I have dreamed for many years of seeing Aung San Suu Kyi elected to the Myanmar parliament and watching thousands of people celebrating in the streets. Yet, while Monday's scenes made me happy, I also felt a strange emptiness inside.

We always thought that Suu Kyi being allowed to take a seat in parliament would be a final step on the road to democracy. Instead, it is only the first. Suu Kyi is even more cautious. Asked last week how democratic Myanmar was on a scale of one to 10, she answered: "On the way to one."

Too much importance has been attached to these by-elections, whose significance is more symbolic than practical. Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, will have about 5 per cent of the seats in parliament, compared with 80 per cent for the military and the main military-backed party. Even if Suu Kyi had a majority, parliament has limited power, and the military has an effective veto.

Yet, as Suu Kyi hoped, the by-election campaign has successfully mobilised many people, breaking down the fear of engaging in politics after generations of dictatorship. Now she is trying to use the limited new political space to bring genuine democratic reform, but the challenges are immense.

To use these by-elections as a benchmark for judging change is a mistake. Even had they been free and fair, and they were not, they don't mean Myanmar is now free.

I have another reason for caution. I am from the Karen ethnic group, which has faced appalling repression since Myanmar gained independence. Aged 16, I had to flee, when without warning the army fired mortars into the village. That was 15 years ago but, under the ‘reforming' President Thein Sein, attacks by the army haven't decreased. Quite the opposite.

While the international community gets excited about the changes taking place in Myanmar, many people from ethnic minorities, who make up 40 per cent of the population, feel forgotten. The only change for many people from ethnic minorities under President Thein Sein has been that things have got worse.

Rampage

The government broke ceasefires with some armed ethnic political parties, and its soldiers went on a rampage of raping, killing, looting, burning villages, using villagers as slave labour. In the past year more than 150,000 people in ethnic minority states fled their homes because of attacks.

If this had happened in or around Yangon, there would be outrage. No one would be talking about lifting sanctions. But because it happens out of sight in the mountains in ethnic minority states, the international community ignores what is going on.

I can't help thinking how people in the refugee camps in Thailand, facing yet more cuts in rations because the European Union is cutting funding, and who cannot safely return home, will feel seeing pictures of celebrations in Yangon.

How will a mother in Kachin state, living in an overcrowded temporary camp and whose child is sick from malnutrition because Thein Sein won't allow aid to them, feel when she sees those pictures? There has always been a divide and mistrust between ethnic minorities and the Myanmarese population in central Myanmar.

My father, a Karen leader who was assassinated in 2008 by government agents, said the dictatorship's successful divide and rule strategy was one of the main reasons we hadn't won our freedom.

The contrast in experiences between the changes for those in central Myanmar, and new horrors for ethnic minorities in border areas, is enormous, but we must not allow it to increase resentment.

There are reasons for optimism. Suu Kyi won her seat in the Irrawaddy delta thanks to the overwhelming support of the ethnic Karen in her constituency. Myanmar's reform process might be leaving ethnic minorities behind, but we should still stay united for our common cause: freedom.

— Guardian News & Media Ltd

 

Zoya Phan is one of Myanmar's leading democracy activists in Europe.