တရက်ဆိုတာမြန်မာပြည်သူတွေရဲ့အသက်ပါ
“ဒီမှာညစိုဧည့်စားရင်းစစ်တယ် မတိုင်လဲဖမ်း
တိုင်လဲဖမ်း ဘာမှမလွတ်တဲ့ဘဝတွေပါ
သတ်နေတာဘဲနေ့စဥ်
ကျီးလန့်စာလိုနေနေရတယ်
ပိုက်ဆံစားစရာမလိုပါဘူး
မျှစားအဆင်ပြေတဲ့သူတွေမျှသုံးလို့ရပေမဲ့
သေနေတဲ့လူတွေနေ့တိုင်း
ဘယ်တော့လွတ်မလဲဘယ်နေ့လဲ ပြက္ခဒိန်ကြည့်ပီအိမ်တိုင်းငိုနေရတဲ့သောက
ဆန္ဒထွက်ပြတဲ့သူတိုင်းလဲထိုင်ဆုတောင်းနေရပေမဲ့
သေနေကျတာမြင်တိုင်းစားချင်းစိတ်တောင်မရှိတော့ဘူး
ကို့အလှည့်ဘယ်တော့လဲဘဲတွေးနေတယ်
၁ရက်စိုသလို၁ရက်အဓိပ္ပါယ်ရှိပါတယ်
မြန်မာပြည်သူရဲ့ဘဝတွေပါ
သေတာတောင်ခန္ဓါချုပ်ညိမ်းခါနီးတောင်
အရှင်ငရဲကျသလိုကလီစာတွေထုတ်တာ
စဥ်းစားကြည့်ပါပြည်ပကလူတွေကပြောယုံးဘဲရတယ်
တောင့်ထားပါတဲ့
အန်ကြိတ်တောင့်ပီးကို့အလှည့်စောင့်နေကျရတာပါ
၁ရက်စိုတာမြန်မာပြည်သူတွေရဲ့အသက်ပါဆရာ”
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English Translation by Maung Zarni
A Typical Day in the Life of People in Myanmar (under Terrorist Siege)
This evening we had this “guest list” check (by the regime)
They typically take away the overnight guest (s), whether you report to the regime or not,
(as it is required of all households).
You are punished either way.
The regime kills everyday.
Everyone lives with greatest of anxieties and fear.
Money is not THE issue: those who have more share with those in need.
We all share communally.
Daily kills by the regime take a huge toll on us.
We all stare at the calendar anticipating the day we may all be delivered from this fear-stricken existence.
We pray for everyone who dares to join the protest movement.
But the news of their murder hits home hard, leaving no appetite for meals.
One’s mind can’t help but wonder “when is my turn?”
Everyday being alive is full of meaning and everyday feels like a life time now.
Our lives are like in a living hell.
Even death is not peaceful as the regime harvest organs of our deads.
Those in diaspora tell us “to hang in there.”
Well, we typically grit our teeth
but it is as though we were readying for our turns (to be murdered).
One Day in Myanmar now feels like a whole lifetime.
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A Buddhist humanist from Burma, Maung Zarni is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center – Cambodia. Zarni s the co-founder of FORSEA, a grass-roots organization of Southeast Asian human rights defenders, coordinator for Strategic Affairs for Free Rohingya Coalition, and an adviser to the European Centre for the Study of Extremism, Cambridge. Zarni holds a PhD (U Wisconsin at Madison) and a MA (U California), and has held various teaching, research and visiting fellowships at the universities in Asia, Europe and USA including Oxford, LSE, UCL Institute of Education, National-Louis, Malaya, and Brunei. He is the recipient of the “Cultivation of Harmony” award from the Parliament of the World’s Religions (2015). His analyses have appeared in leading newspapers including the New York Times, The Guardian and the Times. Among his academic publications on Rohingya genocide are The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingyas (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal), An Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide, (Middle East Institute, American University), and Myanmar’s State-directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims (Brown World Affairs Journal). He co-authored, with Natalie Brinham, Essays on Myanmar Genocide.