From Asiaweek, Tracking Myanmar

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Burmese Relief Center--Japan
DATE:June 26, 1995
TIME: 8:12PM JST

ASIAWEEK, June 30, 1995

INSIDE STORY 
JOURNEYS

Tracking Myanmar

By Ron Gluckman

The tortuous train journey north of Mandalay is a nightmare of
overheated carriages, backbreaking seats and rickety tracks. 
Beyond the central city, the "express" averages 25 kph. But it
is further north in troubled Kachin state, where no tourists and
even few Myanmar residents have been allowed to travel, that
the decrepit tracks truly show their age.  The line was built by
the British, who ruled the land they called Burma from the
mid-1800s to 1948, and long stretches of track haven't been
repaired in a century.

The slow shuffle, though, grinds to a crawl at a bridge near
remote Mohnyin. It partially collapsed a few weeks before my
10-day trip early this year, killing over 100 people in
Myanmar's worst rail disaster.  That information was never
reported in the country.  Yet as passengers lean out windows
searching for the wreck, it's clear the news got past the state
censors. 

"Look, look.  Over there," shouts one man, pointing to a tangle
of metal at the bottom of a steep gorge.  Inching forward, we
see a more frightening sight.  At the base of the bridge scores
of shirtless men are maneuvering long bamboo poles. 
Incredibly, they seem to be propping up the bridge as we pass
over.

We had heard from the head of the railway system that the
crash was caused by overcrowded trains.  Looking out the
window now, I murmur prayers while counting heads.  All of
the carriages are packed with people and, as expected, as many
as possible are leaning out the windows, putting extra weight
on the bridge's vulnerable flank.  As soon as we are safe on the
other side, I smile at my companion San Lwin, who nods
knowingly.  "Train crash," he says as we pass the wreckage. 
"Lucky, it's not us," I reply.

Indeed, simply being on board is a fortuitous blessing.  A few
months before, covering a charity mission to the capital
Yangon, I met most of the government ministers, including Lt.-Gen. Khin Nyunt,
 the "No. 1" of the State Law and Order
Restoration Council.  SLORC's generals have ruled Burma,
which they renamed Myanmar, since seizing power after elec-
tions in 1988 - despite protests from national leaders, students,
ethnic groups and most of the world community.  At a dinner
honoring ORBIS, a charity that brings eye surgeons to poor
countries, one tourism official took me aside.  Eager for
foreign dollars, Myanmar was considering renting out a few
luxury rail cars.  He described a travel writer's dream: wood
panels, stained glass and servants cooking on board.  The
special carriages slept six and could be taken anywhere, 10
days at a time.  The price, $300, seemed a bargain, but still
there had been no bites.  "Perhaps you can help us?" he asked.

Even with the invitation, permission for the journey took
months to negotiate.  Without a doubt, Myanmar has opened
up in recent years.  Visas that were once restricted to a single
day are now for four weeks, and some foreigners have reported
getting into restricted areas by train.  Yet tourists are officially
limited to runs between Mandalay and Yangon, plus a few
short spurs, such as one to popular Inle Lake.  Pleas to travel
to Asin in southern Mon state were rejected, but we managed
to overcome an earlier refusal to win a visa for the jade-mining
region of Mogaung and onward to the northernmost rail
terminus of Myitkyina.  This covered the longest stretch of
track possible.

The first sight of the "luxury" carriage, though, was unsettling. 
There was wood paneling, if you scraped away decades of
dust, and plenty of stains, but no glass.  Rather than sleep six in
two bedrooms, the carriage had two bunks in a single room,
and two dirty couches in the lounge.  And the price had already
tripled.  The biggest problem, however, was the lack of power. 
Our hosts insisted they would repair the generator and have the
carriage ready to roll.  As one railway worker promised: "You
won't believe what you will see in the morning."

His prophesy came true.  Stumbling aboard before dawn, we
could hardly see a thing.  There was still no power, but he
promised the generator would work once the train began
moving.  It never did, rendering the fans and fridge useless. 
Still, as we pulled out of Yangon, we were a happy quintet:
photographer Murray White and myself, San Lwin and Sanje,
two staff provided by Yangon's Inya Lake Hotel, which
arranged the details of our trip, plus a railway worker to watch
over the lot of us.  The hotel stocked food, which San Lwin
and Sanje served on a linen-covered table set with flowers.
Most precious of all, tucked inside an envelope were our visa
and tickets.  The documents were priceless.

Buying supplies in Yangon the day before our departure, we
drew looks of disbelief whenever the trip was mentioned. 
"You are very lucky," we heard repeatedly.  "No one is
allowed to go to Myitkyina."

Our good fortune is easy to forget minutes after rolling away
from Yangon.  As the lurch of the train topples a flower vase
over the map spread on the table, I make my calculations: 17
hours to cover 610 km on the first leg, just to Mandalay.  And
we feel every agonizing inch.  Like infrastructure everywhere
in Myanmar, the rail system is in a miserable state.  In this
case, however, safety is at stake as the crucial rail system
collapses under the weight of more than 60 million passengers
per year, according to Myanmar Railroad general manager U
Soe Tint.  "The whole system needs repair, but there is no
money," laments the burly train boss, shirt sleeves rolled up in
his hot Yangon office.

Modernizing the outdated meter gauge track will take billions
of dollars, he says.  "Before 1988, the Japanese did some
studies and were offering help.  But that is gone.  Also, we got
parts from the Germans and French.  Now nothing," he says,
repeating a theme I hear endlessly at offices around the capital. 
With the popular oppositionist Aung San Suu Kyi ending her
sixth year of house arrest and the SLORC junta showing no
signs of relinquishing control, the major world powers
continue to hold back the investment money Myanmar so
desperately needs.  Still, SLORC has spent billions of dollars
on arms purchases over the last few years to maintain the
status quo.

         Tourism could help, but fewer than a 10,000 foreigners
currently ride the rails each year, Soe Tint says.  Yangon has
announced a goal of 500,000 tourists for its Visit Myanmar
Year 1996.  With less than a tenth that number visiting last
year, even tourism officials call the target ludicrous.  "If that
many people came," says U Myo Lwin, deputy director general
of the ministry of hotels and tourism, "where would we put
them? How would we get them around?"

We feel the decrepitude of the rails the first night, sweating in
our bunks, praying for the escape of sleep.  Our luck doesn't
stretch that far.  Myanmar trains don't just pitch from side to
side; they lurch, leap and buckle.  The relentless bumps and
bends churn our internal organs like a skillful torture device. 
Consolation comes from the panoramas flashing past the
windows, sights few outsiders have seen.  One foreigner lived
almost a year in Mandalay and never got more than 50 km
north, despite many attempts.  "You have to take notes of
everything and tell the world," she urges.

However, there isn't that much to report as the tracks run
through Myanmar's huge central plain, planted in endless rice
fields.  We keep waiting for an end to the monotony of brown
husks, but the jungles of Rudyard Kipling's enchanting novels
never appear.  It's a complaint voiced often, by visitors as well
as activists, that Myanmar has cleared many of its forests. 
"SLORC has turned everything to desert," a French tourist
says in Mandalay.  Many human-rights groups say that
SLORC has leveled the forests to hinder the rebels fighting
Yangon's rule, Oters accuse SLORC of bankrolling its   
brass by selling off Myanmar's vast er resources; some claim as
much as 80% of the former rain forest is gone.

There are other reminders that this ceased to be one of the
richest nations in Asia long ago.  Some are charming country
scenes: women in magenta dresses driving ox carts with
stagecoach-style wooden wheels, piled high with hay. Where
there aren't enough animals to go around, men pull the carts
themselves.  And bedlam erupts every morning at dawn as the
train arrives in town.  Among the food vendors and smugglers,
children appear carrying ceramic jugs and toothbrushes: for a
penny, passengers can scrub with the communal toothbrush.

Despite the poverty, smiles and friendly waves greet us at each
stop.  On the platforms are kids playing musical instruments
and craftsmen who have turned scraps of wood into furniture. 
The fields always appear well tended, the children clean.  Even
under military rule, Myanmar is full of life and laughter.

But there are ugly scenes too, and many of them.  Our first
glimpse of the dark side of Myanmar comes 100 km north of
Yangon, when the train passes a long row of men in tattered
rags.  They line both sides of the track, heads bowed.  Even
before seeing the chains dangling from their legs, we can tell
from their sad look they constitute a prison chain gang.  They
appear repeatedly along the route, chained like animals.  Many
are mere boys.

The reaction is always the same.  Up and down the train, from
every window, passengers shower them with money,
sometimes cigarettes or food.  After a month in Myanmar, I'm
used to the routine, but it's astonishing the first time, especially
in a country where kindness can be so mercilessly punished. 
What a beautiful, bittersweet sight.  The bills flutter in the
wind like the feathery will of the people, who are repulsed by
the barbaric practice of forced labor, but helpless to end it.

This is one of Myanmar's greatest shames, for the conscription
of prisoners is commonplace, as human-rights organizations
have long contended.  Chain gangs are everywhere.  Prisoners
by the score dredge the moat around the Mandalay Fort under
armed guard.  Other gangs repair roads and paths to all the
major tourist sites as the country rushes to ready for the
tourists SLORC hopes to attract during Visit Myanmar Year
1996.

Elsewhere, we see entire towns on road duty, breaking stones
with primitive tools.  Many are children, laboring in the hot
sun.  This is another form of oppression:  ordinary citizens
forced to donate their time to do the state's backbreaking work. 
In Myitkyina, people describe how soldiers stroll into a
neighborhood demanding laborers.  Most are conscripted for
porter duty in the ongoing battles against guerrilla groups. 
Residents describe paying bribes of as much as $50 to send
them knocking elsewhere.  "It happens all the time," a
shopkeeper says. 

We see this for ourselves in the northern town of Yoatown,
where a ruckus erupts soon after we enter the station.  Six
soldiers are yanking people off the train.  Men and women are
roughly pressed into service.  The women are given heavy
bundles, while men are handed guns.  Then, they are hustled
off amid the wailing of friends and relatives left on the train. 
"To fight the war," a passenger says in a whisper.

Military presence is strong along the train route, particularly in
Kachin state, where residents say the fighting continues despite
an official truce.  Thirteen groups have signed agreements with
SLORC since 1989; many had been fighting since indepen-
dence in 1948.  Still, there have been reports of widespread
dissatisfaction.  The Kachins, one of the biggest ethnic
insurgent groups, signed a truce in 1993.  But we were told
repeatedly of ongoing resistance in the state, as well as in Mon
and eastern Shan areas.

Donald Delorey is among those rejecting official reports of a
truce with the Kachin guerrillas.  He fought along side Kachins
in World War 11 as a member of Merrill's Marauders, the U.S.
soldiers who helped defeat the Japanese 50 years ago.  We
bumped into Delorey and some of his old comrades one night
in Mandalay, drinking at the sleazy rooftop Popa Hotel lounge. 
"Those are tough fighters," Delorey says of the Kachins,
rubbing his green beret in respect.  "They kept us going in the
jungle."  

Two dozen Marauders have hobbled back to visit the country,
where they were credited with inventing modern guerrilla
warfare.  We easily mark them as veterans.  Even in their 70s,
they exude an unmistakable bravado.  A half century ago,
these brash bush heroes put their lives on the line.  In no-name
patches of malaria-infested jungle, they sustained some of the
war's worst casualties to stave off the spread of fascism.  Or so
they thought.  "Now look at this place," another vet says.  "The
government is killing its people.  What were we fighting for?"

Continuing Kachin resistance may be one reason each town
has bamboo barricades at the entrance and exit of each train
station.  The barricades are surrounded by rows of sharpened
bamboo sticks.  If not so deadly real, these lashed together
stockades could be dismissed as the construction of children
playing backyard battles.  The image extends to the soldiers
themselves, often shirtless, often teens.  At one riverside
bamboo fort at sunset, two baby-faced soldiers spy our white
faces, set down machine guns and wave madly.  It isn't hard to
imagine, somewhere outside the stockade, mothers calling
them home for supper.

Seeing the smiles on all the faces, even of soldiers, it's easy to
be lulled into a sense of serenity, forgetting that this is a brutal
military regime.  The reminders come without warning, and at
most unexpected times.  When the train pulls into Myitkyina, a
group of turban-clad men stand on the platform.  They turn out
to be the town's entire population of Sikhs, on hand to bid
farewell to a woman visiting from India.  She is someone's
second cousin, but in Myitkyina, that's like being blood
relative to the entire community.  One of these friendly people
offers a car for hire, and a few days later, we accept.

Half a dozen of them jump in the back of a pickup truck, and
nobody shows the slightest sign of distress when we leave
behind the secret police who suddenly appear from doorways. 
They have been tailing us throughout our four-day stay in
Myitkyina.  In fact, we're in good spirits until the first
checkpoint.  Three soldiers had been kicking a ball in the dirt,
but now they have machine guns at the ready.  We have no
papers to be outside town, nor do the Sikhs have permission to
be with foreigners.  The leader at the outpost, a small tattooed
thug, rubs the stock of his gun with an evil grin.  Our friends
brace for the storm to hit.

But the bad weather blows over when I pull out a photo from
our last visit. SLORC leader Khin Nyunt, who is also the
powerful head of military intelligence, can be seen shaking my
hand, with photographer White watching.  The goon looks it
over, then lifts a finger and shouts, "No. l! No. 1!" The
barricade lifts, and terror washes out of the truck.  "That's very
handy," says one friend, relieved.  But it's many miles before
the carefree smiles return to their faces.

We had already acquired an appreciation for the volatility of
the situation a few days earlier in Mogaung where,
immediately after arrival, we are placed under house arrest. 
Taken to Than Liwn Guest House, we are interrogated by a
procession of underlings before the big boss arrives looking
like Dirty Harry.  Maj.  Wan Hlain wears a maroon parka,
matching cowboy hat and a poker face that changes not a wit
when viewing our visa - and he's not in the least impressed
with the photo of Khin Nyunt.

After a night in custody, a stalemate is acknowledged.  The
major won't allow us to visit the nearby jade mines, but it's also
clear he hasn't a clue what to do. 

The solution comes the next morning when we face a terrified
immigration official, sandwiched between monsters from the
police and military intelligence. Everyone wants to know how
we slipped into town and, judging from his look of fright, the
immigration man is the scapegoat.  He's shaking frantically, so
much so that he can't hold his cigarette, and spills coffee over
his forms. 

The tension turns around when I suggest we continue to
Mytkyina, where our rail car is waiting.  Suddenly, smiles fill
the room, the house arrest is lifted. We are even given a tour of
Mogaung, where scores of trucks packed with people head to
the profitable jade mines.  The value of the jadeite, which can
only be sold in licensed shops and which is completely
controlled by the military, explains both the security around
the town and its "gold rush" appearance.  We also visit the
local illegal jade market, where Chinese buyers acquire the
green gems in open defiance of the military sales ban.  Many
pay a cut to the local police. 

Some of that money lines the maroon pockets of the major,
who poses for pictures back at his guesthouse.  We later learn
that he is the area's former military governor and had good
reason to bar us from the mines: he owns many of them. 

And so it goes throughout Myanmar, where a giddy panic
prevails among the population, like a police state on laughing
gas.  We see it often, off the tourist track, where military con-
trol is ironclad, yet the people are as kind as they come.  The
residents of Myitkyina, a city of about 300,000, treat us like
kings.  Vendors in the market offer gifts as we pass, paying no
attention to our secret-police escort.  And the surveillance
hardly seems necessary, since everyone in town knows our
every move.  New friends recite our routine right down to the
dishes we had for dinner.  Returning from a festival late one
night, our train carriage has been moved.  People sleeping on
the platform point it out before we even ask. 

Perhaps it's the gentle setting that makes the tyranny all the
more terrible.  Often, the lines get blurred, like at Myitkyina
railway station, where police circle our carriage for days
before demanding an interrogation.  "Don't let them in," I tell
San Lwin, who is easily rattled whenever officials come
knocking.  Grabbing our documents, I go alone, leaving him
safely behind.

He's still watching from the window an hour later when I
return with the same police chief, who insists on holding my
hand all the way back to the carriage.  We must look like
schoolboys, but San Lwin has seen it all before.  That's
Myanmar: a land of apparent innocence - until the inhumanity
is unleashed again. 

Ron Gluckman is a freelance reporter based in Hong Kong.

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