Atrocity in the Garden of Eden: Myanmar
Something new and unexpected is happening in Myanmar. No, not the most recent coup d’état. Few countries have had so many coups as Myanmar. The surprise is that, a year later, the military are still not in control. That is what has never happened before.
On February 1, 2021, when a new parliament was due to convene, General Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s army, known as the Tatmadaw, decided to act on his dislike of the result of the elections held in November 2020 and took over the government. Again, no other country has a history of coups to rival Myanmar’s, or has endured such long periods of military misrule. But this time it is different. This time the coup has been launched but it has not landed. The military are in government and they occupy the buildings of the state — but they are not in power. The government does not function, not even in the incompetent and brutal fashion in which it usually operates under the military. Resistance continues, and it is everywhere. For a military that has been in power on and off since 1958, this suggests that something has gone wrong. Or more precisely, gone right.
No one explains Myanmar, from both personal experience and academic study, as well as Thant Myint-U, and in his book The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century he records an apposite question asked by Frank Smithuis, a Dutch doctor who worked in Myanmar since 1994: “Why is there severe malnutrition in this Garden of Eden?” The doctor’s image is not accurate: Myanmar is hardly the Garden of Eden. For decades it has been one of the poorest countries in the world. And yet, even on a short visit, you cannot escape the feeling that it ought to be the Garden of Eden. The country’s assets and its potential are visible even to the casual visitor. It is a big country, roughly the size of Ukraine; it has some of the most fertile soil in Asia; from the foothills of the Himalayas to the warm waters of the Andaman Sea it has every climate you could wish for. The mangoes are legendary, but climb a bit higher and you can create a first-class vineyard. The seas are full of fish; Myanmar’s great rivers have been the arteries of civilisation for a thousand years. The forests have a wonderful legacy of hardwoods, not to mention tigers and elephants. The teak inheritance has been pillaged, but the forests can be restored; and handled well they would be a unique asset. There are beaches, lakes, and wooded hills to please the most discerning tourist. In the hills you can find every mineral, every rare earth, every gemstone (including diamonds, it is said). There is oil and gas, too. Myanmar’s potential for looting and drug production has already been plentifully exploited, but in a well-governed country the prospects for development would be unlimited.
Well-governed: there is the catch. Myanmar has never been well governed. That is not the fault of the people. According to Thant Myint-U, his country “ranks consistently as one of the most generous countries on earth.” Some ten years ago, in Myanmar on official business, and tired of meetings with government officials in air-conditioned offices, I stopped in a remote village to visit a small project, and to see how ordinary people lived. The head of the village organized a meeting, providing local peanuts and milk. Everyone came. One remark in particular, from the collective conversation, sticks in the memory: “The government doesn’t help us, so we help each other.” This spirit runs through the whole society: no matter how poor the people, they look after their children, and are proud of them; they keep themselves and their villages as clean as they can. They do not have many opportunities, but there is a respect for learning and a great desire of education. Nor is this just my own view of today’s Myanmar: Viscount William Slim, who commanded British forces in Burma in the war against Japan, described his impression of a Burmese village when he first arrived there in 1942: it seemed, he wrote “much cleaner and better kept than similar places in India — as indeed are all Burmese towns and villages.” All Myanmar needs is a break from the wars, and a halfway decent government.
Britain began to annex Burma in 1852 and it became one of the last additions to the British Empire, a province of British India, in 1886, a time when its older possessions, notably Ireland, were beginning to press for home rule. It lost Burma, briefly, to Japan in World War II, and gave it independence in 1948. The movement for independence had begun in the interwar years among the students at Rangoon University, partly inspired by Ireland. That movement included many individuals who would matter later: U Nu, the country’s first prime minister; U Thant, the first non-European UN Secretary General; and Aung San, Burma’s first elected leader. Aung San was expelled from university for an article attacking its principal, but reinstated after a student strike. He admired Abraham Lincoln, read voraciously, learned some of Edmund Burke’s speeches by heart, and at different times embraced every ideology from left or right, provided it pointed to independence.
The British government, meanwhile, was beginning to experiment with pseudo-democratic institutions: a Burmese parliament and a council of ministers. These were all a façade: power remained in the hands of the Governor — including direct rule over the hills of the periphery, the regions of minority peoples such as the Shan, the Karen, and the Kachin, seen by the British as good war-like material for the British army. It is important to understand that Burma, now Myanmar, is an uncommonly diverse country. No less than 135 ethnic groups have been officially recognized, and they have been grouped into eight “major national ethnic races.” The largest is the Burmese, or Bama. Burma is where China meets India and where both meet Thailand, Laos and Bangladesh. To an outsider the Wa seem Chinese, and the Chin might be from Nagaland, and the Karen and Shan resemble Thais. (And there are villages in Vietnam where everyone looks and dresses like the Burmese). Belonging to one of these groups is a way of qualifying as a citizen — which has made the absence of the Rohingya from the official list a serious problem.
The first military intervention in British Burma was the Japanese invasion in 1942. The Japanese claimed to come as liberators and brought with them a small “Burmese Independence Army” (BIA), led by Aung San. Despairing of change under the British, and with help from Japanese intelligence, he had made his way to Tokyo, returning secretly to recruit other young men — the “thirty comrades” who arrived with him in Burma as auxiliaries to the Japanese army. As Japan moved into Burma, Aung San and his comrades recruited more Burmese, so that his “independence army” grew to approximately three thousand — still a tiny number when compared with British or Japanese forces. But the sight of Burmese people in uniform, helping to drive the British out, inspired patriotism among some Burmese. For others, such as the Karen, who were stalwarts of the British colonial army, it brought anxiety. The arrival of the BIA thus set off communal violence among Burma’s different peoples. The Japanese intervened to stop it. (The Kachin, who had fought in Flanders in World War I, also fought the Japanese, but as part of the campaign to liberate China, and under the auspices of the OSS, which was the predecessor of the CIA.)
In 1943, the Japanese organized an independence ceremony, appointing Dr. Ba Maw as Leader — this was, after all, a fascist regime. Both the independence and the office were hollow, as the office of prime minister under the British had been. The same Ba Maw had held that position too; but now Aung San was his number two and his minister of defense. By 1944, it became increasingly clear that independence under the Japanese was not the real thing; also that they were losing the war. Aung San, in secret, created a new movement: the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League. When the British got word of this, they signalled that they would be ready to arm and work with his new organization. A few weeks later Aung San and his men joined a Japanese parade in front of Government House, but instead of marching back to barracks they turned in a different direction, to join the war against Japan. Another few weeks, and Aung San arrived, by invitation, in General Slim’s headquarters — causing a stir, since he was still in the uniform of a Japanese general. Slim asked Aung San if he was not taking a rather large risk in coming: after all, he had committed innumerable offenses and had only oral promises of safe conduct. “No” he replied, and, when Slim asked him why not, he said: “Because you are a British officer.” But had he not come now only because the British side was winning? Aung San replied that it would not have done much good to come to Slim if the British had been losing. Slim liked his frankness, and judged him to be a patriot, straightforward and bold. And so he was.
Shortly afterwards, parties of Burmese soldiers began to arrive in Japanese uniforms, announcing that they were reporting for duty with the British. By then Japan was being beaten in Burma. A few months later, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they surrendered. The British side had plans for the peace: an orderly transition to independence under British supervision, including a new Burmese Advisory Council, based on a British White Paper. Aung San’s Anti-Fascist League would have a special position in this body. But they had also made promises of independence for the Karen, the Kachin, and others. Aung San’s message was simpler: only independence mattered. By now he had a private army and a growing public following. The “strength of the League appears to depend on the personality of Aung San,” wrote the British colonial Governor, Sir Reginald Dorman-Smith.
In late 1946, Aung San made four demands: elections the following spring; the inclusion of all Burmese territory — including the hills of the periphery, where the Shan, the Karen, the Chin, the Kachin and others lived; a review of economic reconstruction and the role of British companies, and above all, independence by early 1948. As always: clear and concise. Britain was already dealing with the post-war complications of India and Palestine, the occupation of Germany, and its own domestic wreckage and debt; it had every incentive to settle Burma quickly. The government invited Aung San and a delegation to London in the freezing January of 1947. Aung San went with his deputy Tin Tut, an able lawyer, but none of the delegates with him were from the minority peoples. Karen and Shan leaders warned that they would not be bound by an agreement where representation for them was absent.
By comparison with Burma’s internal complications, the negotiation with Britain was easy — the Attlee government was committed to independence for India and had no reason to hang on to Burma. The only question left open was that of membership of the Commonwealth. Rivals on the right — U Saw — and on the left — the clever Communist Party leader Thakin Than Tun — joined the conference in London, but they refused to sign the agreement and they also opposed membership in the Commonwealth. In practice, this was never a runner. The name “British Commonwealth” did not sound very different from “British Empire.” And it was headed by the Queen. It would be hard to explain to a newly independent country (itself a former monarchy) that Her Royal Highness was not a real sovereign and would have no power. The shape of the Burmese constitution, and the position of non-Burmese peoples, such as the Karen, was hardly discussed. (The ethnic minorities tended to favor the idea of being part of the Commonwealth and were nervous that the end of the Commonwealth might put them “at the mercy of Burmese-dominated Burma.”)
Aung San was in his early thirties. His life had been full of drama: as a student he had joined any number of dissident groups, including Dobama Asiayone, or the We Burmese Association, whose members gave themselves the ironic title Thakin, or Lord; he had been expelled from university, along with U Nu, but reinstated after a three-month strike by the other students. After graduating he became Secretary General of the Burmese Communist Party and left it twice. All of these activities were unpaid, so he had lived in poverty. Then he had been a soldier on both sides in the war, and now, as Governor Dorman-Smith said to him, he was “the people’s idol.” “I did not seek that,” Aung San said, “but only to free my country. But now it is so lonely.” And then he wept.
The path to independence began with parliamentary elections in April 1947. Before the elections Aung San gathered the leaders of non-Burmese peoples, Shan, Karen, Kachin, and Chin, together in the town of Panglong in the Shan Hills. The Shan agreed to join the new republic on condition that they had the right to secede in ten years. The Karen refused. They had fought on the British side against the Japanese, and against Aung San’s small army too; they had promises of independence from Britain. They boycotted the elections, which unwittingly helped Aung San’s party to win a huge majority.
The Panglong meeting is still remembered in Myanmar as a bid for national reconciliation. So it was, but just as significant was the composition of Aung San’s Executive Council — which he nominated after the elections as the interim government, under British authority, until independence. It included neither the extreme right (U Saw) nor the Communist Party; but Aung San persuaded important Shan, Kachin, and Chin leaders and to join it, as well as a well-regarded Moslem figure from Mandalay.
Independence was scheduled for January 4, 1948 — a date identified by the astrologers as auspicious. Until then the British Governor, now Sir Hubert Rance, presided. On July 19, 1947, the Executive Council met for an informal session under Aung San. As the meeting began, three men in military fatigues burst in, firing sub-machine guns. Aung San died instantly, and so did many members of his cabinet and staff. U Saw, who had organised the slaughter, was later hanged. Aung San left behind him his wife, Daw Khin Kyi, and three children. The youngest, his daughter Aung San Suu Kyi, was two years old.
The death of Aung San was a calamity. It was as though Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated before the Civil War. With him died the best men of his generation: he had brought them together to rebuild the country as an independent state and a union. He was young, but he was the creator of Burma as an independent state, and also of its army.
Instead of Aung San, the Prime Minister at independence in January 1948 was U Nu. He was older than Aung San, but they had been expelled together from Rangoon University many years before and had been active in the same movements. U Nu had a different temperament. He was charming, thoughtful, and a devout Buddhist. Perhaps he had some of the naivete of someone who is essentially a good man. What is certain is that he did not have Aung San’s hard edge, nor his decisiveness, nor the authority that his experience of military command had brought him.
In retrospect U Nu’s time as Prime Minister is commonly regarded as a golden age. In fact it was a time of turmoil, shaken by rebellions of every sort, especially by the Karen. U Tin Tut, an experienced colleague of U Nu (and they were few) was killed by a bomb that was planted in his car, no one knows by whom. At this time too, the civil war in China spilled over the borders into northeast Burma, where some of hill tribes are cousins of the Chinese. U Nu’s closest friend and adviser was U Thant; but he, too, was a man of words and of peace. The Burmese army had much to do, and did it well enough; but increasingly the military became a separate entity, led by General Ne Win, responsible only to its own command structure. It was at this time that the military began to run private businesses for profit — the beginning of the military-commercial-political complex that has been a disaster for Myanmar.
U Nu offered U Thant the job of Burmese ambassador to the United Nations in 1957. A few years later, as Secretary General, he became the most famous Burmese in the world. But U Nu himself was left more isolated. In the following summer some of his own party proposed a vote of no confidence in the government; U Nu won the ballot, but rumors circulated of plots by army field commanders for Ne Win and the army to take the government “under its protection.” U Nu then announced that, “because of the situation,” he had invited General Ne Win to “assume the reins of government” as a “caretaker.”
Strictly speaking, this was not the first of the military’s coups d’état, but that is how it is remembered. There was no violence, but it was in part a result of the killing of Aung San and his government in waiting. In hindsight it also looks a lot like a dry run. The military governed rather well, if also rather brutally. They cleaned up Rangoon and other cities; they dealt with rebels and with corruption, except their own (the army’s commercial interests continued to expand). And they handed power back on time, through elections in February, 1960. U Nu won by a landslide. The people clearly preferred civilian government, but it seemed also that the military could be trusted with power.
Wrong! After the dry run, came the real thing. On March 3, 1962, tanks and armored units moved into downtown Rangoon. Prime Minister U Nu, other ministers, and the chief justice were arrested; so were a number of Shan and Karen leaders. With a few exceptions the coup was bloodless, but now there was no promise of future elections. When, in July, students in Rangoon University demanded the restoration of democracy, troops arrived and fifteen students were killed. The next morning the army blew up the Students Union building where, as students, Aung San, U Nu and U Thant had all spoken.
Ne Win, like Aung San, was from the middle classes. He went to Rangoon University to read natural sciences, hoping to become a doctor. But he failed his examinations and, after two years, dropped out. He tried different kinds of work, but found that small business was dominated by the Indian community. He ended up working for the Post Office. When he was not selling stamps, his free time was spent with politically minded students, and he helped to translate The Communist Manifesto into Burmese. With Aung San and others he was a Thakin in the We Burmese association. Then he joined Aung San as one of the thirty, taking “Ne Win” (meaning “bright sun”) as his nom de guerre, and it stuck. He was Aung San’s second in command, and after independence he became the army chief of staff. In private life he was happily married several times, and known as a playboy.
Anyone who thought that in power the army would repeat the technocratic pattern of its previous two years was incorrect. As chairman of the Revolutionary Council, Ne Win declared that “parliamentary democracy was not suitable for Burma,” created the Burma Socialist Programme Party, and declared all other political parties illegal. When there were riots at Rangoon University, he shut all universities down. Health care was nationalized, and so was almost everything else, including major private enterprises. Foreign trade and development aid — except some Soviet programs — were banned. This was “the Burmese road to socialism.”
Officially, Burmese foreign policy was “non-aligned,” or unaffiliated with either the United States or the Soviet Union, the great power rivals in the Cold War; but it would be more accurate to say that it was isolationist. The country turned inwards. In 1964, Ne Win expelled Burma’s large Indian community, some three hundred thousand people. Burma also had a substantial Chinese population, with its own school system, and as they became more visible — with flags and badges — during the Cultural Revolution in 1967, they too became a target. But China sent troops into Burma, to join related ethnic communities in the Kokang and Wa hills, close to the border with China’s Yunnan province, where traffickers ran opium, and today, methamphetamines. The government did not touch Chinese schools or communities.
In 1966 U Nu was released from prison. He met Ne Win and discussed the possibility of a return to democracy. Ne Win was against it, but he gave U Nu permission to leave the country. He did, and promptly set up an organisation to over-throw Ne Win. It failed. In 1974, U Thant died. His family brought his body back to Burma. Ne Win, who believed that U Thant had been conspiring with U Nu against him, refused any official recognition. His family arranged for his coffin to be displayed in a dignified way in a public space (the old racecourse) with flowers and his portrait; and when a torrent of well-wishers came to pay their respects, the government reluctantly gave permission for a (private) burial. Anti-government students hijacked the coffin and took it to Rangoon University and the site of the Students Union, where monks watched over it with the students, who wanted it buried on the spot. Thousands of soldiers and police arrived: they arrested many of those who had gathered, probably killing some. Eventually U Thant was buried close to the great Schwedagon Pagoda.
The Burmese road to socialism turned out to be a road to nowhere. The country grew isolated and impoverished. Ne Win contributed to the decline with a series of demonetizations. In 1964 he decreed that 50 and 100 Kyat notes would cease to be legal tender. This was a clumsy effort against the black market, but its main effect was to wipe out the savings of the poor. Later, in 1987, having been told that the number nine was astrologically auspicious for him, Ne Win introduced 45 and 90 Kyat notes — both numbers being multiples of, and adding up to, nine. That is not a sound basis for monetary policy. Around this time, I visited Rangoon briefly for the first time. Two memories are especially vivid. The first was the complaint of a woman that to buy a bag of cement she had had to fill in twenty-four forms and obtain permission from almost as many ministries. The second was the story that Ne Win had been told by a soothsayer that in the coming year Burma would turn to the right. As a pre-emptive strike against the prediction coming true through the overthrow of his left-wing government, he announced that traffic would henceforth drive on the right. This made no sense, as cars were largely imported from Britain or Japan and they suddenly had the steering wheel on the wrong side. No matter: it was done and everyone drove on the wrong side. As usual, the Burmese people managed.
In the end numerology and bad luck got the better of Ne Win. In 1988 he announced that he would resign, thoughtfully suggesting that this might be the moment to return to multi-party democracy, but leaving the details to his military successors. They accepted the resignation and forgot the rest. The students, as usual, wanted better; their demonstrations met a violent response and many were killed. Then came the numerology: the number eight is lucky in Burma, so on 8/8/88 the students tried again. A massive demonstration was put down with massive force, but this time others joined in: workers, civil servants, and even policemen and soldiers.
Then the bad luck: Aung San Suu Kyi was in Rangoon. She had left Burma long ago, when U Nu had sent her mother to India as ambassador; and from India she had gone to Oxford University, and then to New York, where she had worked in the Secretariat of U Thant’s UN, returning to Britain to marry Michael Aris, a quiet, serious scholar of Tibetan Buddhism. They had lived in Bhutan and were living in Oxford, with their two children, when in 1988 Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma to care for her mother, who was dying. That being her purpose, she had no wish to involve herself in politics. But after many approaches, from old friends and from young people, she agreed to address the students. Her first words were: “I never left Burma.” They were true: whether she was enjoying herself in New York, or looking after her children in Oxford, a part of her mind had always been in Burma.
In 1988, hundreds of the protesters were imprisoned, usually far from their families to worsen their isolation. A year later Aung San Suu Kyi herself was placed under house arrest. She was now committed to the fight for democracy in Burma and, with one or two breaks, when the political atmosphere improved, she spent most of the next twenty years isolated in her mother’s house in Rangoon. During this time her husband died of cancer. She had declined the government’s offer to let her visit him when his illness worsened, being sure they would not let her return.
soon a new general would rule in 1992: Than Shwe would replace the Burmese road to socialism. In 1990 they held elections. Remarkably, they were well conducted. We know this because the National League for Democracy (NLD) — Aung San Suu Kyi’s party created in 1988 — won over eighty percent of the seats. (The army has never understood how unpopular it is). The new military government, renamed the State Peace and Development Commission (SPDC), declared that the implementation of the election results would have to wait for the new constitution that they were starting work on. The United States and the European Union adopted a policy of sanctions and isolation, out of sympathy for Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD. This approach often punished the people more than the rulers who profited from illegal trade in timber, gemstones, and drugs. But what else can you do? The West also criticized ASEAN when it admitted Burma (now calling itself Myanmar) to its ranks. In retrospect this had a good side: visiting thriving countries such as Indonesia and Thailand gave Myanmar’s generals a sense of how far their own country was falling behind their regional peers, whom they had always looked down on. But at home nothing changed, unless for the worse. Inflation and seizures of land made the lives of peasant farmers — most of the population — even poorer.
In 2007 the monks took up the cause of the people in what the West has called “the Saffron Revolution.” As their protests were beginning, recent newspaper photographs of Than Shwe’s daughter in a wedding dress covered with diamonds added fuel to the dissident fire. The demonstrations began in late August and continued through September. In many places, contrary to Buddhist custom and doctrine, the monks were met with force. On September 24, demonstrations were held in twenty-five cities; in Rangoon a long line of monks walked in front of Aung San Suu Kyi’s house. She opened the gates, watched them in silence, and received their blessing. But there was no revolution. Instead the SPDC carried out its plan to move the capital from crowded Yangon (the former Rangoon) — always at risk from mass protests — to an empty Disneyland capital in the middle of nowhere, called Naypyitaw. There the government would not have to worry about unsightly and dangerous demonstrations.
Then, in May 2008, Cyclone Nargis struck. It made landfall on the flatlands of the Irrawaddy Delta, with the wind at more than a hundred miles per hour and a storm surge reaching twenty-five miles inland in a densely populated area. The government refused to acknowledge either the damage or its incapacity to deal with it. Eventually UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon persuaded Than Shwe to accept foreign aid and aid workers, with a promise that no military would be involved. The death toll of Nargis is thought to have been more than a hundred thousand people. In other countries it would have been natural to involve the military in relief operations; eventually this happened in Myanmar too, though the Tatmadaw had no plans for civil emergencies and no experience in helping, as opposed to oppressing, the people.
And right after Nargis, another storm hit, not natural but political: the referendum on the new constitution. This had been drawn up by the National Convention, which was almost entirely from the military. The NLD had been invited to join, but it refused when it was offered only a small number of the seats. It had won a big majority in the election of 1997, but the SPDC decided to set this aside until the new constitution was agreed upon. Government figures claimed that, despite the chaos brought by Nargis, turnout for the referendum was at 99%, with 92.4% voting for the new constitution.
That constitution, which would be in force today had the Tatmadaw not set it aside, promises Myanmar a “flourishing of a genuine, disciplined multi-party democratic system.” But it has some unusual features. Three are especially important: a quarter of the members of each of the two parliamentary chambers are military officers nominated by the Commander in Chief of the army, and they vote according to his orders; one of the qualifications for the office of the presidency, as specified in Article 59, is that he or she must not have a spouse or a child who is a foreign citizen (this was designed to exclude Aung San Suu Kyi); the president appoints all ministers, but the ministers of defense, home affairs, and border affairs are appointed from a list of “suitable Defence Services personnel” who are “nominated by the Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Services.” Constitutional change in Myanmar requires a majority of 75% plus one in a vote in Parliament. In other words, military control is secure.
Yet the constitution does provide for elections. When elections were held under the new constitution in 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest and the NLD did not register as a political party. A few NLD members, seeing no other way forward, broke away from the party and ran in the elections. When votes were counted and it began to look as though they might win, sacks of advance votes were “discovered” to ensure that they did not. A rigged election that followed a rigged constitution seemed to suggest that nothing was going to change.
But when the new government, with U Thein Sein (the general who had chaired the National Convention) as president, took over, a series of surprises followed. A controversial and unpopular mega-dam was put on hold, greatly to the annoyance of China; some political prisoners were released; and then “the Lady’s” house arrest was not renewed. She was invited to meet the president in private, and after much thought and consultation she agreed to register the NLD under the new constitution and to contest forty-four seats in upcoming by-elections. (The constitution is based on the separation of powers, so members of parliament must resign their seats if they become ministers. Montesquieu might have wondered whether a constitution where the head of the army appoints members of parliament really embody a separation of powers.) The by-elections, when held, were visibly free and fair: the proof of this was that the NLD won all the seats but one. Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD were now in the Burmese parliament for the first time. But they were far from being in power.
In 2012, the NLD was a small minority party in parliament, though Aung San Suu Kyi played a prominent role. In the general election four years later, she and her party contested every seat, and won a large majority. Admiration for her and her father was a factor — at rallies many carried his picture as well as hers. So was the unpopularity of the military, who had corruptly enriched themselves and who were fighting a never-ending series of wars against the non-Burmese peoples of the border lands. Aung San Suu Kyi dealt with the problem of Article 59 by having a trusted friend elected president, inventing the title “state counsellor” for herself, and acting as if she were president. Yet there was no way to get around the impossible parliamentary threshold needed for constitutional change: the military vote under orders and acted as a permanent blocking minority.
Nor did it prove easy to make peace in the border regions, though U Thein Sein’s government tried hard. Peace is a condition for both development and a secure democracy. Long-term conflicts have their own momentum, especially if some of those involved benefit commercially. The NLD is seen by some as a Bama party. Aung San Suu Kyi herself is a heroine in regions such as Kachin, but minority peoples are not well represented in her party. The heart of the problem, however, was and is the Tatmadaw: Bama in its composition, and from the day of independence under no one’s control except its own. Abroad Aung San Suu Kyis was seen as a saint, but her government was unable to perform miracles. On reflection, a long period of solitary confinement is poor preparation for government. (Nelson Mandela’s prison on Robben Island was much less comfortable, but he was with his comrades and they planned the future together.)
The area where Aung San Suu Kyi took the boldest approach was the one for which she has been most criticized. To tackle the problem of the Rohingya, an unloved Muslim minority who are mostly not citizens, she persuaded Kofi Annan to chair a commission and promised to follow his recommendations. She knew that these would include a path to citizenship, and that this would be unpopular. Only hours after his report came out, a Rohingya group attacked Burmese forces, provoking massive and wildly disproportionate retaliation against the whole Rohingya community, driving hundreds of thousands across the border to Bangladesh. A mass exodus of refugees followed — an unconscionable episode of ethnic cruelty and ethnic cleansing. Later Aung San Suu Kyi shocked many people by defending the Burmese army’s harsh actions against the Rohingya in court at The Hague. Those who had thought she was a saint now decided that she was a war criminal. In fact, the transition that she had made was from heroine to politician. She had an election to win in 2020, and seeming unpatriotic is a bad election strategy. A cold-hearted calculation perhaps, but to help the Rohingya, if that was her intention, she needed power, and she won again by another massive majority.
And so, on February 1, 2021, there occurred yet another coup d’état, this one led by Min Aung Hlaing. There were multiple arrests, including Aung San Suu Kyi herself, who was charged with possession of an illegal walkie-talkie and “incitement” — presumably to overthrow the constitution, which of course is precisely what Min Aung Hlaing had just done. With her, many NLD members were arrested too, elected parliamentarians and veteran detainees (and also her Australian economic adviser Sean Turnell, who is one of the least conspiratorial people I have ever met). Now it is more than a year since the coup, and the army is still not in control. But neither are those who won the election. They were never going to be allowed full and legitimate control under this constitution; but now they are in prison. We can describe such events properly only when we know their outcome. Is this the start of a doomed if heroic struggle against overwhelming odds? Or are these the first steps on a path that will unite everyone against the military?
Immediately after the coup people took to the streets all across Myanmar — not only the students of Yangon University, but people of all ages. Everyone has been involved, poor as well as middle class, women as well men, their elders are joining them, and the kids are not giving up. On the streets the leadership comes from Generation Z, who have grown up digital and connected. (For better or for worse, life in Myanmar is dominated by Facebook). And they are able to organize themselves. One woman wore a wedding dress to the protests and held a placard that read, “I am supposed to be getting married; but it’s more important for me to be on the street demonstrating for democracy.” Others are banging pots and pans, a traditional way to express scorn and to ward off evil spirits. The protests started spontaneously after the coup. Everything stopped: trains did not run; government offices emptied; doctors left their hospitals for the day. The Commander in Chief, now the leader of the junta, Min Aung Hlaing, has admitted that he did not foresee such resistance. But he still ordered his troops to shoot and kill demonstrators. Arrest warrants were issued for those who did not turn up for work, and for health care workers ministering to the wounded, and for people in the fields of television, journalism, literature, music, and theater arts.
One of the first to lose her life was a twenty-year-old named Mya Thwate Thwate Khaing, in Naypyitaw. In Yangon, seeing young people being shot, fifty-nine-year-old Daw Tin Nwee Yee put on her school-teacher’s uniform and joined her colleagues and her pupils. She was shot on the street by a rubber bullet and died of an immediate heart attack. In Mandalay, Kyal Sin, singer, dancer, and taekwondo champion, was shot dead. As the mass marches were driven from the streets of the big cities, the small towns took up the struggle. Myanmar people abroad are providing money for food and for guns. Eleven months after the coup, a silent strike was organized to show that the people have not forgotten, have not given in: fifty-five million people vanished for the day.
Away from the streets there are dissident organizations: an underground government, the National Unity Government (NUG), brings together those who have been elected and are not yet in prison. Under its auspices, supporters in local areas have established People’s Defence Forces (PDFs) to protect the people against the Tatmadaw. The NUG would like to win the support of the Ethnic Armed Organizations (EAOs) who for years have fought the Tatmadaw. That the NUG now speaks of establishing a federal democracy — putting the word “federal” first — is itself a sign of change. It has also put aside Aung San Suu Kyi’s longstanding policy of non-violent resistance.
In some areas there has been a positive response from the minority peoples who have been fighting the Tadmadaw for years. Some are helping to train PDFs; some are fighting alongside them. Others are offering refuge to those fleeing the Tadmadaw. Here are two small examples of what might be described as the battle for the hills. The battle began in 1948, when the state was founded. The objective has always been to change the state’s shape, and the enemy has usually been the army. In Chin State on the Indian border, an area that until recently was relatively peaceful, the local Chinland Defense Force has clashed with Tatmadaw units, who have abducted citizens, including children, to use as human shields. The Chin National Front now has an agreement with the National Unity Government; it works with the parallel NUG administration to deal with COVID-19, and it offers training for the new People’s Defense Forces.
Several hundred miles away over bad roads and across wide rivers, on the border with Thailand, is the township of Lay Kay Kaw in Kayin state. Here the forces of the Karen National Union (KNU) are giving shelter to members of the civil disobedience movement, who are organizing demonstrations and urban resistance. The picture is grim. In December the military attacked the town of Lay Kay Kaw, using, they said, “limited force,” claiming that the town was sheltering “terrorists.” The KNU spokesperson denied there were terrorists in the town: “We accepted the guests on the basis of human rights. Those people wouldn’t have to seek refuge in Lay Kay Kaw if the military didn’t keep killing and torturing people.” Twenty-one people were arrested, including members of the National Unity Government, and public servants taking part in the Civil Disobedience Movement. When junta troops returned to Lay Kay Kaw the next day, they found themselves under siege. What triggered the conflict, according to the KNU, was the behavior of the Tatmadaw. who did not just make arrests but also stole and destroyed property belonging to residents. “We couldn’t stand by and do nothing. They have acted with impunity for their actions for too long.”
People were fleeing by the thousands. By December 20, 2021 the clashes in Lay Kay Kaw had become so serious that the KNU made an appeal to the United Nations to declare a no-fly zone over the area. Three days later the regime launched airstrikes and heavy artillery attacks that forced thousands more to flee their homes. The junta said the attack was in accordance with its rules of engagement. The KNU spokesperson memorably retorted, “What rules of engagement did they follow? The entire world knows that they’ve been indiscriminately shelling entire villages… The military keeps sending reinforcements. The battles are bound to continue… the locals can’t come back.” A woman (who did not want to give her name) from the nearby Thai-Myanmar border town of Myawaddy had this to say about the regime’s professed attempts to repatriate displaced villagers: “It’s pure fantasy. No one believes a word of it. People here know the real situation, and so do those who fled the fighting. Everyone knows the military even fired shells into Thailand. They’re only telling lies about this to maintain stability inside the army.” Another KNU spokesperson summed it up: “The more the military treat the people as enemies, the more enemies they will have.”
The eventual settlement in Myanmar will have to be far-reaching: not just elections, but a constitution that recognizes ethnic diversity in a federal framework, and offers a better electoral system than the colonial legacy of first-past-the-post, the most primitive of all electoral systems. This is still a long way off. But there are grounds for hope. The battle for the streets and the battle for the hills are becoming the same battle in some places. This is a development of enormous significance. Those who seek democracy and those who seek autonomy have joined forces. The wish for autonomy is old, of course; it goes back before independence. What is new is the realization that the two fights can be made one — that democratic majorities and protection of minorities can be a single cause.
What has made this national solidarity possible is the other new factor in the struggle against military dictatorship in Myanmar: the experience of democracy, from 2010 to 2020. This was a mediocre democracy in every way, with the military taking a quarter of the seats in parliament, and a primitive electoral system inherited from Britain — but even that experience of flawed and limited democracy has had such a powerful effect that people are risking their lives for it.
The catalogue of arrests, torture, trials, and killings grows long. By the abysmal standards of Myanmar justice, Aung San Suu Kyi has gotten off lightly so far: in December she was convicted of violating COVID-19 restrictions during the election campaign and of calling for public opposition to the coup, and was sentenced to six years in prison; this was reduced to two years in a show of magnanimity by the military; and more recently she was given a four-year sentence for owning a walkie talkie, also reduced to two years. Many other charges against her remain, and if she is found guilty she could spend the rest of her life in prison. The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an organization based in Thailand, founded and staffed by Burmese former political prisoners, does its best to keep a record: their latest update since the most recent coup, as of late January, records 1,503 killed, 8,778 arrested, and 1,672 on the run. The numbers go up every day.
That inexperienced city kids and disparate ethnic organizations might win against the ruthless, disciplined, well-armed Tatmadaw may seem impossible, but they are many in number, and their courage and endurance is extraordinary. A year after the coup, the military is still not in control of the country. Yet the authoritarians in power in Yangon, like the authoritarians in power in other capitals around the world, may believe that there is a new historical trend in their favor: the indifference of the West, and particularly the United States, to the global attrition of democracy. Democratization no longer figures among our foreign policy priorities; indeed, it is increasingly described as imperialism.
We who live in democratic countries have increasingly lost sight of the worth of democracy, both for ourselves and as a way of making the world more peaceful and more decent. The tyrants in Myanmar will persist in their vicious policies until they encounter not only serious resistance at home but also serious resistance abroad. But who among the powers will put up the impediments to their cruelty?