Giang Nguyen/Loa
Amazing things can happen when like-minded people come together to pool ideas and exchange experiences and lessons. The three-day study tour on the “Lessons from Myanmar,” organized by pro-democracy party Việt Tân, kicked off earlier this week with a special welcome at the headquarters of the National League for Democracy in Yangon.
National League for Democracy chairperson Aung San Suu Kyi gives a speech during an election campaign rally in Hpruso, Myanmar’s Kayah State on September 10, 2015. Some 30 million people will have the chance to vote — many for the first time in their lives — in the elections, the only nationwide polls contested by Suu Kyi’s party in a quarter of a century as the nation emerges from decades of stifling military rule. (Photo: Ye Aung Thu/AFP/Getty Images)
Fourteen Vietnamese democracy activists, human rights defenders and citizen journalists met with Burmese civil society groups including the Democratic Voice of Burma, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, and the National League for Democracy. Half of the group travelled from various regions of Vietnam, while the other seven came from the Vietnamese diaspora. Another seven Vietnamese citizens were barred by Vietnamese authorities from leaving the country.
The NLD had been declared illegal by Myanmar’s military junta but was later allowed to register as a political party. The organization won a landslide victory in the November 8 general election that was hailed by the international community and U.S. President Barack Obama as Myanmar’s first free vote in 25 years, marking a milestone in its people’s perilous struggle for democracy and human rights.
Shirts with Aung Sun Suu Kyi’s TIME magazine cover printed on them hang near the National League for Democracy headquarters in Yangon on November 13, 2015 in Yangon, Myanmar. Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy has won a historic landslide victory in the parliamentary elections. The elections were Myanmar’s first openly contested polls in 25 years, following decades of military rule. (Photo by Lauren DeCicca/Getty Images)
During the roundtable and throughout the three days, Vietnam-to-Myanmar participants took away lessons in rallying international support, capacity-building, and organizing – and how those responsibilities can be coordinated between activists in exile and those inside the country.
The study tour also compared notes on Vietnamese and Burmese opposition movements with Generation Wave, a group which was part of an underground political network both inside and outside Burma, and Myanmar Egress, a nonprofit organization founded by Myanmar scholars and social workers.
At the offices of the 88 Generation Students group, prominent activist Ko Ko Gyi, who was among the student leaders that spearheaded the people power uprising in 1988, told Loa what motivated him to keep fighting after three decades in and out of prison. He spent over 17 years in prison on multiple occasions. His resolve and fighting spirit continues to this day; he has said that he will set up his own political party and advocate for change without resorting to violence.
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http://www.loa.fm/post/134943331283/from-myanmar-to-vi%E1%BB%87t-nam-democracy-activists
