88Generation « Walk For Freedom

88Generation

At 10:40 am on Saturday, March 1st, Athein and Zaw set out from Portland, OR on the first steps of their journey to New York. With two cell phones, a camera, and their green army packs full of supplies, they will follow the path of I-84 across America – one carrying the American flag, and the other carrying the flag of Burma’s democracy movement with the signature golden peacock on a red background.

We are carrying two flags and we respect for both flags carrying each day.Our peacock red flag stand for peaceful fighting freedom for Burma and USA flag stand for, to show US land is freedom land and protect our mission to successful.

Red Flag = Brave and strong

Peacock = Male peacock , never return fight till death or win on mission.

White star = Democracy, Freedom, Peace, living without fears.

Yellow cycle = Restrain , press down , Oppression

Yellow color stand for , Seven nations in Burma with Burmese equal living live style , Students , People , Ka chin nation , Karan nation, Ka yah nation, Ka Yin nation, Moon nation, Ra khaing nation, Shan nation and Burmese

Our annoucement and statement for Burmese people in Burma

Second Statement of concerned Burmese around the world – Upload a doc

16 Comments »

Hi Tara is that you Editing this post? Send me Email Thanks I have lost contact with Athein , he called me on Week day but I was in Class room .

Comment by athein | March 2,2008 | Reply
Yes – that was me. Athein left this morning on the walk. You are logged in under Athein’s account so only his email shows up – I am not sure what yours is from here. You can also email me at tara AT burmasolidarity.net

Comment by relawatch | March 2,2008 | Reply
hi
this is si thu. the guy who drove across north americe for free burma campign. I SLUTE YOU ATHEIN AND ZAW. I WISH YOUR JOURNEL SAFE AND YOUR CAMPIGN WILL SUCCESS. maybe i will see you at finish line. take care. i support you guys all the way.
your comarate
sithu

Comment by si thu | March 4,2008 | Reply
Hi,
I am so pround of you Athin and Zaw .Thia is unbelieveable that coz 3000 mils to New York so i respect them .Good save and keep your walking .

Comment by zaw ko ko | March 8,2008 | Reply
ေျပာက္က်ားစစ္သည္…. ေအာင္စစ္သည္ကြ၊

ျပည္သူ႔အတြက္ စြန္႔စားလွ်က္ပဲ

မင္းတို႔ေသြး႐ွိ ယွဥ္ၾကစမ္း။

I am very proud of you, Brothers.

May you have a save journey.

In solidarity,

Aung Zay Ya

Comment by ေအာင္ေဇယ် | March 8,2008 | Reply
Just an update folks. We saw Athien and Zaw in Arlington, Oregon on Saturday, March 8th. The Eastern Oregonian did a story on their march in the paper on 03/09/2008. Here is the site to read the article.

http://www.eastoregonian.com/main.asp?SectionID=13&SubSectionID=48&ArticleID=74559

Good luck, Gentlemen. You walk for a worthy cause.

Comment by Shelly Mundy | March 10,2008 | Reply
Good luck,
I supporting you, whatever you doing for
our country. I beleive we will success one day.

Comment by khtay | March 11,2008 | Reply
It’s great to see so many people supporting! I saw the guys last week and they were doing good. I know they can do this, they just need the support and encouragement from us. Thanks to all!

Comment by rissah | March 11,2008 | Reply
I am very proud of you, Brothers.

I beleive we will success one day.

Comment by ko phyo | March 12,2008 | Reply
ခင္ဗ်ားတို ့လုပ္ေနတာကိုၾကည့္ျပီး ကြ်န္ေတ္အပါအ၀င္ မလုပ္ေသးတဲ့လူ
အားလံုးအစား ရွက္မိတယ္ဗ်ာ တေနရာရာမွာေတြ ႔ခဲ့ရင္လဲတတ္နိုင္တဲ့ ဘက္ကကူညီပါ့မယ္ ခြတ္ေဒါင္းေသြးဟာဘယ္ေလာက္ရဲတယ္ဆိုတာ ျပလိုက္စမ္းပါ ေနာင္ေတာ္တို ့ရယ္……………………………………..

Comment by ေက်ာ္လင္းထြန္း | March 15,2008 | Reply
save journey…i beleive god bless ur way. don’t give up . i proud of u. i want to help u but i can’t..coz i’m in myanmar. but i can support u by my prayers.

Comment by nay thurein | March 18,2008 | Reply
Hi my brothers congratulation and very proud for you.we should be successfully democracy and human right in the our mother land.That is not so far way our future.
Take care
Htat Aung (88)

Comment by Htat Aung | April 28,2008 | Reply
The boys have made it to mid-Nebraska. You can see their picture made the front page at http://www.nptelegraph.com.

Comment by Tiffany | May 3,2008 | Reply
HI,
I live in winterset, Ia. May 16th, 2008 i was driving and i saw these 3 guys walking the highway carrying the American Flag and another flag which i didn’t know what it was. Looking at them i didn’t figure they spoke english, but i tried to ask them what they were doing. I think i frightened them. I drove home grabbed my video camerea, some cokes and some money. I then raced back to highway 92 heading west of Winterset. I kept driving with my heart sinking thinking i lost them or they got a ride. As I crested a hill I saw the proud RED flag of Burma with a yellow Peacock emblazened on it. My heart jumped for joy. I honked and pulled over to the side of the rode in from of them thinking of how i would let them know i was a “friend”. Thankfully they spoke a little english and i was able to communicate with them. I handed them the cokes and asked if i could video them telling what their story was and why they were walking with these 2 flags. They proudly stood there along a busy highway in a small town in front of me and my camera and proudly told their story. My heart cried for them. I have to admit i didn’t understand some of what they were saying as iam not good at other languages. What struck my heart was the strong set of the jawlines on Zaws face and the friendliness and eagerness to talk on Atheins’ face. After the talk i offered them a ride which they proudly turned down stating they “Walk” for their cause. I then offered them some money and to my unbalievable surprise they turned that down also. I was then told that Zaw has won a Nobel Peace Prize. After telling them i was so proud of what they were doing and asking what i could do to help, I shook their hands and stated i was very honered to meet them. I thanked them for telling me their story on camera and advised them i would get it out there. As i walked back to my car with such mixed feelings I felt so little and worthless compared to these strong, believing, dedicated young men. I truly hope their mission turns out as they expected and I will try to get their story out the best i can. It is not everyday that you see young men walking down a highway carrying flags and so desperate to get help for their country. They were actually carrying our american flag proudly, and sad to say I would not carry our flag proudly nor would i fly it at my home as i use to years ago. To me this is “The United States of Embarassement” Good luck to you my friends, i will do what i can to get the word out and to help in any way i can for Burma. Thank-You for touching my heart.

Your friend from winterset, Ia

Comment by Mary | May 19,2008 | Reply
Hello, my friends.

You are doing a beautiful thing.

My name is Kim. I went to Burma a few years ago, and the Burmese people have a special place in my heart. I also worked with refugees on the Thai-Burmese border. People like me think, “what else can we do?” I have been to demonstrations; I am having an event for Aung San Suu Kyi at my house on her birthday to raise money and awareness, but still….it is not enough! You are an inspiration. You are doing something extraordinary!

Where will you stay when you reach New York City? I live here, and you can stay with us as long as you like. Free food. Free bed. And new friendship. Please contact me.

kimborba@gmail.com

I left a message somewhere else on this website, and I sent you an email. I will also try to call you.

Thank you so very much.
Kim

Comment by Kim | June 1,2008 | Reply
GREAT JOB,BRO.
WE SUPPORT U 2.
SAVE JOURNEY.

Comment by ko | July 25,2008 | Reply

About

Aung San Suu Kyi her mother was ambassador to India and her father was Aung San the leader of Burma (1915-1947)

Suu Kyi won the election but was denied the office by the military government.

She won Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

To visitors you may need Burmese font so please click and install below images Key pad and Font

Click Map to Burmese language blog

Zaw Min Htwe is one of the 1988 student new generation, he is 27 years old and his father was a member of the A.B.S.D.F ( All Burma Student Democratic Font) Regiment 216 in 1988 Thai- Burma border.

In 1988 Zaw min Htwe was 7 years old and he didn’t know about the whole story of Burma but he knew thousands of thousand students and people died at that time when the Burma terrorist military junta shoot innocent people down.

He could not completed his school, he went as far as high school year 7 when he left the country because of the political situation. He was a very active freedom for Burma and hunger strike supporter.

This time Zaw Min Htwe wanted to join on Walk For Freedom and also he wants to write his story for Burma people.

Zaw says ” I could catch a plane to New York or post the Petition letter, I know its easy. I have my brothers and sisiters I have a good parents with me, I have a house to live and I have enough foods to stay on this land USA. Living in this country life style is 9 time out of 10 better than Burma, I can’t stand sitting in living room watching TV and forget everything past life. I know this is not right, I have to help Burmese people from my side the best as I can, this walking is not for me and I am not showing myself who I am on the road everyday but I am showing why we are walking on long road , where we are from and why we have to do this for our country. Realtively, people left in my home country, they have no freedom , they can’t do anything I am free to do here. We all must help people of Burma , please help us”

Zaw Min Htwe

This is our regiment camp based on Thai-Burma border, this mountain completely covered with bush land.
After we left home for Democracy in Burma, this is where I grew up with my brothers on this place more than 10 years.This is not someone writing fiction, this is true story, many life’s had been buried for Democracy and Burma freedom but this is not finished, we have to do and this is our duty to do . If I die new generation will take our place and they will take our duty till our country get freedom.
It was for so many reasons that I left my regiment and my friends, but this does not mean that I ran away from my country. I have always wanted to do something for my country, but I don’t know what the right way is for me to do this. Before, I believed we needed international help for Burma, but I haven’t seen any help from the world. There are only two choices left for every life in Burma, become a fugitive and rebel against their law, or obey their rules and stay with their ruling one-power government.
I already donated my life for my country, and now I have decided to do something that nobody else would do. Maybe someone has already done this, maybe this is the first time, but I am not crazy and I am going to do this until my job is done. I have decided to march to New York from my city. I live in Portland, Oregon, about 2,500 miles east of New York by plane. Walking this journey will be at least 3,000 miles. It won’t be easy to get there like sitting on a plane is, I know and understand that I will be walking for more than six months, and I don’t know what I will have to face on my journey.

Athein

A world away from America, the Southeast Asian nation of Burma made headlines in 2007 when Buddhist monks rose up in protest against the ruling military junta. The Burmese junta responded with violence and thousands of monks have since disappeared. While some ﬂed for their lives, many others have been tortured, jailed, or killed. Oppression in Burma began long before last year’s protests, though. The military took over the government in 1962 and has ruled with an iron ﬁst ever since. Over 650,000 people have been displaced and 3,000 villages have been destroyed by the junta, which targets civilians in ﬁghting against rebel groups. Army battalions routinely conﬁscate land from locals to use for their own proﬁt. Soldiers rape women with impunity and forced labor is common. The junta has been destroying the environment to mine gold, jade, rubies, and to build oil pipelines and dams. They are destroying the peoples’ lives and land and keeping the proﬁt for themselves. With an estimated 450,000 soldiers, Burma has one of the largest military forces in the world, and more than one-third of the national budget is spent on it. The government only uses this force against its own citizens. Nonetheless, countries like Russia and China continue to sell the Burmese junta the weapons that are the tool of their oppression. In 1988, Athein was just 15 years old. After participating in the August ‘88 protests, he found himself marked by the military government and in danger. With no other choice, he left his home and his family in northeast Burma and joined the multitude of student leaders who were ﬂeeing for their lives. He traveled on foot through the jungles of Burma to the Thai border, where he joined other students and found shelter with the Karen National Union, an ethnic rebel group. The students formed the All Burma Students Democratic Front, and continued their struggle against the junta from the border regions of Burma. Like many other students, Athein eventually made his way to the United States as a refugee – where he continues to struggle for change in his homeland, and works tirelessly to raise awareness about the atrocities the Burmese junta is committing against its own people. In March, 2008, Athein will step out from Portland on a journey to the United Nations ofﬁces in New York. Like thousands of Burmese who have traveled on foot through mountains and jungles in search of refuge, Athein will walk across the United States in a call to action to save Burma. Along the way he will speak to people in towns across America, telling the story of millions of oppressed Burmese, and collecting signatures on a petition to present to the United Nations. On August 8, 2008, China will hold the opening ceremony of the Beijing winter olympics, an event symbolic of global cooperation and peace. Athein will present his petition to the UN on this day – 20 years to the date that the Burmese military gunned down 3,000 demonstrators in the now infamous 8-8-88 protests.