Welcome to Rakhaing Women's Union

Introduction

During the 1988 uprising in Rakhaing State, Burma, many Rakhaing people became actively involved in the demonstration against the totalitarian government of Ne Win, to regain their denied rights. After the Saw Maung military junta seized state power on 18 September of that year, most of activists, including many women, were arrested and imprisoned.

In the course of interrogation, the women were exploited by military henchmen, tortured mentally and physically in murky cells, and vilified by ungrounded suspicions.

Since then, many young people of conscience in Rakhaing State have been kept contained through various forms of abuse, such as forced labor inroad construction and new army camp installation, farming labor to support the military, and in frontier areas as porter, or extorting properties from the local people. In order to escape such torture, rape, detention, and forced labor, they fled in large numbers to nearby countries, and continue to do so to the present day.

Within the ruling junta, the soldiers force Rakhaing women to marry them in all kinds of cruel ways without regard for the women's wishes. Consequently, some Rakhaing women descent to the unwilling conjugal life with the Burmese soldiers. Some refuse or escape marriage with the Burmese soldiers, and risk travel across rivers and mountains, to find shelter on the Bangladesh-Rakhaing border.

In 1997, many people of Rakhaing State, including women and children, took shelter along the Indo- Bangladesh-Burma border. Their condition was rather unstable in these areas. Many were killed by environmental catastrophes, or die of preventable diseases and social neglect. For helping innocent refugees from Rakhaing State, Western Burma and trying for establishing democracy and human rights in Burma, as well as women participation in decision making level for regain foundamental rights of Rakhaing people, the Rakhaing Women's Union was founded in 1998.