Just recently there have been a number of severe attacks on and close to the Thai-Burma border.

Since the 21st of September the DKBA (Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, who are allies with the Burma Army) have attacked a number of Karen villages inside Burma. The villagers are now not allowed to leave without permission. Villagers are being used as forced labour and minesweepers. So far, four people have stepped on landmines - two have died from their injuries. Over 250 people in surrounding areas have fled to the border near Mae Sot, seeking safety. More are expected to arrive in the next week or so. Partners has been able to immediately supply rice, medicine, knives, cooking pots, mats, blankets, mosquito nets and stoves to those who are in desperate need of help.

One of the villages attacked is home to a good friend of Partners. She ran a clinic there which Partners supports. When the DKBA attacked they took all of her medicine and materials. Our friend managed to escape the attack, but because of safety issues, she cannot yet return to her village.

We have also heard confirmed reports that DKBA and Burma Army soldiers are crossing the border into Thailand to carry out attacks on Karen villages. Another good friend of ours has had to go into hiding with his family because of DKBA presence in their village, which is in Thailand. On the 11th of October, the DKBA and Burma Army soldiers burned down the home of a KNLA (Karen National Liberation Army) colonol's home in Thailand and laid landmines nearby. When the Thai army checked out the house, a Thai soldier stepped on the landmine and was killed.

It is a very messy and difficult situation along the border. Please support us as we seek to get aid and relief to those who need it most. Also pray that the DKBA and Burma Army soldiers will stop violently attacking innocent Karen people.

Thank you,

Sarah Armitage
Partners Relief & Development UK

(The DKBA is a breakaway group of the KNLA. The KNLA is the main Karen resistance army for the Karen. The DKBA has allied itself with the Burma Army, the military wing of the SPDC regime.)

At times the need we see before us is overwhelming and it’s difficult to work out what we can do, especially when our lives are so busy. However, we have a creative God, who is well able to give us ideas within our means.

Early in 2008 wife and busy mother of two Anna Nilsson wanted to do something to help the displaced children of Burma. The idea of knitting jumpers for babies came to mind. “My mother-in-law gave me a simple pattern and knitting is something inexpensive that I can do as I wind down from a busy day. It brings me pleasure to know that I’m helping. I pray for the children that will wear the jumpers, and each one is sent with the love of my family.”

Anna spoke to friends about the idea, and there are now over 15 people knitting, including a craft group who have been meeting for years. Host Annette Bird says that they have taken the ‘jumpers for Burmese babies’ idea on as a group project. Those who don’t knit have contributed funds for posting the jumpers to Chiang Mai. Others who crochet are working on their own patterns.

If you’d like to knit love into jumpers for babies in Burma send an email to liberty778@hotmail.com with “jumper pattern please” in the subject bar and the pattern will be emailed through to you.

Before the Cyclone Nargis crisis, I sat in a meeting with a man from Burma who outlined a story of human tragedy akin to a Hollywood blockbuster script. But, unlike the Hollywood myths of our time, this story is true.

In Chin State, (an area in north-western Burma, bordering Bangladesh and India) there is a famine. Every fifty years, a certain species of bamboo flowers. This natural phenomenon causes exponential rat reproduction. These rats eat rice crops and other food sources,
resulting in famine.

People are starving and the impact of the famine is exaggerated by the Burma Army’s unwillingness to value the lives of the people they govern.

Within the past few days we have received confirmed reports of 44 deaths by starvation. All children. Each has a name, family and home. These children are the faces of the famine in Chin state.

As always, Partners is positioned to assist. We have sent in rice but we need your help to shower love on these people. Starvation has to be one of the worst ways to die; these people are only a whisper away from that reality. Please do what you can to help.

In addition to food assistance, this month, Partners is deploying staff to provide relief training for teams on the front-line of this crisis. As a part of this deployment, Kathryn Halley (Australian RN working full-time with Partners) and I will be in India to provide primary health care training to these teams.

Your partnership of love is a vital ongoing thread of love and hope to the people directly impacted by disaster, disease and dictatorship. Thank you for caring and doing what you can to pour love on the people of Burma.

I was one of a fortunate few expatriates who gained access to the Delta area and was able to spend time visiting villages and meeting some of the local aid workers who have managed to get aid through despite the attempts of the government to restrict access to the disaster area. It was a privilege to rub shoulders with local heroes like these people, who also assisted in the clean-up process witnessing more horrific sights during that time than anyone should ever see in a lifetime. It is wonderful to be able to resource these local groups with aid supplies bought with Partners donations, and witness how effectively they are getting aid deep into the cyclone ravaged area.

I heard many tragic stories firsthand from the cyclone survivors. Many were encouraged when I told them that I represented love and prayers from Partners supporters from around the world including New Zealand and Australia. They were encouraged that people so far away would be concerned with their plight.

What difference could one person like me make? One distraught woman, of a similar age to me, shared how she had heard her mother calling for help from the rice field but both her and her husband were carrying two of their children each trying to keep all heads above the rising water and were unable to go to her aid. This family lost their home and all of their belongings but fortunately all of their children miraculously survived. However now they are grieving the loss of their mother and grandmother. Who else around her had the strength to listen to her tell her story over again as if it was the first time, when everyone else had their own tragic story? Instead God supplied the ears of an Australian. I offered reassurance that she had made the right choice as a mother, a gentle squeeze of the hand and a prayer of blessing over their new home and her family. I attempted to instill hope that many on the other side of the world are being moved into action to pray, to give, and to be a voice for the suffering people of Burma.

Amidst the tragedy there were many stories of miraculous survival. Many villagers huddled together in monasteries and churches for safety. In one village three babies were born during the cyclone. Anyone who has given birth will no doubt admire the tenacity of these women and their babies! What a privilege to share these people’s stories, to see the ongoing delivery of aid and provisions and to offer some hope amongst the chaos. Not speaking Burmese didn’t seem to be a barrier in my attempt at using my life skills to make a difference. It’s amazing how a squeeze of the hand or a reassuring smile crosses all boundaries.

Of course surviving the cyclone was a miracle for many, and yet in many ways I feel that the journey has only just begun for these people. With entire communities now under reconstruction survivors are pleading for ongoing supplies of food, shelter and equipment and rice seeds for farming. They are especially grateful for the love that has been expressed through the aid received already. Let’s keep showing love in action. We are making a difference!

Kathryn Halley
Partners Australia

Saw Keh Leh looked strong and handsome. His eyes radiated something that I did not have the words to describe. A look that would have compelled me to trust and follow, had he been my leader. During our talk I realized that he was indeed a leader, a leader whom the world should watch and learn from.
“Tell me about the night of the cyclone,” I urged him. As he started to share I was drawn into a story that sounded more like a plot of a movie that would describe the end of the world, than a true story that had happened only weeks ago. This is what he shared:

We came from the village Toung Goh from Lah Phutta Township. In my village there were 400 people before the cyclone hit. On the night of the Cyclone, 311 of them died. All the survivors have now left the village that was completely destroyed. I was the last one to leave our village. I was the village headman, a man with much land and many riches. Now I have nothing left, and I will never return to my land. It has been stolen by the military and they will never allow me to go back and grow rice on the land of my ancestors. If I go back again, I will become their slave. I will never go back to serve them.

On the day of the Cyclone Nargis we endured a strong wind that lasted all day. We were hiding in our houses hoping the wind would stop and that our houses would endure its power. The wind started t 10.00 A.M and got stronger as the day went on. It was the very strongest from 7-8 P.M. Then suddenly all got very quiet. There was no wind. No rain. No sound. We were all relieved that the storm had passed and we survived. We did not know that this was the beginning of our end. During the quiet the water started coming. It increased so fast. About 6 feet at the time. We all ran to the highest point in our village, which was where we had our church building. As the water kept rising we tried to save the children by lifting them up on the rafters of the church. That was the highest point we could get them. Some of us tried to hold the children close to ourselves. In the end the water had risen to 15 feet.

Then the force of the waves and after a while, the force of the wind, made the church collapse. The small children that we had wanted to save so desperately all fell into the water and drowned. I was holding my youngest daughter. The water covered my head and I tried to keep my arms in the air, and my daughter above the water. But I could not hold on as the water swept me off my feet and we were swept away. When I hit a tree, I clung to my daughter and I held on to the tree. That tree saved our lives.

All night I held on to the tree while the water rushed around me. I did not know what was happening to the people I loved. At 3 A.M the water level and waves started to decrease and soon it was all back in the ocean. What I saw was the destruction of my world. Everything was gone. There were the dead people on the ground. I found my own son still alive. He is only 9, and he survived the night by holding on to a cluster of bamboo. There were less than 100 of us still alive. All the others were gone. We were so exhausted after the night of fighting with death that we had no strength left to bury the dead.

The biggest problem was the lack of water. We had to save all our energy in order to stay alive. I tried to organize my people. We cut up the flesh of the dead animals and ate it. We drank the juice from the coconuts. The sea had polluted all the fresh water, so we could only drink the coconut juice the first few days. We were afraid that a new storm would come the following night, so with the strength we had left we built some rafts with bamboo and animal hair. Then we sat on the rafts in the evening waiting for the new storm. Even though the next storm never came, we still were always expecting it. During the days we dug up wet rice that we ate. We also dug a new well for water to drink. One of the young survivors went to a neighboring village asking for help. He returned with one sack of rice that we shared.

Every day we sat there waiting for somebody to come and rescue us. We saw helicopters flying above us daily, but they never paid any attention to us. One day we saw 6 ships on the sea, but they too did not seem to see us. After a week we were finally able to get a boat to come and recue our people and people from neighboring villages who had suffered the same. The boat took 200 people with them to Lah Phuta. But I did not go with the first boatload of 200. As my people’s leader I felt that it was my duty to stay behind with the ones who did not get space on the boat. I knew the 200 would be OK on the boat. I wanted to make sure the 10 people that were left did not perish. After 9 more days of waiting our recue finally came. My people went to find shelter at a church compound. They were given food, medicines and shelter there. I myself went to Rangoon to try to find some work to provide for my family, but there was no work for me there. So I decided to come to this refugee camp to start a new life here with my family and relatives. I gave up on my village. I owned 70 acres that all has become government land now. The government will force my people into small huts that are owned by the military and they will force the people to work the land for the benefit of the military. The military needs rice for their soldiers and they are forcing my people to grow rice on their land so the military will have enough.

I have no faith in change. I have no hope for a better future for Burma. I decided to take my family here to this camp because their future is better here than on the land of my ancestors. We have no land here, but we do not have to be slaves for the regime that has stolen our land and the future of our children.

Well, I am back from Rangoon, a few weeks older, a few years wiser, and a lot more determined to keep standing up for truth in this hopeless situation. Rangoon city itself was great, but it was excruciatingly sad to see how extensive the abuse and mismanagement of the Burmese military junta really is. We have confirmed reports of Burmese military personnel demanding bribes to allow aid to reach the affected, rape, and forced labor in the delta areas. One friend I met there had a meeting with the Minister of Disaster Response, and was told that there was a bank account in Singapore, and if funds were deposited, the necessary clearance to visit the delta would be granted. Even while people starve to death, these overly rich generals and businessmen are cashing in. (My friend refused to pay)

Villagers, mostly ethnic minorities, are being forced to build army camps in exchange for small amounts of food, and in some areas ethnic minorities are being ignored altogether. There are also many reports that the army is forbidding people to bury or dispose of the dead left after the cyclone over a month ago. The idea I guess is that they want the people to leave the area and move on, although one thing I have learned here is that it is futile to try and figure out why crazy people do the things they do. And even while over a million go hungry amid the death and destruction left behind by Cyclone Nargis, this bunch of pompous generals are still launching attacks against the ethnic minorities along its borders. Just last week the military attacked Karen villages in Papun district, forcing over 1000 civilians into hiding in the jungles.

Overall, I spent two weeks working with our partner organization in Rangoon that shall go unnamed for their ongoing security. These guys are doing a great job of dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, even though they are hampered at every turn by the government. We were able to train and equip a group of over 30 Burmese nationals, consisting of doctors and nurses to go out to the affected areas where no foreigner is able to go. These teams were able to provide and are still providing necessary medicine, food and shelter to thousands of victims of the cyclone and the oppression of their own government. By far the real heroes of this tragedy, the Burmese people themselves have pulled together and are doing the best they can to help the 1.5 million people affected. I was just happy to be a small part of helping them do a great job. The majority of my time was spent writing articles for reports and publication, as well as helping in the office with IT stuff and training, and any other jobs that needed doing. As a big white guy, I was never able to actually reach the delta area where the need is the greatest. Our international staff were confined to the city, no one was allowed past the first army checkpoint. The possibility to get smuggled in was open at one point, but in the end, I felt it better not to go this route, as I would only get deported, whereas anyone caught helping would be arrested and imprisoned.

It was a great to see how things work in a situation like this, and seeing the way the Burmese junta works was a real eye opener. I am very grateful for the opportunity to have gone, I learned so much from those brave people on the ground in Rangoon. These incredible people impressed me every day with their ability to deal with the terrible situation with grace and empathy. The sad fact is, they have way too much practice, they have been dealing with the callous evil of the junta for fifty years. One young woman that I will never forget lost her sister and family to the cyclone, yet she was on one of the first of our teams to leave and bring aid to the survivors. Everyone from these areas had lost someone, mothers, brothers, sons, friends. No one was spared, but what got to me the most was the attitude of those left behind. No one waited around for outside help; perhaps they knew that it wouldn’t come. They simply went about the daily tasks of finding food, shelter and water.

I could share with you a hundred stories of survival, of loss, corrupt government officials, of destruction. But the fact is, although those things happened, and are still happening, the harsh reality is that these people are on their own, and they know it. But they don’t quit, they don’t complain. They get on with life, they survive. I admire that. I am glad I got the chance to meet them.

Yesterday evening I saw a young man on stage in the restaurant where we were eating wearing a t-shirt that said “world without strangers”. During my morning workout, I couldn’t get that phrase out of my head, and I tried to figure out what it meant. It has stuck with me the entire morning.

Three weeks after Cyclone Nargis ravaged Burma’s Irrawaddy delta area, Rangoon residents are returning to normal life. The same cannot be said for the devastated southern delta region though, where reports are still coming in of people dying from disease and even starvation. Unconfirmed reports have even come in of cannibalism among the survivors. The military’s half-hearted and unbelievably ignorant relief effort have forced many to dig through the mud of their ruined fields to find rice that was planted right before the cyclone hit just to survive, while international relief organizations fight frustration and boredom in Yangon and neighboring Thailand waiting for the generals to grant them access.

Meanwhile, the corrupt and bloated regime that has mismanaged every aspect of this crisis continues forward with the constitutional referendum that is widely regarded by critics and human rights watchdogs as a sham. A taxi driver we spoke to here in Rangoon laughed when we asked if he thought life would be different after the referendum, and was uncharacteristically open about his feelings that the regime was lying, and that nothing would actually change. Everywhere you go, the propaganda is visible, from the newspapers to signs in the streets proclaiming Burma to be peaceful and on the road to wealth and democracy. Nothing could be further from the truth though, as the military is still attacking villages in the ethnic areas, forcing more and more people to flee to neighboring countries, despite the international scrutiny placed upon it by the cyclone.

In an age where the word “democracy” is proclaimed by every illegal and corrupt regime from Africa to Asia and beyond, the reclusive Burmese generals seems to have a unique take on what it means to be “democratic”. Apparently, it means forcing the population to vote “yes” to a constitution that guarantees power to the same fat, out of touch generals that have run this once beautiful and advanced country into poverty and world disregard. The fact that the entire world has granted Burma’s regime legitimacy for years by allowing them membership in the UN and other international organizations has only made the situation worse.

But hope still grows in the charred and ruined soil that is Burma today. Burmese nationals have stepped up and continue to send aid and help to the ravaged delta area. Daily trucks are sent to the devastated region carrying rice, water, and temporary shelter for the people there. Although no one here believes that the government will change, they still choose to take the high road and help their brothers in need. Everyday we are receiving reports from national staff and others about desperate people being given the food, water, and shelter they need to get through another day. Amid the death and destruction, the floating bodies of people and livestock, ordinary people are becoming extraordinary heroes. Buddhist, Christian, and animist are pulling together and crossing religious lines, breaking down long-held barriers and doing the best they can to help those affected by this tragedy.

As I thought about these reports, and as I meet with more and more people who lived through the devastation, I am beginning to understand what it means to be a “world without strangers”. Its not that we know everybody, or that everyone on the planet is our friend. It’s the fact that we are all human, and in some way or another we are all in this together. The strands that hold us together in times of crisis are so much stronger than the petty prejudices and hatreds that try to keep us apart so much of the rest of the time. Hopefully after all the work is done, after all the dead are buried and mourned, after homes are rebuilt, these relationships will continue, that friendships will be strengthened, and that hope will spring forth anew in this country that has been destroyed by the greed and selfishness of a few evil men.