ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးစတစ္ကာ ကပ္ျခင္းရဲ႕ေနာက္ကြယ္မွာ ဘယ္လိုအေတြးအေခၚေတြမ်ားရွိပါသလဲ။ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံအတြင္းနဲ႔အျပင္ကပ္ရျခင္း ရည္ရြယ္ခ်က္ျခင္းမတူပါဘူး။ ျပည္ပမွာေတာ့ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံရဲ႕လြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ နဲ႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးလွဳပ္ရွားမႈကို ေထာက္ခံဖို႔နဲ႔ အားေပးဖို႔အတြက္ လုပ္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဥပမာ ျမန္မာအလုပ္သမားတစ္ ေယာက္ဟာ မဲေဆာက္ၿမိဳ႕မွာရွိတဲ့ ဆိုင္တစ္ဆိုင္မွာ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးပိုစတာကပ္တာကိုျမင္တာနဲ႔ ဒီဆိုင္ဟာ ျမန္မာ့ အေရးကို ေထာက္ခံေၾကာင္း သိႏိုင္ပါတယ္။
ျပည္တြင္းမွာက်ေတာ့ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးစတစ္ကာကပ္တာေတြဟာ ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္းအေၾကာင္းကို ေျပာင္းလဲေစဖို႔ အတြက္ ျမန္မာျပည္သားေတြလုပ္ကိုင္လိုစိတ္ေတြကို လွံဳ႕ေဆာ္ႏွိဳးဆြေပးဖို႔ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဒီစတစ္ကာေလးေတြ ဟာ ျမန္မာျပည္တြင္း ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးနဲ႔ လြတ္ေျမာက္ေရးအတြက္ ဆက္လက္႐ုန္းကန္ႀကိဳးစားဖို႔ သတိေပးသလို ျဖစ္ေစတဲ့အျပင္ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္ခ်က္ေတြ အမ်ားႀကီး ရွိပါေသးတယ္ ဆိုတာကိုလည္း ေဖာ္ညႊန္းပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ အတြင္းမွာတုန္းကေတာ့ က်ေနာ္တစ္ေယာက္တည္း လိုက္လံကပ္ခဲ့တာပါ။ ျဖန္႔ခဲ့တာပါ။ က်ေနာ္ရဲ႕ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံသား သူငယ္ခ်င္းေတြ၊ မိတ္ေဆြေတြ အႏၲရာယ္မျဖစ္ေစလိုဘူးေလ။
ဒီလို သြားေရာက္ လုပ္ကိုင္ဖို႔ အေတြးမွာ သင္ရဲ႕အေတြးလား၊ တျခားတစ္ေယာက္ေယာက္ရဲ႕ အစီအစဥ္လား။
ျပည္တြင္းမွာ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးစတစ္ကာေတြ ျဖန္႔ဖို႔အတြက္ The Best Friends စာၾကည့္တိုက္ရဲ႕ ဦးေဆာင္သူမ်ား ျဖစ္ၾကတဲ့ အရွင္ေသာပါက၊ အရွင္ဣႆရိယ (မင္းသုည) တို႔နဲ႔ တိုင္ပင္ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ပါတယ္။
ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံတြင္း ခရီးသြားျခင္းဟာ အလြန္သိမ္ေမြ႔ေသာ ကိစၥတရပ္ျဖစ္ပါတယ္။ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲဆိုေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ တို႔ ေငြေတြဟာ စစ္အာဏာရွင္ေတြဆီကို တစ္နည္းနည္းနဲ႔ ေရာက္သြားမွာတဲ့ေလ။ ဒါေၾကာင့္ စစ္ကၽြန္လက္ ေအာက္ခံစားေနရတဲ့ျပည္သူေတြနဲ႔အတူ က်ေနာ္ရွိေနပါတယ္ဆိုတာကို တနည္းနည္းနဲ႔ ျပႏိုင္မွသာ ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံ ကို အလည္ သြားထိုက္တယ္လို႔လည္း က်ေနာ္ခံစားရပါတယ္။
က်ေနာ္တို႔မွာ အျခားအိုင္ဒီယာ ေတြလည္းရွိပါတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ စတစ္ကာလွဳပ္ရွားမႈဟာ ေဘးကင္းတာရယ္၊ ျမန္မာ့ႏိုင္ငံေရးနဲ႔ တိုက္႐ိုက္ ပတ္သတ္မယ္ထင္လို႔ ဒီလွဳပ္ရွားမႈကို ေရြးလိုက္တာပါ။ က်ေနာ့္လုပ္ငန္း ေအာင္ျမင္တယ္ လို႔ေတာ့ ဆိုႏိုင္ပါတယ္။ ဘာျဖစ္လို႔လဲဆိုေတာ့ ၂၇ ရက္ ခရီးစဥ္မွာ ၂၃ ရက္ေန႔ထိ တိုင္ေအာင္ က်ေနာ္ျပည္ႏွင္ မခံရခဲ့လို႔ပါပဲ။
သင့္အေနနဲ႔ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးစတစ္ကာေတြကို ဘယ္လိုေနရာ၊ ဘယ္ၿမိဳ႕ေတြမွာ ကပ္ခဲ့ပါသလဲ။
Mr. Garrett ကသူ Favorite အျဖစ္ဆံုး ပံုပါဆိုျပီး ေပးပို႔လာပါတယ္လက္ဖက္ရည္ဆိုင္၊ စားေသာက္ဆိုင္စတဲ့ အမ်ားနဲ႔သက္ဆိုင္ရာေနရာေတြမွာ ကပ္ခဲ့တယ္။ ၿမိဳ႕လည္ေခါင္က ဓါတ္မီးတိုင္ေတြ၊ စစ္၀ါဒျဖန္႔ဆိုင္းဘုတ္ေတြ စတဲ့ေနရာေတြမွာ ကပ္ခဲ့တာမ်ားပါတယ္။ တခါတေလ စတစ္ကာ အခြံကိုမခြာေတာ့ဘဲ အလွဴခံပံုးထဲကို ထည့္ခဲ့ရတာေတြေတာင္ရွိပါတယ္။ တခါတေလစာအုပ္ေတြေအာက္မွာ ထားေပးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ့္ရဲ႕ စတစ္ကာတိုင္းကို လူအမ်ားျမင္ေတြ႔ၾကမယ္လို႔ ယံုၾကည္ပါတယ္။
တခါဘဲ က်ေနာ္ကပ္ၿပီးၿပီးခ်င္း စေတြ႔တဲ့လူက ဖယ္ရွားခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ ဒီၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးစတစ္ကာေလးကို အနည္းဆံုး သူတစ္ေယာက္ေတာ့ ျမင္လိုက္ရတာေပါ့လို႔ဘဲ က်ေနာ္ခံယူလိုက္ပါတယ္။
စတစ္ကာနဲ႔ပတ္သတ္ၿပီး လူေတြရဲ႕တုန္႔ျပန္မႈေတြကို သင္ေတြ႔ခဲ့ရလား။ သင့္အေနနဲ႔ေကာ သင့္ရဲ႕လွဳပ္ရွားမႈေတြ နဲ႔ ပတ္သတ္ၿပီး တစ္စံုတစ္ဦးကို ရွင္းျပခဲ့တာေတြရွိခဲ့လား။
က်ေနာ္ စိတ္ခ်ယံုၾကည္ရတယ္လို႔ထင္ရတဲ့သူေတြကိုေတာ့ ေျပာျပခဲ့ပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ္နဲ႔ ႀကံဳခဲ့တဲ့သူတိုင္းကိုေတာ့ စတစ္ကာေတြေပးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ လူအမ်ားကေတာ့ သူတို႔သေဘာထားကို ထုတ္ေဖာ္မျပပါဘူး။ တခ်ိဳ႕လူေတြက ေတာ့ က်ေနာ္ ဒုကၡေရာက္ႏိုင္ေၾကာင္း သတိေပးတာေတြရွိပါတယ္။ က်ေနာ့္လံုၿခံဳေရးကို ဂ႐ုစိုက္ဖို႔လည္း တိုက္ တြန္းတာေတြရွိပါတယ္။ သူတို႔အရမ္းအံ့ၾသၾကတယ္။ ဒါေပမယ့္ သေဘာက် ေက်နပ္ၾကတယ္။ ႏိုင္ငံျခားသား တစ္ဦးက သူတို႔အေရးကိုေထာက္ခံၿပီး စြန္႔စားလုပ္ကိုင္ေနလို႔ျဖစ္မွာေပါ့ေလ။ တစ္ခ်ိဳ႕လူေတြကေတာ့ ေျပာပါ တယ္။ သူတို႔လည္း စစ္အာဏာရွင္ဆန္႔က်င္ေရးကို လုပ္ခ်င္ပါတယ္လို႔၊ ဒါေပမယ့္ သူတို႔မိသားစုအေရးကို ထိ ခိုက္မွာစိုးလို႔ မလုပ္ရဲေသးတာလို႔ ေျပာၾကတယ္။
က်ေနာ္ေတြ႔ခဲ့သမွ် လူေတြထဲမွာ ၿငိမ္းခ်မ္းေရးစတစ္ကာနဲ႔ပတ္သတ္ၿပီး အပ်က္သေဘာ (Negative) အျမင္ရွိ တာမေတြ႔ခဲ့ရပါဘူး။
- What is the idea behind the peace stickers?
The goals for the peace stickers are different depending on whether they are distributed inside or outside of Burma. Outside Burma, the stickers are used to offer support and encouragement for those struggling for a free and peaceful Burma. They are also commonly displayed in areas where Burmese exiles and refugees are living, where hopefully the stickers work to foster a sense of community and security. For example, if a Burmese migrant sees a sticker displayed at a shop in Mae Sot, he or she will know the staff of the shop is supportive of the common Burmese cause. Inside Burma, the stickers are meant to work as an inspiration for people to continue to do anything they can to bring about positive change in Burma. They remind people that the struggle for peace and freedom in Burma continues, and that there is still much hope.
- Did you spread the stickers on your own or with somebody else?
While I was in Burma I only spread the stickers when I was alone. I did not want to endanger any of my Burmese friends or acquaintances.
- Was it your idea to go and do this or was it somebody else's plan?
The idea to spread the stickers inside Burma came about through discussions I had with Ashin Sopaka and King Zero, two of the founders of The Best Friend Education Project, prior to my trip. Tourism in Burma is a sensitive issue, as inevitably some of the money a traveller spends goes to the military regime. I did not feel it was responsible for me to travel in Burma without doing something to express solidarity with the Burmese who are struggling under military rule. We had a few other ideas, but the stickers seemed like the best plan – safer than distributing something directly related to politics or calling for an end to the regime’s rule. The goal was to spread a relatively quiet wish for peace and freedom in Burma so that I would be able to avoid detection as long as possible, and be able to spread the stickers in many cities throughout the country. In this sense, my ‘mission’ was a success – I wasn’t deported until day 23 of my planned 27-day trip!
- Where did you put the stickers, what sort of places, which towns?
I managed to spread stickers in at least fifteen cities. I made it to three of the ethnic states and four of the divisions. The only additional place that I had planned to get to, but was unable to because of the deportation, was Kachin State. The types of places I put the stickers varied depending on how brazen I felt I could be. Tea shops and restaurants were a common place I felt it was safe to put up a few stickers. Also in bathrooms. Several times I was able to get a sticker up in a very public place – on a lightpost in a downtown area, or even stuck on to a military sign or billboard. Other times I didn’t even bother to peel the sticker from the backing. I would just drop a sticker or two into a donation box, or leave one to be found later under a book. Of course I hope every sticker will be seen by many people, but even if a sticker is immediately removed by the first person who sees it, at least that one person will have seen it.
- Did you see any reactions of people to the stickers? Did you speak to anybody about your activities?
I did speak to some people I felt I could trust, and I did give stickers directly to certain individuals I encountered. Many people did not interpret the stickers as controversial political statements, and were not concerned about their display. Many others reminded me of the personal risk I was taking by putting up the stickers, and urged me to be careful for my own safety. I think they may have been surprised, but very pleased, that a foreigner was willing to take a risk in support of Burmese well-being. I was told by a few people that they also would like to do something pro-active in opposition to military rule, but did not dare do so for fear of their family’s well-being.
Not one Burmese person I met had a negative opinion about the stickers or my actions, and in fact many people thanked me for my efforts. In my experience, the only people who are opposed to a wish for peace in Burma are the Burmese authorities.
- What is your opinion about some of the reactions people have had to your actions and subsequent deportation, e.g. on Facebook: that as a 'farang' the only punishment you got is to be deported, but that Burmese people in this situation would be directly sent to jail?
Well, that comment is exactly correct. As a foreigner, I automatically had some protection in Burma. I knew I was taking a risk, but that the risk to myself was much less than the risk would be for a Burmese person. That’s why I feel it is even more important for outsiders to do what they can to help and express solidarity with those inside Burma who are directly suffering under the regime. The Burmese themselves face grave danger and punishment if they express or do anything that could be interpreted as dissent (or ‘incorrect opinions’) against the military regime. A famous quote from Aung San Suu Kyi could apply here: “Please use your liberty to promote ours.” ဘာသာျပန္ အလင္းဆက္...
