Aung San Suu Kyi

by Jesper Bengtsson

  Khin Kyi was three years older than Aung San, but it is obvious that they resembled each other in many ways. Both were politically active. Khin Kyi had already been involved in the Women’s Freedom League, even before the war. It was a nationalist organization working for women’s rights. Both also seemed to be steered by an inner compass that helped them to find their way even in situations in which circumstances pointed in a totally different direction. Without this characteristic Aung San would never have survived the hard years in the freedom movement. Without it, Khin Kyi would never, as one of the first women in a prominent public position, have embarked on a career in politics after her husband’s death.

  A person tending more toward conservative values would never have chosen the profession of nurse either. That task was normally reserved for women from the ethnic minorities, such as the Karen, Chin, or Kachin. If a Bamar got involved in health care, it was as a doctor, neither more nor less.

  As a child, Khin Kyi had been sent to Kemmendine’s Girls’ School in Rangoon, and she planned on becoming a doctor. But health care attracted her more, and after a while she got herself a job at Rangoon General Hospital, the same hospital that would see her fading away almost fifty years later after a stroke.

  It seems only to have taken a few days for Aung San to decide that Khin Kyi was to be the only woman in his life. In his usual straightforward and practical way he told her about his feelings. He wanted to get married. Now was the time. Khin Kyi was not as sure. However, Aung San insisted, and when the fever had abated and he had returned to his work, they continued to meet.

  The relationship came as a surprise to most of Aung San’s comrades and colleagues. At the university he had been an oddity and after that always 100 percent focused on the struggle for freedom. Even during the war he had kept his asocial character. He was a respected leader and the voice of the people, but his hygiene had not improved. Maung Maung, who later became Burma’s official historian, describes how during the Japanese occupation he once saw Aung San take off his military tunic before a meeting in central Burma. The shirt underneath was filthy and full of holes. He only had two uniforms that he alternated between, and he rejected all forms of personal comfort. His self-denying attitude reinforced his position among the Burmese and made him excessively popular, but no women had appeared in his life. Most people understood Aung San to be “a political animal,” uninterested in getting married and starting a family. It seemed to be a luxury that he could not or would not allow himself. On one occasion during the war he had even forbidden his soldiers to sing love songs in the evenings when they had pitched camp, since he was afraid that the singing would make them lose focus on the main target. There is also documentation showing how he had yelled in a fit of fury that all true patriots should subject themselves to castration so that romantic nonsense would not distract them from “the great assignment.”

  In his book Perfect Hostage, Justin Wintle described how many of the people around Aung San reacted with what can only be seen as jealousy when he at last was himself struck by love. They wanted to have Bogyoke Aung San to themselves, and right from the beginning strange rumors spread about Ma Khin Kyi. Some asserted that she came from the Karen people, others that she was a Christian, a Baptist, or even a Seventh Day Adventist. The truth was that her father, Pho Hnyin, had grown up in an ordinary Burmese home where Buddhism was the only conceivable religion. As a young man, however, he had hunted frequently, and many of his hunting comrades, often the best shots, were Christian men from the Karen people. During late evenings on hunting expeditions they used to read selected parts of the Bible for him. They told him about the Christian message of love and forgiveness, and after a time Pho Hnyin converted to Christianity. His conversion was an unusual and controversial step in Burma, with all its conflicts between different religions and ethnic groups and with Bamar nationalism strongly on the march forward.

  Khin Kyi’s mother reacted very strongly. She came from a religious home, and for a long time she refused to accept her husband’s decision. In the end they reached an agreement, the gist of which was that their children would grow up with two religions, so that they would later be able to choose for themselves which they wanted to profess. During the years of her youth in her hometown Myaungmya in the Irrawaddy Delta, Khin Kyi regularly attended both Buddhist convent and Christian church services. In this way it was natural for her to live in a multicultural and multireligious society. The strong tensions between the population groups in Burma as a whole did not exist in her own home.

  Aung San and Khin Kyi both understood that their relationship would not be “ordinary,” but out on the shining waters of Lake Inya, Khin Kyi said yes to Aung San’s proposal of marriage.

  And yet it was all nearly canceled since Aung San lost control of himself in an atypical way the day before the wedding, as related in Wintle’s Perfect Hostage. A group of Japanese officers had taken Aung San out with them on a stag party, happy that the committed and extremely hard-working Burmese had a human side despite everything. Aung San had barely tasted alcohol at all previously, and he did not have a chance when the hardened Japanese escalated the rate of drinking. He got disgustingly drunk, and just after midnight he was dumped on the veranda at the front of the house where Khin Kyi was waiting. She was furious and gave the Japanese a severe scolding for what they had done to her husband-to-be. When they left, she continued to scold Aung San, who responded by being sick on the veranda. At that point Khin Kyi informed him that the wedding was off. That was the end. If he were going to behave in that way, then “the great” Aung San would have to find another woman. After some hours’ conversation during which Aung San explained that he had never behaved like that before and had no intention of ever doing so again, she changed her mind and they were married on September 6, 1942.

  One can only guess how they both came to influence each other in issues of politics and religion. It is clear that Khin Kyi leaned more toward Christianity, her father’s religion, before her meeting with Aung San, but after their marriage she was persuaded to be a faithful Buddhist. On a superficial level, this sounds like a purely strategic decision. In a country so profoundly Buddhist as Burma it would have been difficult for Aung San to make a career with a Christian wife. However, according to her friends and family, it was a seriously and carefully considered decision and her faith grew deeper as she grew older. But she never let go of her tolerant view of other cultures and religions, and as Wintle has asserted, it may have been precisely this attitude toward life that contributed to Aung San’s greater understanding for Burma’s ethnic minorities after the war and their demands for respect from the Bamar majority.

  During the following years Aung San and Khin Kyi had four children one after another in rapid succession. The first-born was Aung San Oo, almost ten months to the day after the wedding. Slightly more than a year later little brother Aung San Lin arrived, and on the June 19, 1945, the couple’s first daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, was born. They had another daughter in 1946, but she died almost immediately after being delivered.

  All of Aung San Suu Kyi’s names come from older members of the family. Aung San after her father, Suu after her paternal grandmother, and Kyi after her mother. In that way her parents did not follow the traditions in Burma. Burmese do not have family names in the same way Westerners do. A woman who marries does not take her husband’s name, any more than children take their parents. If someone is named Win Naing, for example, then both names are his individual first names.

  On the other hand, most Burmese are given their names according to which day of the week they were born on. Aung San Suu Kyi was born on a Tuesday, for which names like Cid, Nyi, San, and Zaw are common. This means that the number of names in Burma is rather limited, and that many people have the same names. In order to distinguish between people with the same name, the name of the birthplace is sometimes added as part of a person’s name. For example, U Thant, the former secretary general of the United Nations, became k
nown in Burma as Pantanaw U Thant, since he was born in the village of Pantanaw.

  Family gathered in Rangoon when Aung San Suu Kyi is one year old. Behind her from the left: Khin Kyi, Aung San Oo, Aung San Lin, and Aung San. Courtesy of Norstedts.

  Sometimes the similarity in names can be an advantage. Several years ago I met a human rights activist who used to visit illegal Burmese immigrants imprisoned in Bangkok. In order to gain access to the prison, she was always compelled to give the name of the person she was going to visit. The problem was that she never knew with any certainty just who had been imprisoned that particular day of the week. “I always say that I am going to visit Maung Maung,” she explained, laughing, “and I am always allowed in.”

  This morass of names becomes even more impenetrable through the titles often used by the Burmese to precede people’s names. An older respected man is always accorded the title “U,” meaning approximately “Mister” or “Uncle.” U Nu is thus really only called Nu. The feminine equivalent is Daw. When people say Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, it is thus a way of showing her special respect.

  Apart from this, many writers and political activists use a nickname or a pseudonym. The habit started during the colonial era as a way of misleading the security police, and it has been common even since the junta seized power. The student leader Min Ko Naing can be named as an example. His real name is Paw Oo Tun, but he changed names after a period of student protests. The name Min Ko Naing means “Slayer of Kings,” and it was originally a collective designation for a number of students who had printed political texts in protest against the military rule. When Paw Oo Tun later came forward as the leader of the whole student revolt, it was he who came to be associated with the name (as yet another curious fact it may be mentioned that the author Eric Blair, who worked as a policeman in Burma during his youth, later followed this Burmese tradition by taking the pen name George Orwell).

  Aung San Suu Kyi means literally “Strange Collection of Brilliant Victories.” She was born on a Tuesday and in Burmese astrology every day of the week also stands for a number of personal characteristics. As a Tuesday’s child Suu Kyi was expected to be an honest person with high morals. Her father was born on a Saturday, which means that he would become a troublemaker with a hot temper. The belief in the significance of birthdays is strong in Burma, and it is highly probable that parents’ and other adults’ expectations actually influence the personality that people develop, in the same way as social demands influence the degree to which we develop so-called typically “masculine” or “feminine” characteristics.

  The Second World War in Burma ended only a few weeks before Aung San Suu Kyi was born. After the end of the war it was an open question at first as to which status a future Burma was to be given. From his vantage point in London, Winston Churchill assumed that the English commonwealth would be restored. He had not won a world war just to lose an empire. But Churchill did not succeed in convincing the English voters of his worthiness as a postwar politician. The Labour Party won the parliamentary elections in 1945, and with Clement Attlee as prime minister, the process was initiated to dismantle the most globally comprehensive superpower and its domination in the world.

  Aung San and the other leaders of the nationalist movement had learned not to trust British promises, and this distrust was mutual to the highest possible degree. After the war the old colonial civil servants returned to Rangoon, and many of them still had their idea of Aung San and the thirty comrades as half-criminal troublemakers. One of those who distrusted the young generation of nationalists was the governor, Reginald Dorman Smith. When Japan invaded Burma he had fled to Calcutta, and he was bitter because the Bamar had not taken sides with the Allies right from the start. In his eyes Aung San was a criminal who ought to be brought to justice for war crimes.

  Together with the administration in London, Dorman-Smith had produced a “White Paper” on the future status of Burma, since up until then the British were planning to govern the country in the same way as before the war. Aung San suspected that the White Paper was a way of delaying Burma’s independence long enough for the British to have time to reestablish the old colonial system. The reconstruction of the country’s economy and infrastructure was also to be reassigned to the same Western companies as those that had exploited the country’s teak forests and mineral mining before the war.

  Aung San did not exclude the possibility of a new necessity for armed struggle, and he prepared the nationalist movement for a guerrilla war. Straight after the recapture of Burma, the British had disbanded the nationalist army and about five thousand men had joined the new Burmese army that had been built the period between colonial rule and independence. Aung San was satisfied with that solution, but for safety’s sake he built up a militia, the PVO, as well as the regular army. Formally speaking, the PVO was involved in health care and social work, but in practice it was a private army under the leadership of Aung San.

  At this point Aung San was confronted with a choice of action. In world history there is no shortage of leaders who have gotten stuck in the liberation phase and who have not understood the need to lay down their arms in time, thus creating a new system of oppression. If one looks at countries like Zimbabwe, Eritrea, or even Vietnam for that matter, the step from liberation to freedom seems to be the most difficult of all.

  However, in precisely that situation Aung San showed that he was more than just a liberator. The struggle for independence had increased his tolerance, not diminished it. He had modified some of his most eccentric personal characteristics and matured as a political leader. He had three realizations. The first was that they could not have a dogmatic attitude toward the British. Even if he rattled his weapons he was basically convinced that negotiations and peaceful methods were now needed in order to build a durable independence. In the autumn of 1945 he left the army for this reason and continued his work as a civilian and politician instead.

  The second realization was that the political factions within the nationalist movement must achieve lasting unity, otherwise the country would end up in civil war. Even before the Second World War the communists had opposed seeking help from Japan in order to drive out the British. They were of the opinion—absolutely correctly as would soon become evident— that Japan was a more brutal imperial power than Great Britain, and they wanted therefore to join the British in a common cause, fighting against Japanese expansion in Asia. However, Aung San and some of the other leading nationalists had had to sit still and not rock the boat. After the invasion the communists had become the opposition, and their leaders were being hunted down by the Japanese security service. Two of the leaders fled to India, but the most radical communist leader, Thakin Soe, remained in the country, and he was a perpetual source of worry. If the communists took to arms prematurely, then Aung San would be forced to fight against them. This would lead to civil war instead of a common struggle against Japan. Aung San persuaded Thakin Soe to avoid taking up arms until the time was ripe. The nationalist movement united itself in becoming a member of the Anti-Fascist’s People’s Freedom League (AFPFL), with Aung San as its first official chairman. The AFPFL was to become the foremost political party in the country right up until the time when Ne Win seized power in 1962.

  When the British returned, Aung San worked according to the same principle of unity. The opposition movement had to keep itself together, otherwise the British would exploit its disunity for their own ends.

  The third realization was that it was necessary to get the ethnic minorities to join in the process. Aung San realized that this would demand negotiations and great diplomatic skill. The British had consistently favored these groups, and their antagonisms were reinforced by the progress of the Japanese and the Bamar nationalist army, the BIA. The Karens were hit particularly hard. The invading army advanced right through their traditional territories in southern and eastern Burma, and many of the soldiers who had joined up with the BIA as volunteers were former criminals who did not giv
e a damn about what the civilian population thought about the Burmese army. When groups of Karen soldiers later carried out guerrilla attacks against the Japanese, Colonel Suzuki gave orders that they should make an example out of the BIA. Several Karen villages east of Rangoon were attacked and burned to the ground. Men, women, and children were shot to death.

  Aung San realized that a Burma of the future would not work without the cooperation of the ethnic minorities, and even as early on as the first months of the Japanese occupation, he made regular visits to their leaders to win their confidence. An understanding developed slowly but surely between Aung San and the ethnic groups.

  The rivalry between the nationalist leaders was also an integral part of this difficult equation. Several older right-wing nationalists tried to maneuver themselves into a leading position. Ba Maw, who had already been prime minister on two occasions, was one of the self-appointed candidates, as was U Saw, who had been prime minister under both the British and the Japanese rules. The governor, Dorman-Smith, preferred to speak with these two about the future of Burma, even though it was Aung San whose popular support was the strongest. Both of these politicians had, moreover, their own private militias. Neither of them was as large or influential as Aung San’s PVO, but the mere fact that they were able to launch their own force gave them influence in the shaky political postwar landscape.

  At the same time the AFPFL was already on the point of splitting apart. The entire nationalist movement was being torn to pieces by internal conflicts, and early in the spring of 1946 Tun Ok, one of the more right-wing nationalists, attempted to get Aung San out of the way by accusing him of murder. Tun Ok said that he had witnessed how Aung San personally executed a man during the 1942 invasion of Burma.

  This provided Dorman-Smith with a golden opportunity to get rid of the young nationalist leader, but he hesitated anyway. The British military leader Hubert Rance asserted that any action against Aung San would lead to civil war. Dorman-Smith summoned Aung San to him, and he confessed immediately. When the BIA had penetrated the jungle regions in the south, he had entered a village near the town of Moulmein. Several days earlier the villagers had arrested their own village chief, an Indian man, because he had been cooperating with the British. Aung San decided to make an example of him, and in a summary trial the man was condemned to death. After that, in front of the assembled villagers, Aung San himself was to carry out the sentence. He struck the man with a sword, but the man survived and Aung San had to order one of his men to kill him with a shot to the head. This bizarre episode casts a long shadow over the memory of Aung San. To DormanSmith, Aung San asserted emphatically that the execution had been carried out in a state of war and that he had only done his duty as a soldier and commanding officer.