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13 detained in Myanmar after pro-democracy support
Private sector generously supports Myanmar cyclone emergency response
William Hague: Government must redouble efforts to raise Burma at UN Security Council
WLB: Free our people's leader or face dire consequences
Suu Kyi in good health after cyclone: party official
Firsthand tale of Burma relief frustrations
Relief after Burma’s Cyclone Nargis
Escape From Burma

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13 detained in Myanmar after pro-democracy support
AP
19 June 2008

Myanmar's ruling military junta detained 13 opposition party members who called for the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi as she marked her 63rd birthday Thursday, witnesses said.

The 13 people were taken into a truck after dozens of Suu Kyi's supporters gathered outside the National League for Democracy party's headquarters in Yangon, witnesses said on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisals.

Some of those detained were punched and beaten before being taken away, they said.

The protesters shouted slogans calling for the government to immediately release Suu Kyi, who they said "has been unfairly detained."

A Buddhist monk was also arrested, according to a government official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press. The circumstances of his detention were not clear.

Last month, the junta extended the house arrest of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for a sixth year, despite international protests.

The Suu Kyi supporters dispersed Thursday — some running back into party headquarters — after more than a hundred pro-junta thugs approached in six trucks.

Security was tight around both the party headquarters and near her home, with extra barricades at both locations.

Some 40 plainclothes security officials and other pro-junta men were stationed around the headquarters.

When a group of Buddhist nuns stood outside the headquarters to pray, some security officials videotaped them.

Earlier in the day, the party celebrated Suu Kyi's birthday by offering meals to Buddhist monks at the headquarters, several miles from her home.

Suu Kyi offered yellow roses at Yangon's famous Shwedagon pagoda through a member of her political party.

Party member Myint Soe, who buys and brings food daily for Suu Kyi, offered 64 roses at the soaring Buddhist shrine, signifying the beginning of her 64th year, party sources said.

He also laid 64 yellow chrysanthemums at the tomb of Khin Kyi, Suu Kyi's mother and the wife of Myanmar independence hero Gen. Aung San. The tomb is located at the foot of the Shwedagon pagoda.

A neighbor said Suu Kyi spent a quiet birthday inside her lakeside compound.

"Her compound is quiet. So far no visitors have come to bless her, no monks have come to accept alms," said the neighbor, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisals.

Suu Kyi has spent more than 12 of the last 18 years under detention. Her party swept national elections in 1990 but the ruling junta refused to honor the results.

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Private sector generously supports Myanmar cyclone emergency response
Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Date: 19 Jun 2008

(New York, 19 June 2008): With $30 million worth of contributions, the private sector has emerged as a significant contributor to the Myanmar cyclone emergency, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today. This includes $10 million raised by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) National Committees across the world.

Humanitarian agencies on 8 May launched a Flash Appeal to fund the humanitarian effort to help more than two million people affected by Cyclone Nargis. Some of the largest donors to projects in the Flash Appeal include the Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), a key humanitarian financing mechanism managed by OCHA, which allocated $22 million to the appeal, and the United Kingdom, which gave $20 million.

Some of the largest private sector contributors to the Myanmar cyclone relief effort include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which gave a total of $3 million to non-governmental organizations, and Total oil company, which gave $2 million through the Red Cross and provided fuel for the transportation of relief supplies.

A number of companies are also channelling their donations through the CERF. They include the French reinsurance company SCOR, Western Union and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Members of the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of leading Unites States companies, have contributed a total of $7.5 million in cash and in-kind assistance for the Myanmar cyclone emergency. Contributors include Chevron, Procter and Gamble, Abbott Lab, American Express, Caterpillar, Merck & Co, Merrill Lynch, Pfizer and Schering-Plough. Business Roundtable members also contributed close to $61 million for the earthquake emergency in China.

Logistics companies Agility, TNT, UPS and DHL assisted humanitarian organizations with logistical expertise in Bangkok and Yangon. Microsoft helped OCHA to develop the Myanmar Humanitarian Information Centre website. These efforts are in line with the Guiding Principles for Public-Private Collaboration for Humanitarian Action prepared by the World Economic Forum and OCHA and launched in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2008.

Many other companies and foundations have offered help, confirming that the private sector is now a key player in humanitarian operations through both in-kind and cash donations.

The UN encourages public and private donors to report their contributions to the OCHA Financial Tracking Service (fts@reliefweb. int) to ensure that an accurate picture of international humanitarian aid flow is maintained. This global aid database helps all stakeholders to determine which emergencies and humanitarian sectors are under-funded.

Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar on 2 and 3 May 2008, making landfall in the Ayeyarwady Division and hitting the former capital, Yangon. An estimated 2.4 million people are affected. Official estimates have put the number of those either killed or missing at more than 130,000.

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William Hague: Government must redouble efforts to raise Burma at UN Security Council
Press Release / Conservatives
t (Press) 020 7984 8121
t (Broadcast) 020 7984 8100
f 020 7984 8272
19th June 2008
Ref: 1191/08

Speaking on the day that Aung San Suu Kyi marks her 63rd birthday in Burma , Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague, said:

“Aung San Suu Kyi has suffered over a decade of unjust imprisonment because of her extraordinary personal courage in standing up for the people of Burma .  We utterly condemn her continued detention and that of the 2,000 other political prisoners in Burma .

”As she marks her 63rd birthday under house arrest and isolated from her friends, family and the outside world, we call on the British Government today to redouble its efforts to raise Burma at the UN Security Council. Those countries which callously continue to oppose Security Council action on Burma , and to shield the junta, should be named and shamed.”

ENDS
For further information, please contact Natalie Kirby on 020 7984 8121.

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Free our people's leader or face dire consequences
WLB renews call for immediate release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
Women's League of Burma
18 June, 2008

On 19 June 2008, Burma's democratic leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, will once again spend her birthday under house arrest in Rangoon. She has been under detention and barred from communicating with the outside world since May 2003, when the military regime attempted to assassinate her.

The SPDC extended her illegal detention for another year last month, not daring to release her amidst the turmoil following Cyclone Nargis. However, they are in effect sidelining the one person who represents the best possible solution for a peaceful transition to democracy and reconciliation in the country.

The military junta is deliberately ignoring the fact that Aung San Suu Kyi's determination and unwavering courage to confront the regime serve as a source of inspiration for all the people in Burma as well as her supporters from all over the world.

The regime's barbaric suppression of freedom-loving people and forced adoption of its own constitution will not result in genuine peace and prosperity, which is what the people of Burma truly desire.

The junta must start stepping in the right direction by releasing Aung San Suu Kyi and all political prisoners now. This is their only way out.

We wish to thank those governments, including the United States of America, Canada, Australia and the European Union, who have maintained sanctions against the SPDC at this critical time. These sanctions have targeted SPDC leader Than Shwe and his clique, including his business cronies, the Union Solidarity and Development Association and other entities of the regime. These sanctions must be maintained until genuine steps to democracy are taken. 

It is time for the brutal generals to make the right choice and release Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's democratic leader, and start meaningful dialogue, or face being charged at an international court for crimes against humanity. Such crimes include the killing of monks last September and the ongoing blocking of aid to cyclone victims, which is causing further unnecessary suffering and death, particularly of women and children.

Some groups have already started exploring the possibilities of bringing the top leadership of the SPDC to international justice. This includes the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands, which can deal with crimes against humanity:

If Than Shwe and his cronies continue to commit brutal crimes against Burma's people, it is sure that they will one day be brought to justice.

Today, on Aung San Suu Kyi's 63rd birthday, we urge the people of Burma to call collectively for her freedom.

Let Aung San Suu Kyi be free.

Let the people of Burma be free.

Contacts:
Dwelling  : 66 89 4348976
Thin Thin Aung  : 66 89 8554119

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Suu Kyi in good health after cyclone: party official
AFP
Fri Jun 20, 1:36 AM ET

Myanmar's detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was in good health when her personal doctor visited her after last month's deadly cyclone, a senior official with her party told AFP on Friday.

Her doctor is one of the only people the military junta allows to see the Nobel Peace Prize winner inside her lakeside home, where she has been under house arrest for most of the last 18 years.

"Her doctor was allowed to visit her last month after the cyclone. It was his first visit in four months," the party official said.

"As far as I know, her health condition is fine," he added.

Part of the roof of her house in the main city Yangon was damaged when Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar seven weeks ago, killing more than 133,000 people and leaving 2.4 million in need of humanitarian aid.

Despite the devastation, Myanmar's junta last month extended Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest by another year, brushing off complaints from her National League for Democracy (NLD) party that her detention is illegal.

Fourteen people were arrested Thursday after a small protest held to mark her 63rd birthday, where her supporters shouted for her freedom on the sidewalk outside NLD's headquarters.

Aung San Suu Kyi led her party to a landslide victory in 1990 elections, but has never been allowed to govern.

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Firsthand tale of Burma relief frustrations
Tyche Hendricks, Chronicle Staff Writer
Friday, June 20, 2008

(06-19) 18:10 PDT -- Nearly two months after Cyclone Nargis slammed into Burma's Irrawaddy Delta, humanitarian relief groups are still struggling to get government permission to deliver life-saving aid to 2 million survivors, said Richard Jacquot, a San Francisco resident and emergency program manager for Mercy Corps.

In a conversation with The Chronicle, Jacquot, who returned Sunday from a month in Burma, detailed the enormous frustrations and the modest triumphs of helping cyclone victims recover under the watchful eye of an authoritarian regime.

Although Burma's military leaders promised U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a month ago that they would admit aid workers of all nationalities, they continue to restrict aid delivery, he said.

The French-born Jacquot has spent 24 years working in some of the hardest-hit war zones and disaster areas on the planet - from Sarajevo to Sudan and Congo to the Kurdish area of Iraq. He managed Hurricane Katrina recovery for Mercy Corps, an Oregon aid agency working in three dozen countries. Trained in international relations and economic development, Jacquot has worked for several humanitarian organizations coordinating emergency food, shelter, water, sanitation and health care.

The risks of providing aid in the midst of a war are manageable compared to the obstacles he confronted trying to deliver aid in Burma, said Jacquot, 58.

"You have to make contact with all the groups ... it's dangerous but you know the players," he said of his experiences in battle zones.

By contrast, in Burma, renamed Myanmar by the governing junta, "there's no rhyme or reason. You don't know why you can go here today and tomorrow you can't," said Jacquot. "It's the way an authoritarian regime works: It puts you off balance. That's the way it controls its population."

Jacquot spent a month in Rangoon, coordinating with colleagues in the delta town of Laputta over government-issued cell phones. He was not permitted to leave the city and they were unable to travel out of the delta. Satellite phones and Internet access was blocked by the government.

Mercy Corps has only been able to operate in Burma because it affiliated itself with a British medical aid group, Merlin, which had already been working in Burma and had a memorandum of understanding with the government to equip health centers in the Irrawaddy Delta. Like other aid groups, Mercy Corps and Merlin have relied heavily on Burmese staff and associates who have been able to move more freely.

The greatest frustration, said Jacquot, was watching millions of dollars worth of aid and hundreds of skilled relief workers stay bottled up in Rangoon while hundreds of thousands of survivors subsist on almost nothing after the May 3 storm, which took an estimated 134,000 lives.

"Imagine Katrina: it was already a pretty difficult challenge for the U.S. to handle," he said. "Now imagine the government has shut the area completely. No one is allowed inside and no aid is allowed to get in. The result is a population that needs assistance and cannot get it."

Mercy Corps and Merlin managed to install three large barges loaded with supplies on rivers in the delta, then used smaller boats to ferry food, plastic sheeting and other materials from the barges to the villages.

Jacquot's team has employed Burmese health workers to serve the remote communities along the rivers and hired local people to drain salt water and clear corpses out of rainwater reservoirs and prepare them to catch the monsoon rains again for drinking water.

Jacquot said he was moved by the ingenuity and initiative of Burmese people in reaching out to their countrymen in spite of government-erected obstacles.

"One of the side effects of a controlling government is that it triggers human creativity," he said. "What is extraordinary there is the response by local organizations. We have to admire them because they are taking a lot of risk."

The United Nations, along with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the Burmese government, is conducting a comprehensive disaster assessment to be complete next month. Early reports indicate that a feared wave of disease and death has not materialized. But that doesn't mean that all is well in the Irrawaddy Delta, where families still huddle in shelters with their livestock and scrounge for food and fresh water, said Jacquot.

"The fact that there isn't secondary death doesn't mean they are not suffering," he said. "You hear people say, 'It's amazing how resilient they are.' But what choice do they have?"

Meanwhile, aid workers like Jacquot debate how best to proceed in the face of continuing government resistance to foreign aid.

"Some say providing a little bit of help is better than no help at all, others say we should challenge the government further," said Jacquot, now back in his San Francisco living room. "I don't know the answer but it's a dilemma everybody has to deal with."

How to help
Foundation for the People of Burma: foundation burma.org
Give2Asia: give2asia.org.
Burmese American Democratic Alliance: badasf.org
Burmese American Women's Alliance: bawalliance.org
U.S. Campaign for Burma: uscampaignforburma.org
UNICEF: unicef.org
Mercy Corps: mercycorps.org
CARE: care.org
Save the Children: savethechildren.org
Doctors World Vision Without Borders: doctorswithout borders.org
World Vision: worldvision.org
American Red Cross: redcross.org (The Red Cross has an international response fund through which people can designate donations for the Burma cyclone victims.)

E-mail Tyche Hendricks at thendricks@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/20/BAB411C3M5.DTL
This article appeared on page B - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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Relief after Burma’s Cyclone Nargis
Learn about efforts to help victims of the devastating cyclone in Myanmar and find out what you can do.
From rd.com

On May 3, Cyclone Nargis devastated Myanmar’s southwest coast. UNICEF estimates the death toll at 100,000, making the storm the worst natural disaster since south Asia’s 2004 tsunami.

According to the United Nations, about 1 million of the 2.4 million people affected still need help in Myanmar (the country’s name was changed from Burma to Myanmar in 1989).

The Myanmar government has imposed complicated guidelines that relief workers must follow before they’re allowed in the country to help victims, slowing the relief efforts. The government was also slow to grant visas to relief workers immediately after the cyclone hit, further hindering the process.

Despite these limitations, large agencies like the Red Cross and UNICEF have been providing relief. Food, clean water, shelter and medical supplies are still desperately needed. Relief workers are working to address the immediate needs of cyclone victims, while also looking to the future to determine what it will take to rebuild homes, schools and crops. The cyclone tore through the country’s capital city of Rangoon and destroyed some of the country’s most important rice crops in the Irrawaddy Delta, so identifying how to revitalize this supply is key to rebuilding the region.

What you can do to help? Learn more below with this list of organizations working to bring much-needed relief to the already war-torn region:

• Get the latest news on UNICEF’s relief efforts with children and in Myanmar’s schools.
• Donate to UNICEF
•Find out how Direct Relief International is airlifting essential medical supplies to cyclone-affected areas.
•Donate to Direct Relief International
•Learn about the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies’ relief efforts.
•Donate to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
•Read about CARE’s emergency response Irrawaddy Delta.
•Donate to CARE
•Learn about Feed the Children’s efforts in devastated areas.
•Donate to Feed the Children 

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Escape From Burma
The world's longest-running civil war has forced 400,000 refugees into neighboring Thailand. But Thailand has had enough. Now 80,000 Burmese -- including two girls who've endured the unimaginable -- are headed for the U.S.
By Sam Dealey
From Reader's Digest

Memories of Her Mother

Moo Nay Paw has only fleeting memories of her mother. She remembers her long, dark hair and the faint outline of her beauty, unblemished by the labor of raising three children in the rugged jungles of Burma. She remembers the sweet treats her mother prepared from yellow pumpkins and roots, steamed and sugared to become a young girl's treasure. And Moo Nay Paw remembers the night when she was seven and her fingers felt the bullet hole in her mother's back.

Of the years before and since, she has other memories. She remembers brutality-at the hands of Burmese soldiers during their periodic sweeps of the mountain villages along the country's border with Thailand. And death -- of her brother and others from fever. And still more murders -- of her father, her family's friends, and countless others by the junta's soldiers. But amid all this, as clear as yesterday, is the memory of the night ten years ago that set in motion the destruction of her family.

It began with a journey. Moo Nay Paw belongs to the Karen, a tribe whose desire for an autonomous homeland has triggered relentless and brutal attacks by the government's military (which changed the country's name to Myanmar in 1989). To escape the danger, her parents gathered their children and belongings and forded the Moei River to Thailand, settling with other refugees in a small fishing village where they thought they'd be safe. But an international boundary proved as inconsequential to the Burmese army as it had to the fleeing Karen; from a hilltop across the river, troops shelled the village. Moo Nay Paw's family and two friends set out again, this time back across the river to her father's childhood village, Hta Oak, in Burma's misty mountains.

The trek took the family through dangerous territory, but her father and his friends were careful. They stuck to well-worn paths cleared of land mines, and when they came to one of the handful of roads the regime had built for troop deployment, the men strained to detect signs of soldiers nearby. Resting high against the side of a hill, they were sure they were safe. "But the Burmese army was on the other side of the hill," recalls Moo Nay Paw. "They heard all, they were so close." As the group came upon a telltale boot print on the trail, the soldiers opened fire.

Now 17, Moo Nay Paw speaks softly in the cautious English she learned in a Thai refugee camp. Her features-dark olive skin, a wide, round face, and black hair-are unmistakably Karen. She has large, serious eyes that suddenly melt into liquid when she smiles, often at the oddest moments in a conversation. She speaks of death, heartache, and misery with almost clinical detachment, as if this weren't her story at all. And in a way it isn't; it's a communal story among the Karen, in which only details differ.

Moo Nay Paw's family was caught in the world's longest-running civil war. For almost 60 years, the Karen -- one of Burma's largest ethnic minorities, totaling some 7 percent of the population -- and a handful of other tribes have struggled for freedom from the Burmese majority. That freedom once seemed within their grasp. The Karen helped the British administer their colonies starting in the late 19th century and fought with the Allies in World War II against the Japanese, with whom the Burmese sided. In return for their loyalty, the Karen were led to believe the British would grant them autonomy. But when Burmese independence came in 1948, Britain forgot its promise. The commander of the Burmese army, Ne Win, launched an offensive to bring the tribes under central rule, an effort that only intensified when, in 1962, he staged a military coup and became the country's dictator. He died in 2002, but dictatorial rule continues today.

The Karen National Liberation Army insists its soldiers are holding their ground. But with just 4,000 fighters and weapons from the Vietnam War era and earlier, the guerrillas are outgunned and outmanned. The junta's strategy, meanwhile, is simple: to force submission by attacking villages and cutting off the food and supply lines that feed the resistance. Its tactics: enslavement, torture, rape, execution.

"Where is Your Mother?"

When the gunfire erupted on the hill, Moo Nay Paw's family scattered. She and her mother dove off the path and hid behind a tree. They heard shouts and more shots, and then her mother slumped beside her. "I reached for her and I was calling, 'Mommy, Mommy,'" Moo Nay Paw remembers. "There was no answer." The girl's hands found her mother in the dark and felt the warm blood on her chest. "I could feel the hole in my mother's back," she says flatly. "I knew she was dead, but I couldn't move. I was very afraid. I cried a lot, but not too loud." Moo Nay Paw curled up against her mother's body, hugging it tightly and quietly sobbing.

When the shooting stopped, a soldier pulled Moo Nay Paw from her mother's body and delivered her to what remained of her family -- her brother and sister and her father, who had been treated roughly. "My father said, 'Where is your mother?'" Moo Nay Paw recalls. "I told him she was dead." His hands bound, he begged the soldiers to let him see her body, to bury her. They refused, then relented. In the dark of night by the side of the trail, he buried his wife and pleaded to be shot. But the junta had other plans for him.

At daybreak, the soldiers marched him and his children to a nearby encampment, where they joined other prisoners, all waiting for the day when the squadron would move on and they would be used as porters. In the regime's efforts to bring the country under its control, indigenous tribesmen are forcibly recruited to haul materials as pack mules, often going without food and water for days and being left for dead when they can no longer work. Moo Nay Paw's father plotted his family's escape, and late one night, they slipped out of the camp and fled to Hta Oak.

Moo Nay Paw and her family lived there with her grandparents for about a year. Her father worked as an itinerant farmer to support them, leaving at dawn and returning after dark.

Before long, however, her brother died, and caring for the two girls became too much for her grandmother. Moo Nay Paw's sister, P'Zaw Paw, a quiet girl three years younger with a deformed foot, was sent to stay with relatives in the Mae La refugee camp in Thailand. Moo Nay Paw herself went to another Burmese village to live with her maternal grandmother. Her father said to her, "Don't worry. Stay with your grandmother. I will come back."

But he never did. A week after Moo Nay Paw went to her grandmother's, her father went hunting with a fellow Karen. A troop of soldiers spotted them. The hunting partner escaped, but Moo Nay Paw's father did not. "The Burmese soldiers hit and kicked him," she recalls her father's friend telling her. "For 30 minutes, they hurt him, and then they shot him."

Moo Nay Paw's grandmother sent her to join P'Zaw Paw at Mae La two years later. The sisters are very close and were happy to be reunited -- but like her sister before her, Moo Nay Paw found that the relative she was to stay with already had too many mouths to feed. With their parents dead and their surviving family unable or unwilling to take care of them, the pair were facing dead-end lives before becoming teenagers.

The war has displaced as many as two million people, some 400,000 of whom have fled to Thailand. At least 150,000 now live in nine refugee camps along the border.

Mae La, the largest, is a collection of bamboo huts on stilts crowded onto small hills. For its 40,000 residents, opportunities for education are limited, and the height of prosperity is to own a small stall or a few pigs. "The Thai have labeled these camps a temporary shelter, but the fact is you have people who were born in the camps, raised in the camps, and now have kids in these camps," says Eldon Hager, a resettlement officer in Thailand with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

The Thai government is fed up, partly because of the security risks posed by the military's raids. The United Nations has agreed to resettle willing refugees in other countries, including Australia, Canada, and Norway. The majority-an expected 80,000 -- will come to the United States. Almost 14,000 arrived in 2007, settling in San Francisco, New York, Dallas, and other communities; 17,000 more are expected this year.

Driving Forces

One of the driving forces behind the resettlement is Jim Jacobson, director of a small Michigan-based charity called Christian Freedom International (CFI). For the past decade, he's championed the Karen's cause and trained backpack medic teams to care for the sick and injured inside Burma while establishing schools in the refugee camps.

The best students, including Moo Nay Paw and P'Zaw Paw, matriculate to another CFI school, which teaches English, math, and computer skills with a goal of training future Karen leaders. In addition to hiring full-time staff, Jacobson recruits visiting teachers from the United States.

Among them was Melissa Behrens, a Microsoft manager in her early 30s. Behrens and Microsoft donated ten new computers to the camps, and in September 2003 she took a leave from her job and traveled to Thailand to teach the students basic computer skills. "These kids had never seen electronics like this before," she says. "I showed them how to turn the computer on and off, and I helped them create identification cards with their date of birth, name, and picture."

On her first day in Mae La, Behrens met P'Zaw Paw. "I could not stop staring at her," she says of the frail girl with wavy hair. "We just had this very special connection." During her seven-week stay, Behrens and the girls grew close.

"She makes jokes and makes us feel happy," Moo Nay Paw says of their relationship. Behrens was concerned about P'Zaw Paw's foot: "I asked what I could do about it-in my naive American way, I thought if there's something broken, you see what can be done about it. And of course, over there you just make do and live with it." She paid for P'Zaw Paw to have surgery in Thailand and stayed in touch with the girls via e-mail and letters after returning home to Charlotte, North Carolina.

"When I heard from CFI that the girls might be up for resettlement, I was just beside myself," says Behrens. "I couldn't stop thinking about this." She and her husband, Mark, sought to become the girls' foster caregivers; Moo Nay Paw and P'Zaw Paw shared their enthusiasm.

But more than a year has passed, and the girls remain in Thailand. For single adults and intact families, resettlement can happen quickly and easily. For orphaned children, it's a complex process. The girls' relatives in the Mae La camp have made it clear that they do not want the girls back, but the United Nations is loath to break up even tenuous family connections. The Behrenses faced bureaucratic difficulties in the United States too: They were initially rejected as foster parents in the federal Unaccompanied Refugee Minors program, which is overseeing the resettlement, because they do not live near a URM office.

Even so, they began intensive training in foster care. "We had home inspections, background checks, health exams, CPR training-everything. And I was also writing letters to my Congresswoman," Behrens says. "It's just been so hard to get this done, and it's broken our hearts because what should have taken six months has taken twice as long." The girls are close to being approved for the program. While the couple may be their foster parents, "it's not a guarantee," Behrens says.

She's aware of the huge task in front of her if things work out as she hopes: "It's an unusual thing to want to take in grown teenagers who have been through so much trauma," she says. "But our hearts ache so much for them, and we so want them to have a chance in life, to be loved."

For the girls, too, the issue of resettlement is more personal than political. They understand what's happening in Burma and have said they want their people to be free, but they also have simpler wishes. "I want to go and live with your family," Moo Nay Paw wrote in a recent letter to Behrens. "I can't wait. I want to go this year. I miss you." She signed her letter "With love, from your daughter."

Want to help?
These three charities are making a difference in Burma and Thailand.

--Christian Freedom International runs 12 schools in the country's most remote areas, operates six field clinics that provide medical care, and distributes medicine, food, clothes, and other supplies throughout the country.

--Free Burma Rangers trains relief teams to go into Burma's war zones to provide medical care and supplies and document atrocities (freeburmarangers.org).

--Mae Tao Clinic provides free health care and social services to Burmese refugees and migrant workers on the Thai-Burmese border.

By Neena Samuel

Find information about the relief efforts.
Sam Dealey, a Washington-based journalist, reports on national security issues and international crises.

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