by Peter Popham
THE LADY AND THE PEACOCK
Also by Peter Popham
Tokyo: The City at the End of the World
THE LADY AND THE PEACOCK
The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi
PETER POPHAM
THE LADY AND THE PEACOCK: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi
Copyright © Peter Popham, 2011, 2012
Pages xii–xiv and 436 are a continuation of this copyright page.
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The Lady and the Peacock was first published in the United Kingdom in 2011 by Rider Books,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Popham, Peter.
The lady and the peacock : the life of Aung San Suu Kyi / Peter Popham.
p. cm.
Originally published: London : Rider, 2011.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61519-064-5 -- ISBN 978-1-61519-162-8 (ebook) 1. Aung San Suu Kyi. 2. Women political activists--Burma--Biography. 3. Political activists--Burma--Biography. 4. Women political prisoners--Burma--Biography. 5. Women politicians--Burma--Biography. 6. Burma--Politics and government--1988- 7. Burma--Politics and government--1948- I. Title.
DS530.53.A85P66 2012
959.105’3092--dc23
[B]
2012004652
ISBN 978-1-61519-064-5
Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-162-8
Jacket design by Susan Mitchell
Cover photograph © Joachim Ladefoged/VII/Corbis
Author photograph © Nick Cornish
Back flap photograph of Aung San Suu Kyi © Mario Popham
Map on page xii by Rodney Paull
Manufactured in the United States of America
Distributed by Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
First published in the United States in April 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
In memory of Michela Speranza Bezzi
“I have never ceased to be moved by the sense of the world lying quiescent and vulnerable, waiting to be awakened by the light of the new day quivering just beyond the horizon.”
—Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma
“If they answer not your call, walk alone. . . . With the thunder-flame of pain ignite thine own heart, And let it burn alone.”
—Rabindranath Tagore, “Walk Alone”
“Oh this ruler of our kingdom, a pretty thing, a pretty little thing.”
—Old lady in Po Chit Kon village, Kachin state, singing to her grandchild
CONTENTS
Illustrations
Map of Burma
Prologue
PART ONE: HER FATHER’S CHILD
PART TWO: THE PEACOCK’S FAN
1 Late Call
2 Debut
3 Freedom and Slaughter
4 The Funeral
5 Open Road
6 Her Father’s Blood
7 Defiance
PART THREE: THE WIDE WORLD
1 Grief of a Child
2 The Gang of Five
3 An Exotic at St. Hugh’s
4 Choices
5 Superwoman
PART FOUR: HEIRS TO THE KINGDOM
1 Alone
2 Landslide Victory
3 Long Live Holiness
4 The Peace Prize
5 Heroes and Traitors
PART FIVE: THE ROAD MAP
1 Meeting Suu
2 Nightmare
3 The Saffron Revolution
4 The Peacock Effect
Afterword
Notes
Glossary
List of Names
Further Reading
Acknowledgments
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS
Map of Burma with inset of Rangoon
BLACK AND WHITE PLATES
1. Aung San, his wife Ma Khin Kyi and their first baby, Aung San Oo.
2. Aung San, his wife Ma Khin Kyi and their three children, Aung San Oo, Aung San Lin and Aung San Suu Kyi.
3. A silkscreen of Aung San, Aung San Suu Kyi’s father (Peter Popham).
4. Aung San Suu Kyi with school friends in the cast of Anthony and Cleopatra (courtesy of Malavika Karlekar).
5. Tin Tin and Khin Myint, sisters who went to the same school in Rangoon as Suu and Ma Thanegi (Peter Popham).
6. St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, where Suu was a student (Rachel Rawlings).
7. Suu and Michael on their wedding day in London, January 1, 1972 (courtesy of the Aris family/Getty Images).
8. Michael Aris with his identical twin brother, Anthony (courtesy of the Aris family/Getty Images).
9. Suu and baby Alexander (courtesy of the Aris family/Getty Images).
10. Suu with Michael’s siblings and brother-in-law, plus dog (courtesy of the Aris family).
11. Suu and Michael in Bhutan with their new puppy (courtesy of the Aris family/Getty Images).
12. Suu, Michael and Alexander with Daw Khin Kyi (courtesy of the Aris family/Getty Images).
13. Suu with Hugh Richardson, Michael Aris’s mentor in Tibetan studies (courtesy of the Aris family/Getty Images).
14. The Shwedagon Pagoda, Rangoon, outside which Suu gave her crucial debut speech (Mario Popham).
15. A statue draped in gold inside the Shwedagon shrine (Peter Popham).
16. Pagan, Burma’s most famous historical site (Medioimages/Photodisc/Getty).
17. A page from the campaign diary kept by Ma Thanegi, Suu’s friend and companion.
18. Suu on August 17, 1995 with her friend and assistant, Ma Thanegi (courtesy of Ma Thanegi).
19. Suu, U Tin Oo and other members of the NLD’s Central Executive Committee in early 1989 (courtesy of the Aris family).
20. Bertil Lintner, the veteran Swedish Burma-watcher based in Thailand, photographed in November 2010 in Chiangmai (Peter Popham).
21. Nita Yin Yin May, OBE: courageous information officer at the British Embassy and NLD activist imprisoned in 1989 (Peter Popham).
22. Suu’s estranged elder brother Aung San Oo with his wife Lei Lei Nwe Thein in July 2007.
23. 54 University Avenue, Rangoon, the family home where Suu was detained for more than fifteen years (STR/Stringer/AFP/Getty Images).
24. Suu at the gates of her house, giving a speech.
25. General Ne Win, known as “the Old Man” or “Number One.”
26. Sein Lwin, “the Butcher,” who briefly replaced Ne Win as head of state in 1988 (AP).
27. General Than Shwe, who ruled Burma for eighteen years.
28. General Saw Maung, the ruling general purged in 1992 after he became mentally unstable.
29. Khin Nyunt as Prime Minister in 2004, shortly before he was purged.
30. General Maung Aye, who shared power wi
th Than Shwe after Khin Nyunt was purged.
31. Nyo Ohn Myint, one of the first intellectuals to urge Suu to seize the opportunity to lead the democracy movement (Peter Popham).
32. U Win Tin, founder member of the NLD, during his nineteen years in jail.
33. The journalist, poet and political activist Maung Thaw Ka.
34. Suu and some of her “boys,” student members of the NLD who were her loyal bodyguards during campaign tours (courtesy of the Aris family).
35. Mountains and forest in Karen state, near the site of Manerplaw.
36. Suu with NLD cofounder U Kyi Maung (Nic Dunlop/Panos Pictures).
37. Landscape of lakes and hills in Karen state, near Thamanya (Mario Popham).
38. An image of Thamanya Sayadaw, the revered Buddhist teacher whom Suu visited (Peter Popham).
39. A video grab of Suu speaking at Monywa, hours before her attempted assassination (Burma Campaign UK).
40. Monks on the march in Rangoon, September 2007 (Mizzima News Agency, Delhi)
41. A monk covers his eyes against smoke during the uprising (Burma Campaign UK).
42. Suu pictured in the NLD’s Rangoon headquarters during her meeting with the author in March 2011 (Mario Popham).
43. John Yettaw, Suu’s unbalanced intruder.
44. Suu meeting her son Kim at Mingaladon Airport, Rangoon during his visits to her in 2011.
45. Suu welcomes Hillary Clinton to her home (Khin Maung Win/AP/Corbis).
PROLOGUE
IN November 2010, Burma was preparing for its first elections in decades. Aung San Suu Kyi was in detention in her home, as she had been for the previous seven years.
Traveling across Rangoon six days before the poll, I had the luck to hail a taxi driver who spoke some English. I asked him, “Are you going to vote?’
“No!” he said, “I don’t like it! It is a lie! They are lying to all the people, and all the world. They are very greedy! They don’t know what democracy is . . .” Later he said that his wife was going to vote and he was under pressure to do the same: She was afraid that if they didn’t they might be killed.
He told me that he had a degree in Engineering from Insein Institute of Technology. So why, I asked him, was he driving a taxi?
“I am driving because I don’t want to work for the government, because that means stealing. I want to work for my country and I want to do good. I don’t want to steal! Money is not the important thing for our people. The important thing is to get democracy . . .”
It was the strangest election I have ever come across. The party that had won the previous election by a country mile, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), would have been allowed to participate if it had recognized the new constitution and if it had been prepared to expel Aung San Suu Kyi and all other members in detention or prison. As the party declined to do this, it was de-registered, becoming a non-party. The biggest party, which in the end won handily, had only been in existence for a few months: It was created by the simple trick of turning the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), a regime-sponsored mass organization to which all government employees are compelled to belong, into a party, the USDP. The other parties running included small split-offs from the NLD opposed to that party’s decision not to run.
During the weeks of the election campaign, the mood in Rangoon was completely flat. There were no election meetings, no posters stuck up, no loudspeaker vans patrolling the streets blaring their parties’ messages. The only indications that something out of the ordinary was under way were a few billboards for the USDP, and daily homilies in the regime’s newspaper, the New Light of Myanmar, urging people to vote.
“A voter can choose not to vote,” one such homily noted, “but a person who is found guilty of inciting the people to boycott the election is liable for not more than one year’s prison term or a fine of 100,000 kyats or both.”1
A cartoon in the paper showed a group of smiling citizens striding towards an arch inscribed “Multiparty democracy general election.” Beyond was a modern city of glass and steel skyscrapers, captioned “Peaceful, modern and developed democratic nation.” “Join hands,” said one of the citizens, “the goal is in sight.”
Another article in the same paper recalled that there had been an election twenty years before, whose result had not been honored. “The election was meaningless because it looks like runners starting for the race without having any goal, aim and rule. In other words, it looks like a walk taken by a blind person.[sic]”
Despite the references to the 1990 poll, all mention of Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues was rigorously excluded from all printed and broadcast material.
What actually distinguished the 1990 poll was the fact that the polling and the counting of votes were conducted reasonably fairly: That’s why the NLD and its ethnic allies won 94 percent of the seats.2 Subsequently, the regime agonized for nearly twenty years over how to shake off the memory of that humiliation and somehow acquire legitimacy as rulers. This election was the way they finally chose to play it.
It was inconceivable that their proxies would win if the election was free and fair, so they did not want foreigners poking their noses in. Offers from abroad to monitor the polls were firmly rejected, as were visa applications by foreign journalists. I was admitted as a tourist, as on previous occasions.
The most flagrant way the poll was rigged was by regimented voting in advance: State employees and others were dragooned into voting en masse for the regime’s proxy party.3 “We discussed how to take advance votes from members of thirty civil societies in Rangoon,” a USDP official told Irrawaddy, a news website run by Burmese journalists in exile.4 Civil servants and members of regime-sponsored organizations including the Red Cross and the fire brigade were among those required to vote in advance. In this way getting out the vote—in many cases days in advance—became a quasi-military operation. In Rangoon constituencies where opposition candidates stood a chance of winning, pre-cooked ballots were poured in to ensure a favorable result. Two days after the poll, without giving any details, a senior USDP official was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying, “We have won about 80 percent of the seats. We are glad.”5
By then I and several other undercover reporters had been expelled. I watched the next act of the drama in the office of the NLD-Liberated Areas (NLD-LA) in Mae Sot, on the Thailand–Burma border.6
Although Aung San Suu Kyi’s eighteen-month detention sentence expired on Saturday, November 13th, it was not clear until the last minute whether she would be released or not. But her party was optimistic: “There is no legal basis for detaining her any longer,” said her lawyer.7 Two days before, women members of the NLD had started cleaning the party’s headquarters, which had been closed and shuttered for much of the time she was in detention, and repairing the air conditioners.
Nearly 2,200 political prisoners remained locked up in Burma’s jails, but shortly after 5 PM on November 13th, Suu’s seven and a half years of detention finally came to an end. At 5:15 PM on that day, the Los Angeles Times reported, “Soldiers armed with rifles and tear-gas launchers pushed aside the barbed-wire barriers blocking University Avenue, and a swarm of supporters dashed the final hundred yards to the villa’s gate. Twenty minutes later, a slight 65-year-old woman popped her head over her red spiked fence.”8
The crowd chanted “Long live Aung San Suu Kyi!” “I’m very happy to see you!” she yelled, barely audible over the chanting. “It’s been a very long time since I’ve seen you.” Rangoon was a prison camp no more. “Some people sobbed out loud, many shed tears and everybody shouted words of salutation and love,” the Times of London reported on November 14th. “For ten minutes Aung San Suu Kyi could do nothing but bathe in the acclaim of the crowd.”
The previous week an NLD veteran, one of the party’s founders, released from prison after nineteen years, had told me, “When I and others were released it was like watering a flower in a pot—the plant is getting fresh
, that’s all. But when Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is released it will be like the beginning of the monsoon, the whole countryside green and blooming.”9 And indeed for some days the mood was very much like that.
Burma’s military regime had played its best card with great astuteness. In the cacophonous celebrations of the next days, which echoed around the world, the outrageous theft of the election a week before was completely forgotten.
PART ONE
HER FATHER’S CHILD
AUNG SAN SUU KYI emerged from detention in November 2010 as radiant as a lily, as if she had just returned from a holiday. The generals had contrived the election, from which she had been barred, and made sure that their proxy party won. Her marginalization was now official. But none of that made any difference: Her gate was besieged by thousands of supporters, braving the fury of the regime, in the first scenes of mass happiness in Rangoon in more than eight years.
From the earliest days of her political life, Suu has been attacked by the regime as the “poster girl” of the West. If that was a gross exaggeration in 1989, today it would be an understatement: She is by far the most famous woman politician in the world never to have held office, the most famous Burmese person since the late UN Secretary General U Thant and, along with the Dalai Lama, the most feted exponent of nonviolent political resistance since Mahatma Gandhi. She is a familiar figure to millions of people around the world who have no idea how to pronounce her name or where to place Burma on the world map.
But the fact that Aung San Suu Kyi did nothing out of the ordinary before becoming a political star—that she insisted on being described as a housewife—has led many people who should know better to underrate her.1
Thant Myint-U, grandson of U Thant, in his book The River of Lost Footsteps, casts Suu as little more than a footnote to a narrative dominated down the ages by ruthless military men.2 Michael W. Charney, in his History of Modern Burma, sees her as significant chiefly as the embodiment, for the regime, of the menace from abroad, rather than as a positive force for real change.3 A previous biographer, Justin Wintle, comes to the eccentric conclusion that she herself is to blame for her fate. “Aung San Suu Kyi has become the perfect hostage,” he writes. “. . . Kept in captivity in part brought about by her own intransigence, the songbird’s freedom has a price that no one can, or any longer dares, pay. The latest apostle of nonviolence is imprisoned by her creed.”4