Myanmar: All they have is guns

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): 'Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel,' said Sam Johnson -- but Myanmar's military rulers believe that a little racism also helps. Not only is Aung San Suu Kyi unpatriotic for opposing Myanmar's generals, wrote the government-controlled paper New Light early this month, but she "had her blood mixed with that of an Englishman and gave birth to two half-castes."

Vicious talk, aimed at smearing Myanmar's pro-democracy leader as the annual meeting of the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in Jakarta to consider admitting Myanmar to its ranks. ASEAN did grant Myanmar observer status on 18 July, but few people in Myanmar were shaken in their loyalty to a woman who has selflessly dedicated her life to her country.

There is no starker political contrast in the world. On the one hand, arrogant and brutal generals who have ruled Myanmar since 1962. On the other, Aung San Suu Kyi, a 51-year-old woman with no political experience who has embodied Myanmar's democratic aspirations for the past eight years. A woman who, until 1988, had spent very little of her adult life in Myanmar.

"It's very different from living in academia in Oxford," she remarked at that time, as thousands of Myanmarese laid down their lives in non-violent protests aimed at freeing their country from military misrule. "We called someone vicious in the 'Times Literary Supplement'. We didn't know what vicious was."

Aung San Suu Kyi left Myanmar when she was 15 years old, to complete her education in India, Britain and Japan. In the 1970s she married English academic Michael Aris, an expert on Tibet, and they settled down in Oxford. There she lived quietly, teaching at the university and raising their two sons -- until a visit to Myanmar in 1988 to care for her dying mother transformed her life.

The soldiers had already ruled Myanmar for a generation, enriching themselves as they turned Southeast Asia's richest country into an isolated, terrorized and impoverished pariah state. But in 1987 dictator Ne Win went too far: he canceled Myanmar's paper money and issued new 45- and 90-kyat notes -- because those numbers were both divisible by nine, his personal lucky number.

Millions lost their savings, and something snapped. Ne Win's action underlined how a whole country of 42 million civilized and tolerant people had been hijacked and abused by ignorant thugs in uniform. It was not just the money; it was the humiliation. A new era was dawning in Asia, and Myanmar wasn't part of it.

All around were economic miracles, and Asians were learning the techniques of non-violent revolution: the Philippines blazed the democratic trail in 1986, and Thailand, Bangladesh, China and South Korea were hovering on the brink. So the Myanmarese lost their patience, and in 1988 they tried to drive the army from power.

Aung San Suu Kyi became the symbolic leader of the democratic revolution because her father, who won Myanmar's independence from Britain and was assassinated in 1947, is the country's greatest national hero. She became its real leader because she had great courage and political acumen. And though her presence in Myanmar at the right time was sheer chance, she was ready for her role.

"I only ask one thing," she wrote to Michael Aris before they married; "that should my people need me, you would help me to do my duty by them....If we love and cherish each other as much as we can while we can...love and compassion will triumph in the end."

Suu Kyi has not left Myanmar since 1988, and she has only seen her husband and sons a few brief times. In September, 1988 the army drowned the popular protests in blood: thousands were shot down in the streets. The generals dared not kill Suu Kyi, but they put her under strict house arrest. And then in 1990, believing that they had cowed the public, they held elections.

"They are like a chess player who only thinks one or two moves ahead," Suu Kyi said recently about her tormentors. In 1990, they completely miscalculated: 82 percent of the Myanmarese voted for Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, giving it 392 out of 485 seats. So the generals just arrested most of those elected and annulled the results.

Since then, the Myanmarese army has doubled in size to half a million men. It gobbles up over half of the national budget, and takes huge rake-offs from the heroin trade (Myanmar has become the world's largest producer). But Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, and the generals are hated just as much now as they were five years ago.

Ne Win, now well into his 80s, remains the power behind the scenes. His front men are people of the ilk of Gen. Khin Nyint, the secret police chief whose main contribution to world literature is a tract entitled 'The Conspiracy of Treasonous Minions Within (Myanmar) And Traitorous Cohorts Abroad'. They have taken new heart from ASEAN's tacit blessing of their rule, and from the shoals of potential foreign investors who come sniffing around in search of quick returns from Myanmar's oil and timber.

Suu Kyi's house arrest was lifted a year ago as part of the regime's attempt to curry favor with foreign investors. Now every Saturday thousands of Myanmarese defy the heavy secret police presence and gather outside her father's rundown house in Yangon to hear her speak, and the regime dares not interfere. But she is a Mandela without a De Klerk to talk to: the regime doesn't know how to quit gracefully.

The foreign investors aren't helping. As South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, another Nobel Peace Prize winner, said recently: "International pressure can change the situation in Myanmar. Tough sanctions, not 'constructive engagement', finally brought about a new South Africa. This is the only language that tyrants understand." But ASEAN never takes stands, and Britain sabotaged a recent European Union attempt to agree on sanctions.

In terms of cruel and incompetent dictators, Myanmar is right up there with North Korea and Nigeria, but Aung San Suu Kyi doesn't despair. "There will be change," she explained recently, "because all they have is guns."