Burma- a Nation at the Crossroads

by Benedict Rogers

  In words designed to be conciliatory to the Tatmadaw, and perhaps even motivate soldiers to join the democracy movement, Suu Kyi declared her loyalty to the military. ‘I feel a strong attachment for the armed forces,’ she said. ‘Not only were they built up by my father, as a child I was cared for by his soldiers … I would not therefore wish to see any splits or struggles between the army which my father built up and the people who love my father so much … May I appeal to the armed forces to become a force in which the people can place their trust and reliance. May the armed forces become one which will uphold the honour and dignity of our country.’22

  The crowd was euphoric: for the first time perhaps since Aung San’s assassination, they had found a leader who could inspire as much hope in them as he could. The fact that she was his daughter, and bore such a close resemblance to him, made the public response even more enthusiastic. ‘There was no one else who would have had the bottle or the nerve to do what she did,’ argues Morland. ‘The other pro-democracy leaders did not have the image she had, as Aung San’s daughter. It was perfect. She was very Burmese, and yet she was brought up in freedom. Nobody at that time could stay free. As soon as you stood up you would either be arrested, killed or forced to run away into exile.’ Another former ambassador notes that ‘she has a sense of destiny, a certain sense of obligation as the daughter of Aung San, which transcends normal patriotism’. Suu Kyi became, as another former Western diplomat described, ‘a beacon’ to people throughout the country.

  The Shwedagon speech marked a turning point for the movement. Nita May attended the speech, and recalls: ‘I knew from that moment that she was the one we had been looking for for many years. I would support her, no matter what.’ Not only was it the start of Aung San Suu Kyi’s leadership, it also galvanised other leaders to stand up. The next day, U Tin Oo, a former defence minister who had been dismissed and jailed by Ne Win, addressed an audience of 4,000. BSPP members resigned from the party in their thousands, in support of democracy.23 On 30 August, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling for free and fair multi-party elections and admitting that BSPP policy had ‘tarnished Burma’s pride and prestige in international fora. We’ve lost face implementing policies which lack essence.’24 The regime appeared to be collapsing. Press freedom flourished. ‘There were a few weeks where everything could have changed,’ recalls Danielle White. ‘Everybody was in the streets.’ When the housewives turned out banging their pots and pans, she joined them. ‘It was a carnival atmosphere.’

  In this atmosphere of freedom, however, there were grave concerns that it was bordering on anarchy. Local authorities had lost control almost completely, and in many areas Buddhist monks took charge. The Venerable U Uttara, for example, was in charge of Taunggyi, Shan State for one and a half months. ‘I controlled the town, providing social services and security, because the police did not work any more, the soldiers stayed in their compound, there were many thieves and robbers, and young people were very scared,’ he recalls. Local committees were established to handle daily issues such as food distribution and security, and inter-faith councils of Buddhist, Christian, Hindu and Muslim leaders were formed to provide rice to the most needy.25 Even so, they were not able to keep the violence and disorder under control. Rumours abounded that the water had been poisoned. ‘Public executions – mostly beheadings – of suspected DDSI agents became an almost daily occurrence in Rangoon,’ writes Lintner.26

  Much of the violence was an uncontrollable outpouring of sheer anger and bitterness and a desire for revenge after twenty-six years of brutal suppression. However, there is also evidence that the regime had sent in agents provocateurs. ‘Prisoners were released to create chaos,’ says Khin Ohmar. ‘The whole bureaucracy collapsed. There were beheadings of ‘spies’, but it was hard to differentiate whether the person being beheaded was a spy, or whether the person carrying out the beheading was a spy. But the irony was there was no attempt by army patrols to stop this. We couldn’t control people any more. We tried to stop the beheadings, but we could have been beheaded ourselves. It was not even human nature. It was a really ugly time.’ The scenes, she says, were as shocking as Rwanda.

  Other eyewitnesses confirm Khin Ohmar’s account. Lian Sakhong recalls that after the prisons were opened, he saw ‘heads stuck on poles’ and heard rumours that the water supplies had been poisoned. ‘It was chaos. The government mechanisms were totally broken.’ Soe Myint, an international relations student at Rangoon University, believes that Burma’s military intelligence infiltrated the demonstrations and deliberately created problems, although some of the worst violence resulted from public outrage. ‘People were so angry, and for so many years they had not been able to do anything. So whenever they suspected someone of being a government agent, they just chased them and beat them up. It was the response of people who had been oppressed for decades.’

  Morland agrees that the army ‘promoted chaos’, perhaps as a deliberate attempt to create a complete breakdown in order, to give the military the excuse to step in. He received reports from eyewitnesses claiming to have seen soldiers smashing up machines in a tobacco factory, and the German embassy reported soldiers looting a warehouse full of humanitarian aid supplies. Lintner details a case of a woman who was drugged before committing arson.27

  On 9 September, former Prime Minister U Nu brazenly announced the formation of an ‘interim’ government, declaring that he was still the legitimate Prime Minister of Burma since he was deposed by an illegal coup. Aung Gyi and Aung San Suu Kyi gave his idea short shrift. Aung San Suu Kyi said that ‘the future of the people will be decided by the masses of the people’. The following day, the BSPP held an emergency congress and announced it would hold ‘free, fair and multi-party elections’.28 Eight days later, on 18 September 1988, the military seized direct power again. A State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) was formed, led by General Saw Maung, with Than Shwe as his deputy.

  Khin Ohmar was on her way back to Rangoon from Prome on the day of the ‘coup’. ‘At 5 p.m., it was not yet dark, and we arrived by bus. There were army checkpoints stopping cars and checking people as we entered Rangoon. We had not yet heard the announcement of the coup. We got out of the bus, and heard a radio announcement playing in a nearby teashop,’ she recalls. She then saw tanks rolling into the city, and heard gunfire from her colleague’s house on U Wisaya Road, where she spent the night. There was also shooting at south Okkalapa and near Shwedagon. Many were shot dead on the night of 18 September. A Western ambassador told Lintner that a group of schoolgirls, aged between thirteen and fourteen, were attacked and killed by troops in Kemmendine. ‘It’s so shameful what’s happening, I have no words for it,’ he said. ‘It’s just a small group of people who want to consolidate their power and are willing to shoot down school children and unarmed demonstrators to do so.’ He added: ‘It’s not a coup – how can you stage a coup if you’re running the damn place already?’29

  As with earlier crackdowns on protests, the suppression of the demonstrations in late September was bloody. In Rangoon, observers estimate a death toll of between 500 and 1,000, mostly high school and university students. Diplomats described Rangoon as ‘a city under hostile, foreign occupation’.30

  Many activists fled out of Rangoon and from many other parts of the country to Burma’s borders, to avoid arrest. Aung Htoo, now General Secretary of the exiled Burma Lawyers’ Council, had to hide in the roof of a house for seven days before escaping through the jungle. ‘The military were searching for me, house to house, and I had to camouflage myself, change my clothes, and trek through the jungle,’ he says.

  In the borderlands they regrouped, and some decided to take up arms against the regime. The All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF) was formed. ‘It was the first students’ army in the world to fight against a dictatorship,’ says Soe Myint. ‘But we were politically immature, and did not have a clear vision. All we thought about was to get training, take up arms and fight.’


  Khin Ohmar stayed in Rangoon for as long as she could, trying to reorganise the remaining students into a movement, but the numbers and the willpower were depleted. ‘One day I was going for a meeting, and military intelligence raided the place. They took away papers which had names of people and minutes of meetings, and so we had to meet at another place. We didn’t go back to our homes any more.’

  One night, Khin Ohmar and her colleagues from the All Burma Students’ Democratic Movement Organisation (ABSDMO), led by Min Zeya, were staying in a friend’s home when the army conducted a raid through the entire ward. ‘We started hearing noises from the top of the street. We could see their green uniforms, their guns and their bayonets.’

  Khin Ohmar and her fellow activists knew there were no hiding places left, and so they decided to escape to the border. They set out by boat in groups of three or four. Two students left first, but returned on 28 October 1988, as they were chased by the army. One of them was injured. Khin Ohmar followed with a few friends on 2 November, and behind her were the prominent student leaders Min Zeya and Htay Kywe. ‘The boatmen were very kind. They didn’t take a lot of money from us, and they took care of our security,’ she recalls. ‘We had to stop at Myeik, or Mergui, in Tenasserim. Some of our group were arrested. We had to hide in a Buddhist monastery for three days. Local people gave us food.’ After another boat journey, Khin Ohmar and twenty others crossed into Thailand at Kawthaung, the southernmost point in Burma, 800 kilometres from Rangoon. Burmese navy boats were pursuing them, and drunken border-traders threatened them.

  ‘When we left Rangoon, we had no idea what was ahead of us,’ reflects Khin Ohmar. ‘Some of my colleagues said I shouldn’t go, it was too dangerous for women. But I told them it was my decision. “Either I go with you or I go alone,” I said. “I got involved in this movement not because of you …”’ They found their way to Three Pagodas Pass, on the border of Mon and Karen states, where they found refuge and began to make plans for armed struggle. ‘We had nothing when we arrived in Thailand,’ she recalls.

  Meanwhile, back in Rangoon preparations were underway for the promised multi-party elections. Soon after the military took over direct power, Saw Maung invited political parties to register. On 27 September 1988 – barely a fortnight after the so-called ‘coup’ – the National League for Democracy (NLD) became the first party to register, with Aung San Suu Kyi, Tin Oo and Aung Gyi as its leaders. Three groups came together to form the NLD – intellectuals, students and former military officers. ‘Aung San Suu Kyi was the cement that kept everyone together,’ Morland believes. In addition, Student Union activists organised the Democratic Party for a New Society (DPNS). The regime disbanded the BSPP but created a new party in its place, the National Unity Party (NUP). In all, over 200 political parties were established, incentivised by subsidies from the regime in a deliberate strategy to create confusion and dilute the anti-regime vote.

  The new regime, SLORC, immediately began a concerted propaganda war against the NLD, and a relentless attack aimed at discrediting Aung San Suu Kyi in particular. ‘They’ve been trying that all the time with false propaganda about me – all sorts of nonsense,’ she told Asiaweek. ‘Things like I have four husbands, three husbands, two husbands. That I am a communist – although in some circles they say I am CIA. They have been trying to get prominent monks to say I have been insulting Buddha.’ Just about the only true claim made was that she was married to a foreigner. ‘But I’ve always admitted that. I’m not trying to hide that.’31

  The charge of communism was perhaps the most dangerous. Burma had been dogged by a communist insurgency ever since independence, although it came to an end on 16 April 1989 due to what Lintner describes as ‘an all-out mutiny within the rank-and-file of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB)’.32 In the state newspaper, the Working People’s Daily, the junta accused the CPB of placing ‘hardcore cadres’ in leadership positions of the student movement.33 A letter from a leading CPB member and one of the Thirty Comrades, Kyaw Zaw, to Aung San Suu Kyi was found by military intelligence in her compound, and was used as evidence to support the claim that the NLD itself had communist links.34 This charge was given further fuel when NLD Chairman Aung Gyi resigned in December 1988, after presenting a list of eight alleged communists in the NLD top leadership. He claimed that Thakin Tin Mya, a former CPB leader, was Aung San Suu Kyi’s ‘main adviser’,35 suggested that ‘her crowd belongs to the communist group’ and compared the NLD’s encouragement of strikes and demonstrations to the behaviour of the communists in 1947. ‘It’s quite natural the army thinks their actions are like the communists. In that respect I agree with the army,’ he said.36

  The democracy movement dismissed such charges. In an interview with Asiaweek, student leader Min Ko Naing laughed at the suggestion that he was a communist. ‘I am a student who believes that the country should have democratic ideals,’ he said. ‘Let me point out that this government labels anybody it is afraid of as a communist. None of us is communist.’37 Aung San Suu Kyi herself said in her article in the Independent that such accusations are made by ‘those who wish to discredit me’. While she acknowledged that veteran politicians ‘of varying political colour’ were assisting her, she said she had accepted their help ‘only on the understanding that they are working for the democratic cause without expectation of political advantage or personal gain.’38

  While throwing dirt at the opposition, the regime tried to paint itself in the best possible light, as the saviour of the nation. In a rare interview with Dominic Faulder of Asiaweek, Saw Maung said: ‘I believe that I have saved the country from an abyss. The country has come back from an abyss, and I saved the country, for the good of the people, according to law.’ He denied the 8 August 1988 massacre, claiming that ‘we tried our best to be very controlled’. Soldiers fired four rubber bullets into the crowd, he claimed. ‘Four, that’s all. There were six people who were hurt. Six people. So we controlled the situation in this manner. But on the following day … the mob came to assault us. In defence, we fired. But we did it in a controlled manner, not in an irresponsible manner.’39 If he believed that, he was even more deluded than people thought.

  Saw Maung repeatedly promised fair elections. ‘I give you my guarantee,’ he told Asiaweek. ‘I’ll say one thing: Do you think that I’m assuming power today because I hunger for power? … In the armed forces we are not backed by a political party. In the next general election, none of us is going to stand for election.’40 Kyaw Nyunt, member of the election commission, promised that ‘there’ll be no monkeying with the results’.41

  These promises, however, sounded hollow when compared with the increasing harassment of the opposition. Aung San Suu Kyi faced growing threats to her personal security, but perhaps her closest encounter with death during this period came in Danubyu, on the Irrawaddy River fifty miles from Rangoon, on 5 April 1989. Touring the area with her supporters, she arrived in the town by boat towards the end of the day and walked towards the house where she was to spend the night. Surrounded by party colleagues and with a young man carrying the NLD flag in front, the group walked down the middle of the street. ‘Then we saw the soldiers across the road, kneeling with their guns trained on us,’ Aung San Suu Kyi recalled, in an interview with Alan Clements. As the tension mounted, a captain ordered Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters to walk on the side of the road, not down the middle. He then told them that he would shoot even if they continued down the side of the road. Laughing as she recounted the experience, Suu Kyi said: ‘Now that seemed highly unreasonable to me … I thought, if he’s going to shoot us even if we walk at the side of the road, well, perhaps it is me they want to shoot. I thought, I might as well walk in the middle of the road.’ Instructing her followers to stay back, Aung San Suu Kyi stepped forward and in an extraordinary act of defiance and courage, she walked, calmly and alone, towards the troops. Their guns remained trained on her, and the captain began the countdown. The soldiers were starting to shake – either at
the thought of killing Aung San’s daughter, or out of astonishment that she was disobeying orders and seemingly walking towards her own death. Seconds away from firing, a major rushed onto the scene and overruled the captain. He ordered the troops to lower their weapons, and a heated exchange between the two officers followed. Furious at being overruled and undermined, the captain tore off the insignia from his shoulder and threw it to the ground. ‘We just walked through the soldiers who were kneeling there,’ says Suu Kyi.42 British Council Director Tom White saw her the next evening, when she returned to Rangoon. ‘She said she was surprised at her own reaction,’ he recalls.

  White saw Suu Kyi regularly during that period. It was safer for her to communicate with him than directly with the British ambassador. On one occasion, the night before she was due to travel to the north of the country, she phoned White to ask if she could leave some private papers in his safe. ‘She was afraid that the authorities would ransack her house while she was away.’ He recalls her as a person not only of deep courage and intellect, but also ‘very sociable, full of fun’. Suu Kyi appreciated ‘the sheer absurdity of the mindset of the military’. Her inner steel, however, was very apparent as well. ‘She could be very blunt and direct, and sometimes pretty cutting.’

  Others who have known her confirm this description. ‘She is not perfect, and some say she is too rigid,’ says one former Western ambassador. ‘But she has a great sense of humour. She was very much into word play, and very academic. She was an intriguing mix of oriental and Western – delightfully English about some tastes, particularly literature and music, and yet very proud of being Burmese.’ The diplomat insists that when he first met her, he was ‘reluctant to fall under the spell’ but found her impossible to resist. ‘She has an incredible combination of steely determination of principle coupled with incredible personal bravery. She has a magnetic combination of great presence, physical beauty and serenity.’ Her devout Buddhism means she does not attach ‘too much importance’ to her own life, and this, combined with a recognition that she has had a privileged upbringing and has a duty to her country, shaped by her father’s legacy, has made her the person she is, he believes.