Rebecca Hniangsinmawii (her name means “springtime beauty”
was born on March 15, 1979, in the hills of northwest Burma. According to the Chinland Guardian website, she was the second-eldest daughter among six siblings of Pu Khua Hnin Thank and Pi Zung Tin Par from the Phunte village of Falam Township in Chin State, also known as Chinland. It’s an area of many tribes, including the Zahaus. In a land of 113 languages and scores of dialects, the Zahaus had their own.
When Jonah Shacknai told friends he was dating an Asian princess, they thought he was exaggerating. But apparently Zahau’s family had status. She told friends that her grandfather was chief of the Zahau tribe. Both her grandfather and her father, now known as Robert Zahau, were freedom fighters, opposed to the military regime’s systematic ethnic cleansing through forced labor, forced migration, rape, and religious persecution (especially of the many Chins, who were converted to Christianity by American missionaries in the 19th century). Her childhood seems to have been one of continual loss and displacement. In Rebecca’s rendition, at some point in her youth her father was a political prisoner and absent for six years.