Aung San Suu Kyi

by Jesper Bengtsson

  After September 27, things became routine again. The protests faded when people no longer dared to go out onto the streets, and the military was slowly able to regain control.

  The teahouse where Zaw Zaw and I are sitting is by coincidence situated just a stone’s throw from the Secretariat, the redbrick building where Aung San was murdered in 1947. Aung San’s spirit hovers over the democratic movement, in the same way that Aung San Suu Kyi is present in our conversations the whole time, directly or indirectly. In a whisper, Zaw Zaw describes how the Lady followed the protests in 2007, full of hope and expectation. “She realized that it would perhaps not lead to any dramatic changes, but that it was important that people dared to demonstrate openly. It created a completely new generation of democratic activists.”

  Zaw Zaw was himself out in the streets every day during those autumn days in 2007. He organized the students and activists who walked side by side with the monks to protect them against police and military harassment. During our conversation, he tells me about the violence that confronted the demonstrators when the junta decided to suppress the revolt. Zaw Zaw was walking in a demonstration in one of Rangoon’s northern suburbs, near the Insein prison, where the military did not have to worry about foreign journalists. On the morning of September 27, the soldiers started firing tear gas at the procession of demonstrators. After that they opened fire with live ammunition.

  “One of my best friends got a bullet in his head,” said Zaw Zaw, and for the first time during our conversation at the teashop he looked uncertain. His gaze started to wander, and he smoothed back his dark, long hair and took a deep breath before continuing: “It was as though the whole of the back of his head had exploded. I couldn’t sleep that night. Hid in a cellar. Then the adrenaline took over and the day after I was back in the demonstrations again.”

  Zaw Zaw marched along the streets together with the orangerobed monks. They clapped their hands twice, then took a step forward. Clap, clap. One more step. Clap, clap. One more step.

  A quiet, slowly advancing procession against violence.

  15

  All These Anniversaries

  There are plenty of tragic anniversaries in Burma. They have greatly increased in number during the decades marking the struggle for democracy. Aung San’s death on July 19, 1947. The massacres at Rangoon University on July 7, 1962. The popular uprising on August 8, 1988. Aung San Suu Kyi’s speech on August 26 of the same year. The SLORC’s seizure of power on September 18. Suu Kyi’s house arrest on May 30, 2003. The crushing of the monks’ protests on September 25, 2007. Hurricane Nargis in May 2008. To name but a few.

  Sometimes it’s good to think about all the years Aung San Suu Kyi has been either isolated or under strict surveillance by the junta and compare what’s happened in your own life during the same period. When she was arrested the first time in July 1989 I was a twenty-one-year-old student in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden. I still had a year of classes and examinations before I would graduate. After that I have worked as radio journalist, press secretary for a union in Sweden, editor of three magazines, book publisher, and writer of a column in a newspaper. I have had three kids, married, and divorced. I have become middle aged and published five books.

  Society has changed dramatically. The Berlin Wall has fallen, computers and information technology have become permanently enmeshed in our lives. Both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush had two terms as U.S. president; the attacks of 9/11 led to the war on terrorism; China, India, and Brazil have risen to possibly become new superpowers one day; and the people of Tunisia and Egypt have forced their dictators to leave the country.

  In Burma, very little has changed during the same period, and Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for most of the time.

  The decisive question is when all these tragic anniversaries and all these developments, for better or worse, in the surrounding world will become too much for the military to cope with. When will the protests and the activists’ enormous personal sacrifices finally have an effect? All dictatorships fall, of course, but Burma’s generals have developed a huge capacity for riding out all the storms and hanging on to their power. They know exactly how to pit countries and interests against each other, with the only end being to preserve military rule. And while this oppression continues, the anniversaries will just become more and more numerous.

  The international community has not discovered any working solution for breaking the deadlock. The United Nations’ and other international actors’ operations have mainly had the aim of calling on the junta to engage in dialogue with the opposition. Time after time they have demanded that Aung San Suu Kyi be released, that a dialogue should start, and that the rights of the ethnic minorities must be respected. During my interview with Aung San Suu Kyi, she was still searching for someone to talk to: “We have to wait and see what the new parliament and the new government will do, and then we have to find out whether they are interested in a dialogue or not. We are always open for that.”

  And maybe, hopefully, that is what we see now, as I write this. With the ongoing talks between Suu Kyi and president Thein Sein, that would be a true breakthrough. But as so many Burmese exiled activists state: so far very little has changed the fundamental political structure in Burma. The military can intervene as soon as it thinks the changes have gone too far. As soon as it feels its own power base erode under its feet.

  The failure of the international community to be the catalyzer of real change is so far complete. Razali made some minor progress in 2002 and 2003, but it stagnated. After the saffron revolution in 2007, the former United Nations envoy Ibrahim Gambari traveled to Thailand, where he yet again demanded talks among the junta, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the ethnic minorities. At that time he had a world that was more critical than ever backing him up. The United States and the European Union had introduced new sanctions against the trade in precious stones and timber, among other commodities, as well as against yet another group of junta members and their families. Russia and China had agreed to discuss Burma at the Security Council. The United Nations demanded in a resolution that the conflict in Burma should be settled in a peaceful manner, without brutality on the part of the military. However, China and Russia, in parity with ASEAN’s member countries, basically claimed that the violations in Burma were a domestic matter that had nothing to do with other governments.

  From 1990 until today the United Nations has had nine different envoys who have made a total of forty-one visits to Burma. Each time the visit has been preceded by speculations about a breakthrough, each time the envoy has demanded a dialogue. And each time this effort has resulted in nothing at all. And even if there now seem to be some real efforts to open up Burma and actually change the politics of all those years of military junta rule, it’s still a fact that the UN had very little to do with it.

  Not even repeated reports of murder, torture, and rape have had any effect.

  In September 2005, Nobel Prize winners Václav Havel and Desmond Tutu presented the report “Threat to the Peace” about the crisis in Burma. The report states that the situation in Burma is worse than in other cases in which the United Nations has chosen to intervene. The civil war and the attacks against the ethnic minorities are two such deciding factors, as is also the humanitarian crisis: the millions of refugees in neighboring countries, the drugs from the golden triangle, the spread of HIV that always follows in the tracks of heroin use, the democratically elected government that was never allowed to take over back in 1990. These factors would each on its own motivate a sharper reaction on the part of the United Nations, wrote Havel and Tutu. But nothing has happened. The United Nations has not taken seriously its responsibility to protect the civilian population.

  During my travels in Burma, at least before the last year’s development in the country, I have met many activists as well as “ordinary” Burmese, who have quite simply stopped believing in the United Nations or any other international organization as a factor of change. “W
e no longer count on any help from outside the country,” said one young NLD activist whom I met the day after my meeting with Zaw Zaw. “There were such hopes after 1988, those who fled to the border after the massacres counted on receiving military support, perhaps from the USA, but it didn’t happen that way. And since then nothing has worked. A new popular uprising is necessary to overthrow the junta. We have to work underground and organize our opposition.”

  The situation among the ethnic minorities is particularly desperate, which became clearer than ever in the aftermath of the election in November 2010. Ethnic minorities like Kachin, Karen, and Shan had warned the surrounding world of the threat of a new war. They had seen the junta gather massive amounts of soldiers in the border areas, and the ethnic minority leaders thought their resistance to the fake election was the reason. The junta would take their revenge, trying once and for all to take control of the border areas.

  The war restarted a couple of days after the election. The Tatmadaw attacked Karen villages in eastern Burma, and around fifteen thousand refugees immediately crossed the border into Thailand. Fighting also broke out in the Shan state and elsewhere, and later the war with the KIA was restarted after fifteen years of cease-fire.

  During my travels in the Kachin states in 2005, I met many young people who in all seriousness hoped that the United States would invade Burma, just as it had done in Iraq. They were fed up with the whole situation. Tired of decades of war and living in a country where their own future would be decided by a xenophobic regime with little or no understanding of world developments.

  As a matter of fact the junta have used the fear of an invasion in their propaganda. When they moved their administrative capital from Rangoon to the brand-new town of Naypyidaw in central Burma, Than Shwe said that the move had been made to “avoid an attack by the ocean.” All the Burma experts in the world scratched their heads and wondered in surprise what threat he was speaking about.

  There is no military threat against Burma. At least no external military threat. And the guerrilla armies have been active since 1948 without any success in their ambition to overthrow the central government.

  The idea to invade would probably never enter the minds of Washington officials, since there are not a sufficient number of oil wells or security policy interests at risk. However, in November 2011, when Hillary Clinton made the first official U.S. trip to Burma since the 1950s, it also become clear that the new political landscape, despite all the understandable skepticism about the military’s real intent, has opened a new dialogue between the United States and the regime in the new, strange capital of Naypyidaw.

  In any case, a military invasion, no matter the political development, would make the conflict in Iraq seem like a walk in the park. The military controls an army of 400,000 men, and they have still not succeeded in gaining control of the mountains in the last fifty years. Dozens of armies would not recognize an occupying power. The drug cartels in the mountains would give their support to the generals in Burma. The reality of the situation is that the country is in an eternal state of war. It has never existed in practice, since the military have never recognized the rights of the ethnic groups to independence within the framework of a federal state.

  After the protests in the autumn of 2007, the United States and the European Union demanded yet again that a dialogue should be held between the junta and Aung San Suu Kyi, and they introduced new sanctions aimed at the junta members and their families. But they did not dare to aim the sanctions against the oil or gas industries this time either.

  The Burma issue also came up in the Security Council of the United Nations, and for the first time China and Russia did not use their vetos. Meanwhile, the junta carried on developing their “roadmap to democracy” and forced the adoption of the new constitution.

  As the situation in Burma was relatively stable in the two years following Hurricane Nargis and because they managed to keep Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest after John Yettaw’s swim in May 2009, the junta felt it safe to move on with the election.

  This decision was probably also based on the fact that the international community was ready to reconsider its relations with Burma. To start with, their attitude toward humanitarian aid changed after Hurricane Nargis. Most countries had approached Burma with great caution up until then, but after the catastrophe the people’s needs were so enormous that that attitude was no longer perceived as reasonable.

  The increased foreign presence was the most evident change between my trips to Burma in 2010–2011 and my previous visits. It is obvious that more and more foreign companies are to be found there. Now cafés and restaurants have even appeared where aid workers and other Westerners gather for lunch and dinner. The prices are of course higher than at other places.

  When the American John Yettaw went for a swim, despite its total madness, he succeeded in focusing the spotlight on the junta’s violations. Mass media all over the world reported on the sentences against Aung San Suu Kyi and her staff. Photographs of the demonstrating monks once more filled TV screens, and politicians across the globe demanded—for which time in a row?—a dialogue with the opposition. However, when United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-Moon was to visit Burma a few weeks after Yettaw’s swim, he was not even permitted to meet Aung San Suu Kyi, despite the fact that he had made that request to the junta. Than Shwe explained that it would not look very good if the head of the United Nations were to meet a person who was prosecuted for a crime.

  Perhaps the only positive effect of Yettaw’s action was that it made the junta appear yet again as unreasonable, brutal, and almost medieval in their view of the legal system.

  The swim also coincided with the process whereby several countries were on their way to further reconsidering their policies toward Burma. With President Barack Obama at the helm, the United States decided to redirect its policies. Economic sanctions and political isolation had been the basic attitude of the United States since 1988. Now Obama wanted to initiate a dialogue with the junta, the same promise that he had given to a number of the regimes that his predecessor, President Bush, had refused to speak to. The sanctions would remain in place as long as the junta did not make any concessions or release Aung San Suu Kyi, but the talks implied a marked change, and the European Union announced that it was considering a similar change, even though it’s sometimes hard to see any clear message from the EU.

  Unfortunately, some of the foreign diplomats and business people in Rangoon took this new message of dialogue and the election in November 2010 as an excuse for advocating a more dramatic change in policy. They wanted the international community not only to open up diplomatic channels to Burmese counterparts but also to dismantle the sanctions, and as bizarre as it might seem given that the election was such a farce, they also saw the election process as a true step toward more openness and democracy in Burma. Many people make this mistake, and a few weeks after the elections the magazine The Irrawaddy provided some of the more hilarious examples:

  Priscilla Clapp, a senior American analyst and former diplomat associated with the Asia Society, believed that since seventy senior officers and many junior ones retired from active service in order to run for election, that would pave the way for a new and more reform-minded generation of army commanders to take over. No such thing has happened.

  David Lipman, the Bangkok-based European Union ambassador, called the election “the only game in town,” implying that the international community should play along with the junta or not play at all.

  A British expert, Dr. Marie Lall of Chatham House, was extolling the virtues of the politics of “collaboration” advanced by EU-funded local NGOs such as Myanmar Egress, who later reached some international notoriety by being critical of the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. They claimed her release had made their own social work more complicated.

  Lall hoped the National Unity Party, made up of former generals, was “not only set to beat the [junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Pa
rty] in many constituencies, giving it real power at a national level, it is also likely to take a different stand to the current regime on many issues, starting with land-owning rights for the peasants.” She concluded, “The elections are the first step out of the impasse between the military and the wider population.”

  NUP got 5.6 percent of the seats in the new parliament. The junta didn’t accept any competition, not even from a party basically loyal to a continued military rule.

  Those who recommended closer cooperation with the junta placed their hope in a group that is often called the Third Force. This is a loosely defined group of politicians and exiled Burmese who assert that they have taken up a position between the military and the NLD.

  The “policymakers” also proclaimed the death of the National League for Democracy and questioned the relevance of Aung San Suu Kyi.

  The junta couldn’t have been happier, since they have always tried to marginalize Aung San Suu Kyi politically. The laws that were adopted in view of the election in 2010 meant not only that she herself was denied the possibility of running as a candidate, but also that the NLD would be banned as a party if Aung San Suu Kyi remained a member of the party’s leadership. If they kicked her out, their members would be allowed to run as candidates. If they refused to stand in protest against the rules, then they would also be banned.