Burmese villagers being forced to work as uncompensated manual labor. Courtesy of HURCOM.
The Burma Lawyers’ Council (BLC) is an independent organization of Burmese lawyers on the Thai-Burma border that fights oppression and human rights abuses in Burma (Myanmar) and advocates for the restoration of the rule of law. The BLC runs a two-year capacity-building law school known as the Peace Law Academy (PLA). The PLA’s 25 university-aged students come from inside Burma and from refugee camps in Thailand for a law-based education that prepares them for work in a variety of NGOs. The long-term vision of the PLA is to help create a new generation of informed leaders, capable of navigating a changing political landscape despite the complex challenges posed by Burma’s ethnic diversity, rich natural resources, and decades of stagnation, oppression, and civil war under ruthless military rule.
As one of the final assignments in a six-month Environmental Ethics course exploring relationships between environmental, economic, political, and human rights issues in Burma, the students wrote “Letters to the Editor” of the New York Times in response to a March 17, 2010 article entitled, “Change Comes to Myanmar, but Only on the Junta’s Terms.”
