Thank you. That's an excellent question.
The army certainly does have a hold on the civil government. Will it change? To answer that, I can only say that I hope so, but I can't be sure.
It has to do with the power structure and whether the army or the individual commanders feel they can maintain their power and security if a change happens. I am not a political scientist, so I can't give good recommendations on how that can happen.
The other problem is that a lot of these commanders have committed human rights violations. If Burma needs to come to terms with its past, there are a lot of different ways to do this, but at the very least these commanders are not going to look good. They're not going to want that to happen, so it's a very difficult situation.
Continuing to push for a change, beginning to empower civil society groups and community-based organizations.... Historically in Burma there have been a lot of laws on the books to crush civil society. Even when Cyclone Nargis happened, there was no help coming in. Villagers organized themselves like volunteer firemen to go help, and they were thrown in prison for that. That was in the past.
In the future, if there were a stronger civil society, that would help to bring more power to civilians and to shift it from the military.
What can we do to push for this? We can continue to support community-based organizations. There are more fledgling ones in the interior of the country, which I think are good to support. But there's an extremely strong civil society in all the ethnic states and on the borders, because they've been forced to take care of themselves for this time.
Because I live right across the border from Karen state, I know this area well and I work closely with the exiled Karen health department, with the Back Pack Health Worker Team, and with the Mae Tao Clinic. These groups, in Karen state, are serving more than 300,000 people in their clinical catchment areas. They have had training from outside. They have a different perspective. It's really important to continue to support this.
Maybe I should mention now that there's one Canadian organization that's donating a lot of money. Inter Pares has been funding a lot of border health activities, and I'd like to thank them for that.