![]() These insurgents have been fighting since 1949. Because it has been going on for such a long time. Rumpus: You put it really well when you say that the situation is the “opposite of news.” So even if you did read the Asia-Pacific sections of newspapers every day, you still wouldn’t know about this really crazy genocide that’s going on. ![]() So you have maybe an annual Burma-mentioning in the news, but even when those stories make it into Western media, this other story, this story about this rampant ethnic cleansing campaign, is not ever part of that, and is not ever mentioned in that. And then last year, when Aung San Suu Kyi got re-sentenced to house arrest, that also made the news. And then in 2008 there was the cyclone that killed 140,000 people, and that made it into the news also. As you mentioned, there was a protest in 2007, and when monks get shot, apparently that makes it internationally newsworthy. The point is: how I learned about Burma was basically from a refugee, and from Isaac. And then one day I was hanging out with Isaac and I asked him to tell me about his experiences in Thailand. The first time I really became aware of Burma was last fall, and it wasn’t something in the news, but the fact my wife had a student in her class who was a refugee, and that reminded me of the monks’ protest, which I had read about. Rumpus: Lack of information in the news is kind of a big thing with this story I’m not especially well-versed about international humanitarian crises, but I do read the news, and like almost everyone else I talked to while reading your book, I had no idea about the situation in Burma. So when I graduated from grad school, I just decided to go check it out. I kept going back to this website, and there was still a refugee crisis, and there was still no information. ![]() It was a total fluke of a Google search, but it stuck with me for a couple years. It happened the way I described it in the book, that very lame story of how I was kind of just screwing around on the Internet and saw some information about this big refugee crisis, but couldn’t really find much information about why there was this huge refugee crisis. Mac McClelland: It wasn’t like I was shopping for a huge humanitarian crisis, although if I had been, Burma would have been at the top of my list. What drew you to working there and how’d you find out about it? The Rumpus: So I’m curious what drew you to Burma in the first place, there are so many humanitarian crises you could get involved with. You are going to tell everybody in America, then.” I spoke to McClelland by phone in late April, shortly after her book tour ended. In the book, she tells one of the refugees that nobody in America knows about Burma, and he says in perfect seriousness: “Well. Her book lays out the refugee situation at the Thai border in a direct and compelling way, but with a note of contained outrage that makes you want to get up and do something about the conflict. Which is kind of the point. But the book is more than a memoir: McClelland uses her personal experiences as a springboard for reporting the documentation on the atrocities committed by the junta against the Burmese people, and for delving into a detailed history of the conflict in Burma, especially as it touches upon the 60-year old armed insurgency that the Karen National Union (KNU) has sustained to the present day. These refugees were from an ethnic minority called the Karen (kuh-REN), and they’ve been persecuted by the junta in Burma, McClelland convincingly argues, to the point of genocide-though it’s not officially called that, for complicated reasons. The memoir of her time assisting the refugees is very entertaining, and rich with interesting characters, among them a man she formed a close friendship with, Htan Dah (pronounced ‘ta da’-he eventually made it to the States). In March, Soft Skull Press released For Us Surrender Is Out of the Question, Mac McClelland’s memoir of the six weeks she spent in Thailand, helping refugees from Burma living illegally in a border city. ![]()
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