Zoya Phan

Zoya Phan (born 27 October 1980) is a Burmese political activist. She resides in the United Kingdom, and is the Campaign Manager of the human rights organization Burma Campaign UK. She was an outspoken critic of the Burmese government when it was under direct military rule, repeatedly calling for democratic reform in Burma, as well as economic sanctions from both the British government and the United Nations. Following political changes in the country from 2011, she has continued to campaign for international action to end ongoing human rights violations, especially regarding the use of rape and sexual violence against ethnic women by the Burmese Army.

In April 2009, she published her autobiography, Little Daughter, in the UK, which was published under the title Undaunted in the United States in May 2010.

Biography

Early life Zoya Phan was born in Manerplaw, then the headquarters of the Karen National Union (KNU), on 27 October 1980, the second of her parents' three biological children. Her father was Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan, General Secretary of the KNU, and her mother was Nant Kyin Shwe, a former soldier for the KNU. The name Zoya came from her father, who named her after the Russian World War II hero Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya; he said he saw several parallels between the Soviet fight against the Nazis and the ongoing Karen conflict with the Burmese government. She spent most of her early life in the Karen village Per He Lu, an hour's walk away from the KNU headquarters in Manerplaw. When she was six she began to spend more time in Manerplaw, and it was there she had her first exposure to the fighting in Burma, as land mine victims frequently went to the hospital there for treatment.

When Zoya was 14, the Burmese army attacked Manerplaw and Per He Lu, forcing her and her family to run to Mae Ra Moe, a refugee camp just across the border in Thailand. In 1996, she and her family managed to cross back into Burma, settling in a Karen village called Ther Waw Thaw (The New Village). She says that this has had a particularly devastating effect on the Karen, who are an ethnic minority and around 40% Christian and 20% animist in predominantly Buddhist Burma. In addition, she accused the Burmese government of extreme corruption, saying that the leaders of the military junta have intentionally mismanaged the economy to benefit themselves. While Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest, she repeatedly urged the UN and the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights to work towards her release.

In 2007, she spoke at a Conservative Party conference, calling for the British government to cease trade with the Burmese government, and expressed her anger at the British government's continued inaction towards Burma even in the face of human rights abuses. She was also very critical of the UN for failing to impose an arms embargo on Burma after Russia and China blocked a Security Council motion. Later, she met with then-British prime minister Gordon Brown to encourage imposition of a trade embargo with the Burmese. In addition, she harshly criticised Western governments, especially the United Kingdom, for refusing to push further when Burma agreed to allow relief workers into small parts of the country, saying that they did not do enough to hold the Burmese government accountable for its lack of response to the cyclone. She pointed out that the junta had already bent to international pressure by allowing workers in at all, and said that the international community should have pushed harder, which she said would have forced the junta to allow more essential aid. Ultimately, she said the international reaction was symbolic of the past several decades of inaction towards political and human rights abuses in Burma.

In May 2011, she spoke at the Oslo Freedom Forum, and said that despite the Burmese government's claims of reform, the changes were only cosmetic and no real change had occurred in Burma. She also urged the UN to judge the Burmese government by their actions instead of their official statements. In March 2012, she spoke at the fourth Geneva Summit for Human Rights and Democracy and continued to maintain that the Burmese government's reforms were insufficient and that international pressure and sanctions were still necessary. After Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won 40 of 45 parliamentary seats in April of that year, Zoya urged people not to become overly optimistic, echoing Suu Kyi's statement that far from being the complete transition to democracy, this was only the very beginning of the process. She also stated that, despite assurances from Thein Sein that reforms would take place, attacks on minority groups in Burma were only increasing in frequency, further bolstering the need for caution.

In addition to her work with the Burma Campaign UK, Zoya is the coordinator of the European Karen Network, secretary of the Karen Community Association (UK), and serves of the board of the Austrian Burma Centre.

Writing in the UK newspaper The Independent in 2015, following election in Burma which the NLD won by a landslide, she warned that the struggle for human rights in the country was still not over.

Little Daughter

In speeches and interviews, Zoya frequently speaks about her experiences to describe conditions in Burma. In 2009, she worked with Damien Lewis to publish her autobiography, Little Daughter: a Memoir of Survival in Burma and the West, 2009. It is published by Simon & Schuster. Following this, Zoya and her remaining family set up the Phan Foundation, which aims to fight poverty, promote education and human rights, and protect the culture of the Karen people of Burma. She received her MA in politics and development from the University of East Anglia in May 2008. Today, she resides in London, UK.

Zoya has two brothers and one sister. Say Say, her older brother, was adopted by her parents when she was four months old, and her younger brother Slone Phan was born when she was two. Nant Bwa Bwa Phan, her older sister, is the UK representative of the Karen National Union. Slone lives in Manitoba, Canada, where he studied at the University of Manitoba and became active in the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, an organization assisting refugees coming into Manitoba.

Awards and recognition In 2009, Zoya became a TED Fellow. In March 2010, she was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF).