@body intro = My name is Ayi Layah Mon and I am a member of the Mon Youth Group.
I am honoured to speak at this rally on behalf of the Mon Youth Group, which is a branch of the Australian Mon Association.
As an Aussie-Mon girl, my usual life was interrupted by images of the recent political turmoil in Burma.
My parents came here as refugees who had fled the country in 1988. They told me that Burma has been ruled by a group of generals since 1962, and the people of Burma have not enjoyed freedom or democracy since. They also told me that schools in Burma are very crowded and many schools don't even have a computer, and sometimes the Burmese soldiers would even come to the schools to arrest the students who had been part of the anti-government demonstrations.
Unlike us in Australia, students in Burma frequently joined in demonstrations against the corrupt generals, and many were killed in 1988.
While we in Australia constantly complain about the small things in our lives that have gone wrong, our counterparts in Burma are risking their lives for the greater good of Burma.
When I saw the images of the demonstration, which many of you may have seen, I felt angry and I wanted to do something about it.
So what can I do, what can we do? I think that we all can do a lot.
We can tell our friends that soldiers should not rule any country. We can tell them that the soldiers are making Burma poor. We can tell them that students and the youth in Burma are paying a great price and it's not even their fault. We can tell them that they can write to politicians or even the United Nations.
Finally, the students and the youth of Burma are suffering as much as their parents did from those tyrants. I strongly believe that we, in Australia, can make a difference by helping send the Burmese military regime into the dustbins of history.
[Ayi Layah Mon is a year 9 student in the ACT. This her speech at a Free Burma rally in Canberra.]