ျပန္လည္ဆုံေတြ႕ျခင္း - ေပါင္းစည္းမႈ (၂)

ျမန္မာျပည္မွ စာ။ ။

ျပန္လည္ဆုံေတြ႕ျခင္း - ေပါင္းစည္းမႈ (၂)

ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ ၂၀၁၂ မတ္လ ၅ ရက္ေန႔က မိတၳီလာၿမိဳ႕တြင္ မဲဆြယ္စည္း႐ုံးေရးမိန္႔ခြန္းေျပာၾကားေနစဉ္ (ဓါတ္ပုံ ေအပီ)

ကရင္ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးကုိယ္စားလွယ္အဖြဲ႕ဝင္မ်ားကုိႀကိဳဆုိရလုိ႔ ဝမ္းသာရျခင္းနဲ႔ တစိမ္းတရံစာမ်ားအၾကား ပထမ ဆုံးေတြ႕ဆုံရျခင္းဆိုတာထက္ ပုိမုိကာ မိသားစုျပန္လည္ဆုံစည္းရမႈအျဖစ္ ေတြ႕႐ိွရေၾကာင္းကုိ ၿပီးခဲ့တဲ့လက ကၽြန္မေရးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီစ႐ိုက္ဝန္းက်င္ဟာ ေႏြးေထြးကာ စိတ္ၿငိမ္းေအးသက္သာ႐ိွေစခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဖြဲ႕ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေစာေဌးေမာင္ကုိ “အဘ”လုိ႔၊ အသက္ ၃၂ ႏွစ္အ႐ြယ္ ဗုိလ္မႉးႀကီး ‘တုိက္ဂါး’ ကုိ  “သား” လုိ႔ ႏႈတ္ဆက္ရတာေတြဟာ သဘာဝဆန္လွပါတယ္။ စိတ္ပုိင္းျဖတ္ႁမႇဳပ္ႏွံမႈ၊ စည္းကမ္း႐ိွမႈနဲ႔ ယဉ္ေက်းရည္မြန္မႈေတြ ႐ိွေနတယ္လို႔ အဲဒိအရာ႐ိွငယ္ဟာ ပင္ကုိယ္အရ ဂုဏ္ယူထုိက္ပါေပတယ္။ စည္းလုံးညီၫြတ္ျခင္းနဲ႔ ပူးေပါင္း ေဆာင္႐ြက္မ်ားမွတဆင့္ အက်ဳိး႐ိွမႈမ်ားစြာကုိ ရႏိုင္ေနတဲ့အခါမွာ ေသြးစည္းၿပိဳကြဲျခင္းနဲ႔ ျပင္းျပင္းထန္ထန္ သေဘာကြဲလြဲမႈမ်ားအတြက္ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔တေတြဟာ  တန္ဘုိး႐ိွလွတဲ့ လူသားအရင္းအျမစ္ေတြကုိ ဘာေၾကာင့္မ်ား ျဖဳန္းတီးေနၾကပါသလဲ? ကၽြန္မတို႔ႏိုင္ငံတြင္း႐ိွ မတူကြဲျပားေနတဲ့လူမ်ဳိးစုတုိင္းရင္းသားမ်ားဟာ ေတာက္ေျပာင္ တဲ့အနာဂတ္အတြက္ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔ ရဲ႕ အာမခံခ်က္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။

ကၽြန္မငယ္စဉ္က ကၽြန္မတို႔ထမင္းစားခန္းအတြင္းမွာခ်ိတ္ဆြဲထားတဲ့ ဓါတ္ပုံႀကီးတပုံုကုိ အခ်ိန္မ်ားစြာ ၾကည့္ခဲ့ဘူး ပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မဖခင္ဟာ ခပ္ပြပြကာကီဝတ္စုံကုိဝတ္ထားကာ၊ သူ႔ေခါင္းမွာ ကခ်င္ေခါင္းေပါင္းကုိ ေပါင္းထားၿပီး၊ ကခ်င္ဓါးကုိလဲ ရင္ပတ္မွာ စလြယ္သုိင္းထားလ်က္၊၊  ကခ်င္လွပ်ဳိျဖဴတသုိက္ အလယ္မွာ တဦးတည္းေသာ အမ်ဳိးသားအျဖစ္ ထီးထီးႀကီးထုိင္ေနတဲ့ဓါတ္ပုံပါ။ ဒီပုံဟာ ျမစ္ႀကီးနားမွာ ႐ိုက္ခဲ့တဲ့ ဓါတ္ပံုပါ။ လူတုိင္းကုိယ္စီ ထင္႐ွားတဲ့အၿပံဳးပန္းကုိေဆာင္ေနပါတယ္။ ဓါတ္ပုံဆရာက  ဒီပံုကုိ႐ိုက္ဘုိ႔ ခလုတ္ႏွိပ္ခါနီးမွာ “ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ခင္ဗ်ာ - ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္ကေတာ္ စိတ္ဆုိးေနမယ္ေနာ္”လုိ႔ ေနာက္ေျပာင္ ေျပာလုိက္တာကုိ အားလုံးကပြဲက်သြားၾကလုိ႔ အားလုံး ဝုိင္းရယ္ေနၾကတာျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ေမေမက ႐ွင္းျပပါတယ္။ ဒီဓါတ္ပုံကုိ ကၽြန္မတင္မက အားလုံးကပါ ျမတ္ႏိုးခဲ့ၾက ပါတယ္။ ဘာေၾကာင့္လဲဆုိ ေဖေဖဟာ ကင္မရာေ႐ွ႕ေရာက္တုိင္း သူ႔ရဲ႕စစ္ေရးနဲ႔ႏိုင္ငံေရးတာဝန္မ်ားရဲ႕တခ်ိန္လုံး ေတာင္းဆုိခ်က္မ်ားအရ ျဖစ္ေနေလ့႐ိွတဲ့ မ်က္ႏွာထားတည္တည္ႀကီးနဲ႔ မၿပံဳးမရယ္ေနတတ္လုိ႔ပါ။

အဲဒီအခမ္းအနားမွာပဲ ႐ိုက္ကူးခဲ့တဲ့ ေပ်ာ္႐ႊင္ေနတဲ့အုပ္စုရဲ႕ အျခားဓါတ္ပုံတပုံကုိလဲ ထမင္းစားခန္းထဲ မွာ ခ်ိတ္ဆြဲထားပါေသးတယ္။ တေယာက္တည္းရပ္ရင္း ကင္မရာမွန္ဘီလူးကုိ တည့္တည့္ၾကည့္ေနတဲ့ ကၽြန္မဖခင္ဟာ ႏုပ်ဳိ ၿပံဳးေပ်ာ္ ခန္႔ညားလ်က္ပါ။ ျမစ္ႀကီးနားမွာ သူဟာ ေပ်ာ္ေမြ႔ေနမွာပဲလုိ႔ ကၽြန္မ ေကာက္ခ်က္ခ်လုိက္ပါတယ္။ ေသးငယ္တဲ့“ဟာသ”တခုကုိ လြယ္လြယ္နဲ႔တုန္႔ျပန္မႈထက္ပုိတဲ့ ထြန္း လင္းဝင္းပျခင္းအျဖစ္ ေဖေဖခံစားခဲ့မွာပါ။ ျမစ္ႀကီးနားမွာ ေဖေဖ့ရဲ႕ ထူးျခားတဲ့ ေနျခည္ျဖာခံစားမႈရဲ႕ ေနာက္ကြယ္က အေၾကာင္းရင္းကုိ ကၽြန္မႀကီး ျပင္းလာတာနဲ႔အမွ် ကၽြန္မ စတင္နားလည္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ကခ်င္နဲ႔အျခားလူမ်ဳိးစုေခါင္းေဆာင္မ်ားနဲ႔ ေဆြးေႏြးမႈမ်ားေကာင္းစြာလုပ္ျဖစ္လာတဲ့အခါ “ျပည္ေထာင္စု စိတ္ဓါတ္” စတင္ေပၚေပါက္လာခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

ကၽြန္မရဲ႕ ႏုစဉ္ စိတ္ကူးအေတြးထဲမွာေတာ့ ျမစ္ႀကီးနားဟာ “ေပ်ာ္႐ႊင္ဘြယ္နယ္ေျမ”ျဖစ္လာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီၿမိဳ႕ကုိေရာက္ခဲ့တဲ့ ကၽြန္မရဲ႕ ပထမဆုံး အလည္အပတ္ခရီးဟာ ကၽြန္မရဲ႕ ငယ္စဉ္ကအထင္ႀကီးမႈကုိ ပုိမုိခုိင္မာေစခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒိအခ်ိန္ဟာ ေႏြရာသီနားရက္မ်ားျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ျမစ္ႀကီးနားမွာ လူမႈဖူလုံေရး အတြက္ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲတခု ျပဳလုပ္ေပးဘုိ႔ ကၽြႏ္မရဲ႕မိခင္က ေဆာင္႐ြက္ေပးေနခ်ိန္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မတုိ႕ အုပ္စုက အေတာ္ႀကီးပါတယ္။ ျမန္မာျပည္  အလယ္ပုိင္းကုိျဖတ္ၿပီး ေျမာက္ပုိင္းကုိ မွန္မွန္ခုတ္ေမာင္း ကာ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔ကုိသယ္ေဆာင္လာတဲ့ ရထားေပၚမွာ ေပ်ာ္႐ႊင္ဘြယ္ ၂ ေန႔နဲ႔ ၂ ညတာ ေပ်ာ္ေပ်ာ္ပါးပါး လုိက္ပါခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ၃ ရက္ေျမာက္ေန႔မွာ ျမစ္ႀကီးနားကုိေရာက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေနတဲ့ၿမိဳ႕နဲ႔ ရင္သပ္႐ႈေမာဘြယ္ျမင္ကြင္းတုိ႔က ကၽြန္မကုိ ခ်က္ျခင္းဆုိသလုိ ၫႇဳိ႕ယူစြဲမက္ေစလုိက္ပါတယ္။ ဧရာဝတီျမစ္အျဖစ္ စတင္ဆုံစည္းခဲ့တဲ့ ျမစ္ဆုံရဲ႕ ၾကည္လင္တဲ့ေရထဲမွာ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔ ေရခ်ဳိးခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။  ယခုအခါ ေရကာတာ ၈ ခု စီမံကိန္းနဲ႔ ပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ပ်က္စီးဆုံး႐ႈံးမႈေတြနဲ႔ဆက္ႏြယ္ၿပီးအျငင္းပြါးစရာ ေတြေၾကာင့္ ေက်ာ္ၾကားေနတဲ့ ျမစ္ဆုံဟာ သူ႔အလွေၾကာင့္သာ တခ်ိန္က ထင္႐ွားခဲ့ပါတယ္။  ကၽြန္မ တုိ႔ဟာ ႐ိုးရာကပြဲ တင္ဆက္မႈတခုကုိၾကည့္႐ႈေနၾကပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မရဲ႕ေဖေဖနဲ႔အတူ ဓါတ္ပုံ႐ိုက္ခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ မိန္းမလွေလးမ်ားလုိ အခုမိန္းကေလးမ်ားလဲ လွပၾကတာေကာ၊ အမ်ဳိးသားမ်ားလဲ စိတ္ဓါတ္တက္ႂကြ ဆြဲေဆာင္မႈ႐ိွေနၾကတာပါ ေတြ႕ရပါတယ္။ ဒီအရာအားလုံးဟာ ကၽြန္မဘဝမွာ  အေပ်ာ္႐ႊင္ဆုံးအခ်ိန္ ေတြထဲက တခုျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔ရဲ႕ ညီကုိေမာင္ႏွမလူမ်ဳိးစုေတြ ဘယ္ေနရာမွာေနေန  အလွအပ နဲ႔ ေပ်ာ္႐ႊင္မႈမ်ားကုိ မယုံၾကည္ႏိုင္ေအာင္ ေတြ႕ျမင္ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။

ျမစ္ႀကီးနားကုိ ၁၉၈၉ ဧၿပီလမွာ ဒုတိယအႀကိမ္ ကၽြန္မေရာက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အသစ္ဖြဲ႕စည္းလုိက္တဲ့ အမ်ဳိးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ရဲ႕ အေထြေထြအတြင္းေရးမႉးအျဖစ္ သြားေရာက္ခဲ့တာပါ။ အေတာ္ အတန္ႀကီးတဲ့ ကၽြန္မတို႔အဖြဲ႔ကုိ အသစ္ဖြဲ႕လုိက္တဲ့ ကခ်င္ႏိုင္ငံေရးပါတီတခုရဲ႕ေခါင္းေဆာင္ျဖစ္သူ အၿငိမ္းစားစစ္ဘက္အရာ႐ွိက ေႏြးေထြးစြာ ႀကိဳဆုိခဲ့ပါတယ္။ သူ႔အိမ္နဲ႔သူ႔ပါတီပစၥည္းမ်ားကုိ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔ စိတ္ႀကိဳက္ ရက္ရက္ေရာေရာ သဒၶါထက္သန္စြာ ေပးသုံးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔တေတြ စည္း႐ုံးလႈံ႕ ေဆာ္ေရးမ်ားကို မေမာႏိုင္မပန္းႏိုင္ေဆာင္႐ြက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔ရဲ႕ လူငယ္မ်ားကေတာ့ သူ႔ၿခံထဲက ေဇာင္းလ်ားပင္ႀကီးက ေဇာင္းလ်ားသီးမ်ားကုိ အကုန္စားခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ကခ်င္နယ္ေျမမွာေနထုိင္ခဲ့စဉ္ ရခဲ့တဲ့ ေက်နပ္မႈနဲ႔ပီတိျဖာမႈေတြနဲ႔အတူ ရန္ကုန္ကုိျပန္လာခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

၂၀၀၃ ခုႏွစ္မွာ တတိယအႀကိမ္ေျမာက္သြားခဲ့ရတဲ့ ျမစ္ႀကီးနားခရီးစဥ္ကေတာ့ ေပ်ာ္႐ႊင္စရာ မဟုတ္ ေတာ့ပါ။ လူတုိင္းဟာ ေျခာက္ျခားေနၾကပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မမွတ္မိခဲ့တဲ့ တက္ႂကြေတာက္ပမႈေတြဟာ ထူးထူးျခားျခား ေမွးမွိန္မႈန္ပ်ပ် ျဖစ္ေနၾကပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မျမစ္ႀကီးနားမွာ႐ိွေနစဉ္ ႐ိုးရာလူမ်ဳိးစုဝတ္စုံမ်ား ကုိ မဝတ္ဆင္ၾကရန္ ေဒသဆုိင္ရာအရာ႐ိွမ်ားက အမိန္႔ထုတ္ထားၿပီး (ႏွစ္လုိ ႀကိဳဆုိျခင္းမ႐ိွတဲ့အသြင္ ေဆာင္ေနပါတယ္။) ကၽြန္မတုိ႔ကုိေထာက္ခံသူမ်ားလဲ မႏွစ္ၿမိဳ႕ဘြယ္ ေနာက္ဆက္တြဲျဖစ္ရပ္မ်ားနဲ႔ ၿခိမ္း ေျခာက္ခံေနၾကရပါတယ္။ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔ရဲ႕ပါတီဝင္မ်ားနဲ႔ အျခားရဲရင့္တဲ့ ၿမိဳ႕ခံမ်ားကေတာ့ ၿခိမ္းေျခာက္မႈ မ်ားကုိ အာခံၾကၿပီး လွပတဲ့ ဝတ္စုံမ်ားကုိဆင္ျမန္းလ်က္ အိမ္တအိမ္ရဲ႕ ဝရံတာက ကၽြန္မ ေဟာေျပာ ခ်က္ကုိ လာေရာက္ နားေထာင္ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။

ဖိႏွိပ္ခ်ဳပ္ျခယ္မႈအေျခအေနဟာ ျမစ္ႀကီးနားၿမိဳ႕ေပၚတင္မကပါ။ ကၽြႏ္မတို႔ျဖတ္သြားခဲ့တဲ့ ကခ်င္ျပည္ နယ္ရဲ႕အျခားေဒသေတြမွာပါ လႊမ္းမုိးေနပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမင့္ တေန႔မွာ မေျမာ္လင့္ပဲ ၾကည္သာေတာက္ ပတဲ့ ျမင္ကြင္းတခုကုိ ေတြ႕လုိက္ရပါတယ္။ နာရီေပါင္းမ်ားစြာ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔မသိကၽြမ္းတဲ့နယ္ေျမထဲ သြား ေနရပါတယ္။ ဘယ္လုိပတ္ဝန္းက်င္ဆုိတာမေျပာျပႏိုင္ေအာင္ပဲ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔လဲေမာပန္းေနၾကပါတယ္။ ပ်ဳိ႐ြယ္ၿပီး စမတ္က်လွတဲ့ စစ္သားမ်ား ရင္းႏွီးေဖာ္ေ႐ြေလးစားစြာ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔ကားေမာင္းသြားတဲ့လမ္း တေလွ်ာက္မွာ တန္းစီရပ္ေနၾကတာကုိ ႐ုတ္တရက္ သတိထားမိလုိက္ပါတယ္။ ခဏတာေတာ့ ကၽြန္မ တုိ႔ ေၾကာင္စီစီျဖစ္သြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေနာက္မွ အဲဒီအခ်ိန္က ႏိုင္ငံေတာ္ေအးခ်မ္းေရးနဲ႔ဖြံ႕ၿဖိဳးေရးေကာင္စီ နဲ႔ အပစ္အခတ္ရပ္သေဘာတူထားတဲ့ ကခ်င္လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးတပ္မေတာ္(ေက အုိင္ ေအ)က ကၽြန္မ တုိ႔ကုိ လုံၿခဳံေရးေစာင့္ေ႐ွာက္ေပးတာျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း အမွတ္ရလုိက္ပါတယ္။ ဒါဟာ ကၽြန္မ ဘယ္ေတာ့မွ မေမ့ႏုိင္တဲ့ ေစတနာပါတဲ့ေလာကဝတ္တခုပါပဲ။ ေနာက္ေတာ့ ေက အုိင္ ေအ က ႐ႊံ႕ထူထူထဲႏြံနစ္ေန တဲ့ ကၽြန္မတို႔ကားတစီးကုိ ဆြဲထုတ္ၿပီး လုိအပ္တာေတြျပင္ဆင္ဘုိ႔ အနီးဆုံး ၿမိဳ႕အေရာက္ စီမံပုိ႔ေဆာင္ ေပးခဲ့ပါတယ္။                                                                                                     

ဒီလုိနဲ႔ ကၽြန္မတုိ႔ရဲ႕ အခက္အခဲမ်ားၾကားကပဲ “ထာဝရတည္တံ့တဲ့ ျပည္ေထာင္စုစိတ္ဓါတ္ဟာ အာဏာ႐ွင္ဆန္တဲ႕အတားအဆီးေတြအေပၚမွာ ႐ိွေနတယ္” ဆုိတဲ့ ေျမာ္လင့္မႈ မွတ္ခ်က္ကုိ ခ်ျဖစ္ရင္း ခရီးစဉ္ဟာၿပီးဆုံးသြားခဲ့ပါတယ္။

( ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ )

မုိင္အိနိခ်ိ သတင္းစာ၊ ဂ်ပန္။ ၂၀၁၂ မတ္လ ၂၅

(ဂ်ပန္ႏိုင္ထုတ္ မုိင္အိနိခ်ိ သတင္းစာပါ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ရဲ႕ LETTER FROM BURMA: REUNION, UNION -2 ကုိဘာသာျပန္ဆုိပါတယ္။)

ေမာင္ေမာင္လွႀကိဳင္

၂၀၁၂ မတ္လ ၂၇


 Letter from Burma: Reunion, Union - 2
By Aung San Suu Kyi


Last month I wrote about the joy of welcoming the members of the Karen peace delegation and finding that it was more like a family reunion than a first meeting between strangers. The atmosphere was warm and relaxed, it felt as natural to address the leader of the delegation, the octogenarian General Saw Htay Maung, as "A-ba," ("Father") as to address the thirty-two year old Colonel 'Tiger' as "Son."

Dedicated, disciplined and courteous, the latter was the kind of young officer any army should be proud to claim as its own. Why were we wasting our precious human resources through disunity and dissension when so much could be achieved through unity and cooperation? The different ethnic nationalities in our country are our strength, our insurance for a bright future.

When I was a child I spent long moments looking at a large photograph that hung in our dining room. My father dressed in shabby khaki, his head swathed in a Kachin turban, a Kachin sword slung across his chest, sat in the centre, the sole man surrounded by a bevy of Kachin beauties. It had been taken in Myitkyina and everybody was smiling broadly. My mother had explained that they were all laughing because just as the photographer was about to press the button somebody had shouted out to my father: "Bogyoke (General), won't your wife be furious?" This photograph was loved not only by me but by many others as well because my father usually appeared before the camera stern and unsmiling, very much a man totally given over to the demands of his military and political duties.

Another photograph taken on the same occasion as the happy group also hung in the dining room. My father stood alone looking straight into the lens, smiling, young, happy and handsome. I came to the conclusion that he must have been happy in Myitkyina. There was a radiance to him that was more than a simple reaction to a small joke. As I grew older I began to understand the reason behind my father's unusually sunny mood in Myitkyina. The meetings with Kachin and other ethnic nationality leaders had gone well and the spirit of Union had begun to materialize

Myitkyina became, in my youthful imagination, the 'happy land.' My first visit to this town only strengthened my early impressions. It was the summer holidays and my mother was going to convene a conference on Social Welfare in Myitkyina. Our party was big and we enjoyed two delightful nights and days on a train that took us steadily north through the heart of Burma. When we reached Myitkyina on the third day, I was immediately charmed by the peaceful town and the breathtaking views. We bathed in the limpid waters of Myitsone, the confluence of the Irrawaddy, now widely known because of controversies related to the Eight Dams project and environmental degradation, then famed only for its beauty. We watched a performance of traditional dances and I found that not only were the girls as pretty as the ones who had been photographed with my father, the men were dashing and attractive as well. It was altogether one of the happiest times of my life and I came away convinced that where our ethnic brethren lived, there was to be found beauty and joy.

My second visit to Myitkyina took place in April 1989. I went there as the General Secretary of the newly founded National League for Democracy and our rather large group was welcomed warmly by a retired army officer, the leader of a Kachin political party, also newly founded. He put his house as well as the resources of his party at our disposal with unstinting generosity. We campaigned tirelessly, made many friends, our young people ate the large star apple tree in his garden bare of all its fruit and we went back to Rangoon contented and glowing from our sojourn in the Kachin lands.

My third visit to Myitkyina that took place in 2003 was not so happy. The people appeared nervous, the brightness that I remembered had dimmed noticeably. Some local officials had decreed that traditional ethnic costumes were not to be worn while I was in town (this would have appeared too welcoming) and our supporters were threatened with unpleasant consequences. Our party members and other brave townsfolk defied the threats and turned up in their beautiful costumes to listen to a speech I gave from the balcony of a house.

The oppressive atmosphere was not confined to the town of Myitkyina; it also hung over the other parts of the Kachin state that we journeyed through. But one day we hit an unexpected bright spot. We had been going along for hours in what was to us unknown terrain, barely able to take in our surroundings, we were so exhausted. Suddenly, we became aware of young, smartly turned our soldiers, friendly and respectful, lining the road we were driving through. We were puzzled for a bit, then realized that the Kachin Independence Army, which at that time had come to a ceasefire agreement with the State Peace and Development Council (the military government) had provided us with a security guard. It was a courtesy I shall never forget. Later the KIA helped to dig one of our cars out from the thick mud in which it was stuck and made arrangements for it to be towed to the nearest town for necessary repairs. Thus in spite of all our difficulties the trip ended on a hopeful note, the enduring spirit of Union rising above arbitrary barriers. (By Aung San Suu Kyi)

(Mainichi Japan) March 25, 2012