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Myanmar: behind the bright facade,



Subject: Myanmar: behind the bright facade, a land shadowed by fear -- The

Japan Times
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THE JAPAN TIMES / WEDNESDAY, APRIL 21, 1999
              Myanmar: behind the bright facade, a land shadowed by fear
                                                        By RICHARD HUMPHRIES
                                                                      YANGON
  The setting is remarkable. Resplendent golden pagodas shimmer in the light.
Riverboats pass lush, green, irrigated paddy fields. Ethnic festivals explode
in color and noise against a still-grand back drop of fading colonial
architecture. Bright, sarong-like "longyis," wrapped around people's waists,
add to the vividness of the scene. And here and there, magnificent, haunting
ruins evoke the splendor of the past.

  Yet if the sun still shines on the Myanmar of coffee-table photo albums, a
vast, disturbing darkness also shadows the country. This is not a happy
society. Fear, deprivation and worse are commonplace.

  Myanmar has been under varying forms of military rule since 1962. The
present
government, euphemistically self-named the State Peace and Development
Council,
consists largely of senior military brass at the top, with regional commanders
filling assorted Cabinet position. The actions of these men have repeatedly
given rise to the quip that George Orwell wrote "1984" as a sequel to his
"Burmese Days." Orwellian this government certainly is.

  Even the most native visitor cannot miss the billboards. Large and small,
always with white text on a red background, they have been placed throughout
the country. Many of the massages, which are occasionally in English, call for
obedience: "LOVE AND CHERISH THE MOTHERLAND" or "OBSERVANCE OF DISCIPLINE
LEADS
TO SAFETY." Others announce the presence of enemies and what the military will
do to them if they are caught.

  A few of these exhortations have been posted in curious locations, such as
outside Yangon's U.S. Embassy. The reasoning behind this, apart from the
probable insult intended, may be religious in origin. Many Myanmars believe in
"nats," 37 capricious spirits whose worship predates the arrival of Buddhism.
Red and White are the colors associated with placating these potentially
dangerous entities. The authorities may well see the signs as useful
talismans,
capable of warding off malign foreign influence.

  The amount of construction under way in Yangon is striking. Hotels,
half-built or with signs proclaiming "Opening Soon," dot the city. But the air
of burgeoning prosperity suggested by this is misleading. There are few
tourists. The younger, backpacking crowd is largely absent, and among older
tourists a sheepish, should -we-really-be-here demeanor is common.

  Any profits flowing from the construction projects or from the sale of the
country's natural resources have mostly benefited the "Tatmadaw," or Myanmar
Army, and a few other favored groups. For the average person, daily life is a
struggle. Inflation is severe, and the black-market rate for Myanmar's
currency, the kyat, has doubled in the last two years.

Child laborers, soldiers and spies
  According to a member of the Democratic Party for a New Society, a popular
but now-banned student organization, many of Yangon's citizens have no
disposable income. They will pawn their few personal possessions in the
mornings to pay for transportation to work sites. If they were lucky enough to
get work that day, they can buy back their things as they go home in the
evenings.

  Work is available, but often it is not of the paid --- or at least well-paid
--- variety. The use of forced labor throughout Myanmar has been
well-documented. One notorious example is the construction of the Ye to Dawei
(Tavoy) railway in the south, with thousands of villagers dragooned for the
purpose and guarded by armed soldiers.

  North of Yangon, especially between the cities of Nyaunglebin and Toungoo,
child labor is a frequent and visible phenomenon. At one site, small girls,
clearly younger than 10, were pouring tar at road works under the blazing sun.
"It is very sad; they have no chance for school," one bystander quietly
observed.

  A genuine growth industry in Myanmar has been the military --- meaning more
soldiers, more equipment and more spies for the Military Intelligence Service.
Consequently, journalists must be careful whom they speak to, not so much for
their own safety as for that of their interlocutors. Myanmar people are
exceedingly polite and friendly. Pleasantries and smiles are readily
exchanged,
but it is important to let people broach the more difficult topics in their
own
ways.

  "We can talk here safely," one very well-informed gentleman said, "If we
were
in public, Military Intelligence might be watching and listening."

  Under such laws as the 1950 Emergency Provisions Act, a seven-year jail term
awaits anyone who "causes or intends to spread false rumors laws that have
followed it are interpreted as the government sees fit, to suppress dissent.

  It is not just in the tea shops and marketplaces that "they" might be
listening. According to Professor Desmond Ball, author of "Burma's Military
Secrets" (White Lotus,1988), "Monitoring of domestic conversations is
widespread, especially when critics of the government or associates of critics
are involved. All domestic long-distance connections can be intercepted and
recorded at the exchanges in Rangoon (now Yangon) and Mandalay. (MIS officers
are stationed at both exchanges)." Additionally, the regime has recently
received equipment enabling it to monitor satellite, fax and e-mail
transmissions.

  The military junta attempts to justify its heavy-handedness by saying
that it
is the only force capable of preserving the unity of the state. At least
one-third (actual numbers are contested) of Myanmar's citizens belong to an
ethnic minority. Many of these groups are either in a state of active
insurgency or maintaining tenuous ceasefire with the government. The
nationalities question is central to Myanmar politics. It is one that past and
present governments have failed to address adequately and which any future
democratic government will have to treat very carefully.

A place of tension and uncertainty
  This March, I went to Karen State in Southeastern Myanmar, where what is
perhaps the world's longest-running civil war continues. Since 1949, the Karen
National Union and its military wing have been fighting successive Myanmar
governments, at first for independence and more recently for autonomy within a
proposed democratic federal state. The Karen ethnic minority is possibly
Myanmar's largest (the same claim is made for the Shan).

  The capital, Hpa-an, is an immediately appealing place, situated in a
lowland
valley alongside one of Asia's great rivers, the Salween, with majestic karst
formations rising in the distance. At first, the atmosphere of the town is
inviting. In the evenings, for instance, it is relaxing to walk down the
darkened  side streets, past teak houses lit by small oil lamps.

  Soon, however, more ominous elements come into focus. If the military
presence ranges from the subtle to the overt in Yangon, it is at times
overwhelming in Hpa-an, giving the impression of an occupying force. A
compound
fenced with barbed wire occupies a good chunk of city land. This is the base
area for the 22nd Light Infantry Division, one of 10 such divisions in
Myanmar's Army.

  The 22nd participates in military actions against KNU forces. It was
involved
in the major battles of 1995 that saw the capture of the Karen headquarters at
Manerplaw, along the Thai border, a devastating blow to the KNU. This division
also saw "action" in 988, when it was involved in the gunning down of
thousands
of unarmed prodemocracy demonstrators.

  The Tatmadaw isn't the only armed presence, which further adds to the
tension
and uncertainty that pervade the place. I saw at least 100 other soldiers,
recognizable by their distinctive yellow headbands, traveling in pickups or
larger trucks. Many appeared to be very young, probably in their early teens,
and all looked a little menacing, with grenades strapped to their belts and
assault rifles in their hands. Some sported the acronym "DKBA" in Roman
letters
on their headbands.

  The DKBA, or Democratic Karen Buddhist Army, is a splinter group that broke
away from the KNU in December 1994, following complaints by many Buddhist
Karen
foot soldiers that they were being marginalized by the largely Christian KNU
leadership. It was the DKBA that led the Myanmar Army into the KNU fortress at
Manerplaw, and it was this group that has led attacks on Karen refugee
camps in
Thailand, destroying several camps and killing many refugees. 

The word from the hills is bad
  The DKBA have a forward base 13 km east of Hpa-an and a main one 48 km north
at Myaing Gyi Ngyu. Many locals do not welcome their presence. "We don't like
them. They have spent too much time in the jungle and are wild. If they want
something, they take it," I was told. The DKBA are still allied with the
Tatmadaw, but there are whispers that this will not last.

  Farmers in the area, like farmers elsewhere in Myanmar, have to subsidize
the
government by selling a good portion of their crop at a steep discount from
the
market price, arousing great disaffection. Additionally, outside Hpa-an there
are military-owned rubber plantations, cleared and planted with forced labor.
When villagers' livestock roams into the plantations the army shoots it. In
early March, a section of one plantation burned down. Whether this was a
typical dry-season occurrence or some villagers' revenge, no one was saying.

  Most of the fighting takes place in the Dawna Range, well to the east of
Hpa-an. I was permitted to travel no more than 40 km in that direction, as far
as the town of Hlaing-bwe, where I was assigned a permanent "escort" of three
MIS officials. Nonetheless, the word from those hills is very bad.

  According to rights-monitoring organizations like the Karen Human Rights
Group, as well as officials from aid agencies who requested anonymity, the
Tatmadaw is committing large-scale human-rights abuses. Army conscripts are
not
receiving free rice from the quota system but are being told to "grow it or
take it." They take it.

  In an effort to deny the KNU support, the Tatmadaw is also declaring large
areas free-fire zones and ordering inhabitants, often at gunpoint or by
burning
their villages, to relocate to more controllable settlements. This doubling
and
tripling of populations is causing immense hunger and hardship, as newcomers
are settled on other villages' paddy fields.

  Hundreds of thousands of others are voting with their feet and fleeing. Many
are still hiding inside Myanmar and are thus, in the modern parlance of
nongovernment organizations, "internally displaced persons." Their
situation is
perilous and not easily ameliorated. Many hide in areas strewn with land
mines.
I was told that in recent months many very elderly people, who had previously
felt bound to their lands no matter what, were fleeing as well.

  Amid the darkness, one glimmer of light can be glimpsed in Karen State. Some
40 km from Hpa-an is the monastery town of Thamanya is one of the most
venerated Buddhist monks in Southeast Asia. He has declared a small "zone of
peace" at Thamanya, and thousands have come to live there near him in relative
safety.

  When I met the Thamanya Sayadaw, he showed me a large photo taken of him
with
Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's opposition leader. Thamanya was the first place
Suu
Kyi traveled outside Yangon after her release from house arrest in 1995. The
Thamanya Sayadaw is said to tell his SPDC visitors repeatedly that there will
be no progress in Myanmar until there is peace and Suu Kyi is running the
country. If only they would take advice.
     
* Richard Humphries teaches at Sophia University. He last wrote for the Focus
page on the rebuilding of Sarajevo.


                Keeping 'scabies' in check at the ministry of Information
                                                                        Yangon
  In downtown Yangon, at 22/30 Strand Road, stands a large building housing
the
Myanmar Ministry of Information. As part of its mission to produce and
disseminate "information," the ministry oversees publication of what may be
one
of the world's most bizarre newspapers --- an English-language daily called
The
New Light of Myanmar.

  Myanmar is run by a brutal military junta; it is therefore not surprising
that any government- run media publication will toe the official line. Still,
on an evolutionary scale of propaganda sophistication, the New Light of
Maynmar
would have to rank very near the bottom.

  Headlines blazon the comings and goings of the top military rulers,
typically
to and from fertilizer factories, land-reclamation projects and the like,
where
they appear in full military regalia to offer "guidance" or "instructions" to
the people. The paper does carry some wire-service reports, but there it
plumbs
wholly new journalistic depths is with its coverage of opposition leader Aung
San Suu Kyi and  her political party, the National League for Democracy.

  On March 5, Suu Kyi was referred to as the "white alien's wife," who should
be crushed and deported. This was done despite the regime's full knowledge at
the time that her husband, Oxford University academic Dr. Michael Aris, was
dying. She was also referred to as someone who exhibits "cruelty like an
ogress..." On March 15, in a rambling essay titled "Turning Scabies into
Leprosy," she was said to be "like a small frog from the footprint of ox...
who
dominates an acre-wide compound (but has) no connection with Myanmar or the
world."

  The NLD comes in for more than its fair share of vituperation. The "Scabies"
piece suggested that NLD leaders' speeches are so bad that people need "to
have
their phlegm checked to deny they are asthma patients." (sic) Frequently, NLD
leaders are called "ax-handles," which in junta terminology means they operate
at the beck and call of neocolonialists. The newspaper offers no right of
reply.

  Behind these rants lies a campaign that is both sinister and well-organized.
In the 1990 elections, the NLD won 392 of the 485 contested seats. The
promilitary party won 10. Ten evidently was enough for the soldiers at the
time, because they refused to give up power. Since then they have been
committed to destroying the NLD.

  Every day, it seems, The New Light of Myanmar carries articles announcing
mass resignations by NLD rank-and-file members or of 1990 winners in various
parliamentary districts. On March 16, 687 NLD members were said to have
resigned from a village in Mandalay Division. They took this action, the paper
claimed, "on their own volition" and "collectively." The resignations were
allegedly sent to a body titled the Multiparty Democracy General Election
Sub-Commission, which, despite the first two words, is a government
organization.

  After the 1990 election results were denied and overridden, many NLD
activists, sensing what was to come, went into exile and formed the
NLD/Liberated Area. This group enjoys far greater opportunities for political
activity than members of the party who remain in Myanmar. Asked to explain the
significance of the government's current anti-NLD campaign, Ram Jeet Verma,
formerly leader of an NLD/LA central Committee member, described it as
"part of
a systematic plan by the SPDC." It involves, he said, "many people (who were)
enrolled (in the party) in 1990, but have not been active for six or seven
years."

  With the party's elected MPs, the campaign is more forthright. Threats and
intimidations are widespread. This February saw a case involving one U Bo Zan,
member for a Mandalay district. His wife, who suffers from a nervous disorder,
was summoned to appear before local authorities and threatened with the
following: The NLD would be eventually destroyed; family members would be used
to engineer losses in any business undertaking they had; and that this was
part
of a special campaign. U Bo Zan has continued to resist but others have
succumbed to the pressure.

  U Aung Than, a member for Toungoo City, was repeatedly ordered to appear
before the military and "explain" why he hadn't resigned yet. Eventually he
gave way and resigned.

  Verma sees all this as part of a long campaign of suppression. "Their
strategy is to abolish us in one way or another," he said. "They don't just
simply ban us, because how can they say to the world or their friends in ASEAN
that they are advancing to democracy? But it is their goal."

  Observers believe that the junta plans to eventually eliminate the NLD and
replace it with the regime's own political action group, the United Solidarity
Development Association. The logic driving this policy is a vision of the USDA
evolving into something like the Golkar party under Suharto, a large, docile,
political rubber-stamp organization, membership of which automatically means
favors. The Indonesian model may be in decline, but that does not diminish the
Yangon authorities' apparent determination to hold onto power. (R.H.) 


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