By TESS BACALLA
RANGOON, Myanmar—Let it not be said that the month of March went by without the outside world taking a moment to remember Burma’s drawn-out struggle for freedom.
March marks the commemoration of resistance movements in Burma or, as its ruling junta wants it called, Myanmar. It was on March 13, 1988 when the pro-democracy movement in this country began. On that fateful day, two students from the Rangoon Institute of Technology, Phone Maw and Soe Naing, were killed following clashes with the police at the height of the anti-government demonstrations in this former capital of Burma. That movement, which culminated in the deaths of some 3,000 people in the weeks and months that followed, successfully toppled Ne Win from power, Burma’s then dictator who ruled from 1962 to 1988.
Fast forward two decades later and Burma remains in the throes of dictatorship. The violent crackdown of the military junta on anti-government protests in 2007 led by thousand of monks was reminiscent of what happened in 1988 and was yet another evidence of a government leery of any sign of opposition or attempts to destabilize the state.
Burma’s propaganda newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, puts it in no uncertain terms: “Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views…those trying to jeopardize (the) stability of the State and progress of the nation,” and “crush all internal and destructive elements as the common enemy.”
Every move watched
Here in the country’s largest city (officially called Yangon) and elsewhere in Burma, not a few people are wary of others keeping an eye on their every move because the slightest sign of resistance to government is bound to be met with severe, even brutal, punishment from the powers that be.
Individuals coming together even for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with politics are bound to be suspected of plotting against government. Of late, churches other than state-recognized ones have been forbidden from meeting together for worship under pain of imprisonment. Public gatherings of more than five people were banned by the junta days after the monk-led protests in 2007.
“A lot of people are informers. They form different layers,” says Mya Lin (not his real name; as are all other names mentioned in this article), who now lives with his family in Thailand but visits Burma every chance he gets, his heart still very much attached to his land of birth.
Some of these plainclothes informers are directly connected to the high-ranking officials of Burma’s oppressive regime. Others simply serve as eyes or ears of officials at the lower rungs of government, ready to tell on anyone whose “suspicious” actions happen to catch their fancy. They could be some innocent-looking waiter in a hotel or one’s fellow customer seated at another table inside a restaurant, seemingly oblivious to others while enjoying his food. They are everywhere, Mya Lin warns. His late father was an informer himself so he knows whereof he speaks.
Even your hotel room could be bugged, says Annette Diaz, a Filipino who has been to Burma numerous times and who has developed deep friendships with some Burmese people. (For reasons of security, her work that brings her to Burma every now and then cannot be disclosed. Suffice it to say that hers is in part a development-related undertaking that she believes benefits many in this oppressed and deeply impoverished nation.)
Why, you cannot even pass the place where Burma’s icon of democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi (on house arrest since 1989), lives, located in the heart of this city, without getting accosted by the police, says Than Aung, who, being an orphan, spent a good part of his growing up years in the army. He left it many years later, but not without having witnessed what it was capable of doing to anyone suspected of opposing the government and others considered enemies of the state. Now an ordinary civilian devoted to helping the youth, Than Aung still recalls his brush with the authorities while touring a foreign friend around Rangoon when they came a few inches away from Suu Kyi’s house.
Mya Lin is quick to use coded language with kindred spirits once their conversation shifts to the sensitive topic that is the government. “Everything here is good; the government is good,” he tells a friend, who is calling from offshore and inquiring about him and the state of affairs in his country, tongue-in-cheek.
Mya Lin is one of the fortunate few who can afford a local SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card, which requires prior government approval—as do mobile phones—and costs a whopping 2.5 million kyat or about $2,500. The more affordable ones cost about $10 each but are good only for two weeks’ use, says Than Aung.
Internet access should be used with caution, sources say, because this too is subject to constant monitoring by government. Filipino-American journalist James Rodriguez found himself unable to access his email account when he tried using the Internet a second time on his first visit to Rangoon. The first time was okay, he says.
Oppressed, poorest
Military rule in this former British colony has spanned more than 40 years since democratic rule ended in 1962, rendering it one of the most heavily oppressed and poorest nations in the world. It is said to have one of the worst, if not the worst, human rights records while poverty lurks around every corner of this otherwise resource-rich nation yet considered one of the poorest in the world.
Both locals and foreigners privy to what’s happening inside Burma have attested to the untold violence being inflicted on ethnic minorities such as the Karen and other non-Burmese ethnically dominated border areas. Children and youth, especially orphans, are reportedly taken against their will for military duty while women are systematically raped by military forces. This is chronicled in the book License to Rape, which describes in harrowing details how women are being abused sexually to subjugate ethnic groups in Burma.
In the aftermath of cyclone Nargis—the worst disaster recorded in the history of this country, which claimed at least 100,000 lives when it struck the Irrawaddy Delta and surrounding areas, including Rangoon, in May last year—orphaned children became prime recruitment targets of the military for forced training, and brought them to some undisclosed location, say Than Aung and Mya Lin. They need to beef up their military force, they add.
The country also finds itself in the grip of darkness, literally. It lacks basic necessities like electricity. Burma is said to have one of the world’s worst energy distribution systems. In Rangoon, the country’s main commercial center, Than Aung describes power supply as “very bad.” You either have only three to four hours of electricity each day, or none at all, he says. Business establishments are fitted with generators, which rack up the costs of their operations that already cover standard payoffs to government officials. If there is one place that enjoys a stable supply of electricity, it is Naypyidaw, the administrative capital of Burma, where the ruling military regime is located.
Massive corruption
The situation in Burma today is not helped by the massive corruption in government, where the top leaders reportedly think nothing of holding scandalously lavish events such as family weddings using public monies, and where everything requiring government approval, such as securing a passport, will not move apart from bribe money changing hands. Businesses are prime milking cows of a government widely perceived to be riddled with corruption. They cannot operate without regularly bribing officials, or they close shop.
Visitors coming to Rangoon or elsewhere in Burma for the first time should not expect to find any gasoline station, because this prime commodity is largely sold in the black market, whose distributors buy from civil personnel making money off government-controlled fuel supplies at prices lower than state-dictated rates.
If persistent rumors circulating in certain circles within Burma are anything to go by—and both Than Aung and Mya Lin are inclined to believe it—drug dealing is tolerated by the government to lull the youth into passivity and keep them from organizing mass actions. The government certainly does not want a repeat of the bloody protests in 1988 and 2007, and will protect itself at all costs. Reports of substance abuse among Burmese youth, many of them cannot afford to go to school, are mounting, say Than Aung.
Reports that senior military officials are involved in the drug trade and that funds from the drugs business flow into public coffers are persistent in Burma, one of the world’s top producers of opium and said to be the biggest source of drugs in Asia.
The military regime’s palpable desperation to remain in power has resulted in state-induced violence and exacerbated poverty in the country. Children dropping out of school are growing in number while teenage prostitution is on the rise, evidenced by more women being seen soliciting on the streets. International agencies estimate that one in three Burmese lives in poverty and one-third of Burmese children are malnourished.
Some people say it is only a matter of time before the military regime falls as it did in 1988. Burmese dissident Win Min, speaking at the University of the Philippines last year and who himself had been part of the 1988 uprising before fleeing to Thailand and eventually becoming a Harvard scholar, echoes this optimism. He believes, however, that the struggle for freedom in Burma must be sustained for it to happen.
“I have a feeling it will happen this year,” says Mya Lin, his eyes pensively looking toward the falling dusk. Wishful thinking? Not for a people that, for far too long, have only known unrelenting repression and abject poverty.