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ASIAWEEK ARTICLE (JUNE 03, 95)



FROM: YE MYINT@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

ASIA WEEK(JUNE 30, 1995)
INSIDE STORY:TRACKING MYANMAR
BY  RON  GLUCKMAN

	The tortuous train journey north of Mandaly is a nightmare of overheated carriages, backbreaking seats and rickety tracks. Beyond the central city, the "express" averages 25 mph. But it is further north in troubled Kachi
n State, where no tourists and even few Burmese residents have been allowed ot travel, that the decrepit tracks truly show their age. The liine was built by the British, who ruled the land they called Burma from the mid-1
800s 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 remot Mohnyin. It partially collapsed a few weeks before my 10-day trip early this year, killing over 100 people in Burma's worst rail disaster. That informati
on was never reported in the country. Ye as passengers lean out windows searching for the wreck, it's clear the news got past the state censors.
	"Look, Loo. Over there," shouts one man, pointing t a tangle of metal at the bottom of  a steep gorge. Inching forward, we see From: burma@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (AB AUNGKHIN)
Subject: ASIAWEEK ARTICLE (JUNE 03, 95)
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FROM : YE   MYINT
ASIA WEEK(JUNE 30, 1995)
INSIDE STORY:TRACKING MYANMAR
BY  RON  GLUCKMAN

	The tortuous train journey north of Mandaly is a nightmare of overheated carriages, backbreaking seats and rickety tracks. Beyond the central city, the "express" averages 25 mph. But it is further north in troubled Kachi
n State, where no tourists and even few Burmese residents have been allowed ot travel, that the decrepit tracks truly show their age. The liine was built by the British, who ruled the land they called Burma from the mid-1
800s 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 remot Mohnyin. It partially collapsed a few weeks before my 10-day trip early this year, killing over 100 people in Burma's worst rail disaster. That informati
on was never reported in the country. Ye as passengers lean out windows searching for the wreck, it's clear the news got past the state censors.
	"Look, Loo. Over there," shouts one man, pointing t a tangle of metal at the bottom of  a steep gorge. Inching forward, we see 0 days at a time. The price, $300, seemed a bar
gain, but still there had been no bites. "Perhaps you can help us?" he asked.
	Even with the invitation, permission for he journey took months to negitiate. Without a doubt, Burma has opened up in recent years. Visa that were once restricted to a singel day are now for four weeks, and some foreigne
rs have reported getting into restricted areas by train. Ye tourists are officially limitted ot runs between Mandalay and Rangoon, plus a few short spurs, such as one to popular Inle Lakke. Pleas to travel to Asin in Sout
hern Mon state were rejected, but we managed to overcome an earlier refusal to win a visa for the jad-mining region of Mogaung and onward to eh northernmost trail terminus of Mitkyina. This covered the longest stretch of 
track possible.
	The first sight of the "luxury" carriage, though, was unsettling. There was wood panelling, if you scraped away decades of dust, and plenty of stains, but no glass. Rather than sleep six in two befrooms, the carriage had
 tow bunks in a single room, and two dirty couches in the lounge. And the price had already trippled. The biggest problem, however was the lack of power. Out hosts insisted they would repair the generator an dhave the car
riage 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 still no power, but he promised the generatgor would work once the train began moving. It never did, rendering the fans and fridge 
useless. Still, as we pulled out of Rantgoon, we were a happy quintet: photographer Murray Whie and myself, San Lwin and Sanje, two staff provided by Rnagoon's Inya Lawk Hotel, which arranged the details of our trip, plus
 a railway worker ot watch over the lot of us. The hotel stocked food, which San Lwin and Sanje severed on a linen- covered table set with flowers. Most precious of all, tucked inside an envlope were our visa and tickets.
 The deocuments were priceless. Buying suppllies in Rangoon 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 
Myikyina."
	Our good fortune is easy to forgtet minutes after rolling away from Rangoon. 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 kilometers on t
he first leg, just ot Mandalay. And wer feel very agonizing inch. Like infrastructure everywhere in Myanmar, the rail system is in a miserable state. In this case, however, safety is at statke as the cricial rail system c
ollapses under the weight ofmore than 60million passengers per year, according to Myanmar Railroad general manager U So Tint. "The whole system needs repair, but there is no money, " laments the burly train boss, shirtsle
eves rolled up in his hot Rangoon office.
	Modernizing the outdated metergauge track will take billions ofdollars, 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 n
othing," 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 relinquishi
ng control, the major world powers to continue to hold back the investment money Burma so desperately needs. Still, SLORC has spent billions of dollars on arms purchases over the last few years to maintain status quo.
	Tourism could help, but fewer thatn 10,000 foreigners currently ride the rails each year, Soe Tint says. Rangoon has announced a goal of 500,000 tourists its Visit Myanmar Year 1996. With less than a tenth that number vi
siting last year, even tourism ovvicials call the target ludicrous. "If that many people came, " says U Myo Lwin, deputy director general of theminstry of hotels and tourism, "where would we ut them? How would we get them
 around?"
	We feel the decrepitude of the rails the frist night, sweating in our bunks, parying for the escape of sleep. Our luck doesn't stretch that far. Burmese trains don't just pitch from side to side: they lurch, leap and buc
kle. The relentless bumps and bends churn our internal organs like a skilful torture device. Consolation comes from the panoramas falshing past the windows, sights few outsiders have seen. One foreigner lived almost a yea
r in Mandalay and never got more tha 50 kilometer 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  Burma's huge central plain, planted in endless rice fields. We keep waiting for an end to the monotony of brown husks, but th ejungles Rudyard Kipling's
 enchanting novels never appear. It's a complaint voiced often by visitors as well as activists, that Burma has claeared many of its forests. "SLORC has turned everything to desert," a French tourist says in Mandalay. Man
y human-rights groups say that SLORC leveled the forests to hinder rebels fighting Rangoon's rule. Others accuses SLORC of bankrolling its top brass by selling of Burma's vast timber resources; some claim as much as 80 % 
of the former froest is gone.
	There are other reminders that this ceased to be one of the richest nations in Asia  long ago. Some are charming country scences: women in megenta dresses driving ox carts with stagecoach-style wooden wheels, piled high 
with hay. Where ther 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 an dsmugglers, children appear carring c
eramic jugs and toothbrushes: for a penny, passengers cna 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 craftment who have truned scraps ofwood into furniture. The fields always appear well tended
, the childredn clean . Even under military rule, Burma is full of life and laughter.
	But there are ugly scenes too, and many of them. Our first glimpse of the dark side of Burma comes 100 kilometers north of Rangoon, when the train passes a long rowo of men in tattered rage. They line both sides of the t
rack, 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 b
oys.
	The reaction is always the same. Up and down the train, fromefvey window, passengers  shower them with money, sometimes cigarettes or food. After a month in Burma, 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, bitter-sweet sight. The bills flutter in the wind like th feathery will of the people, who are repulsed by the barbaric pract
ice of froced labor, but helpless to end it.
	This is one of Burma's greatest shames, for the consription of prisoners is commonplance, as human-rights organizations have long contended. Chain gangs are everywhere. Prisoners by the score dredge the moat around the M
andaly Fort under armed guard. Other ganges repair roads and paths to all the major tourist sites as the country rushes to ready for the trourists 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 anotherform of oppression: ordinary citizens forced to donate to do th estate's backb
reaking work. In Myitkyina, people describe how soldiers stroll into a neighborhood demanding laborers. Most are conscripted for porter duty in the ongoing battles against guerilla 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 wer enter the station. Six soldiers are yanking peole off the train. Men and women are roughly pressed into service. The women 
are given heavy bundles, while men are handed guns. Then, they hustled off amid the wailing of friends and relatives left on the train."To fight the  war," a passenger says in whisper.
	Military presence is strong along the train route, particularly in Kachin State, where residents say the fitghting continues despite an official truce. Thirteen groups have signed agreements with SLORC since 1989; many h
ad been fighting since indepence 1948. Still there have been reports of widespread dissatifaction. Ther Kachins, one of the bigges ethnic insurgent groups, signed a truce in 1993. But we were told repeatedly of ongoing re
sistance in the state, as well as in Mon and eastern Shan state.
	Donald Delorey is among those rejecting official reports of a truc with the Kachin guerillas. He fought alongside Kachins in World War II as a member of Marauders, the U.S. soldiers who helped defeat the Japanese 50 year
s ago. We bumped into Delorey and some of his old comrades on night in Mandalay, drinking at the sleazy rooftop Popa Hotel lounge. "They 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 hobled back to visit the country, where they were credited with inventing modern guerilla warfare. We easily mark them as veterans. Even in their 70's they exudes 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 casualities to stave off the spread of facism. Or so they thought. "N
ow look at this place," another vet says."The government is killing its' people. What were we fighting for?"
	Continuing Kachin resistance mah be on reason each town has bamboo barricades at he 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 for t at sunset, t
ow baby-faced soldiers spy our white faces, set machine guns and wave madly. It isn't hard to imagine, somewhere outside the stockade, mothers calling them home for supers.
	seeing the smiles on all the faces, even soldiers, it's easy to be lulled into a sense of serenity, of forgetting that this is a brutal military regime. The remeinders come without warning , and at most unexpected times.
 Whe the train pulls into Myitkyina, a group of turban-clad men stand on the platform. They turn out to be the town's entire populatin of Sikhs, on hand to bid farewell to a woman visiting from India. She is someone's sec
ond cousing, but in Myitkyina, that's llikebeing blood relative to the entire community. One of these friendly people offers a car for hire, and a few days later, we accepted.
	Half a dozen of them jump in the back of a pick-up 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 the 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 tatooed thug, rubs the stock of his gun with an evil grin. Our frinds 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 ove, then lifts a finger and shouts "No. 1, No.1." The barricade lifts, and terror washes out of the truck. "That's  very handy," says on friend, relieved. But it's many miles before the carefree smiles 
turn 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 were placed under house-arrest. Taken to Than Lwin Guest House, we are interr
ogated by a procession of underllings before the  big boss arrives looking Dirty Harry.  Major Wan Hlain wears a maron parka, clutching cowboy hat and a poker face that changes not a wit when viewing our visa - and his is
 not in the least impressed with the photo of Khin Nyunt. After a night in the custody, a stalemate is acknowledged. The major won't allow us to visit nearby jade mines, but its so clear that he hasn't a clue what to do.
	 The solution comes the next morning when we face a terrified official, sandwiched between the monsters from the Police and Military Intelligence. Everyone wants to know how we slipped out to town an d, judging from his 
look of fright, the immigration man is the scapegoat. He is shaking frantically, so much so that he can't hold his cigarettes, and spills over over his forms.
	The tension truns around when I suggest we continue to Myikyina where our rial car is waiting. Suddenly, smiles fill the room, the house arrest is lifted. Wer are given a tour of Mogaung, where scores of trucks packed wi
th people heading 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 bo the security around the town and its "Gol
d Rush" appearance. We also visited the local illegal jade market, where Chinese buyers acquire the green gems upon open defiance of the military sales man. Many pay a cut to the local police.
	Some of that money  lines the maroon pockets of the major, who poses for ictures back at his guest house. We later larned that he is the area's former military governor and had good reasons to bar us from the mines: he o
wns many of them.
	And so it goes throughout Myanmar, where giddy panic prevails among the population, like a police state on laughing gas. We see it often, off the trourist track, where military control is ironclad, yet the people are as 
kind as they come. Ther residents of Myitkyina, a city of about 
300,000, treat us like kings. Vendors in the market offer figts as we 
pass, paying no attention to our secret-police escort. And the 
surveillance hardly seem
s necessary, since everyone in town knows our every move. New friends 
recite ourtine right down to the dishes we had for dinner. Returning 
from a festival lat one night, our train carriage has been moved. 
People sleeping 
on the platform point it out before we ask.
	Perhaps it is the gentle setting that makes the tyranny al the 
more terrible. Often, the lines get blurred, like at Myitkyina railway 
station, where police circle our carriage before demanding an 
interrogation. "Don't le
t them in," I tell San Lwin, who is easily rattled whenever officials 
come knocking . Grabbing our documents, I go alone, leaving hime safely 
behind.
	He is 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 before.
 That's Myanmar: a land apparent innocence - until inhumanity is 
unleashed again.