Zoya Phan, Campaigns Manager at Burma Campaign UK, is featured in the New Internationalist magazine.
‘The government policy on Burma is soft,’ says Zoya Phan with a hint of anger in her voice. ‘They are promoting their own trade and business interests. I want to see a more robust policy from [British Prime Minister] David Cameron that challenges the government in Burma and tackles their impunity.’
A member of Burma’s Karen ethnic minority, Zoya was named after Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya, a Russian partisan who died fighting against the Nazis at the age of 18. Unlike her namesake, Zoya, now 33 and living in England, managed to escape the clutches of a despotic invasion and has become the global voice for the Karen community. While she was able to escape a cycle of suffering, hundreds of thousands of her people are still trapped and at the mercy of the military junta.
