After Burmese protests, man fights struggles

Had he been arrested by Burmese officials or killed by a bout of malaria, Sai Kyaw would not have been able to serve his native cuisine at YoMa, his restaurant on North Beacon Street in Allston.

The unassuming cultural décor of YoMa belies its owner’s turbulent past, one underscored by a constant battle for the liberation of the Burmese people from an oppressive government.

The struggle for Kyaw, 43, began in 1987, when he was studying at Rangoon University in Yangon, Burma.

In Sept. 1987, then-ruler of the Burmese government General Ne Win announced he was withdrawing the 75, 35 and 25 kyat currency notes, voiding much of Kyaw and his fellow students’ money and jeopardizing his education.

“If you didn’t pay the tuition fee, they didn’t give you a grade,” Kyaw said. “For the rich, it was OK, but for the poor who couldn’t use their money, it was more difficult. It made me angry, and [the students] started protesting.”

Despite being expelled from school for protesting, Kyaw said he continued to participate in student demonstrations, which started to spread to nearby colleges.

On March 13, 1988, Burmese special police killed two Rangoon Institute of Technology student protesters, exacerbating already high tensions throughout the nation. Roused by the deaths, student leaders organized a nationwide protest on Aug. 8, 1988, which would become known as the 8888 Uprising and would drastically change the nation.

“Monks, farmers, even people with the police and government joined us and then everybody started marching,” Kyaw said. “At City Hall, there were maybe 200,000 to 300,000 of us. All over [Yangon], there were maybe over one million.”

Just as the Chinese military did during the Tiananmen Square protest less than a year later, the Burmese military began firing on the demonstrators.

“A group of us were by a white bridge during the demonstrations,” he said. “Other university students joined us. The military was blocking the road, and they wanted us to disperse. They started shooting at the sky, and then they started shooting at us. Afterwards, we called the bridge the Red Bridge, since there was a lot of blood on it. Over a thousand people got killed that night.”

When General Win resigned after the 8888 Uprising, the government temporarily took a hands-off approach before tightening its grip on the country’s protesters.

“On September 18, [the military] started shooting again,” Kyaw said. “The government imposed martial law and curfews. You could not leave your house after 7 p.m. We had to run away. If we didn’t, they would arrest us and kill us.”

Kyaw said he fled to the Thai-Burmese border and, along with other former students, formed the military wing of the All-Burma Student Democratic Front. Though they had previously protested peacefully, Kyaw said he and his comrades were forced to fight for their people and their livelihood.

For three years, Kyaw combated the Burmese army alongside ABSDF compatriots in the dense jungle near the Thai-Burmese border. During his first year of fighting, Kyaw was wounded.

“[The students and I] were moving up a small hill,” he said. “Suddenly, the [Burmese] soldiers surrounded us. I got shot in the back.”

The scar from the bullet forms a visible dent on Kyaw’s lower back, while the bullet still resides in his stomach. Kyaw survived, unlike thousands of his fellow freedom fighters.

His struggle was far from over, however. He contracted malaria and was sent to Bangkok General Hospital in Thailand for treatment. The World Church Organization and the United Nations then sponsored Kyaw as a political refugee to the United States, and though he now lives in Massachusetts, Kyaw said he and his wife, Thawder, are not immune to the ongoing crisis in Burma.

“We have family in Burma, but we can’t contact them because only the government and rich people can use the phones,” Thawder Kyaw said. “We also can’t talk about the government with family because they will get in trouble if we say anything bad about it.”