A new dawn?

Nearly a year ago, I met a remarkable young man, Low Low, in a refugee camp on the Thai-Burmese border.  We shared a short, but memorable journey - you can read about it here:

www.bmsworldmission.org/news-blogs/archive/different-year-same-borders-0

Last Saturday, a week after Burma held their first elections for 20 years, the ruling military junta released Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winning democracy activist.  She has been under house arrest for 15 of the last 21 years.  Suu Kyi (pronounced 'Sue-Chi') won the last election in 1990, but was never allowed to take power - and she remains hugely popular in Burma.

So what might her release, and the recent elections, mean for Low Low, and the others I met last Christmas (pictured above)?  In the short term - nothing.  In fact, if anything, conditions in the camps and along the border have deteriorated over the past few weeks.  In the days after the election, renewed fighting broke out on the border between Karen resistance groups and the Burmese army.  There is much discontent among the Karen and other ethnic minority groups over the way in which the election was run - with many millions of ethnic minority Burmese excluded from voting because their areas were considered 'unsafe' to participate.  No international election observers were allowed into Burma during the election process, and initial results indicate that political parties allied to the military junta have won the majority of the vote.

And yet... and yet.  Reading Aung San Suu Kyi's interview with John Simpson (www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11761133), is it possible to hope - against all the odds - that there is a possibility of change in Burma?  Redemption?  Yes, Suu Kyi has been released before - only to be promptly re-arrested shortly afterwards.  But for Low Low, hearing the news over the camp radio, her release must have been a message of hope.  Hope - a rare commodity for Low Low and the other 138,000 refugees sheltering along the Thai-Burma border.  Let's be praying for the country of Burma in these turbulent days.

Pete Maycock