Exhausted by war, Kachin IDPs in rebel areas see aid dwindle

Za Hkawng, right, was forced to leave his village a few years ago amid the fighting between government forces and the Kachin rebels and has since been living in N-Hkawng Pa IDP camp in Kachin State. (Photo: Htet Hkaung Linn/Myanmar Now)


By Htet Khaung Linn

N-HKAWNG PA IDP CAMP, Kachin State (Myanmar Now) - Za Hkawng, a 70-year-old ethnic Kachin man, prepares some tea in his small bamboo hut situated on a windy mountain ridge and recalls how he used to live off the land as a farmer.

Though his farm in Mahn Taung Village is only a half day’s walk away from his shelter here in N-Hkawng Pa IDP camp, he hasn’t grown any crops in five years.

His village is now a frontline position of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which has fought a grinding war with the Myanmar military in the mountains of northern Myanmar’s Kachin State since June 2011, when a longstanding ceasefire collapsed.

Za Hkawng said he was tired of living in a hut and relying on food donations that are supplied to his camp in Waimaw Township. It is one of 29 sites under KIA control that provide refuge to some 40,000 internally displaced civilians.

“Every day, I’m not happy here,” he murmured, while looking out over the surrounding mountains, some of which were capped with snow and shrouded in dark clouds during a visit by this reporter in early June.

EXHAUSTED BY CAMP LIFE

KIA forces control small, mountainous areas on the Myanmar-China border and are headquartered in Laiza town. The IDPs have lived in these remote, rough areas for five years now, cut off from government services and reliant on the KIA’s civilian wing and several aid NGOs for food, shelter, education and healthcare.

N-Hkawng Pa IDP camp houses 1,708 people and is situated along a creek that demarcates the border with China. The site is isolated and the vicinity of the frontline adds a sense of danger to the helplessness felt by many camp residents.

“We don't even dare to go into forest around here to find firewood or vegetables - it’s very dangerous as the army might suspect we are KIA members,” Za Hkawng said, adding that civilians caught by soldiers are often tortured.

Only the elderly, women and young children stay at the camp. Most of the young people have crossed into nearby China to look for work and many have become farm labourers.

Za Hkawng stays here with a wife and members of his extended family who live in five other huts clustered on the mountainside. He and his wife had three children, but all passed away before the war.

Camp residents rely on increasingly infrequent food rations from the UN World Food Program (WFP) and other aid support from the Metta Foundation and Kachin NGO Wunpawng Ninghtoi.

“It's not really enough for us,” Za Hkawng said of his food ration, adding that his family rarely gets to eat meat.

Khon Ra, a Kachin Baptist preacher and medical worker from Lashio, Shan State, runs a small medical clinic in N-Hkawng Pa camp.

“I’m now working for my Kachin people. I can provide treatment only for minor cases, such as fever,” she said, adding that serious cases are sent to a KIA-run hospital in the larger Maija Yang City , or to the Myanmar border town of Muse in Shan State, which can be reached via China.

“About 50 persons have died here in the last five years, and many suffer from serious mental trauma caused by civil war,” she said.

Local aid workers have warned that a prolonged stay in the camps also causes social problems, such as domestic violence, divorce and substance abuse, while a lack of education and poverty affects children’s development.

REDUCED AID FOR KIA-RUN CAMPS

As the Kachin conflict enters its sixth year, clashes between the KIA and the army continue. Some 100,000 civilians have fled the fighting and about 80,000 are registered camp residents - about half of the displaced stay in KIA-controlled areas.

International attention for the conflict has been flagging, however. Meanwhile, other humanitarian crises in Myanmar - such as last year’s flood disaster and increased fighting in Rakhine and northern Shan states - have also required international aid support.

As a result, WFP has reduced aid in Kachin State. Since early 2016, it has changed support for some 28,000 Kachin IDPs in government areas from food baskets to monthly cash transfers of around 9,000-13,000 kyats per person (about US$7.5-11).

Another 9,000 ‘vulnerable’ IDPs continue to receive WFP food rations, but half of these households have seen their monthly food rations cut to 11.5 kg of rice, 1 kg of pulses, 450 ml of cooking oil and 150 g of salt.

The situation of IDPs in the remote KIA areas is even tougher. Their camps suffer from a lack of aid access and though WFP said it would not reduce food rations there, aid delivery is irregular and hindered by conflict.

In the month of May, WFP said it “delivered two-three month food rations for over 8,400 IDPs in five IDP locations” in KIA areas, while “delivery to Laiza has been postponed due to volatile security situation.”

Yanghee Lee, the United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Myanmar, noted in her end-of-mission statement last week that ongoing conflict had further reduced humanitarian access to KIA-controlled areas.

“Previously there was access, albeit subject to some limitations, to the more than 40,000 IDPs in non-government controlled areas. However, access has been blocked in recent months, with a proposal made to deliver assistance to neutral or government controlled areas – a 1.5 day walk for many of those affected,” she said.

Lee added that her planned visit to Laiza to look into this situation was refused due to security considerations.

A HOPE FOR PEACE

The National League for Democracy (NLD) government controlled by Aung San Suu Kyi has pledged to resume ceasefire negotiations and to hold a nationwide conference within months, dubbed the 21st Century Panglong Conference.

It hopes to broker an all-inclusive accord that brings on board half a dozen armed groups, including the KIA, that are still embroiled in clashes with the army in Kachin, Shan and Rakhine states.

It remains unclear, however, whether the NLD can bring the rebel groups and Myanmar’s powerful military together for an accord in such short term.

Za Hkawng knows of the change to a democratic government - though none of the IDPs in KIA areas were allowed to cast their vote last November - and he is aware of the plans to resume peace talks with the KIA.

He said he does not expect that peace will come soon, adding, “We hear a ceasefire deal remains elusive and meanwhile conflicts are happening almost every day.”

Yet, hopes he spent to his last years on his farm. “I don’t want to take shelter anymore. I have become old and want to spend my remaining life in my native village,” Za Hkawng said.

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)

Isolated and lacking labor rights, housemaids toil in silence

Photo caption: This photo of an eight-year-old housemaid in Yangon’s Bahan Township being tortured by her employers went viral on Facebook in 2015.)


By Ei Cherry Aung

YANGON (Myanmar Now) - Khin Htar Kyu was in her late teens when she left her village in Ayeyarwady Region’s Wakema Township with a younger sister to find work in Yangon in order to help her indebted family.

Upon arrival she took the first job she was offered and began work as a live-in housemaid with a family in Sanchaung Township. Four years have passed and the 23-year-old has rarely had a day off since. She usually works from 4 am to 10 pm to cook, clean and take care of the young children. With this gruelling work, she earns US$85 per month and free meals and lodging.

“Sometimes, I want to take one day off during the week but I can’t,” Khin Htar Kyu said, adding that she even cares for her employer’s baby in the middle of the night. “I was happier as a farmer, I had a lot of quiet and freedom. I need not care about anything except my crops,” she said wistfully.

Across Myanmar, there are tens of thousands of girls like Khin Htar Kyu who leave their poor families to become a domestic worker for wealthier households.

They usually receive little pay and lack labor rights protection, according to women and child rights activists, who said the maids are often are young - or underage - and vulnerable to various forms of abuse by their employer.

Naw Aye Aye Hlaing, programme manager with Yangon-based NGO Women Can Do It, said workers usually don't complain about their situation as they are isolated in their employers’ homes and lack support when they want to report abuses.

“Myanmar has no special support group to help housemaids as they are seen as unimportant workers,” she said, adding that more must be done to ensure proper treatment of workers.

“Housemaids should be set reasonable tasks… [and] employers should be responsible for creating a safe working environment,” said Naw Aye Aye Hlaing, whose organisation promotes women’s education and involvement in politics.

VULNERABLE AND UNPROTECTED

Aung Myo Min, executive director at NGO Equality Myanmar, said many maids are children from poor families who cannot care for them. They are placed with wealthier households and provide free labor in return for a roof over their heads.

“Some of these children have a lower status than domestic workers - they just get a meal and shelter, not money, for their work,” he said, adding that such issues also relate to Myanmar’s longstanding problems with ensuring child rights and preventing child labour.

Maung Maung Soe, a lawyer in Yangon, told Myanmar Now that maids are often poorly fed, lack proper sleeping quarters and are regularly beaten. Yet, court cases against abusive employers are very rare as maids lack legal avenues to complain.

“They have little legal protection as there are no (labor) laws to protect housemaids against employers. But if they are accused of stealing money from their employer they can easily be prosecuted,” said Maung Maung Soe, who has provided legal aid to abused workers.

Files at Yangon Regional Police Headquarters obtained by Myanmar Now show authorities recorded only eight cases of criminal abuse of maids by employers in the whole country between 2011 to 2015, four cases of which were in Yangon.

In only one case an employer was sentenced. Kyi Hla Myint, a man from Yangon’s Bahan Township, received three years in prison with hard labor in February 2014 for beating a 14-year-old girl, burning her hands with cooking oil, and locking her up in a room without food.

In 2013, a 14-year-old housemaid managed to file a complaint with police over beatings on her head, back, arms and chest by members of a family in North Dagon Township who employed her for four years. Three of them are now facing criminal prosecution at the township court.

The victim’s uncle, Myo Oo, said his niece will never work as a housemaid again. “She has trauma from that job,” he said, adding that he hoped the perpetrators will face serious criminal punishment.

LEGAL PROTECTION NEEDED

Rights activists said the cases are merely a tip of the iceberg as many abuses go unreported because victims lack strength or knowledge to stand up to their employers, or because issues are quietly settled by employers.

“Only if housemaids have major injuries on their bodies can they have enough proof for a police complaint. Otherwise, it is very difficult for them,” said Maung Maung Soe.

Aung Myo Min, of Equality Myanmar, said the government should draw up legal protections for domestic workers and inform them of their rights. “Housemaids need to know how and where they can file complaints against abuses by employers,” he said.

Nyunt Win, deputy director-general at Factories and General Labour Laws Inspection Department, told Myanmar Now that the Ministry of Labor, Immigration and Manpower has held discussions with civil society organisations over drafting a law that would set a minimum age for domestic workers and provide basic labor rights, such as working hours and holidays.

He acknowledged the workers’ situation was currently poorly regulated.

“There are many controversial issues regarding housemaids, including working hours and off-days,” Nyunt Win said, before adding that maids “should not refuse to prepare meals or wash clothes at the time when their employers come home.”

Myanmar Now contacted several National League for Democracy lawmakers, but none had knowledge of the draft law to protect domestic workers.

IMPROVING RECRUITMENT

Bringing poor girls from rural areas to work as housemaids in wealthier households in cities and
towns is a longstanding practice in impoverished Myanmar.

The process often involved relatives or neighbours of the girls who would connect them with wealthier families, but these days most maids are placed with an employer by recruitment agencies or unregistered brokers.

One informal broker in Yangon named Moe Moe said she had helped ten families find a housemaid in recent years, earning about $30 in commission per worker.

She said she ensures that both maid and employer are suitable and trustworthy. “I will have to face any follow-up problems, so I avoid strangers in this business,” Moe Moe said.

Khin Swe Win said her family in Yangon’s South Okkalapa Township had found a maid through her relatives. “Most housemaid brokers do not take responsibility for their work, so I relied on close family members,” she said.

The Yangon Kayin Baptist Women’s Association has created an organisation called Protection for Women in Household Services that tries to ensure that girls are employed by families who treat them well.

Naw Phaw Wah, the director of the organisation, said her staff have helped about 100 maids find safe jobs and carry out regular visits to check on their working situation.

“The employers are warned once if housemaids are found to be treated badly. If they neglect our suggestions the organisation withdraws its housemaid,” she said.

Khin Htar Kyu said she desperately wanted to quit work as a maid, but she needs to send cash to her family and help them save up to $1,000 to regain control of their farm in Wakema Township, which they pawned to a wealthy neighbour.

“I cannot foresee the day when our family can get back their land and I can go back to the village,” she said.

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)

“Myanmar is still the third-most malnourished country in SE Asia”

A man holds food collected from local donors at a village in Kawlin township, Sagaing division, Myanmar, July 21, 2015. Heavy rains caused flooding over 20,000 acres of rice field and in about a hundred villages, killing at least eight people, according to local media. (PHOTO:- REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun)


By Thin Lei Win 

Abandoned babies indicate single mother, sex education problems

Shocked by-standers gather around an abandoned newborn found in Mingalar Taung Nyunt, and a lactating mother immediately breast-feeds the baby, on May 12. (Photo: The Voice Daily)


By Ei Cherry Aung

YANGON (Myanmar Now) - During a power blackout on a hot night in May, Thidar Han heard a baby crying at around 9 pm in back lane of Yangon’s Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township, where she works as a ward administrator.
Thidar Han ventured into the dark alley and saw no one, but the crying continued. As she moved closer she was shocked to find an abandoned newborn, lying face down and with its umbilical cord still attached, in a plastic bag.
“The baby was fortunately alive and without breathing problems,” she said, adding that shocked by-standers gathered around and a lactating mother among them breast-fed the poor newborn. The baby, weighing 4 pound and 12 ounces, was brought to Yangon Central Women’s Hospital just in time and survived after receiving intensive medical care.
According to officers at the Yangon Police Headquarters, it was the second baby to be abandoned by its mother in Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township in May. The other sadly died while it was being treated in hospital.
Records kept at the headquarters show the recorded cases of abandoned newborns nationwide. Though these are likely to be far from complete, they indicate a rise from 6 cases in Myanmar in 2011, to 4 in 2012, 9 in 2013, 12 in 2014, and 20 cases in 2015.
“Only unsolved child abandonment cases are reported to the police. So there might be other, unrecorded cases,” said an officer who asked not be named. Most cases occurred in Shan State and in Yangon, Mandalay and Magwe regions.
Some cases involved newborns who were left at back streets or at door steps, while most often new mothers left their babies behind in hospital after giving birth. Yankin Children’s Hospital recorded 5 such cases in 2015, 4 in 2014 and 2 cases in 2013, according to police records.

Desperate single mothers
Ma Htar, director of Akhaya Women, a women’s rights NGO in Yangon, said the tragic cases probably involved desperate women who had an unplanned pregnancy and felt they could not care for their babies due to poverty or because the father had abandoned them.
She said being a single, unmarried mother carries great stigma in Myanmar’s conservative society, while there are few services, either government or NGO, available that support such mothers.
“Single women are blamed for their fatherless child,” said Ma Htar, adding that services to help them “will emerge when Myanmar people have more knowledge about human rights.”
Ma Htar said old laws that punish abortion probably also put women in a situation of continuing an unwanted pregnancy, adding that politicians should reflect on the impacts of these laws.

Illegal abortion
Under the Penal Code, abortion can lead to 10 years imprisonment, though court cases are rare and usually result in a two- or three-year sentence. Due to such penalties, Myanmar has no official abortion clinics, forcing women wanting the procedure to do so through secret, unregulated medical practices.
Abandonment of a child younger than 12 year is also punishable and carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
Nyein Nyein, 45, a widow and mother of four from Yangon’s Latha Township, said raising children was hard for poor women in Myanmar. She believes better contraception and legal options for choosing an abortion should be made available to women and girls.
“Abortion should be allowed systematically, as it is now being carried out illegally,” she said.
Under Myanmar’s civil law, a women who bore a child from a man who abandoned her can file a complaint to demand financial support.
A police officer in Panzundaung Township, who declined to be named, said such cases were rare. “Women do not file lawsuits against their irresponsible partners as they feel ashamed for the pregnancy. But actually, these men must be ashamed for their lack of care,” he said.
Kyee Myint, a Yangon-based lawyer who works on child rights cases, said more government funding should be made available to support vulnerable children and single mothers.

Government measures
The phenomenon of abandoning babies, either to be found or left to die, is sometimes called ‘baby dumping’, and occurs in many countries. It often involves unprepared young women, teenage pregnancy, and children born out of wedlock.
In Southeast Asia, the issue has reportedly become increasingly common in Malaysia in recent years, with 517 babies found abandoned between 2005 and 2011, often for reason of stigmatisation associated with having illegitimate children born outside of marriage.
In some Western countries, authorities have installed so-called ‘baby box’ or ‘baby hatch’, where a baby can be anonymously abandoned while ensuring that the child will be cared for.
Phyu Phyu Thin, a National League for Democracy Lower House lawmaker from Yangon’s Mingalar Taung Nyunt Township, said sex education and family planning programs would help address the issue of unwanted pregnancy in Myanmar, adding that such measures should precede discussions on legalisation of abortion.
“The main cause of this problem is that young people don’t have sufficient knowledge about sex. Since they don’t understand it, they have to cope with unwanted pregnancies. That’s why we have cases of abortions and newborn babies abandoned on the roads,” she said. “I think sex education and family planning would help decrease these cases.”
Aung Kyaw Moe, director of the Department for Child Care at the Ministry of Social Welfare, Relief and Resettlement, said poverty and the lack services for single mothers should be addressed, adding, “Educative programmes on reproduction should be conducted for young people to reduce abortion and child abandonment.”
Aung Kyaw Moe added that abandoned babies would be cared for at state orphanages.
According to the ministry’s website, there are five government child care centres for orphans and abandoned children in Yangon, Mandalay, Magwe, Mawlamyine and Kengtung. Children administered here are supported to complete primary school and are then sent to two centres in Yangon, where they can stay until the age of 18 and receive vocational training.
In Yangon, at the Shwe Gone Dine Orphanage Center, principal Khin Yu Dar Yee said the regional government’s Ministry of Health and Directorate of Social Welfare had put 128 children under her care in the past five years, 45 of whom were later adopted by families.
She said she could not comment on how many children there were abandoned, but stressed that regardless of particular background all are in dire need of care.
“I hope that kind and good parents can adopt them,” she said.

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)

Hpakant scenes: scarred landscapes, jade scavenging and drug use

By Htet Khaung Linn 

HPAKANT (Myanmar Now) - The Hpakant jade mines in Kachin State are believed to be Myanmar’s most valuable natural resource, with some estimates suggesting jade worth as much as US$31 billion is being extracted annually.
Little of this money ends up impoverished, conflict-torn Kachin State, as a web of hidden license-holders, often with links to the military, reap the mines’ benefits.
On the ground, the environmental damage has worsened after a decade of large-scale mining by dozens of companies. Hpakant now appears as a barren moonscape where whole mountains have been turned into rubble.
Among this rubble toil an estimated 300,000 migrant labourers who came from all over Myanmar. They chase the dream of getting rich by finding a big jade stone, but many end up drug addicted while scores are killed in accidents at the poorly regulated mines.
Myanmar Now reporter Htet Khaung Linn visited Hpakant in April and his photo capture some of the scenes.

Dreams of riches and risk of death - a jade miner’s life

Maung Aye, a miner who has worked in Hpakant for many years, carries a piece of low-grade jade. (Htet Khaung Linn / Myanmar Now)

By Htet Khaung Linn

HPAKANT, Kachin State (Myanmar Now) - For much of the past two decades Maung Aye’s life has revolved around a daily routine that mixes the hope of finding sudden riches with constant danger and back-breaking work.

Every morning, the 36-year-old jade labourer gets up in the bamboo shack that he shares with other workers and walks down from the heap of mining waste on which it sits.

He goes down into one of the many mining pits that scar Hpakant’s mountains and takes out a small hammer mounted on a stick. One by one he taps rocks in the rubble dumped by mining companies, carefully listening to see if the sound could indicate precious jade mineral inside.

At the end of recent, hot April day, he returned to his miners’ camp with a rock half the size of a football, which he inspected with a special flashlight and valued it as low-grade jade worth around 30,000 kyats (around US$26).

“To get good quality jade depends on luck. Sometimes it is hard to find a jade stone worth 10,000 kyats in a week,” said Maung Aye, thin and muscular, wearing a traditional bamboo hat and shorts.

Though the money made in treacherous jade scavenging might seem small to some, it represents a good income to the tens of thousands of men who migrated here from poor, rural communities across Myanmar.

“Life is too hard for us in our home village, we can’t earn enough income, while we can easily get 5,000 to 10,000 kyats per day here,” said Maung Aye, who left his family home in Magwe Region’s Gangaw Township, central Myanmar, in 1996.

He recalled how he decided to go to Hpakant after fighting with his father. “At the time, I told my mother: I don't want to live in this house, please give me money and I will go away. She gave me 25 kyats,” he said, adding that he followed his older brother who was already working at the mines.

According to a recent state-run media report, there are some 300,000 men like Maung Aye toiling in the jade mines in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State.

Local journalists and activists said the numbers of men who migrated here has probably doubled since 2010, perhaps because stories of jade mining opportunities have spread more easily to remote communities in recent years as mobile phones and internet connectivity have become more widely available.

An increase in large-scale mining by companies using dynamite and heavy machinery has also increased the amount of rubble available for scavenging.

Those who own the companies that dump the waste on which Maung Aye and many like him live, make enormous, unregistered profits. Myanmar’s opaque jade mining industry has been estimated by resource corruption watchdog Global Witness to be worth up to US$31 billion per year and is controlled by hidden license holders mostly linked to the military elite.

Dangers and dreams of fortunes

The migrant miners are aware of the risks they take by working and sleeping near unstable piles of waste. These are dumped by the companies which have little regard for the largely unenforced safety regulations. The new National League for Democracy government has pledged to improve safety in Hpakant.

Maung Aye is stoic about the dangers and confident he can stay safe after many years in the mines. “I have got a lot of experience and know how to keep away from the falling waste, I was never injured,” he said.

Deadly accidents are a regular occurrence. A night-time landslide last November buried 114 migrant miners, according to the official death toll. Several accidents have killed groups of workers since then. Most recently, on May 23, at least 13 miners died in pit collapse.

Maung Aye said the November accident occurred near his camp and he saw the aftermath, adding that the number of deaths was probably several times higher than official figures as authorities had stopped searching for buried corpses after two days.

“Scavengers and machinery drivers from mining companies died, maybe 300 in total, under waste dumped near the site of Mya Ya Mone Company,” he said.

The poor men are willing to face such deadly risks as many dream of finding a large, valuable jade stone that will lift them out of poverty.

Maung Aye got his break in 2002, making a small fortune by Myanmar standards when he and his friends found a jade boulder worth around $7,000.

Maung Aye said the gem find turned his life around and he went back to his home village to enjoy his newfound riches and to kick a drug habit he had developed a few months before. Heroin and opium are easily available and used by many workers.

“I was so happy at home as I could save and bring a certain amount of money for my family. I drank alcohol almost every day with my friends and forgot about the (withdrawal symptoms) I got from quitting drugs,” he said.

Yet, he struggled to use his savings to set up a profitable business in his impoverished village and after eight years at home he returned to Hpakant. He now plans to stay until he feels he has enough income.

“I feel life is more meaningful here than in my village, I can expect to make a lot of money. This is our dream as scavengers,” Maung Aye said. “I can send money to my family and stay here with friends - but I am lonely.”

(Editing by Paul Vrieze)

“Myanmar is still the third-most malnourished country in SE Asia”

A man holds food collected from local donors at a village in Kawlin township, Sagaing division, Myanmar, July 21, 2015. Heavy rains caused flooding over 20,000 acres of rice field and in about a hundred villages, killing at least eight people, according to local media. (PHOTO:- REUTERS/Soe Zeya Tun)


By Thin Lei Win 

Why are Myanmar nuns not granted the same respect as monks?

A young Buddhist nun rides Yangon's circular train in June 2015. (Hkun Lat / Myanmar Now).


By Ei Cherry Aung 

Born of Buddhist parents and raised in a Buddhist environment, I grew up as a typical Myanmar Buddhist girl. Under the care of my grandmother, it was hammered into my brain that we should worship and pay the utmost respect to Buddhist monks in all circumstances. My grandmother instructed me, for example, to never sit on the same level as monks, but place myself at their feet. Yet in all the years of my childhood she never said a word about how to behave in front of Buddhist women who had become nuns.

It’s customary in Myanmar to make donations at monasteries during annual religious events and to donate to monks begging for alms on the street. I used to see my grandmother give rice and curries to monks every morning, before anyone had a chance to eat, and I learned that I should always offer food to the monks first. But when nuns came asking for alms she usually replied: “Sorry, please no offerings.” Only occasionally a nun would receive a spoonful of rice or a one-kyat note - this was at a time when the bus fare for a short trip cost around 50 kyats.

Thus, I learned early on that nuns do not deserve the same respect as monks. Later, I came to understand this is due to persistent conservative views of women in Myanmar society and in religious practice.

When I was a child, an aunt decided to become a nun for life. I remember thinking that it was embarrassing for a woman to become a nun and shave her head. It is common in Myanmar for children to have their heads shaved from time to time as mothers believe this will give them thick, beautiful hair. I always disliked having my head shaved - it happened to me only three times, and I would cry my eyes out every time.

But in recent years as I’ve grown older, and perhaps more mature, a new thought entered my head. I began to ask myself: Why, as a Buddhist woman, should I feel ashamed to shave my head when I become a nun?

So, earlier this year I decided that I wanted to overcome my old anxieties and became a nun for 10
days during the Thingyan water festival in April. What I found during this experience is that nuns suffer not only a lack of respect due to negative, patriarchal views that still hold sway, but also a lack of public support.

I went to Shwe Min Wun Nunnery on Yangon’s Dhammazedi Road to be ordained. The living conditions of the 10 poor nuns in the tiny nunnery shocked me. The one-storey wooden building was small and cramped; there was no modern furniture and it had only one fan, two water tanks, a drinking water pot and bamboo sleeping mats.

Soon after the ordination I went to Tit Wine Monastery, a well-known religious centre in Yangon’s South Okkalapa Township, for a short meditation course. There I realized how different the living conditions are for monks when compared to nuns.

The monastery was a grand, five-storey building installed with modern electrical items, such as air-conditioners, electric fans, and water coolers, as well as a generator in case of power cuts. The nuns at Shwe Min Wun have to scoop up every drink of water they need, the monks at Tit Wine got a refreshing drink of cooled water at the press of a button.

Upon closer inspection there is no end to the differences between the facilities at nunneries and monasteries; the gap in living conditions is huge.

Monasteries can count on numerous generous donors looking to earn merit through donations, but nuns arriving in front of a house to ask for donations for their nunnery usually leave empty-handed. Even in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city, there are only a few donors for nunneries, so we can imagine how nuns in rural areas are struggling to get by.

Negative views of women and nuns can sadly be found in some of the centuries-old Buddhist practices in Myanmar. Women and nuns can often not visit the holiest parts of religious monuments like men can. Nuns are not allowed to give sermons at important events, only monks can.

We are taught to step aside when monks are passing by because it would be bad karma to even stand on their shadow, yet little regard is paid to a passing nun. People will give up their seats on buses for monks, but rarely for nuns.

Tazar Thiri, a life-long nun living in Yangon, told me, “I’ve met men and women who would refer to me as a lay person.”

As a Myanmar woman and a temporary nun, it is has been very disappointing to see nuns being treated like they deserve no more respect than ordinary lay people, and to see them struggle to live with dignity just because of their gender.

I believe our society has wrongly presumed that nuns do not deserve the same respect and support as monks just because they are women. In fact, both monks and nuns are living strictly in accordance with the instructions of Lord Buddha and deserve an equal amount of respect.