The BurmaNet News: April 6, 1999

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The BurmaNet News: April 6, 1999
Issue #1244

Noted in Passing: "[N]obody who has seen Miss Suu Kyi address a crowd of
her compatriots could think she had lost touch with her people."
- The Economist (see Shame in Myanmar) 

HEADLINES:
==========
HK Standard: Decision "Most Heartbreaking" for Suu Kyi 
The Economist: Shame in Myanmar 
AWSJ: Polish Lessons for Burma's Generals 
The Nation: Shwedagon Restoration Takes Shape 
Independent Commentary: Yadaya, Yadaya 
DPA: Myanmar AIDS Epidemic Second Worst in Asia 
SHAN: Constant Flow of Refugees from Central Shan State 
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Hong Kong Standard: Decision on Last Visit "Most Heartbreaking" for Suu Kyi 
5 April, 1999 
AFP

STORY: LONDON: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken of her
decision not to visit her husband before he died in an interview published.
Ms Suu Kyi told the Sunday Telegraph that her sons Kim, 21, and Alex, 25,
urged her to return to Britain while their father, academic Michael Aris,
was on his deathbed.

Aris, her British husband of 27 years, died on his 53rd birthday in an
Oxford hospital last weekend of prostate cancer, the day after Yangon
authorities offered Ms Suu Kyi a chance to fly to Britain to join him.
``Imagine how hard it was to say no to them,'' she said.

In the interview with Matt Frei, the BBC's South East Asia correspondent,
Ms Suu Kyi said that she had been convinced the military government would
not allow her to return.

Accusing the junta of ``political blackmail'', she said, ``After all, their
greatest wish was to see me leave. They were desperate to get me out of the
country and they thought my husband's illness gave them the perfect
opportunity.''

Ms Suu Kyi would say little else on the subject.

``I never discuss private matters in public,'' she said. ``There are
thousands of people who face the same dilemma that I have had to face, who
have to make these choices.

``In many cases it is far worse. This is daily fare in Burma,'' she said,
adding that her colleagues in the National League for Democracy had urged
her to stay.

``It was only natural,'' she said. ``Apart from being afraid they would
lose a leader, many of them fear even more reprisals and arrests than they
are already used to.''

She admitted the decision was one of the most heartbreaking of her life,
but added: ``This has the makings of a Greek tragedy? Oh don't be silly. I
don't go in for melodrama.''

Aris, an Oxford academic and a distinguished Tibetan scholar, had not seen
Ms Suu Kyi since 1996.

He was cremated at a ceremony attended by only close family and friends in
England on Thursday. 

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THE ECONOMIST: SHAME IN MYANMAR
3 April, 1999 

THE DEATH OF AUNG SAN SUU KYI'S HUSBAND HAS REVEALED THE VINDICTIVENESS OF
THE GENERALS WHO RUN MYANMAR -- AND, INCIDENTALLY, THE DEPTH OF HER
COMMITMENT TO HER COUNTRY.


MICHAEL ARIS, who died on March 27th, was a much-liked man, as well as a
respected and prolific explorer in one of academia's far-flung corners,
Tibetan and Himalayan studies. But his death would have attracted little
attention outside his immediate circle had he not also been the husband of
Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar's opposition.

His marriage made it inevitable that when he lost his life early, to
cancer, it would be in the glare of publicity. That the ruling junta,
however, should have used his dying days for an undignified exercise in
political point scoring was outrageous. It was also predictable. This
cruelty to a bereaved family is part of a broader pattern: of the desperate
rigidity of a regime intent on clinging to power, while, bizarrely,
accusing its chief opponent of "inflexibility".

Knowing he was terminally ill, Mr Aris had applied for a visa to pay a
farewell visit to his wife in Myanmar, his first in three years. The junta
refused, saying she should visit him in Britain instead. It was an offer
she could not accept. Ever since her return to Myanmar in 1988, to look
after her sick mother, the generals have longed to see Miss Suu Kyi go away
again.

Even when, on the eve of Mr Aris's death, they said she could go and come
back, they must have known she would not trust their promise. This, after
all, is a regime which held an election in 1990, was roundly defeated, and
has yet to honour the outcome; which "freed" Miss Suu Kyi from six years of
house arrest in 1995, but still restricts her movements and cuts her
telephone line; which describes itself as transitional, but locks up and
tortures those who take it at its word. Had Miss Suu Kyi left to see her
husband before his death, or to attend his funeral, she would probably have
been consigned to lifelong exile. Those few of her leading supporters who
have so far been spared the junta's reprisals would probably have been
rounded up. The opposition, already enfeebled by years of repression, would
have been dealt a possibly fatal blow.

Mr Aris's illness gave the junta the chance to trundle out two of its
favourite weapons in its propaganda battle with Miss Suu Kyi: the claim
that she is a virtual foreigner, and that she is stubborn and unreasonable.
Myanmar's press and television -- a match for North Korea's in their
blinkered dreadfulness -- like to refer to her as "Mrs Aris". Her other
name incorporates that of her father, Aung San, Myanmar's independence
hero, and founder of the army in whose name the generals locked up his
daughter.

THE FEAR OF FREEDOM

By harping on Miss Suu Kyi's marriage to a foreigner, and the long period
she once spent abroad, the junta hopes to discredit her patriotism, and
hence the validity of her political ideas. But nobody who has seen Miss Suu
Kyi address a crowd of her compatriots could think she had lost touch with
her people. In fact, many ordinary citizens recognise that there can be few
greater sacrifices for one's country than to forsake husband and children
for an unequal struggle against tyranny. Nor are Miss Suu Kyi's political
demands, as the generals would have it, western imports that have no value
in poverty-stricken, ethnically divided Myanmar. "Freedom from Fear", the
title of a book of her writings, is an aspiration felt as keenly in Yangon
as in Pristina.


The other charge -- that Miss Suu Kyi, through her rigid refusal to
compromise, has become the main obstacle to national reconciliation in
Myanmar -- would be laughable were it not also gaining currency abroad. It
is certainly true that the opposition would like to see the results of the
1990 election honoured. But its initial demand is minimal -- a dialogue
that must include Miss Suu Kyi. The generals, understandably, would prefer
she took no part.

Without her, the opposition would be deprived of its main source of
international attention and support and, much more important, of its most
popular and revered leader at home. Miss Suu Kyi's stubbornness is one of
the few beacons in Myanmar's gloom. 

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ASIAN WALL STREET JOURNAL: POLISH LESSONS FOR BURMA'S GENERALS 
5 April, 1999 by Anna Husarska 

Michael Aris, the husband of Burmese opposition leader and Nobel peace
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, died on March 27 in Britain. He did not see his
wife before he died because the military junta in Rangoon refused to grant
him an entry visa.

This dry information, dramatic as it sounds, does not begin to reflect this
couple's ordeal, which began in 1988. Married in 1972, Ms. Suu Kyi and
Michael Aris had been living apart for 10 years when he died, and saw each
other for the last time in January 1996. The reason? Aung San Suu Kyi knew
that she would not be readmitted to the country if she went abroad, and the
junta was denying Mr. Aris a visa.

In December I went to Burma, the country that the junta renamed Myanmar, to
meet Ms. Suu Kyi. It was a most confusing encounter, irrespective of the
fact that I was detained and then deported. My confusion came from the fact
that Ms. Suu Kyi seemed to me both strong and fragile, both courteous and
curt. I assumed at the time that this was because six years of house arrest
and, later, continuous persecution by the military junta of herself and of
the National League for Democracy she leads, were taking their toll. I also
thought that her situation couldn't get any worse. Little did I know about
some of the personal reasons for her state of mind or about her endurance.

It might have been asking too much to expect military dictators to show
compassion and to act in a magnanimous way toward a married couple about to
be separated by death. But at least the junta from Rangoon could have
understood that this was a rare opportunity for them to score a few coveted
points under the heading of "humanity." The Burmese people's memory of that
gesture might have come in handy when the generals' time is over some day.

Burma's rulers should learn from other regimes that they cannot break the
larger spirit of resistance by destroying the lives of dissidents. The
recent history of my native Poland provides a valuable lesson. Ms. Suu Kyi
told me that she learned a lot from the experience of Polish dissidents.
Maybe even now the Burmese generals could learn from the experience of
Polish Communist rulers, the final batch of whom also were generals.


Poland resembled the Burmese dictatorship most under the martial law
imposed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski on December 13, 1981. That night
most of the opposition activists were arrested and "interned" in camps. In
Burma over the last year, the junta arrested and "sequestered for
conversations" roughly half of the elected parliamentarians from NLD. And
like the Burmese generals today whose [fixation] it is to destroy Aung San
Suu Kyi and the NLD, the Polish junta was obsessed with the opposition.

To organs like the Communist party daily "Trybuna Ludu," the opposition was
"a malignant tumor which tries to eat away the Polish state organism." In a
similar vein, The Burmese junta's mouthpiece, "New Light of Myanmar,"
speaks of the need to "crush" Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD and says that
"White alien's wife Suu Kyi should be deported because she is conspiring to
sell the Union into the hands of neo-colonialism."

The personal drama in Aung San Suu Kyi's family also has a few precedents
in the Poland of 1982. In August of that year, leading dissident Adam
Michnik, who had been jailed for his opinions, was taken from prison for an
hour to attend his father's funeral and then put back behind bars. A month
later, another leading imprisoned dissident, Jacek Kuron, was permitted
only a glimpse of his father's coffin before being returned to his cell
without even being allowed to take part in the funeral ceremony. At the
time, Mr. Kuron's wife, whom everyone called Gajka, was hospitalized after
being imprisoned for seven months in an internment camp. Two months later,
Kuron was allowed out of prison to visit his mortally ill wife. This was
too little and came too late. Gajka died the same day.

By such vile and inhuman actions, the Polish communist junta sought to
break the spirit of the opposition. All in vain. If anything, the regime's
lack of compassion helped hasten its demise. Seven years later the
Communists were swept away and both Messrs. Kuron and Michnik were elected
to the Polish parliament. The former became minister of Labor, and the
latter, editor of the most successful Polish daily.

It does not pay to be cruel. The Burmese junta made another mistake: A
woman of the stature of Aung San Suu Kyi will be hurt, but not broken. The
losers are the generals from Rangoon: They lost the opportunity to appear
somewhat human. To dictators, such opportunities do not come often. 

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THE NATION: SHWEDAGON RESTORATION TAKES SHAPE 
5 April, 1999 

AP

RANGOON - A golden, umbrella-shaped plate was winched atop of the soaring
Shwedagon Pagoda in Burma yesterday, the first step in the wholesale
restoration of one of Buddhism's greatest shrines.

The elevation of the tier - one of seven which make up the structure's
htidaw, or umbrella - was preceded by the offering of 9,000 candles, 9,000
flowers and 9,000 fruits to the Lord Buddha. Nine is an auspicious number
in Buddhist lore.

Tens of thousands of devotees prayed during a colourful ceremony attended
by the country's military leaders and which was broadcast on state television.


The Shwedagon, which is said to date to 2,500 years, is the most sacred
pagoda in Burma and a major tourist attraction. According to legend, eight
strands of the Buddha's hair are enshrined within the temple.

The government consulted senior monks last year about the deterioration of
the 128-year-old umbrella, or upper final due to age and weather.

A decision was made to launch a general renovation of the temple, including
a new gilding of the main, 99.4-metre pagoda and 64 smaller encircling ones.

Also to be restored are the sacred diamond bud and vane which, along with
the umbrella, form the uppermost portion of the central edifice.

Tapering towards the top, the umbrella is made up of seven separate
circular bands of gold, each sitting upright on the inner frames of the
larger cylinder below.

The base tier has a diameter of 4.5 metres. Thousands of small, golden
bells and jewels donated by the public are suspended from the frames inside
each tier.

The total amount of gold on the umbrella is reported to weigh 2.3 tonnes,
while the weight of the gold plates screwed into the upper portion of the
pagoda was estimated at 6 tonnes 16 years ago.

Buddhism is fervently practised by millions in Burma, with the faithful
donating large portions of their earnings to pagodas and monks.

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INDEPENDENT COMMENTARY:  YADAYA, YADAYA
31 March, 1999 by Emma Bovary 

[A version of this article appeared in the Montreal Gazette last week.
This version is the author's original.]

Burma's military rulers, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC),
are a superstitious bunch, but they understand a lot about technology.

For instance, they made it practically impossible for Aung San Suu Kyi to
talk to her husband, Michael Aris, in the weeks before he died. Her home
phone was blocked. When Suu Kyi called from other locations, the SPDC
intercepted and cut off most of those calls, too.

Several hours after Michael Aris's death on Saturday, I watched a close
friend of Suu Kyi's try to dial her. At first she got through, but that
call to provide comfort was stopped before Suu Kyi reached the receiver.

The continuing eagerness to keep Suu Kyi out of communication with the
world is one of the reasons why the military government's note of
condolence to her, offering to help in Rangoon with traditional Buddhist
rites for Aris, rings false.

Burma is a superstitious society. In a country where real information is
virtually impossible to get, superstition and rumor hold far more power
than they do in places with access to some form of a free press.

Many members of the Burmese military government are deeply superstitious.
Much Burmese superstition centers on yadaya. In yadaya, a person does not
attack his or her enemy as they would with voodoo dolls. Instead, in yadaya
a person ceremonially tries to take on some of the enemy's characteristics.
By doing so the person hopes to steal the enemy's power.

Like all superstitions, yadaya begs rationality. It's hard to imagine the
head of the CIA dressing up as Saddam Hussein to attempt to defeat him. But
when a defector familiar with the government's inner circle reported that
Lt. General Khin Nyunt, head of military intelligence, had dressed in
women's clothing, complete with the signature flower that Suu Kyi wears,
and performed rituals to steal the power from "a woman," few people who
know much about Burma were surprised at the story.


Khin Nyunt is not the only superstitious member of government. The Burmese
have 45 and 90 kyat notes in their currency because those numbers are
divisible by 9, the government's lucky number. Once a soothsayer told
General Ne Win, the primary military strongman in the country since 1963,
that he should fear an attack from the right.

Ne Win immediately ordered that all the vehicles in Burma would now travel
on the right hand side of the road. Never mind that they had been built for
the left. Ne Win hoped that by forcing drivers to the right he could take
power away from his enemies on the right. Yadaya does not demand direct
correlation. Because of Ne Win's superstitious beliefs, traffic on Burmese
road often looks like the bump cars ride at a carnival and drivers honk
constantly. They can't see to pass or around curves.

The fact that so many of the Burmese military are superstitious gives a
rumor already circulating in Rangoon when Michael Aris died even more
potency. This rumor and the "portents" surrounding Aris's death couldn't
have made the military government very comfortable.

The ancient Shwedagon Pagoda, a massive spire of gold in the middle of
downtown Rangoon, is the physical symbol of the Burmese empire. To gain
merit, governments care for the temple and add to its luster. In Burmese
superstition, when things go wrong at the Shwedagon things go wrong in
Burma. Earthquakes happen. Dynasties crumble. Governments can fall.

The SDPC has tried to gain Buddhist merit recently by undertaking the first
major restoration of the Shwedagon in one hundred years. They declared they
would add almost a ton of gold to the central dome and to the htidaw, the
sacred umbrella that tops it.

The work was to have been completed by March 27th, Armed Forces Day. This
would have brought merit to the military government. But the rumor
circulating in Rangoon is that the work hasn't been completed properly.
It's said that as the army tried to place the sacred htidaw in its proper
place the weather changed and lightening struck. One army man, according to
the rumor, was killed, a terrible omen for the government.

Allegations, superstitions and wild stories can have the same strength, and
the same effect on events, as the truth in a place where there is no real
news. That's why the superstitious members of the government must have
"freaked," as one Burma analyst put it, when Michael Aris died on the day
which was supposed to celebrate their power.

For the government, the omens weren't good. Aris died on his birthday. He
died on the 27th, a number divisible by nine. Buddhist custom dictates a
memorial ceremony 7 days after a person's death. This means the rites for
Michael Aris will fall on Good Friday, a day which the military government
will know represents resurrection in Christian theology. If you're truly
superstitious, everyone's beliefs count.

On some level, the SPDC must fear that performing rites to bring Michael
Aris good fortune in his next life -- on a day which represents
resurrection -- will also be a ceremony to resurrect and bring good fortune
to the democracy movement which Aung San Suu Kyi leads.


It can't have escaped the government's notice that the spontaneous
demonstrations after the funeral of Suu Kyi's mother were one of the first
public outpourings of political will which led to the 1988 uprising. For
those who are superstitious, another death would complete a circle and lead
the country back to what happened then.

Many Burmese exiles and some Burma watchers feel that protests against the
government - demonstrations, insurrection, revolt, call them what you want
- will happen on September 9, 1999, the ninth day of the ninth month in the
ninety-ninth year, just before the new millennium.

It's hard for those of us who live in rationalized countries - where there
are elections, and nightly news, and debate, and the ability to express our
political opinions openly - to take the power of superstition seriously.
But superstitions do not have to be true and logical; people need only
believe in omens to give them power.

So it's hard to take letters of condolence and offers of help arranging the
memorial services from the SPDC seriously, so soon after they worked like
the devil to stop a dying man from seeing, or even talking on the phone, to
his beloved wife.

Perhaps the SPDC hopes that by pretending to be part of the mourning
process they will have yadaya on their side. Perhaps they hope to gain
strength by pretending to be one with their opponents. More likely they
simply want to keep control, and be in place to stop any repeat of the
demonstrations which happened after the funeral of Su Kyi's mother.

No matter what happens in Burma in the coming months, and even without
yadaya, the military government still holds an overwhelming advantage: they
have the most guns and are more than willing to use them.

But for the superstitious members of that government, the number of omens -
Buddhist, animist, Christian - surrounding Michael Aris' death must make
them very nervous about what could start or be resurrected on this Good
Friday.

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DEUTSCHE PRESSE-AGENTUR: MYANMAR AIDS EPIDEMIC SECOND WORST IN ASIA AFTER
CAMBODIA 
2 April, 1999 

Myanmar (Burma) has the second worst HIV/AIDS epidemic in Asia, after only
Cambodia where an estimated 4 per cent of the adult population is infected,
the head of the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) said in
Bangkok Friday.

"Burma has the second worst AIDS epidemic in Asia, and it is because of a
combination of many things," said Peter Piot, UNAIDS's executive director.

Piot said UNAIDS estimated there were at least 440,000 cases of people
infected by HIV/AIDS in Myanmar, where intravenous drug use is widespread
and there is an active cross-border sex trade with neighbouring Thailand
and China.

The Myanmar junta claims to have only 21,503 confirmed HIV cases and 2,854
AIDS cases.

"The big challenge is the recognition of the problem by the government,"
said Piot, addressing a press conference in Bangkok.

The UNAIDS chief added that unlike Thailand, which is often cited as a
success story in the fight against AIDS, Myanmar has few non-government
organizations (NGOs) to fall back on for community support in preventing
the epidemic from taking off and caring for its victims.


"In Myanmar, at the moment, this is not a strong point because there is
the governmment and then there is civil society," said Piot, is a reference
to the rather hostile relationship between Myanmar's military junta and its
own people.

Piot, who was on the last leg of a regional trip that included Vietnam,
Cambodia and Thailand, said that Myanmar would be UNAIDS' next priority
country in Asia.

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SHAN HERALD AGENCY FOR NEWS: CONSTANT FLOW OF REFUGEES 
5 April, 1999 

[From the SHAN March, 1999 Monthly Report]

During January and February of this year, 1999, at least 1,100-1,200 people
per month from the following towns of central Shan State have moved to the
eastern side of the river Salween, to the border areas and to Thailand.

1. Murng-Kerng
2. Lai-Kha
3. Paang Long (in Loi-Lem)
4. Murng Nawng (in Kae-See)
5. Kun-Hing 
6. Nam-Zarng
7. Murng Pawn (in Loi-Lem)
8. Murng-Nai
9. Larng-Khur 
10. Murng-Pan

The numbers are believed to be much larger, given the fact that many people
just pass through unnoticed.  The main reasons that are causing these
people to flee are still basically the same as before:

1. Unfair Rice Procurement:  Farmers are obliged to sell an unreasonable
ratio of their produce at prices much lower than the actual contemporary
market rates, forcing many into destitution.

2. Conscription of Forced Labour and Forced Portering:  In almost all areas
where SPDC troops are present, forced labour of the civilian population
such as building and maintaining military camps and other facilities,
cultivation of crops for the military are routine chores that leave very
little time for the people to care for their own necessities. The civilian
population are also forced to provide porters for the military every 10-12
days. People who cannot go must pay a 10,000-12,000 Kyat wage to hire
someone else to go instead. Those who cannot afford this must suffer cruel
and inhuman treatment by the members of the military.

3. Foraging on civilian livestock:  Livestock such as pigs and chickens
belonging to villagers are often taken at will, often in front of the
owners, without being paid for. Cattle are also frequently shot for meat.

4. Excessive Restriction of Movement:  People are not allowed to go beyond
3 miles from towns to cultivate crops, making it very difficult for those
who have been forcibly relocated over the past 2-3 years because there is
usually no land  available for them to cultivate within 3 miles of the
towns. Those who go beyond the set limit are severely punished and
sometimes shot dead.

5. Those who manage to catch and sell their loose cattle are subject to
heavy tax by the military, about half the selling price -- 4,000-5,000 Kyat
tax on 10,000 Kyat sale.

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