Women's Underwear Needed in Fight For Democracy in Myanmar

Women are being asked to volunteer their undergarments in an international effort to shame Myanmar's ruling junta into giving citizens greater access to humanitarian aid and human rights.

Organizers launched the Canadian edition of the Panties for Peace! campaign this week with a call for women to send underwear to the Myanmar embassy in Ottawa. According to the campaign, Myanmar's embassies in Europe, Australia and Brazil, among other places, have been receiving female underpants in the mail.

The campaign plays off what the groups says are regional superstitions that contact with women's panties can sap a man's power. Activists claim the fear is shared by the leaders of the country's military regime.

"If you don't believe me, you can bring this to the Yangon airport - you will be shot dead," activist Thet Thet Tun Tuesday as she clutched a pair of white undies. "So we use this against them."

Spearheaded by a pro-democracy group based in Thailand, the campaign was launched last year to draw attention to human rights abuses against women in the country, also known as Burma.

At the time, the junta was accused of violently suppressing a pro-democracy uprising by the country's Buddhist monks.

The Canadian version of the international campaign, co-ordinated by the Quebec Women's Federation and Rights and Democracy, hopes to also raise funds for victims of Cyclone Nargis.

More than 130,000 people are thought to be dead or missing in the wake of the cyclone that struck earlier this month. The United Nations estimates that 1.5 million survivors have not yet received any aid.

"I think there have been more victims from the cyclone from the fact that the military prevented aid from getting through," said Mika Levesque, Rights and Democracy's program officer for Myanmar.

Humanitarian workers have only just begun reaching the remote, hardest hit areas of the country.

Levesque said Rights and Democracy will funnel any money raised to known aid groups working along the Myanmar-Thai border. She refused to name the groups for security reasons.

Tun, who fled the country seven years ago, described a society suffocating under state control and widespread misogyny.

"Our daily clothes are separated from a man's clothes, our towels are separated from their towels," she said. "That's what everyone still believes."

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