TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/082189/08218900.022

Text File | 1990-09-19 | 10KB | 175 lines

WORLD, Page 36

BURMA

A Country Under the Boot

One year after explosive riots, the regime cracks down on

pro-democracy activists


    May I at all times be free
    Of the four nether realms
    The three scoundrels
    The eight inauspicious locations
    And the five enemies . . .

    In Burma's myriad pagodas, those words from the Buddhist Okasa
prayer are often on the lips of worshipers these days. They are an
incantation against the five enemies -- water, fire, robbers,
people who wish evil on others, and rulers. Down through the
centuries, it is the last category that has been most feared. But
rarely in living memory have the Burmese so urgently believed they
needed protection from their rulers.

    The despondency has grown out of 27 years of one-man misrule.
Under the authoritarian leadership of General Ne Win and his
military cohorts, the country has been beggared and its people
forced into silence. Last week, the first anniversary of explosive
antigovernment riots, Burmese were suffering through a renewed
campaign of repression. For the ruling junta, which has changed the
nation's name to Myanmar to reflect the country's ethnic diversity,
the main target is the National League for Democracy, the first
organized, broad-based movement dedicated to democratic reform
since Ne Win came to power in a 1962 military coup. In recent
weeks, hundreds in the N.L.D.'s upper echelons have been jailed.
Its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is under house arrest, where she
began a hunger strike on July 20 that reportedly ended just last
week.

    She is an improbable liberator for backward Burma, though
perhaps born to the task. Her father was the national hero General
Aung San, who led the struggle for independence from Britain only
to be assassinated by a rival in July 1947, a mere six months
before colonial rule ended. Until just over a year ago, Suu Kyi
lived in England with her British husband Michael Aris and her two
sons. Her return to Burma in April 1988 was a matter of
happenstance: she came home to nurse her mother, who died last
January. But the explosive antigovernment protests that gripped
Burma swept Suu Kyi, 44, into her nation's turmoil, from which she
emerged as a clear, determined voice of opposition. Says a Rangoon
lawyer: "She is the only person in our politics who is stainless."

    Her rise has been astonishing. As the daughter of Aung San, she
was met with great deference, but her courage, bearing and oratory
enabled her to build a following. The N.L.D., which she helped
found last year, has grown to some 2 million dues-paying members
in a country of 40 million people. During electrifying tours of the
countryside, she disregarded the army guns that menaced her and her
followers. And she has routinely flouted martial-law regulations
prohibiting gatherings of more than five people. At one rally in
Rangoon, soldiers aimed automatic weapons at the crowd that
gathered to listen to her. "We are grateful to those who are giving
the people practice in being brave," she snapped. While an officer
recited over a loudspeaker the law prohibiting gatherings, Suu Kyi
used her own microphone to confront the intruders: "May I request
that the loudspeakers be quiet. I can control this crowd. You don't
have to."

    Suu Kyi's self-possession and determination have prompted
obvious comparisons with Philippine President Corazon Aquino and
Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. But in Burma the obstacles
to reaching power are, in Suu Kyi's words, "much worse, much
tougher." She did not inherit a large political organization or
support network, as Aquino and Bhutto did. Nor has Burma, a hermit
nation since 1962, been susceptible to the kind of international
pressure that helped force Ferdinand Marcos out and ensured a fair
election for Bhutto. No large business class or organized church
exists to throw its heft behind one politician, only a military
establishment set against the entire society. Says a Western
diplomat of the officers who run the nation: "These are crude,
uneducated, narrow-minded people. They don't understand what
democratic politics is all about or what drives a modern economy."

    It is by no means clear that Suu Kyi understands what drives
a modern economy either. She seems to have given relatively little
thought to the kinds of economic issues that would immediately
confront her should she find herself in power. Her views on trade
and foreign investment remain vague. Instead she has concentrated
on a simple credo: to restore democracy to Burma and bring "freedom
from fear" to its people.

    Burma's current unrest has left thousands dead -- no precise
count is available -- since September 1987. It was then that the
regime sought to curb inflation by striking at an immense black
market. Without warning, the government declared that all 25-,
35-and 75-kyat bank notes were invalid. (A dollar then bought 6.6
kyats at the official rate and as many as 80 kyats on the black
market.) The decree eliminated 60% of the currency and with it the
savings of rich and poor alike.

    In a country that has seen its per capita income sink from $670
in 1960 to $200 today, the move was incendiary. Unrest simmered
for months, then exploded last August. Ne Win had officially left
office in July, but continuous riots brought down two heads of
state before a junta of 19 officers that called itself the State
Law and Order Restoration Council took control in September. The
chief of staff, General Saw Maung, assumed the presidency. But
student protests went on, and only the council's pledge to hand
over power after free multiparty elections quelled the unrest.

    After making that promise, however, the government for a long
time balked at setting a date for the balloting, and many doubt
that it will occur by May 1990, as promised by the junta. If the
election were held today, the Burmese believe the N.L.D. would
capture 75% to 80% of the vote. But the current regime has shown
little inclination to allow genuinely reformist parties to exist,
much less hold power. Consequently, the likely rules of the contest
would prohibit the N.L.D. from taking part. That would probably tip
victory to opportunistic parties eager to do the military's
bidding. Says a European diplomat: "All the obedient little parties
will go along. You'll end up with a gang of puppets willing to jump
when the military pulls the strings."

    While many believe the promised election has become one of the
grand fictions of Burmese life, Suu Kyi refuses to release the
military from its commitment. The latest round of repression came
in response to her decision to attack Burma's other grand fiction:
the official retirement of Ne Win. General Saw Maung, like both his
short-lived predecessors, claims that Ne Win, 78, is no longer
involved in politics. But the populace and the diplomatic community
are convinced that the old strongman still pulls the strings.
Before she was put under house arrest, Suu Kyi told TIME, "We
decided, Enough of the shadowboxing; let's get at the real enemy."

    Her boldness reached a peak at the end of June, when she
appealed to the military to overthrow the widely feared strongman.
"Ne Win is the one who caused this nation to suffer for 26 years,"
she said. "Officials from the armed forces and officials from the
State Law and Order Restoration Council, I call you all to be loyal
to the state. Be loyal to the people. You don't have to be loyal
to Ne Win."

    In the following weeks, the regime stepped up harassment of
the N.L.D. On July 20, Suu Kyi was arrested in Rangoon with 42
other top N.L.D. leaders. The organization's offices all over Burma
were ransacked and files were seized. Reports of torture by troops
grew more frequent, and arrests mounted. The N.L.D. estimates that
2,000 activists have been taken into detention. The army has
launched a campaign of intimidation throughout the countryside.
Said an underground activist in Taungyii: "Outside Rangoon, it's
just naked military power. The soldiers can do what they like."

    Not only is the country's political situation bleak, but its
economy is also near failure. The Burmese Way to Socialism, Ne
Win's odd amalgam of Buddhism, socialism and isolationism, proved
a road to ruin. When Saw Maung took power, he declared that the
economy would be opened up, but central planning and widespread
corruption still discourage improvement. With foreign debt at a
mountainous $3.8 billion, 75% of all foreign-exchange earnings are
needed to service the loans.

    The numbers merely quantify the depth of the despair and
poverty that grip the nation. In conversations with TIME during
four weeks of recent travel in Burma, merchants, monks, farmers,
students, bureaucrats, police and political activists confirmed not
only growing fear of the junta but desperation about the
deterioration of daily life. Buildings seem to crumble before one's
eyes. Most homes are bamboo huts; electricity is a rarity.
Agriculture is a primitive matter of human hands and muscle. Burma
was long a bountiful land, but faith in the kyat has sunk so low
that rice traders are turning to export instead of domestic
markets. Shortfalls are already being felt in some regions, and a
nationwide man-made famine is not inconceivable.

    Economically and politically, the hand of Ne Win continues to
blight Burma. But a strong appetite exists for change, for
democratic institutions and a free market -- even if the means of
bringing it about appear remote. Some believe recovery will come
only with the death of Ne Win, who reportedly still plays tennis
at his lakeside villa in suburban Rangoon. Others feel that that
is only half the equation: Burma's best hope, they suggest,
languishes under house arrest in Rangoon.