HORRORS OF FLIGHT FROM OPPRESSION G

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Subject: HORRORS OF FLIGHT FROM OPPRESSION GIVE WAY TO THANKS

The Flint Journal 
(Flint, Michigan)
November 25, 1999

HORRORS OF FLIGHT FROM OPPRESSION GIVE WAY TO THANKS
By Betty Brenner 
Journal Religion Editor

Captions for attached photos:
[KTO.jpg] Dr. Kyaw Thet Oo, a leader of activists demonstrating against the
Burmese military government, has been living with his children on Flint's east
side since July. Dr. Oo believes he and his wife would be in jail and maybe
dead if they still lived in Burma. Behind him is the All Burma Students'
Democratic Front flag, the fighting peacock.

[ZMN.gif] Zune May Ngae laughs with classmates in her I\nglish as a second
language class through Mott Adult High School held at the Zimmerman Center.


Dr. Kyaw Thet Oo exhibits little emotion as he tells the stories of horror and
repression that mark his life, though sometimes he offers a small, almost
ironic laugh.

Among the tales gathered as he escaped his war-ravaged native country and
eventually settled in Flint are depictions of jungles, death and fear- -but
also of finding hope in his family, his children, and his mission to help other
refugees.

Among the tales:
* The young doctor's sleeve was clipped by a bullet when government soldiers
shot at protesters during demonstrations against the military government of
Burma.  The man next to him was shot dead.

* His wife's father was captured and tortured to death for trying to help
students flee to safety.

* Dr. Oo conducted at least 20 amputations beneath makeshift tents in the
jungle using flashlights and only basic anesthetics. The amputees had stepped
on land mines in the jungle.

* While in the jungle, Dr. Oo met his wife, and they started their family.

But today, on Thanksgiving, Dr. Oo is giving thanks because he lives in Flint. 
If he still were in Burma, he and his wife would be in jail, tortured and maybe
dead, he said.

Or if they returned to Thailand, where they lived for about two years, he would
not be able to practice medicine legally and would be in fear of deportation
back to Burma. 

"Our only way out," he said, "is to settle in a third country.

"This is not my place," he said, "but I'm glad to be here. At least I'm legal
here ,and my children will have an education, and I can help handicapped
people."

Dr. Oo was a leader of activists demonstrating against Burma's military
government.  After he fled for his life to the jungle, he was in charge of
health for the insurgent All Burma Students' Democratic Front.

Now, thanks to a local church and a Flint couple who have organized Burmese
refugee assistance efforts, he is living with his wife, three children and two
handicapped young Burmese men in a two-story five-bedroom house on Flint's east
side.

The home was bought for their use by the Flint couple, Ken and Visakha
Kawasaki, and repaired and furnished by members of the Unitarian Universalist
Church of Flint.

Inside that home, two flags hanging in the dining room provide a hint of the
family's history.  One is the flag of the Karen National Union, an ethnic
resistance group that controlled the area in Burma to which Dr. Oo fled when he
believed his life was in danger; the other is that of the All Burma Students'
Democratic front, which was organized in the jungle to carry on the fight
against the non-democratic government.

Dr. Oo's saga began in March 1988, when student demonstrations were brutally
repressed. Hundreds died and schools closed.

Dr. Oo graduated from an institute of medicine in Rangoon and worked as an
intern in a government hospital. He watched as government soldiers took from
their hospital beds some of his patients who had been in the peaceful
demonstrations. Some died on the way to prison; others were beaten to death,
Dr. Oo said.

So Dr. Oo and others began operating secret clinics in houses where the
government couldn't find them.

The main uprising, with millions taking part, began in June of that year, grew
until August and continued into September.

Dr. Oo was part of a team of doctors who set up 24 free clinics in Rangoon for
those injured in the demonstrations. He also marched in the demonstrations and
went to mass meetings.

On Aug. 9, the day after a general strike across Burma, members of his medical
team participated in a demonstration in Rangoon. After gunfire dispersed the
crowd, Dr. Oo and others began treating the wounded.  That was when he was
arrested.  

He was put in a truck with some injured women to be taken to a temporary
detention center, but he and another doctor were released.

He credits his release to being in a doctor's uniform.

During the uprising, the government massacred thousands; about 10,000 Burmese
fled to insurgent-held border areas and neighboring Thailand, and repression
became more constant than ever, Dr. Oo said.

"Many people died in my hands." 

One was a girl, 13, still in her school clothes. She was shot in the chest.

"It was very brutal," he said.

Because the government started to hunt for him as a prominent activist, he hid
for a while, "but then I decided I had to leave." He traveled 200 miles in
secret--one day by bus, half a day by boat and five days on foot--to the Karen
controlled area on the border of Burma and Thailand.

In the jungle there, he was in charge of health for the student front. He
designed programs to train medics. He also set up six clinics of his own, most
in thatched-roof buildings

Medicine and other supplies were sent in from outside Burma, including by the
Kawasakis, who had seen some of the 1988 uprising and visited the resistance
area once a year afterward.

Caring for the wounded in the jungles was a major job. Injuries from government
offensives that pushed back the resistance zone kept Dr. Oo busy.

"I carried a gun, but I never had the time to shoot," he said.

One mortar shell landed close to him, but didn't explode. Another time, he was
caught in an ambush but escaped. Another shell exploded about 10 feet from him,
rupturing his left ear drum and leaving him with only 60 percent of hearing in
that ear.

Yet it was in the jungle that he met his wife, Zune May Ngae, a Karen
schoolteacher and daughter of the commander of the armed wing of the Karen
National Union. Two of his children, a daughter, 10, Paw Pah Paw, and a son, 6,
Doh Htoo, were born in the jungle.

And there he met the two young men living with the family. They were his
patients in the jungle. Students in the uprising, they followed their leaders
to the border and became freedom fighters.

One, Zaw Min Khaing, caught malaria of the brain in the jungle. He now suffers
from paraparesis but is improving. The other, Yan Kyaw Aung, was shot in the
head. Part of his brain was blown off. The left half of his body is partially
paralyzed, but now he walks with a cane.   

Another young man came with them, but moved to Fort Wayne, Ind,, to join
Burmese there who share his Islamic faith. 

Because of their inability to care for themselves, Dr. Oo said, "I took care of
everything--food, ,clothing, shelter and applying for refugee resettlement."

The central government continued to attack and destroy his hospitals, the last
one in 1997. In that year, there was a split among the Karens. One side of the
split gave Dr. Oo an ultimatum: Join or we will come and get you.

He chose to flee to Thailand, because he considered the faction terrorists. But
Thailand was not accepting refugees from Burma and was deporting to the border
any they found.

One of the handicapped young men now living with Dr. Oo was arrested and taken
to the border, but he returned to the small home outside Bangkok, Thailand's
capital, where the Oo family then lived. Dr. Oo, too, was stopped, but he could
speak Thai well enough that those who arrested him thought he was Thai and let
him go. And sometimes he bribed them.

During his two years living in Thailand, Oo's younger daughter, Thet Su Hnin,
now 18 months old, was born. And he provided illegal medical care to other
refugees.

Although the Thai government refused to accept the Burmese as legal refugees,
the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees did so, sent money and found
places for the refugees to resettle.

Three countries, the United States, Australia and Canada, offered to take some.

The refugees arrived here in July. The young men and Dr. Oo's wife are studying
English as a second language at the Zimmerman Center, where the Flint School
District offers adult classes. The two older children are enrolled in Potter
School in Flint. The entire family also is taking extra English lessons from
church members.

Dr. Oo speaks English because his medical institute work was in English and
because Burma formerly was a British colony.

Dr. Oo also is studying to take the tests for a license to practice medicine.
He works for the Burmese Relief Center--USA, the nonprofit refugee assistance
agency created by the Kawasakis.

Although he now lives in the United States, Oo has not forgotten his
co-fighters back home.

He raises money, seeks media exposure for the groups and writes grant proposals
for refugee assistance--all through a computer in his living room 

The method lacks the hands-on bedside manner he adopted as a doctor in his
homeland and as a political refugee in the jungle, but, he said, at least he is
alive to do the work. 

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