{"id":1677,"date":"2025-07-10T06:01:42","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T06:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/?p=1677"},"modified":"2025-07-10T06:01:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T06:01:43","slug":"compassionate-letter-seven-racial-discriminations-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/2025\/07\/10\/compassionate-letter-seven-racial-discriminations-everywhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Compassionate Letter Seven: Racial Discriminations Everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Author: Bo Aung Din<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dear Nan,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thank you for your kind letter. I\u2019m relieved to know you\u2019re not angry anymore, and I understand your decision to stay longer with your aunts. Their grief is deep\u2014their husbands handed cruel prison sentences merely for political discussion. They weren\u2019t criminals, nor had they participated in violence. Yet, here they are, suffering behind bars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ours is a country where distributing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights can land you in jail. Imagine! A document adopted by the United Nations on December 10, 1948, as a global standard of dignity and freedom\u2014treated as contraband in Myanmar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan once said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Human rights are foreign to no culture and native to all nations. It is a mirror that flatters us and shames us, that bears witness to a record of progress for parts of humanity while revealing a history and reality of horrors for others.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He reminded the world that people do not oppose human rights\u2014it is their leaders who do. In Myanmar and other ASEAN nations, dictators dismiss human rights as a \u201cWestern concept\u201d merely to mask their repression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Compared to the pain those families endure, our temporary separation is bearable. You are always close in my thoughts. Even now, our son is playing a song we both love, teasing me as I write to you. It\u2019s comforting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Do you remember when we first introduced him to Hti Saing\u2019s songs? He called them “black-and-white songs”\u2014outdated and boring. But look at him now\u2014searching through Burmese shops for VCDs of old music. Though he was born abroad, he carries the blood of Burma\u2014Bamar from me, Shan from you, and a shared Burmese spirit that binds us to our Chinese and Muslim brothers and sisters. Only after leaving home did I understand how strong those ties truly are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Nan, we\u2019ve had our share of arguments. You once told me\u2014citing a psychology book\u2014that every household needs a dominant partner, and that gender equality leads to more divorces in the West. Maybe there\u2019s a sliver of truth in that. But let\u2019s talk seriously about rights and injustice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there were a Guinness World Record for repression, Myanmar\u2019s military rulers would surely win. Imagine\u2014a man was jailed and later died in detention simply for using an unlicensed fax machine. That was Leo Nichols, unofficial consul for Norway and several other countries, jailed in 1996. That belongs in Ripley\u2019s Believe It or Not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gender discrimination? Successive military governments never appointed a single woman as minister or deputy. Yes, there are whispers that generals\u2019 wives\u2014like Daw Kyaing Kyaing\u2014wield power behind the scenes, deciding promotions, business deals, and study tours. But if those stories are true, they expose an even deeper dysfunction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our arguments often reflect wider truths. Our son\u2019s recent choice of music\u2014the song “A Shan Who Visited Mandalay”\u2014shows the feelings of being an outsider. That song echoes the discomfort of a Shan arriving in the Bamar heartland. Yet, the singer and composer, both Shan, found success in Mandalay. Dr. Sai Kham Leik became a medical doctor, earned a master\u2019s degree, and married a Bamar woman. That\u2019s the real Burma\u2014a web of shared lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Now, our son plays your favorite: “The Nature\u2019s Children.” Perhaps it\u2019s his quiet plea for peace, a ceasefire to our daily tensions. I believe the root cause of conflict\u2014whether personal or political\u2014is human ego: the desire to dominate, the fear of being less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Remember our son\u2019s school incident? He kicked a Burmese Muslim classmate. The boy had called him a \u201cmixed blood\u201d\u2014Bamar and Shan. That insult struck hard. He\u2019d heard it from both sides: your relatives calling him \u201cBamar Poke Kalay,\u201d mine calling him \u201cShan Pae Poke.\u201d His identity\u2014supposed to be a bridge\u2014became a battleground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the fault was ours. Adults taught them these slurs. That moment in 1972 coincided with General Ne Win\u2019s infamous speech at the BSPP conference, preparing for the citizenship law. He called Burmese Muslims “mi ma sit, pha ma sit”\u2014bastards. That speech sowed deep seeds of hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ne Win\u2019s failures led him to scapegoat minorities. When socialism collapsed, he blamed others. In 1967, it was the Chinese. By 1972, it was Indians and Muslims. To my Burmese Muslim friends, I apologize. Reopening this wound is painful, but necessary. In Burmese, we say: only if we find the diagnosis can we find the cure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The media became complicit. Even our respected Burmese Chinese friends had to conceal their heritage. Some claimed to be “pure Bamar” out of fear. Ne Win himself was of Hokkien Chinese descent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Contrast that with Bogyoke Aung San. He sought unity. He invited all nationalities to Panglong. Today\u2019s generals try to erase that legacy. Nan, I remember your bravery. When the school headmaster raised the incident, you spoke up. You explained the origin of those hateful words and blamed Ne Win by name. I still admire that moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now, the last memory that lingers: you showing me the newspaper column by Thein Pe Myint of Bo Ta Htaung<\/em>, my favorite journalist. He echoed Ne Win\u2019s slur, “Kala Dain,” contrasting \u201cgood old Indians\u201d with \u201cbad new ones.\u201d We were both furious. We swore off his work forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kofi Annan said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We all fully recognize and respect freedom of the press and expression but it must be coupled with press responsibility. Inciting religious or ethnic hatred in this manner is not acceptable.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Annan was right. Press freedom must never be a license to hate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Yours with love,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Ko Tin Nwe) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bo Aung Din<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author: Bo Aung Din Dear Nan, Thank you for your kind letter. I\u2019m relieved to know you\u2019re not angry anymore, and I understand your decision to stay longer with your aunts. Their grief is deep\u2014their husbands handed cruel prison sentences merely for political discussion. They weren\u2019t criminals, nor had they participated in violence. Yet, here […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1678,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,7,6,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anti-racism","category-articles","category-history","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1693,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1677\/revisions\/1693"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myanmarmuslim.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}