A seminarian from the Diocese of Killaloe has walked across Ireland to raise awareness of human rights abuses in Burma. Ger Fitzgerald from Castleconnell, Co. Limerick completed a sponsored walk from O'Connell Street in Dublin to O'Connell Street in Limerick in seven days, accompanied by two Burmese exiles and supporters.
Mr Fitzgerald is currently studying for the priesthood in Maynooth and is expected to be ordained a deacon in the Diocese of Killaloe later this year.
He organised the walk after watching a BBC documentary on the plight of the Karen people from the eastern region and Irrawaddy delta of Burma.
The Karen are one of the largest minority groups in Burma and they participated in an insurgency against the military junta in 1950.
Throughout decades of fighting since then, hundreds of thousands of the Karen have suffered from violence, rape and displacement at the hands of the Burmese army in what has been described by human rights groups as a genocide.
Mr Fitzgerald told The Irish Catholic that he had undertaken the walk "to raise funds to help the Karen people, but more importantly to raise awareness as we travelled across Ireland, of the terrible human rights abuses being perpatrated against them."
The money raised from the walk will be donated to the medical clinic of Dr Cynthia Maung, a Karen woman who has been bringing health care and education to thousands of Burmese refugees from the Karen area since 1988.
This week Burma's pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent more than 13 of the past 20 years in jail or detention, was found guilty of violating security law and sentenced to a further 18 months of house arrest.
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