Shan are Silenced, as Burma’s Chinese Celebrate

By SAW YAN NAING
Irrawaddy News
www.irrawaddy.org

February 7, 2008 - The Shan National Day and Chinese New Year fall on the same day in Burma this year. But while the country’s Chinese residents are celebrating on Thursday, the native Shan are officially barred from publicly marking the occasion.

The regime banned the Shan festival, also known as Shan State Day, in 2001, apparently because it was worried about growing political awareness among the Shan.

The festival commemorates the day when the Shan nation adopted its own flag and national anthem on February 7, 1947.

A resident of the Shan capital, Taunggyi, told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that no celebration of the Shan festival was being held there. Many Chinese residents were gathering to celebrate Chinese New Year, she said.

The woman, a member of the opposition National League for Democracy, said the official ban on the Shan celebration was a further indication of how the regime was suppressing the Shan people.

Low-key ceremonies were being held in some locations, however.

In Rangoon, alms were offered to monks at a Shan monastery in the city’s Mayangone Township. The organizer of the ceremony, Nang Boe Seng, said: “We are celebrating so that our [Shan] people do not forget our culture, tradition and religious customs. We also want the young generation to love and uphold our culture.”

The day’s program included dance and music on Thursday evening by Shan performers, including the famous Shan singers Sai Htee Saing and Sai Khan Lait and Burmese singer Zaw Paing.

The Shan National Day was also being observed on Thursday in celebrations in Loi Taileng, headquarters of Shan State Army—(South).

Outside Burma, Shan migrants working and living in Chiang Mai, northern Thailand, also celebrated the festival.

Despite the ban on Shan National Day observances in Burma, the regime permitted celebrations of the Shan New Year festival in Taunggyi in December.

Source: The Irrawaddy News