Students amass panties for peace

Aaron Yeo

UNDERWEAR UNITY Organizers of Panties for Peace are lampooning a Burmese superstition about women’s underwear.

A worldwide campaign against the military regime governing Burma has reached Edmonton, and the organizers want women to mail in their underwear.

The group responsible is Rights and Democracy, a global human rights organization, who have a student-run chapter at the University of Alberta.

Saima Butt, a fourth-year Political Science student at the University of Alberta, is the lead delegate of the group here on campus. She described the campaign entitled Panties for Peace, which encourages women around the world to send their underwear to Burmese embassies around the world.

"It's based off a superstitious fear that the military leaders have," she explained. "If they come into contact with women's underwear, they will lose all their power."

The campaign encourages women to write slogans such as "Solidarity with Burma" and "Oust the Regime" on their used, clean, panties.

By holding a speakers event this past Monday, Saima explained that their current mission is to get the word out to students.

"Basically we're here just to raise awareness," she added. "If we just get our message across and get people talking about it, we've achieved our goal."

Despite a small turnout on Monday, speaker Mika Lévesque was very eager to talk.

"I would go across Canada to speak to one person who is interested in Burma," she explained. "It is worth it."

Lévesque is the Rights & Democracy Regional Officer for Asia and has been working on the situation in Burma for years.

"[Burma] is a country that has some of the worst human rights violations. We're speaking about systematic violation of human rights," she said.

The campaign isn't just focused on the political imbalance, but is using the panties as a link to the frequency of rape.

"The Burmese military are using the body of women as a field of war." Lévesque said. "It's [become] normal. When you go to a village, you attack the village, and when you see women, you rape them."

She added that the army doesn't just seek sex, but also exploits the women after captureing them.

"They use the women for cooking, entertaining, bringing them drinks, and so on," she explained. "So usually they work them during the day, and at night they abuse them [and] rape them."
Lévesque also mentioned that such superstitions are not unique to Burma.

"Every culture has a taboo against women," she said. "There was a law in Canada that forbid women to go into mines underground. They believe that when a woman goes underground, you won't find any gold anymore. What the women in Burma did was turn that taboo around, use it to their advantage."

She admitted that the campaign is funny, and noted the benefit of the extra attention it attracts.

"It's therapeutic, it's funny. It's better to laugh than to cry and think about the scary images and pictures. It's funny, but to them it's a weapon," she said. "I'm sorry about men — your underwear has no power."

Even though the group has been fighting for decades, and Lévesque noted that with persistence, she is confident they will prevail no matter how bleak the situation may look.

"Look at the Berlin Wall," she said. "Nobody could say, 'In a few more months; no more Berlin Wall.' It's the same in Burma. Burma can fall down anytime."