Today, as the bell atop University Hall tolls noon, members of the Brown chapter of the U.S. Campaign for Burma hope to see every Brown student standing on the Main Green in a red shirt. At 12 p.m., the students will begin a 10-minute silent march in support of protesters in Burma and former Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies, will address the crowd.
The campaign's actions come at a critical time for Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Nine deaths were officially reported Thursday - with exile groups estimating higher numbers - in the second day of violent government crackdowns against a protest movement that has swept the Southeast Asian country.
Public dissent has been rare in Myanmar since its military seized power in 1962. The ruling junta's isolationist policies and socialist reforms plunged the country into steep economic decline. Once a prosperous nation with the world's largest rice exports, Myanmar now suffers from widespread hunger and disease. In 1989, the junta changed the country's official name from Burma to Myanmar. Since the change was never voted on by an elected legislature, many international groups refuse to recognize the new name.
Current demonstrations - the first major protests since 1988 - began in August after an increase in oil and fuel prices doubled the cost of transportation and left many Burmese unable to afford a bus fare. Unrest has spread rapidly since thousands of Buddhist monks became involved several weeks ago. The devoutly religious nation holds monks in reverence, and analysts say the government was reluctant to act against them for fear of sparking a massive public outcry.
On Monday, over 100,000 people marched through the streets of Yangon, Myanmar's capital, led by hundreds of monks in traditional rust-red robes. The next day, witnesses saw uniformed security officers deploying in Yangon's streets for the first time since the protests began. Media outlets are reporting that violent clashes have begun and that crowds have shrunk dramatically over the past two days.
The United States already has strict sanctions in place against Myanmar, and President Bush announced Tuesday in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly that they would be tightened further. However, many analysts say only China has the power to influence Myanmar. China has been active in developing Myanmar's extensive natural gas reserves and on Tuesday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have condemned the nation's military government.
A movement born
At the Brown campaign's meeting Tuesday night, the energy in the room was palpable. Patrick Cook-Deegan '08, the group's director, concluded a brief history of the conflict by telling members, "When we wake up tomorrow, something's going to happen."
"I really haven't slept at all," Cook-Deegan said. "Last night around 3:30, I came up with the idea of having everyone at Brown wear a red or maroon shirt" to mimic the monks' robes. The group quickly took to the idea and began to plan for its execution.
Cook-Deegan divided responsibilities among members. Some would table-slip, and others would distribute information on the Green or in the Ratty. The rest would tell their friends, classmates and members of other organizations. For the past two days, campaign members have been working frantically to spread the word, and by Thursday afternoon, the group's tables on the Main Green and in the Sharpe Refectory had collected names and e-mail addresses from hundreds of passing students.
Even with boundless energy, starting a campus group at Brown is no easy task. The campaign joins an already-crowded field of human rights groups that includes Amnesty International and the Darfur Action Network. Finding available resources at Brown can be difficult for new organizations, and the campaign has sought help from established groups.
Amy Tan '09 and James Chaukos '09 represented Amnesty International at the meeting. From the finer points of table-slipping to the inner workings of the Student Activities Office, they offered their expertise to the new campaign. "Certain things that we had to go through last year in organizing, they won't have to go through this time because we can tell them what things to look out for - like booking space for banners, something you wouldn't think about," Tan said.
Students active in the campaign cite the Darfur Action Network, Brown's chapter of the national group STAND: A Student Anti-Genocide Coalition, as a model for their work, and they've sought to partner with it. "I don't think the goal is to start another STAND for Burma. There's not time for that, and the reason that STAND exists is so that we don't have to do that," said Scott Warren '09, one of STAND's national student directors.
Many campaign members have personal reasons for caring about Myanmar. Eric Gastfriend '10, the group's networking coordinator, traveled to Thailand last year on a program sponsored by Brown Hillel. "We were right on the Thai-Burmese border, and I met a lot of Burmese refugees," Gastfriend said. "Even though they lived in bamboo huts, they said that anything was better than Burma. ... When I got back home, I started researching it. I got in contact with the (national) U.S. Campaign for Burma." The national organization connected Gastfriend with Cook-Deegan.
Cook-Deegan's interest in Myanmar was sparked by a trip to Laos during the summer of 2005, where he also heard horror stories about the country. "I wanted to be able to do something about it," he said, "but I felt that I would have a lot more leverage to do something about it if I'd gone there and experienced something."
The next summer, Cook-Deegan biked the length of Laos in order to raise funds for a school there. After that trip, he headed to Myanmar for a month, hoping to learn more about the country. "It's like living in '1984.' You're monitored everywhere," Cook-Deegan said. "There are spies on the streets. Military people followed me around on motorcycles, knocked on my door at midnight and asked for my ID. It's illegal for a foreigner to spend the night at a Burmese person's house ... so I had to spend the night at a bunch of roadside stands."
During the trip Cook-Deegan talked with monks, political dissidents and dozens of ordinary people, and he came back with a drive to do something about Myanmar. He took a year off from Brown and traveled around the United States speaking at schools about his bike trip. "When I got back on Aug. 22, I started contacting (the campaign) again and working furiously, and then these protests started, and everything changed," he said.
Cook-Deegan's ideas are already gaining ground, said Thelma Young, the national campaign coordinator for the U.S. Campaign for Burma. "The idea to have everyone wear red ... came from Patrick," Young said, and the idea been spreading quickly, "even throughout Europe - a guy from Italy e-mailed me today about it."
"The amount of awareness about Burma that's been exploding in the United States is overpowering," Young added. "People who didn't even know where Burma was before now know what's going on."
