NEWS
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(1 Depayin Butcher Not Evil:
Former Bodyguard
(2 Asian Democrats Urge: Release Suu Kyi Now
(3 Private cars forced to carry people for Trade Fair
(In Burmese)
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OPINION
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READING THE DICTATOR’S PRIMITIVE MIND (By Aung Kin)
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DEPAYIN BUTCHER NOT
EVIL: FORMER BODYGUARD
============================================
S.H.A.N
A former non-commissioned officer of the Burma Army who used
to be
Prime Minister Soe Win's security
man recently told S.H.A.N. he did
not believe his former boss, who
organized the
in
Hawkeye:
"He is just a soldier who's only doing his job,"
the 33-year-old ex-
corporal Myint
Hlaing Oo, personal number taka 711257, who had long
been AWOL (absence without leave),
said, "and that is following orders
without fail."
He knew Soe Win, then a deputy battalion
commander in Pa-an , had also
taken part in the suppression of
the
1988. "He did what he was told," he said. "He
never questioned the
right or wrong of his
assignment."
In 1990, Soe Win became the
commander of Infantry Battalion 226 in
Loimwe, 20 miles southeast of Kengtung, where he served for one-and-a-
half years. "He was totally
disciplined," Myint Hlaing
Oo
recalled. "Always in uniform
until the flag was lowered in the
evening. I also never saw him
smoking, gambling or joining a drinking
party throughout his tenure with
the 226th."
Incidentally, the first replica of
built in
discovery of an ancient alms-bowl
full of Buddha images. There are now
nine Shwe Dagon duplicates in
purpose they were constructed.
Soe Win was also said to be a
planting enthusiast. "I remember him
once asking every soldier who was
on furlough to bring back avocado
seeds," he mused.
General Than Shwe was so impressed
with him, he was placed in charge
of all civil and military affairs
in eastern
part of the Taunggyi-based
Eastern Region Command, while its commander
Colonel Kyaw Win (now Lt-Gen. Kyaw Win, chief of training)
was away.
[
Command, in 1996.]
"I therefore think he will prove to be a better prime
minister for the
generals than Khin Nyunt," he
concluded.
Thai foreign minister Surakiart Sathirathai, during a radio address,
also commented that
minister, whom he had met before
and admired, according to a Reuters
report.
One Thai observer, however, brushes off the praise by
saying, "The
trouble with Soe
Win is he's got no brains."
Soe Win, reportedly a native of
prime minister Oct. 19, replacing
the deposed Gen. Khin Nyunt.
+++++++++++++++++
ASIAN DEMOCRATS URGE:
RELEASE SUU KYI NOW
===========================================
Mizzima News
countries have stepped up the call
for the release of Burmese pro-
democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi in the wake of new threats on
her personal security and her
health.
The activists were participants in the World Forum for
Democratization
in
Societies" hosted by the Taiwan Foundation for
Democracy in
Dec. 16-17.
On Dec. 14, the 1991 Nobel Laureate's team of personal
bodyguards was
withdrawn from her compound and her
access to medical attention was
drastically reduced, just weeks
after
officially extended her detention
by a year.
"These threats and intimidation by the Burmese regime
clearly signal
that
releasing Aung San Suu Kyi,
greater risk," stressed
workshop participant Gus Miclat of the
Ms. Suu Kyi, who led her party, the National League for
Democracy
(NLD), to a landslide victory in
been detained since the May 2003 Depayin Massacre, when a military-
organized mob attacked her and her
supporters, killing scores of
unarmed civilians.
The workshop participants also called for the release of all
prisoners
of conscience in
* Thich Huyen
Quang, Thich Quang Do and Nguyen Dan Que of
* Tenzin Delek,
a Tibetan monk facing the death sentence and Hu
Shigen, a long-term detainee suffering from poor health. Both are
imprisoned in
The activists also urged authorities concerned to grant
adequate
access by health professionals and
family members to all political
prisoners.
Another matter of serious concern raised by the workshop was
the
harassment and detention suffered
by activists from
of these activists will only worsen
and prolong the root causes of the
problems already felt by these
neighboring countries," explained
Korean rights advocate Young Howard.
Human rights and democracy issues of countries that lack a
high
profile in the Asian pro-democracy
movement, including
discussed at the workshop. Baramy Mitthivong, director of
the United
prisoners Feng
Sakchittaphong and Latsami Khampoui and hoped
authorities would be more lenient
toward other activists, including
those detained for the Vangtao Incident: "As
ASEAN, it should demonstrate its appreciation of such a
privilege by
releasing political prisoners on
humanitarian grounds."
The World Forum for Democratization in Asia (WFDA) is a new
platform
for cooperation among democratic
movements, networks and organizations
in
experiences and best practices, to strengthen
the momentum for
democratization throughout the
region and hasten the development of a
regional democratic community.
This workshop was the first official WFDA event, and the
first of a
series of three strategy
development workshops, focusing on countries
at different stages of
democratization, to be held over the next six
months. These workshops will result
in a draft Program of Action, to
be adopted at the inaugural WFDA
Biennial Conference, to be held in
++++++++++++++++++++++
READING THE
DICTATOR’S PRIMITIVE MIND
====================================
By Aung Kin
General Than Shwe’s
instinctual purge of Khin Nyunt and his Military
Intelligence Service (MIS) and the creation of a new group
of henchmen
were identical to what the late
General Ne Win did in 1983. Like his
predecessor Ne
Win, Than Shwe realized that the bedrock of
personalized dictatorship has
always been mutual trust. In the absence
of the rule of law he simply could
not trust the Khin Nyunt nurtured
by Ne Win
as his own unflinching henchman. Than Shwe’s six-year
stint
at the psycho warfare
department(1958-1963), four years (1964-1967) of
jawboning at the socialist
propaganda school called the
of Political Science, and seven
years with the socialist party central
committee (1981-1988) must
have led him to suspect even his own
knees. He now seems to have
believed in an old Burmese saying, “Don’t
trust your knees beyond yourself”
(Trust no one).
Than Shwe, in the same way as Ne
Win, started his life as a junior
clerk at a local post office.
Unlike Ne Win, who had spent a year or
two at
friends with like-minded people,
Than Shwe had not even seen the
university until he joined the war
office in
intellectual things and democratic
ideals are usually way above his
head. When it comes to subtle
political maneuvering or dealing with
foreign leaders he was nowhere near
Ne Win, who had been able to
impress his counterparts with his
bread-and-butter English.
As the most powerful and least educated military leader,
Than Shwe’s
instinctive actions often seem to
have prevailed over learned
behavior. Than Shwe was said to
have believed all along that he would
end up like General Saw Maung if
Khin Nyunt could have his own way.
Acting as Ne Win’s proxy, Khin
Nyunt replaced Saw Maung with Than Shwe
in 1992. But the glaring
unsavory treatment Ne Win received during
his dying days was a kind of rude
awakening for him. He realizes that
to survive he needs his own
obedient, unscrupulous followers, not
those left over from Ne Win’s days. So, the military government and
the military intelligence service
(MIS) are being reconstructed and
face-lifted to suit his own need.
The modern civilized world is supposed to be ruled by
justice. But in
a country where justice is never
achieved nor even sought because of
the persistent, perennial,
ubiquitous fear instilled by the military
dictatorship into the mind of the
people, giving Khin Nyunt’s group a
taste of their own medicine may be
good news for those who wish to
bring them to justice. But
MIS, whether under Khin Nyunt or Than
Shwe, plays the same dirty game.
Harassing, arresting, torturing,
imprisoning and killing are their
normal traits.
When he was not in complete control of the MIS, Than Shwe
used the
USDA (Union Solidarity and Development Association), akin to
Hitler’s
brown-shirted storm troopers that
fought other civilian groups who
opposed Nazi ideas. It is also
similar to the anti-independence
militia group in
unrest. Similarly, the violence of
USDA thugs began with the attack on
Daw Aung San Su Kyi, U Kyi Maung and U Tin Oo while they
were
travelling
in a three-car motorcade in
then on the USDA had been publicly
terrorizing and even murdering NLD
members and democracy activists,
culminating in the Dipeyin Massacre
on
Than Shwe’s philosophy derives
directly from his roots in the psycho
warfare department and the
propaganda school. His behaviour reminds us
of the caveman era — he is
primitive in the way he lusts after power.
He is also said to have hated the sight of Aung San Su Kyi,
whom he
regarded as an obstacle to his
“democratic reform” and an intruder
from abroad. Releasing prisoners in
thousands while detaining
democrats in hundreds is his way of
putting ideas into people’s heads
that democrarcy
is just around the corner. His unwillingness to retire
from the army at the age of 71 has
clearly shown he could not imagine
what he would do outside the military,
his life for 52 years. His
family now believe they have royal
blood in their veins.
Under the cloak of the Burmese way to socialism, Ne Win’s personalized
dictatorship endured for 26
years. In much the same way, Than Shwe
hopes to build up his own
authoritarian rule under the guise of
outward “democratic reforms”
defying international pressure and UN
authority. Cash-starved Burmese
troops rely on levy, tribute and
demand to fill their coffers while
the ruling military elite try to
con foreign companies and
governments into believing what they say.
They believe the world could be talked into anything.
Than Shwe believes in propaganda as a vital tool in
achieving his
goals. He was impressed by the
propaganda machine of Ne Win’s
totalitarian socialist party in
which he served for many years. It is
highly likely all the upstart
ministers must obtain Than Shwe's
thoughts on many things so they can
pass down the official line on
internal and external events.
Retention of a press censorship board
and recent promotion of black
propaganda intended to deceive its
audience, clearly show that Than
Shwe is not going to give the
democratic opposition the time of
day. As usual, he has no moral
qualms about spreading propaganda
which he himself knows to be false.
This disinformation campaign came to be known to the people
as
the ‘Big Lie’. It was effectively
used by Hitler, who acted according
to his ideas developed in Mein Kampf, that a lie, provided
it is
sufficiently big and frequently
repeated, will be at least partly
believed by the gullible
masses. Here Than Shwe found himself out of
his depth to understand the primary
reason for the failure of this
technique. A straight-out
information service used by democratic
countries presenting news and
information as factually as possible and
leaving the listener or the reader
to reach his own conclusion has
beaten the ‘Big Lie’ to its knees.
One of the most insightful authors of the Cold War was
George Orwell,
whose novels Animal Farm and
Nineteen Eighty-Four are virtual
textbooks on the use of propaganda.
Though not set in the Soviet
Union, their characters live under totalitarian regimes in
which
language is constantly corrupted
for political purposes. Those novels
were used for explicit propaganda.
The CIA, for example, secretly
commissioned an animated film
adaptation of Animal Farm in the 1950s.
I also turned Animal Farm into a radio play in Burmese that
was
broadcast from the BBC overseas
service in the early 1990s. The play
was reported to have gone down very
well with listeners.
George Orwell, working for the BBC External Service in 1942,
offered a
foolproof test to probe the nature
of propaganda broadcast by
comparing what propagandists do
with what they say. As he put
it: "The safe rule is to
remember that acts count for more than words
and that the Japanese must be
judged not by what they promise to do
tomorrow in
doing in
audience's attention to that great
and growing gap between Fascist
claims and Fascist acts. The
mind of man, whatever the attempts made
to bend it and shape it this way or
that, continues in the most
startling way to resist these
attempts and apparently retain the
desire and capacity to reach the
truth.
However, the unwillingness or inability of the Burmese
military
leadership to shift from a
political culture anchored in primitive
personalized politics and ‘Big Lie’
psycho warfare to a broader
participatory national politics
based on the development of a free
press, modern democratic
institutions and pluralist ideologies, has
destroyed all hope of genuine
democratic transition.
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