Initiatives varied – some were simply taken by individuals, such as the Burmese lawyer already quoted, others were more formalised. Groups such as the Myanmar/Burma Emergency Aid Network (MBEAN) were formed by civil society organisations and individuals to try to coordinate efforts. The MBEAN provided both emergency relief as well as longer-term assistance, such as stationery to schools, the construction of latrines, repair work and agricultural equipment.26 Some work went unnoticed, under the radar, or the authorities turned a blind eye. Others, however, got into serious trouble for their efforts. One foreign aid worker observed: ‘In the immediate aftermath, many small groups of friends got together as volunteers and went back and forth from Yangon to the Delta providing small amounts of relief because they felt the government was not doing enough. Some told me that they never expect the government to act appropriately, whatever the circumstances. When I made informal suggestions about fundraising methods we use routinely here, such as progressive dinners, raffles etc., I was told that any of these would lead to arrest and probably a long gaol sentence.’27
As Human Rights Watch concluded, while ‘some observers suggested that the resurgence of civil society in the wake of the cyclone showed an opening of humanitarian space’, for Burmese who attempted independent relief efforts or spoke openly of their frustrations with the regime, ‘the threat of arrest or intimidation was all too real’.28 In June 2008 alone, according to Human Rights Watch, at least twenty-two people were arrested for providing assistance to victims of the cyclone. They included a doctor, U Nay Win, who founded The Group that Buries the Dead, an initiative to collect the corpses of cyclone victims for burial. He and his daughter were arrested and jailed for unlawful association. Journalists Eine Khaing Oo, a twenty-four-year-old reporter for Ecovision Journal, and Kyaw Kyaw Thein, a former editor of Weekly Journal, were arrested and jailed for bringing cyclone victims to Rangoon and interpreting for them at meetings with the UN Development Programme and the International Committee of the Red Cross.29 The most prominent person arrested for his involvement in the post-Nargis relief effort was, of course, the comedian Zarganar.
Despite having been in and out of jail several times since 1988, Zarganar continued to be a powerful voice of dissent against the regime. After the cyclone struck the Delta, he mobilised a network of several hundred people to drive supplies down to the affected areas, and to raise money for urgently needed relief. On 2 June, Zarganar spoke out in an interview with the BBC. ‘The victims are very angry with the military junta,’ he said, but added that they were not the only ones. ‘The second group is the donors … They want to donate directly to the victims but the military junta and some police are stopping them from donating directly.’ Some government officials, he added, are unhappy too. ‘They are human beings. Some of their relatives disappeared in the Delta region but they couldn’t go there, so they feel anger towards the military junta.’30 He told the Irrawaddy magazine: ‘I want to save my own people. That’s why we go with any donations we can get. But the government doesn’t like our work. It is not interested in helping people. It just wants to tell the world and the rest of the country that everything is under control and that it has already saved its people.’31 Two days later, he was arrested and in November 2008 he was sentenced to fifty-nine years in prison. Three months later, the sentence was reduced to thirty-five years, although he was released in an amnesty in 2011.
Foreign journalists who attempted to cover Cyclone Nargis were turned back or, if caught, deported. CNN’s Dan Rivers and his camera crew were chased through the Delta by the military for a week in the days immediately after the cyclone. According to Human Rights Watch, the CNN team were ‘hiding in the back of cars, walking through the jungle to sneak into villages to interview survivors, bluffing their way through checkpoints and sending out broadcasts of the scale of the disaster’.32 Eventually, the authorities caught up with him and he was deported. Time magazine reporter Andrew Marshall was similarly kicked out. He wrote later: ‘The junta’s pitiless response to the cyclone is alienating the very people it depends on for its own survival. One young Special Branch officer at the airport seemed embarrassed to be expelling a foreign journalist whose only crime was trying to publicise the plight of Burmese disaster victims. “Please forgive me,” he kept telling me. “Please forgive me.” I now realise he wasn’t embarrassed at all. He was ashamed.’33
If there was any faintly positive outcome of the truly awful events of 2008, it was that the regime’s refusal to help inadvertently empowered Burmese civil society groups. According to a report titled ‘Listening to Voices from Inside: Myanmar Civil Society’s Response to Cyclone Nargis’, ‘on the one hand, Cyclone Nargis brought so much destruction. At the same time, it brought people together and provided the opportunity for people in civil society to take action and mount a response to the disaster.’34 A foreign observer who left the country three months after the cyclone concluded that ‘small acts of heroism will continue’, and that given the regime’s attitude, ‘without the superhuman efforts of local NGOs, church groups and monasteries, there would have been much more suffering and death. It was these groups who found temporary shelter, provided food, clothing and medicine for survivors.’35
As a result of their efforts, people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds became more unified, one Burmese aid worker concluded. ‘Civil society has been strengthened. Because of the cyclone, our local people are more unified. It is a good thing – we could develop empathy, and mobilise resources in-country.’
The words of one woman involved in the relief effort, writing to a relative abroad, sum up the spirit of all those Burmese who reached their people when the regime would not and the international community could not. ‘In situations like these, the important thing is to remain focused on the situation at hand and the person with whom we come into contact, and leave things (or at the very least try to) better than we found them initially. I keep in mind the starfish story36 and affirm what we are doing by reminding myself constantly that it does make a difference (however slight) to that one person we serve.’ Acknowledging the criticism made by professional aid workers that the local efforts were not as well coordinated as they might have been, she concluded: ‘There are many personal, professional and “official” limitations and even negligences. We could have done things differently, in a more “systematic” manner, or even been more effective and efficient but, despite all this, I know that we can rely and lean on each other’s kindness and generosity and resilience – my people have depths of inner strength and are deeply spiritual, capable of amazing rétablissement, and I trust in this.’
11
Out of Uniform but Still in Power
‘Despots themselves do not deny the excellence of liberty; only they want to keep it all to themselves. They do not think that anyone else is entirely worthy of it.’
Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution
ONE OF THE strange facts about Burma is that history keeps repeating itself. Just as Ne Win drew up a new constitution, established a political party, put the constitution to a referendum, albeit one that was completely rigged, and turned a military junta into a nominally civilian government, although with many of the same ministers, history came full circle in Burma in 2010. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, Than Shwe clearly has unbounded admiration for Ne Win.
Than Shwe’s plans began in 2003, following the attack on Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters at Depayin. Although there is little doubt that Than Shwe had ordered the attack, he had to do something to quell growing international anger. The Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai proposed a road map to democracy at a conference of foreign ministers in the Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM). In his mind, such a road map would include the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, an investigation into the Depayin massacre, peace talks with the ethnic groups, a new constitution drawn up through an inclusive process, a transitional period leading to elections, and ultimately democr
atic elections monitored by international observers.1 The third-ranking General in the regime at the time, Khin Nyunt, responded by announcing a seven-stage road map to ‘disciplined democracy’ – but the only thing in common between his plan and the Thai proposal were the words ‘road map’. No mention was made by the SPDC of their road map involving Aung San Suu Kyi, let alone her release, and there was no question of an inquiry into Depayin.
The constitutional element of the new road map was not, however, new. Three years after the 1990 elections, a National Convention was initiated to draw up a new constitution. At the beginning the NLD took part, but they withdrew in protest at the fact that the process was completely rigged. ‘We are not trying to destroy the National Convention,’ Aung San Suu Kyi said at the time. ‘We are trying to make it one that will be acceptable to the people of Burma and to the international community.’ She complained that ‘decisions are laid down before an issue has been discussed’.2 The regime packed the National Convention with hand-picked delegates and imposed tight restrictions on the agenda, making it impossible for the NLD to achieve anything. Of the 702 delegates, only ninety-nine were Members of Parliament elected in 1990, out of which eighty-one were from the NLD. The remaining 603 delegates were all appointed by the SLORC, and included cronies and suspected drug warlords.3 Some ethnic representatives participated, and were initially optimistic that they could create a constitution that would lead to a federal structure with ethnic autonomy. It quickly became apparent that such hopes were false, and that the regime never intended an inclusive, genuine constitution-drafting process.4
After the NLD’s walkout, the National Convention stalled for eight years. When it resumed in 2004, nothing had changed. Confined in a military location with no contact with the outside world, delegates were forbidden to discuss the draft constitution outside the conference hall. Anyone criticising the National Convention could be jailed for up to twenty years. The regime’s ‘104 principles’ for the constitution, providing a basic structure for the final document, offered little hope for democracy. Among the 104 principles were provisions for the Tatmadaw to govern its own affairs without oversight from the civilian government eventually elected, and for the Tatmadaw to seize power again in the event of a ‘state of emergency’. The principles also included a requirement that the President of Burma ‘shall be a person who has been residing continuously in the country for at least twenty years’ with ‘political, administrative, military and economic experience’ and whose spouse, children and spouses of children are not citizens of another country. The President should also have at least fifteen years of military service. These requirements automatically disqualified Aung San Suu Kyi. It was a sign of things to come.
I have spoken to some delegates from the National Convention, who confirm that the entire process was simply a rubber stamp for the regime’s agenda. ‘No discussions were allowed,’ one Kachin former delegate told me. ‘Every day we attended we only listened to the speeches. After that, we took a rest.’ Each morning, from 9 a.m. until 11 a.m., delegates listened to regime officials delivering their speeches, and were then free in the afternoons. ‘Most delegates brought a book to read during the speeches. For some, such as the Kokang, they couldn’t understand Burmese so they sat reading Chinese books.’ When asked whether they learned or achieved anything during the National Convention, one looked at me with a wistful smile and said: ‘We learned to play golf.’
In July 2007, the KIO submitted a ‘Proposal for Constitutional Provisions and Clauses’, otherwise known as the ‘19-point proposal’, in which they advocated ‘a specific constitutional mandate’ to be included providing for ‘a federal system of union’. They also sought guarantees for religious freedom. Their submission was not even discussed in the proceedings, and received no response from the regime. A proposal submitted by thirteen ethnic ceasefire groups three years previously was similarly ignored.5
A major in the Tatmadaw, in charge of hospitality and recreation facilities during the National Convention, observed that during the second session of the newly resumed process ethnic delegates were separated from each other and housed in different accommodation. The regime, he said, did not want representatives of different ethnic groups to conspire with each other. After receiving requests from ethnic delegates urging him to reinstate the previous accommodation arrangements, he spoke up for them. In response, his superiors warned him not to even discuss such matters. ‘I was demoted, and ordered to serve in a [location] far away from Rangoon. They confiscated my car and phone, and forced me out of my government apartment where my family was living. So I fled to Thailand.’
When the National Convention finally concluded, after thirteen suspensions over fourteen years, its outcome was not a constitution – it was a hand-picked fifty-four-member drafting commission to produce a text based on the ‘fundamental principles’ finalised by the National Convention.6 However, the draft constitution was finally ready a few months later, and in February 2008 the regime announced plans to hold a referendum in May that year.
The regime had learned its lesson from the voting in 1990, and was determined that in the referendum, and no doubt any future ballots, its desired result would be achieved. So government-controlled media offered, according to Human Rights Watch, ‘only crude propaganda in favour of a “Yes” vote’ and spread rumours that those who opposed the referendum might go to prison. The proposed constitution itself was only available to limited audiences – it was not published much in advance of the referendum, and when it was available, it went on sale for 1,000 kyat, a price that was unaffordable for many Burmese. It was available in only Burmese and English, making it impossible for many of the non-Burman ethnic nationalities to read it, and was not distributed in rural areas where the majority of the population live. A report by the Institute for Political Analysis and Documentation (IPAD) called ‘No Real Choice: An Assessment of Burma’s 2008 Referendum’, claims that most people ‘were never provided with an opportunity to read the draft constitution. Indeed, most have never seen it. Copies of the draft constitution were released on 9 April, just one month before the referendum.’7 As Human Rights Watch concluded, ‘The generals are sending a clear message that their handcrafted constitution will continue the military rule that has persisted for more than four decades.’8 Critics of the constitution were not permitted to distribute their own literature, and those who campaigned for a no vote did so at significant risk of imprisonment.
In the days leading up to the referendum, the regime used a mixture of fear and incentivisation to encourage people to vote for the new constitution. Civil servants were told if they did not vote for the constitution they would lose their jobs, communities were warned that water and electricity would be cut off if at least 80 per cent did not vote for the constitution, students were warned that only those who voted in favour would be able to graduate and people were threatened with jail if they voted no.9 Thugs from the pro-junta militia, the USDA, went around villages intimidating voters, usually accompanied by military intelligence officers and local officials. One former USDA member involved in this told Human Rights Watch that people suspected of intending to vote no were targeted at night, often threatened, abused and beaten up. ‘The people who say “no” we write down their name and address. If they still say “no” we go back late at night and beat them. We … take them to the jail. We accuse them of being a thief, a drunk. We explain we can give them trouble, give them many problems. Most are scared. [One person] we talked to about the referendum … he said he was not interested, he was against it. We came back later to his house and took him to the ya ya ka office and pushed and beat him and told him he faced many problems.’10
Despite these severe restrictions, an extraordinarily courageous campaign against the constitution did develop. On 27 March 2008 more than thirty NLD activists in T-shirts with ‘NO’ emblazoned across them marched in Rangoon.11 A network of underground activists across the country organised a ‘vote no’ campaign.
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As has been described in the previous chapter, Cyclone Nargis struck Burma on 2 May 2008, just a week before the date of the referendum. With several million people homeless and grieving, and hundreds of thousands dead, one would have expected the regime to delay the ballot. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for a full postponement, but on the contrary, the junta saw the opportunity to ram it through, calculating that people would be less able to organise to vote against it. Only as a result of international pressure did the regime decide to postpone the vote in the most affected areas, and so it was the worst of all worlds: most of the country voted on 10 May, while the Irrawaddy Delta voted two weeks later, on 24 May, leaving the counting of votes wide open to abuse. To compound the farce still further, the junta announced the results of the referendum on 15 May – before the second ballot. According to the regime, turnout was 99 per cent of the electorate, and the constitution was approved by 92.4 per cent.
If the accounts of what happened on polling day are true, it is no surprise that the regime achieved that result. Stories of massive abuse abound.12 In some villages local authorities handed out ballot papers already marked with a tick in the ‘yes’ box, while in other places voters were simply informed that their votes had already been cast for them and that they did not need to go to the polling station. In other areas, voters were watched closely as they cast their ballot, and were advised how to vote if they showed signs of casting a ‘no’ vote. Relatives were told to vote on behalf of family members in some places, while in other areas multiple voting occurred, and according to one report, in one village ‘a polling station officer stretched out the hand of an eighty-year-old man and forced him to vote yes. Local authorities promised villagers that if they voted yes then the village would receive development assistance for the building of necessary infrastructure.’13
Burma- a Nation at the Crossroads Page 28