Burma- a Nation at the Crossroads

by Benedict Rogers

  Those who were not killed or, like Khin Ohmar, were fortunate enough to escape were arrested and taken to prison. Women prisoners were ‘allegedly raped’, according to Martin Smith. In one particularly horrific example of the regime’s ‘astonishingly severe’ response to the protests, 120 students were crammed into a prison van made to hold less than half that number. The prison van was, Smith claims, ‘deliberately driven around the city for two hours’, and 41 of the students suffocated to death.3

  Demonstrations of varying sizes continued throughout the following six months, and were met with further brutality. The universities were forced to close down on 18 March, but the students and others continued their action. Khin Ohmar’s commitment deepened when she went secretly to Rangoon General Hospital, to visit students who had been injured. ‘Two friends and I pretended we were medical students. We met some of those who were detained in the Rangoon General Hospital detention centre. One student, Soe Naing, had been shot at the same time as Phone Maw, but the doctors could not operate because the bullet was in his lung. He was tiny – but his legs were chained to the bed.’ A clear look of bewilderment mixed with anger spread across her face as she recounted this experience. ‘Where could he have run? I was outraged. What did he do wrong?’ Soe Naing died two days later.

  On 30 May, the universities re-opened, and the protests continued. The students had four demands: the release of all students arrested in March, a list of all who had died in detention, the readmission of students expelled, and the formation of a students’ union.4 ‘We wore white and black, as a symbol of sorrow,’ recalls Khin Ohmar. ‘My friends and I took part in these first protests, and quietly mobilised people. By 16 June, [the movement] started to become really big. Students began gathering in cafes and recreation centres, and shouting: “What are we doing here? Our fellow students are in prison. Let us do something.” Everybody already felt dissent and resentment, and these erupted like a volcano.’

  Khin Ohmar helped lead a protest march from the recreation centre towards Convocation Road. She was invited to speak at a rally, and she focused her thoughts on the weaknesses of Burma’s education system. ‘After my talk, I said to the other students: “Let’s work for the release of our brothers and sisters in prison.” We went to the teachers in classes, and said: “What are you doing? Teaching? Teaching what? Stop – it is useless. Students, get out, come and join us.”’ With a smile, she added: ‘I was very rebellious.’

  Khin Ohmar’s rebelliousness had not gone unnoticed by the authorities. Her brother worked as a government official, and military intelligence came to him with a photograph of her giving a speech, and a warning. ‘They told him: “You stop your sister, or we will do what we have to do.” I went home and had a shower, and then my brother came home. He told my mother everything, and she freaked out.’

  On 7 July the regime released all the students who had been arrested, in a gesture aimed at defusing the tension. The students, however, seized the opportunity to strengthen the movement. Min Ko Naing, who had taken on the leadership of the students, issued a statement urging people to continue.5 This was followed by invitations to several professional associations to reflect on how much they had suffered under Ne Win. The aim was clearly to broaden the movement beyond the student demonstrators.

  Several national political figures began to emerge at this time in opposition to Ne Win’s regime. Former Brigadier Aung Gyi, who had been one of Ne Win’s closest allies in the early 1960s, had written an open letter to his former boss the previous year, warning of the dire consequences of his economic policy. Aung Gyi had travelled abroad for the first time in twenty-five years, and was shocked by the difference between Burma and neighbouring countries such as Thailand. In 1988, he wrote two more open letters, and a forty-page analysis of how Ne Win’s regime had brought economic ruin on Burma. In one, dated 12 May 1988, Aung Gyi wrote: ‘That the country has gone from bad to worse [26] years after the seizure of power is evident to anyone not living in a fool’s paradise … The country has plunged to the bottom politically, economically and socially. The moral decay is the most deplorable.’ In an attempt to sound conciliatory and respectful, he accepted his share of the blame, having served in the regime, and let Ne Win off the hook by blaming his advisors. ‘All of us, including you and I, must bear responsibility for the present state of affairs … It is unfair that some people in and outside the country link Bogyoke’s6 name to, and hold you responsible for, whatever happens here … The habit among officials of concealing things from Bogyoke and only saying “done under Bogyoke’s order” is intolerable.’7

  Such open criticism of Ne Win’s regime, even if carefully couched in terms that could be interpreted as constructive, was a shock. But it was in keeping with the public mood, which had become increasingly angry. By July, the country was descending into anarchy. Crowds unleashed their fury on suspected regime agents in horrific scenes. According to Asiaweek, outside the Rangoon Institute of Medicine a military intelligence official was spotted by the crowd of 200 students. ‘Angrily, they set about him, pummelling him to the ground. When two truckloads of riot police arrived on the scene minutes later, the mob turned its hatred on them. One truck escaped, but the students hurled stones and whatever other objects they could lay their hands on at the second. Then they pushed it towards Rangoon General Hospital where they set light to it, burning to death those still alive inside.’ In another incident, ‘enraged students’ attacked police who tried to take protest flags from the hands of demonstrators. They ‘charged’ at the police ‘with sticks, knives and pieces of cement broken from the pavement’. In Myenigone district, an outraged crowd attacked policemen after a police truck had run over and killed three children. The crowd set upon the policemen, ‘stamping their bodies to a pulp long after they were dead’. In Pegu, eighty kilometres north-east of Rangoon, demonstrators reportedly set fire to a dozen houses and ransacked a Ministry of Trade building.8

  Rumours spread that the Tatmadaw soldiers shooting protestors were Chins, and as a result a wave of anger was directed at Chin people. ‘Posters went up accusing Chin soldiers of killing students, and calling for any Chin to be arrested and killed,’ recalls Lian Sakhong, General Secretary of the Chin strike committee in Rangoon and a founder of the Chin National Union. ‘One Sunday morning I went out to teach the adult Sunday school, and nobody showed up. We found out that no Chins would go out, because they were afraid, so the pastor, myself and two or three friends decided to launch a counter-propaganda campaign.’ The false rumours stemmed from the fact that some of the troops were from the Chin Hills Battalion. After independence the different ethnic battalions were integrated into the Tatmadaw, mixing the troops together but retaining the historic names of each battalion. So although the Chin Hills Battalion were deployed in Rangoon, the soldiers themselves may not necessarily have been Chin.

  The authorities imposed a curfew on 21 June, banning people from going outside between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., in an attempt to control the crisis. Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code was invoked, banning public gatherings, speeches, marches and demonstrations.9 Two days after this, however, Ne Win made an announcement that stunned everyone. He was resigning. To the astonishment of delegates at an emergency BSPP congress, the man who had ruled Burma for twenty-six years was not only stepping down, but apologising as well. He acknowledged that the recent events ‘show a lack of trust in the government and the party’, and he promised a referendum on whether to move to a multi-party system of government. ‘If the choice is for a multi-party system, we must hold elections for a new parliament.’ A further surprise came when Ne Win announced that not only would he go, but five other senior leaders, including the state President San Yu, would also step down. ‘The nation, and possibly even more so the diplomatic community, was flabbergasted,’ writes Bertil Lintner. ‘Public outrage had forced an end to 26 years of one-party rule … Or had it?’10

  Ne Win was nothing if not canny. Moreover, his promise of a refer
endum was followed immediately by a warning to demonstrators. ‘I want the entire nation, the people, to know that if in future there are mob disturbances, if the army shoots, it hits – there is no firing into the air to scare.’11 He meant it.

  The students, however, were not appeased by Ne Win’s resignation or by the pledge of a referendum on multi-party democracy. They were even more incensed when it was announced that Sein Lwin would take over as President. Sein Lwin, known as the ‘Butcher of Rangoon’, had presided over the White Bridge massacre in March. Ne Win is said to have described him as ‘my necessary evil’.12 He was the antithesis of reform, and his appointment provided further fuel to the protests.

  At the end of July, Christopher Gunness, a BBC correspondent who had managed to get into Rangoon, broadcast an interview with a student who called for a nationwide demonstration on 8 August. The date was chosen deliberately, for its numerological significance, and at 8.08 a.m. on 8 August 1988 dock workers walked out into the streets. Thousands of other people joined them.

  The previous day, Khin Ohmar came home from a meeting preparing for the ‘8888’ protests and was confronted with her entire family. ‘My mother had completely collapsed. The plan for 8 August had been announced, and there were already warnings of shootings. The family said: “You have to stop, you are killing your mother.” She had a heart condition. But I said I would not change my mind. I would go on,’ she recalls. In an act of desperation, her sisters urged her to lie, for the sake of their mother’s health. ‘They told me to tell my mother I was not going to take part in the protests, and then they would let me out by the window. I said no, I could not lie. My brother got angry, and he slapped me, beat me, and then dragged me into his car and drove me to his apartment, one block from City Hall. There was a movie theatre and a police station next door. He locked me in his flat.’

  From the veranda of her brother’s flat at 10 a.m. on 8 August 1988, Khin Ohmar watched the crowds gathering. The numbers swelled throughout the day. ‘I tried to get out, but I couldn’t. By night-time it got dark and I couldn’t see the people on the streets, but I could hear them in front of City Hall. I felt so guilty for not being with my friends on the streets, and I felt angry because this was the day we had planned. I kept praying that there would be no shooting.’

  The sound of army boots running down stairs, and orders being shouted from the police station, startled Khin Ohmar. It was 11 p.m. ‘I rushed to the back window, and saw lots of police running out with guns.’ Half an hour later, the crackdown began. ‘Trucks loaded with troops roared out from behind City Hall,’ writes Lintner. ‘These were followed by more trucks as well as Bren-carriers, their machine-guns pointed straight in front of them … Two pistol shots rang out – and the sound of machine-gunfire reverberated in the dark between the buildings surrounding Bandoola Square. People fell in droves as they were hit. The streets turned red with blood.’13

  The next morning, Khin Ohmar’s brother’s attention was diverted by his baby, and she found the key and slipped out. ‘I went to the General Hospital. It was full of blood – everywhere. I was completely shocked.’

  Despite the bloodshed, the demonstrations continued for a few days. Thousands were arrested; many were bayoneted to death. On 10 August the military turned its guns on medical staff from Rangoon General Hospital, who were tending the wounded. Five nurses were injured, three severely. An hour and a half later, soldiers returned and started firing directly into the hospital.14

  Sein Lwin stepped down as President on 12 August, aware that public anger was intense. A week later, in an attempt to compromise with the protestors, a civilian President, Dr Maung Maung, was appointed. A lawyer and intellectual, he was regarded as more moderate than Sein Lwin, but in the eyes of the people he was too close to Ne Win and was dismissed as a puppet. His appointment did nothing to quell the protests, and on 22 August a nationwide strike was declared. ‘The whole country ground to a halt,’ says Lintner.15

  Nita May, a Burmese publisher who was working as an information officer at the British embassy at the time, was in the United Kingdom during the summer of 1988, attending a training course. In August, she decided to return home. When she arrived, she found scenes of devastation. ‘I saw a lot of trees blocking the roads – people were so scared that they blocked their own roads to stop army trucks. I went to the Rangoon General Hospital, and my husband told me that the army had shot nurses and doctors the previous day. I could see the bloodstains and smell the stench of blood.’ In the subsequent days, she witnessed the army’s actions herself. ‘I was among the crowds at the demonstrations. I witnessed the scenes – the army shot, aiming at the crowds. The soldiers sat on their knees and shot at people. Sometimes I had to run for my life,’ she recalls. On one occasion, a woman who had been shot gave Nita the bloodstained bullets as evidence.

  Despite the horrific events of 8 August and the ensuing days, after Sein Lwin’s resignation there was a brief period in which protests continued unhindered. ‘We had about two weeks of freedom,’ recalls Khin Ohmar. ‘People from all walks of life joined in – monks, civil servants, workers, farmers, even police, navy, air force and army.’ Lintner describes the extent of the diversity:

  There were the lawyers in their court robes, doctors and nurses in hospital white, bankers, businessmen, labourers, writers, artists, film actors, civil servants … housewives banging pots and pans … long processions of trishaw drivers, Buddhist monks in saffron robes, Muslims brandishing green banners, Christian clergymen chanting ‘Jesus loves democracy’ – and even fringe groups such as columns of blind people and demurely simpering transvestites demanding equal rights.16

  These scenes are confirmed by foreign diplomats and their spouses who witnessed them.

  The British ambassador at the time, Martin Morland, says the movement emerged gradually. ‘People came out from their burrows to see how things were going on. Then there were constant marches in Rangoon and other large towns, with banners. The beggars marched. The gravediggers marched from the cemetery with banners that read: “We are waiting for you, Ne Win” – until villagers said it was bad luck, so they stopped. Some police and soldiers joined in too.’

  Into this extraordinary scene stepped Aung San Suu Kyi, emerging ‘suddenly and effectively’ according to Morland. Until 26 August 1988 few Burmese had seen the daughter of Aung San, and almost no one expected she would be the leader they had longed for. She had, after all, lived most of her life outside Burma. Her mother had been Burma’s ambassador to India after Aung San was assassinated, and Suu Kyi went to school in New Delhi, before studying at Oxford University. She worked for the UN in New York, before marrying Michael Aris, a British academic specialising in Tibet. The family settled in Oxford, and, apart from a period living in Bhutan and in Kyoto, Japan for research purposes, they remained there until 1988.

  Aung San Suu Kyi had returned to Burma in April that year, after her mother had had a stroke. ‘It was a quiet evening in Oxford like many others,’ recalled her husband, Michael Aris. ‘Our sons were already in bed and we were reading when the telephone rang. Suu picked up the phone to learn that her mother had suffered a severe stroke. She put the phone down and at once started to pack. I had a premonition that our lives would change for ever.’17 Aris’s premonition turned out to be completely true. The events of 8 August shocked her. On 12 September 1988 in an article for the Independent, she wrote: ‘Moments of horror, anger and sheer disbelief are engendered in me by what is happening in Burma. Yet above all is the conviction that a movement which has arisen so spontaneously from the people’s desire for full human rights must prevail.’ Explaining her own decision to become involved, she continued:

  When I came to Burma last April I found that the mood of the people had changed and that the time for a popular anti-government movement was approaching. The massacre of peaceful demonstrators last August precipitated such a movement and decided me to come out in support of the people’s aspirations. I have a responsibility toward
s my country, both as my father’s daughter and by my desire to prevent further bloodshed and violence.18

  The decision was not entirely unexpected, at least not for Aris. Prior to their marriage in 1972, Aung San Suu Kyi had written a letter from New York to Aris in Bhutan. Her letter read:

  I ask only one thing. That should my people need me, you would help me do my duty by them. Would you mind very much should such a situation ever arise? How probable it is I do not know, but the possibility is there. Sometimes I am beset by fears that circumstances and national considerations might tear us apart just when we are so happy in each other that separation would be a torment. And yet such fears are so futile and inconsequential: if we love and cherish each other as much as we can while we can, I am sure love and compassion will triumph in the end.19

  In 1988, those words came to fruition. Her people did need her.

  An estimated 500,000 people turned out to hear her speak at the Shwedagon pagoda on 26 August.20 Jenny Morland, wife of the British ambassador, and Danielle White, wife of the British Council representative, were among them. ‘Ambassadors did not go, at Aung San Suu Kyi’s request,’ recalls Tom White. ‘She said the regime would manipulate it if foreign governments were seen to be supporting her.’ Wives, however, could slip into the crowd more inconspicuously. Danielle White described the scene as a ‘human sea’ with ‘everyone who could walk and who was fit enough’.

  Conscious that the regime was already attacking her for being married to a foreigner and living abroad, Suu Kyi dealt with these points head-on. ‘It is true that I have lived abroad. It is also true that I am married to a foreigner,’ she admitted. ‘These facts have never interfered and will never interfere with or lessen my love and devotion for my country by any measure or degree.’ To the charge that she was ignorant of Burmese politics, she responded by evoking her history. ‘The trouble is that I know too much. My family knows best how complicated and tricky Burmese politics can be and how much my father had to suffer on this account … The present crisis is the concern of the entire nation. I could not as my father’s daughter remain indifferent.’ In what became her rallying cry, she declared: ‘This national crisis could in fact be called the second struggle for national independence.’21