Victor Biak Lian
Victor Biak Lian was in his final year at the University of Rangoon when the uprising began. In the spring of 1988, thousands of students took to the streets throughout Burma to demand an end to the dictatorship. Victor, along with other student leaders, was expelled and the university was subsequently closed.
Victor returned to his home in Chin State in Western Burma and continued to be involved in organizing demonstrations during the summer of 1988. In August, the military was sent into the streets to violently crush the democracy movement. In his home town of Harka, Victor and ten student leaders were arrested and imprisoned. Within hours of the arrests, however, a crowd of 15,000 people gathered outside the jail and Victor and the others were hurriedly released.
Victor joined the underground resistance and for the first time traveled throughout much of rural Burma. What he saw on these journeys stunned him. "People were starving. Entire villages were hiding from the military and constantly on the move. There were no schools, no health services. The suffering was terrible."
Convinced that he needed to tell the world what was happening in his country, Victor applied for refugee status in India. He learned English and along with several friends began to document the situation in Burma, producing reports and media releases. This work led to the formation of the Chin Human Rights Organization, a group that continues today to document human rights abuses in Burma's Chin State.
In 1997, with the help of a Canadian church group, Victor and his wife were re-settled in Ottawa and eventually became Canadian citizens. While working several jobs to survive, Victor continued his involvement in Burma's pro-democracy movement. In 1998 he organized in Ottawa the first international meeting of political leaders from Chin State that led to the formation of the Chin Forum. This Forum has embarked on a long process of developing a new constitution for Chin State in anticipation of the day that democracy will be restored. Victor has traveled to a dozen countries around the world to consult with expatriate Chin communities about the new constitution and develop a collective vision of a democratic future. He has also continued to be involved in helping establish refugee support programs in Malaysia and India.
"I told my mother when I left Burma that I would be back in three months," says Victor ruefully. "But now it has been 16 years. Still, I am convinced that someday I will be able to return home and help re-build my country. That is my dream, and my commitment."
The website of the Chin Human Rights Organization can be found at 
www.chro.org.
Bangladesh: Organizing and Resistance
The coastal areas of Bangladesh are the most bio-diverse and environmentally-sensitive areas in the country. They hold one of the largest mangrove forests in the world, a forest that hugs the coastline and is home to many species of birds and animals, including the last remaining Bengal tigers. Here, farmers and fisherfolk have co-existed for centuries, making their living from the bounty of the land and sea.
But these fragile coasts are under threat from industrial aquaculture promoted by government and international financial institutions. In order to increase Bangladesh's foreign exchange earnings, large parts of the coastal lands have been converted to saline ponds to grow shrimp for export. The industry has expanded rapidly, forcing people off the land, often violently, and cutting down the mangrove forests. The result is the destruction of an environment that once supported diverse livelihoods.
Nijera Kori, a long-time counterpart of Inter Pares, is supporting people to resist the industrial take-over of coastal land. For more than a decade, Nijera Kori has helped communities organize to collectively protect themselves. In the past, the well-armed agents of the shrimp industry were able to violently evict people from these areas. The strength of local people, however, is in their numbers. Mobilizing as many people as possible throughout the coastal regions is key to Nijera Kori's strategy.
To day, many parts of coastal Bangladesh are organized and any attempt to forcibly take over land is met by thousands of people determined to resist, even in the face of violence. So effective has been this organizing that many villages have declared themselves "shrimp-free zones", and the shrimp industry has been prevented from entering these areas.
Khushi Kabir, the Coordinator of Nijera Kori, was in Canada recently for a series of meetings arranged by Inter Pares. "It is the people themselves who have resisted this invasion into their communities and their lives," she says. "We came to strengthen the movement, add voice and support it. Producing luxury food at the expense of the coastal poor, and making it affordable to overseas consumers, doesn't make sense. Our priority is to produce food for our own people."
For an account of the social and environmental impact of the shrimp industry in Asia, see "In Defence of Land and Livelihood" in the publications section of the Inter Pares website at www.interpares.ca/en/publications/colworks-archive.php.
| Reviewed June 1, 2004 |  |
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