Exiled prime minister speaks to IU

A world leader told a group in Bloomington about corruption in the Burmese government. \nExiled Prime Minister of Burma Dr. Sein Win spoke to a crowd of 50 Sunday morning at the Leo R. Dowling International Center. The public lecture was part of the Burmese Refugee Scholarship Programs, three days of events for a BRSP Alumni Meeting. \nWin presented the largely non-Burmese audience with a depiction of what life for those still living in Burma. \n"If your salary is not enough, you don't grumble, you take another job or you become corrupt," Win said. \nThe BRSP was approved by the U.S. congress in 1990, as a reaction to events of 1988 in which pro-democracy students and protestors took to the streets to demonstrate against the militarily ruled government. Many of the participants were forced to flee to the surrounding jungles of Burma and eventually live as illegal immigrants in neighboring countries like India or Thailand. Charles Reafsnyder, associate dean of international programs, explained the Burmese refugee experience. \n"Their opportunities in India and Thailand are not very good. They're not residents of the country so they don't have access to state support, higher education, they don't have the same rights that citizens do there," Reafsnyder said. "So it's a very confining and restrictive environment for people to improve themselves, to get education." \nIn 1990, the Burmese government, in an attempt to placate the rising pro-democracy movement, announced it would hold free elections. Pro-democracy supporters quickly formed a party, the National League for Democracy, which won a large majority of the vote. However, the government refused to acknowledge the NLD's claim to power, and reacted by imprisoning members of the elected parliament and party supporters. Many more fled, and formed the National Coalition of Government of the Union of Burma, which operated out of exile and chose Dr. Win as Prime Minister in 1990. \nCarole Myint, program officer for the BRSP, described the current political situation in Burma as "pretty grim."\n"There are still many elected members of Parliament from the 1990 elections that are currently jailed," she said.\nThe BRSP has been operating solely out of IU since its formation. In its first few years of operation, the BRSP was able to bring 15 students a year from refugee camps in Thailand and India and other neighboring countries. \nNow, that number has reduced to four, due to rising costs such as tuition, Reifsnyder said. \nReifsnyder said that many of the current recipients are probably second generation refugees. \n"They were maybe 10 years old when they fled with their parents, who were professors or were politically active in some way with the National League for Democracy," he said, "and they've been living in exile for a decade or 15 years now."\nHre Mang is one of the alumni of the BRSP who attended Win's lecture. He was a student in physics at Mandalay University when he joined the pro-democracy protests that caused him to flee to the jungle where he had to survive for several months before fleeing to India. He described how he and members of his refugee group would have to walk barefoot or in worn shoes on the sandy shores of rivers to avoid the parts of the jungle too dense to hike through. The sand would wear down their feet, causing them to bleed, and some died through loss of blood. Mang recently finished his masters in Public Affairs at IUPUI. He is currently applying to IU Law School in Bloomington. \nWin spoke briefly about the current events affecting Burma, such as the Burmese government caving to U.S. and European Union pressure to surrender its turn to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2006, and President Bush renewing the trade sanctions with Burma for another year. A question and answer session followed his speech.\nHe talked about the support, or lack thereof, from surrounding countries like India and China. \n"(India is) more concentrated on their own interest. Every time when we move in the United Nations General Assembly, India will say, 'This is a Burmese country and other people should not be interfering.' I think India could do more."\nHe talked about the reasons why the government tried to change Burma's official name to Myanmar -- Burma is the name the British gave the country when it was a colony. \n"They want to confuse everybody," he said. "They want to present themselves as ultranationalist."\nAnd the major obstacles he sees is Burmese freedom over the next decade. "The military is still very reluctant and stubborn. We have to push them aside somehow"