, and because her political family are fairly influential.

“My passion is to work on youth and women’s issues generally,” Wai Wai Nu said, “but after the conflict happened in 2012, I realised that there are very few organisations working on the Rohingya and talking about the Rohingya, and there are no organisations working with the Rohingya women. I had to do something.”

After her release from prison, Wai Wai Nu set up the Women Peace Network of Arakan, which advocates for change at both a grassroots and parliamentary level, and promotes ‘mutual understanding’ and peace between women and youth from different ethnic groups.

“Regardless of your status or your ethnicity or your gender, you should have the same rights and dignity as a human being,” she said. “And that should be protected under the constitution, and by the practices of the law.”

Photographed by Charlotte England

Saw Mra Razar Lin, 56, Peace Negotiator

A guard helped me edge past a growling guard dog and showed me to Saw Mra Razar Lin’s room at the Myanmar Peace Centre in Yangon. Birds sang in the garden as I walked in on Saw Mra Razar Lin tying her longyi, having completely forgotten my appointment.

Saw Mra Razar Lin is one of very few women peace negotiators in Myanmar. She is also a former soldier, who once fought against the junta government.

Born in a small village in Rakhine State, Saw Mra Razar Lin said her father always encouraged her to see herself as equal to men. In 1988, she was working as a head teacher in a primary school when pro-democracy protests swept Myanmar and inspired her to become a political activist. Soon she was forced to go into hiding in the Bangladeshi border region. “There were no women, only armed struggle groups,” she said, explaining that she joined one of these groups largely out of necessity. “I faced a lot of difficulties for about three years along the border, no medicine, no blanket, insufficient food,” she said.

Despite joining the fighting, Saw Mra Razar Lin said she never stopped thinking about how to bring about peace and democracy, and in 2012, she volunteered to join peace negotiations between the government and ethnic armed groups on behalf of the Arakan Liberation Party.“I don’t want fighting, I don’t want to see any bloodshed in Rakhine state or Myanmar,” she said, adding that she thinks it is particularly important for more women — who are heavily affected by conflict — to participate in peace talks.

I considered removing Saw Mra Razar Lin from this list because of her allegedly problematic views on the Rohingya. Saw Mra Razar Lin has apparently previously said that, although she ‘respects human rights’, she will not acknowledge the Rohingya as a Burmese ethnic group — presumably instead considering them illegal immigrants — an attitude which is directly contributing to a slow genocide in Rakhine state. I have left her in because she is undeniably changing Myanmar, and also because to remove her would simply be to erase an issue that should be highlighted, especially given how widespread Saw Mra Razar Lin’s alleged views are among otherwise educated and politically sound people in Myanmar. Saw Mra Razar Lin declined to comment on the issue.

Photographed by Charlotte England

Pyo Let Han, 35, Feminist Writer

"Sitting in her small office on the second floor of a tall, narrow building in downtown Yangon, Pyo Let Han quickly lists three things she is proud of. Firstly, she is proud to be a feminist writer, the author of three novels centred around the experiences of women. Secondly she is proud of having started Rainfall, Myanmar’s first feminist magazine. And finally, she is proud of having found herself, “not as somebody’s wife, or somebody’s daughter, but as myself”.

In her books — which she shows me on display in a local bookshop we choose at random — Pyo Let Han challenges traditional, cultural and social norms through fiction. Through exposure to new ideas, she hopes to shock her readers into changing their opinions. “I think I wrote the first book in Myanmar about the love between two women,” she told me, of her first novel.

Recently, Pyo Let Han has expanded into non-fiction writing. Rainfall intends to make feminism accessible to women from every social strata, including those who may not usually have access to feminist ideas.

“Sometimes, I think that I was born a feminist,” Pyo Let Han said, laughing, explaining that she grew up questioning traditional ideas about women and gender – like the belief that women’s clothes are inherently dirty, and the double standards surrounding sex and virginity.

But despite questioning women’s subordinate status from a young age, it took Pyo Let Han a while to find her vocation, she said, telling me that in her 20s she struggled to become a graphic designer instead of a writer. She credits her ex-husband with first encouraging her to write and helping her to publish her first novel, but she explains that, despite his support, she felt she “didn’t fit in married life”. “I wanted to stand by my own, I found myself, I started my career life when I was 31, now I am very happy.”

Photographed by Charlotte England

Tin San, 34, She Leads Participant

“Yes, I would definitely vote for a woman candidate,” Tin San told me, sitting poised in the wheelchair she had to share with another disabled woman, on occasion manoeuvring herself onto the ground to give her friend, on crutches, a chance to rest.

Tin San is one of 513 women who are all changing Myanmar together through Burmese NGO Yaung Chi Thit’s “She Leads” initiative, a programme which trains women in electoral and leadership skills. She is also one of several women recruited for the programme directly from MILI, the Myanmar Independent Living Initiative, an advocacy group that aims to empower disabled people.

I spoke to Tin San at a training event organised and facilitated by She Leads participants, showing villagers how to correctly fill out a ballot slip. The tiny, dusty village was far from wheelchair accessible, but Tin San was patient and uncomplaining, telling me she was very grateful to be able to attend and proud of the women speaking to the crowd.

“We want to mobilise women to participate in the election, also we need to change women’s thoughts and ideas,” explained Khin Hla, the programme director, adding that already six women from She Leads had decided to stand as election candidates and more than 70 were working as polling station officers or observers.

Photographed by Charlotte England

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