Thelma Young, a 2006 Brigham Young University graduate, is a passionate crusader for a free Burma. She moved to Thailand to work on the cause.
By Julia Lyon | The Salt Lake Tribune
Mae Sot, Thailand » Thelma Young made her first “Free Aung San Suu Kyi” T-shirt in high school, captivated by the Nobel laureate’s fight for democracy in Burma. On the day Young graduated in Texas in 2003, she remembers, a convoy carrying Suu Kyi fell under attack.
Young’s passion for the country now has taken her to Thailand, where she is a regional campaigns assistant for the Burma Partnership. She works with dozens of organizations whose focus range from education to politics, trying to make sure their message gets heard.
“It’s in this small forgotten part of the world,” she said recently of Burma, renamed Myanmar by the ruling military. “It’s a slow steady choking of the country.”
Young attended Brigham Young University, where she was the “crazy girl” in class who always talked and wrote essays about Burma, she said. While in a study abroad program, she visited the Thai city of Mae Sot, where she interviewed Burmese factory workers and saw them laying on the floor, exhausted, after being forced to work all night.
After her graduation from BYU in 2006, she worked for the U.S. Campaign for Burma in Washington, D.C., helping to launch about 100 new student chapters nationwide. But she felt isolated in Washington and moved to Mae Sot in 2008.
The nearest ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is in another city, about six hours away. But she said her visits there, and her faith, sustain her as she works long hours.
She encourages people in Utah to become involved with the U.S. Campaign for Burma, which has a single student chapter in the state, and to reach out to arriving Burmese refugees.
“I would beg the people of Utah, please reach out to them,” she said. “These are wonderful people. They’re my friends and I really hope they can be your friends too.”