Welcome to the Tai4Freedom website

Tai people have lived in Shan States, eastern Burma for many centuries.  Tai have a rich cultural heritage and distinctive language and annual festivals.  Since the military coup in 1962, the Burmese military government have victimised the Tai people.  As the largest of the numerous ethnic groups in Burma, the Tai pose the greatest threat to the junta.  The civil war has waged for over forty years, with periodic ceasefire agreements, with no sight of an end to hostilities. 

The present incompetent and corrupt SPDC government now blames the Shan State Army for the atrocities and illicit drug trade activities that they themselves commit.  Tai are not fooled by their psychological warfare, but they continue to suffer every human rights abuse known to man.

Please read around our website and find out more.  We have provided links to Tai cultural sites as well as news, NGOs, and political activist sites, etc. 

We have selected some key recent articles about the political and humanitarian situation faced by the Tai and all the peoples of Burma. 

Burma has been a Theravada Buddhist country since the very early times of the spread of Buddhism from India.  We have a small selection of quotations and links.

Please get involved with your local or internet group and help us all bring an end to the atrocities of the military junta and bring peace and prosperity to a once proud and prosperous nation.

Big Elk, OMAHA Chief

Elder's Meditation of the Day - July 11

Our earth continues to Grow by cycles and seasons:  The cycles of growth - spring, summer, fall, winter.  The cycles of the human being - baby, youth, adult, elder. It is through these cycles that we will experience the changes.  I will not always necessarily agree with these changes but I need to trust the Grandfathers are in charge.  Things will come and things will go.  Really, I own nothing, the Creator owns all. Too often I label things as mine.  I say this belongs to me, but it really belongs to the Creator.  He gives me things to take care of. I need to do the best I can with what I have, with what I know at the time.  And when the Creator changes things, I need to let go for His planning is the best.  Oh Great Spirit, today let me do the best I can with what I know, with what I have.  Let me experience acceptance of Your will.

words of an Anarchist........

The State is the organised authority, domination, and power of the possessing classes over the masses ... the most flagrant, the most cynical, and the most complete negation of  humanity.  It shatters the universal solidarity of all men on earth, and brings some of them into association only for the purpose of destroying, conquering, and enslaving all the rest ... This flagrant negation of humanity which constitutes the very essence of the State is, from the standpoint of the State, its supreme duty and its greatest virtue ...

Thus, to offend, to oppress, to despoil, to plunder, to assassinate or enslave, one's fellow man is ordinarily regarded as a crime.  In the public life, on the other hand, from the standpoint of patriotism, when these things are done for the greater glory of the State, for the preservation or the extension of its power, it is all transformed into duty and virtue ... This explains why the entire history of ancient and modern states is merely a series of revolting crimes; why kings and ministers, past and present, of all times and countries - statesmen, diplomats, bureaucrats, and warriors - if judged from the standpoint of simply morality and human justice, have a hundred, a thousand times over earned their sentence to hard labour or to the gallows. 

There is no horror, no cruelty, sacrilege, or perjury, no imposture, no infamous transaction, no cynical robbery, no bold plunder or shabby betrayal that has not been or is not daily being perpetrated by the representatives of the State, under no other pretext than those elastic words, so convenient and yet so terrible: 'for reasons of State.'

... freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice

... Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality

Mikhail Bakunin, Russian Anarchist, 1814 - 1876

Tai Shan - a Giant Panda in the National Zoo, Washington DC, USA.

Tai4Freedom

This website aims to promote the cause of freedom for the Tai people of Shan States, currently part of the Union of Burma (Myanmar).

The Union of Burma was formed in 1948 based on an agreed union of the states that make up the country boundary of the Union of Burma (the Panglong Agreement).  Following many years of political upheaval and civil unrest, the military coup of 1962 brought about an oppressive brutal military junta that remains to this day.  With totalitarian political thinking derived from pre-WW2 Japan and fascist Germany/Italy, the military junta has suppressed any attempts at political reforms or democracy.  Tai4Freedom is a campaign for democracy and self-determination of Shan States.