Dean Murrell Duster -- announcing the award.
A session on the Philippines --
Nobel Prize winning economist -- A.K. Sen's Development as Freedom -- BTW, A. K. Sen was born and brought up in Mandalay, Burma.4-5-08
For two years now, I have been going to NEIU in Chicago for conferences and seminars related to Burma, sponsored by the Mohammad Mossadegh Fund. http://www.mohammadmossadegh.com/
Mohammad Mossadegh was the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran until 1953 when he was deposed in a CIA engineered plot, which placed the Shah back into power. Before Aug. 1953, the Shah was briefly overseas. Mossadegh had worked for a constitutional monarchy and for Iran to receive more of its oil revenues. The CIA role in the plot was eventually revealed publicly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_Mossadegh
Last year, I was on a panel with Barbara Victor, keynote speaker, author of The Lady, a biography of Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Other panelists last year were Prof. Emeritus Clark Neher and Burma activist Maura Stevens.
This year, I was at NEIU April 2-3 as part of their 13th Annual Asian American Heritage Conference. The events spanned a broad range of topics including Asian Values and Globalization, Contemporary Asian Cinema, Two Decades Since Dictatorship in the Philippines and The Role of the Ethnic Media in the Asian Community. There was also a broad range of cultural and artistic events, but I was not able to catch them all. The one I most regret having missed was Now Ruz – A Celebration of the Iranian New Year.
I was on two panels this year, one on National Autonomy: Examining the 60th Anniversary of India’s and Burma’s Independence, with the Honorable Ashok Kumar Attri, Consul General of India in Chicago, and chaired by Dr. Hamid Akbari, Chair and Assoc. Professor, Management and Marketing, NEIU. Dr. Akbari and his wife Azar are of Iranian descent, and I find many things in common between all of us at the Conference and at NEIU, in our foreign-born backgrounds and American shared values and abiding belief in democracy.
The India and Burma panel caused me to look more closely at the last 60 years in Burma and India. I also added my interest in Chinese economic reforms. My Ph.D. field exams at the University of Pennsylvania were in the Russian, Chinese, Indian and hopefully Burmese economic reforms and problems of communism and transitions to market economies. I have kept up my interests since.
Also on April 2, Girish Rishi, VP and General Manager, Motorola Corporation, Chicago, spoke about market reforms and miracle economic growth in India in the last 15 years. According to Rishi, China is ten years ahead of India, economically speaking.
I concluded my session on India, Burma and China by saying that though spliced between two of the fastest growing economies in the world, India and China, Burma is a basket case. India to our west is not only the world’s 12th largest economy, but also the third largest in purchasing power and the world’s largest democracy, http://www.beyondbooks.com/wcu91/3p.asp -- but I described how troubled I felt by the present Indian government’s seemingly purely commercial and trade approach towards Burma. Even as the monks were marching in Burma last September, Indian companies were busy buying natural gas from Burma and now there is a dispute, with Bangladesh saying that Burma is claiming the offshore plots that belong to it, belong to them.
For Indian economic reforms, see Arvind Panagariya, India’s Economic Reforms: What has been accomplished? What remains to be done? On http://www.adb.org
The Chinese government already has a “natural gas from western to eastern provinces program” in its 16th Five Year Plan and my fear is that, this combined with the Indian and Thai hungers also for (Burmese) natural gas will cause the pipelines to flow out of Burma or through Burma, leaving the Burmese people in the dark.
The other panel I was on at NEIU, was Peace and Democracy in Burma. My co-panelists were -- medical doctor, Dr. Nora Rowley who has worked with Doctors without Borders in the Rohingya (Burmese Muslim) areas in western Burma, and Stacie Freudenberg, Photo Journalist, and was also chaired by Dr. Akbari.
After lunch Stacie gave a “personal tour” of her photographs of Burmese refugees in the Mae Hla camp and migrant workers in Mae Hong Son, near the Burma border in western Thailand. I was struck by Nora Rowley’s deep commitment to Rohingya and human rights in Burma, and by Stacie Freudenberg’s artistic eye as well as her human heart. In a few minutes, she was able to describe for us the fear that the Burmese migrant workers feel. Nora spoke about the Rohingya requiring special permission to marry. A woman who married without permission was stripped naked and paraded in her village. Stacie showed us the thin bar of light below a door in the daytime. The migrant family whose life she documented, lock themselves in, in the daytime, for fear of forced deportation back to Burma. Children are sometimes deported back without their parents and not heard from again.
At the luncheon on the 3rd, I also met Ernest from Burma, who is the son of a famous Burmese movie director. His health has been affected by the struggle, but he is planning a demonstration with Burmese monks soon.
The award came as a complete surprise for me as I have been doing this sort of literary activism for at least a decade now, and few places are as welcoming and supportive as NEIU. It reminds me of a smaller scale Conference on World Affairs, which is also going on right now, and is based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, CO.
The Distinguished Service Award I received was inscribed “In recognition of your Outstanding Dedication and Work in promoting Peace and Democracy in Burma” and was signed by Dean Murrell J.H. Duster, Dean, Academic Development, Diversity and Multicultural Programs, NEIU.
I would like to thank Dean Duster, Asst. Dean Yasmin Ranney, Dr. and Mrs. Hamid Akbari and all the staff at NEIU and the students and Burma activist community, especially Nora Rowley and Stacie Freudenberg and Ernest, for this chance to share ideas and concerns in a supportive environment.
Kyi May Kaung
April 5, 2008
