CHIN COMMUNITY (GERMANY)
STATEMENT ON RUMOURS ABOUT
CHIN SOLDIERS SHOOTING AT DEMONSTRATORS IN BURMA
CCG ev -statement-in-burmese-version
The Rumour
Ever since the first massacre of the students in 1962, General Ne Win’s Military Intelligent Service used to spread words about Chin soldiers shooting at demonstrators. The same thing happened during the 1974 Labor and U Thant Strikes and again during the 1988 uprisings after troops mowed down hundreds of demonstrators. This is part of Ne Win’s stratagem to reduce public hatred towards him or his Burma Army and to instill ethnic hatreds among the oppressed peoples.
This stratagem prove to be successful as some of our Burman brothers believe thoserumours and even spread the word further, unwittingly serving the interest of themilitary dictators . This is due to total ignorant of what happened inside the Burma Army under General Ne Win.
The Reality
Ever since the care-taker government period in 1958-1960 General Ne Win abolishedthe British-era ethnic based battalions and turned the Burma Army into mixed-ethnicbattalions with the majority made up of ethnic Burmans. But Ne Win was careful enough not to eliminate the names of these battalions, so the names 1st,2nd or 3rd. Chin Rifles remains even though these battalions are no more made up of Chins oldiers.The majority of soldiers in any battalion is the Burman soldiers and the Chinsoldiers if they ever exist are made up of 20 to 30 or even less in each of thesebattalions. It was Ne Win’s strategy to use soldiers bearing the badges and uniformsof Chin battalions to crack down whenever unrest occurred. So, many people who are not aware of the changes inside the Army easily believe the Chin soldiers areshooting.
The Chin Revolution
One important fact is, nowadays the ever increasingly racist SPDC regime no morepromote Christian Chin soldiers to higher ranks. And at the same time the Chin youthare very clever and intelligent and very much globalized. In response to the military regime’s persecution and hardships and sufferings imposed upon them the Chin
youth are leaving behind their beloved land temporarily in the thousands to study political science, economics, theology etc. in the western countries. At this very moment there are already about 500 Chin students in the universities in the western world and the number is increasing. This makes the racist military regime very
nervous. If we are to expect the successive Burmese governments to grant us state scholarships to study abroad, less than 10 Chin students would have the chance to get it in ten years! So this is sort of an “unintended consequences” of the SPDC regime the mass Chin exodus is creating. This is part of our Chin revolution -
knowledge revolution.
Our Vision
The pro-democracy political organizations like the Chin National Front, Chin NationalLeague for Democracy, Zomi National Congress etc have been fighting for there storation of democracy and federalism in our country. Non political organizations like the Chin Forum and civil societies, including the Chin Community (Germany) are
formed all over the world to promote democracy, freedom and federalism. Our aim is to bring back modernity and establish a peaceful and prosperous federal democratic Union so that our country could rejoin the civilized world. Successive Burman dominated central governments have been wasting the country’s precious natural
and human resources by heightening racial hatreds among the peoples and there by unnecessarily ruined all the opportunities to build a united and prosperous Union.
We condemn all barbarious killings
Definitely all the Chin people strongly condemn the shootings and killings of peaceful demonstrators as uncivilized and barbarious acts. Whoever shoot the peaceful demonstrators must face justice along with their superiors who actually gave orders to do so.
CHIN COMMUNITY (GERMANY)
October 2007
Tags: 2007, DEMONSTRATOR, statement