As an exiled Burmese, I watched in horror as the events of September's violent military crackdown unfolded. Starting in mid-August, the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay, and a few other cities and towns began filling with Buddhist monks and civilian demonstrators, walking in the monsoon rain to protest the military junta that has ruled Burma with an iron hand for 45 years.
The demonstrations began with the protests of a few committed dissidents in response to the government's fuel-price hike of up to 500 percent, which hit hard in this diesel-dependent country with a command economy. The ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), an Orwellian name in a country where George Orwell was once a police officer, used thugs from an organization it set up called Swan Arr Shin (Possessors of Strength) to break up and arrest the demonstrators.
Then monks began to demonstrate in Pakokku, a small town in mideast Burma. They were lassoed by the Swan Arr Shin, beaten, and arrested, and even more monks took to the streets to demand an apology. As a symbol of the strike, they carried their begging bowls upside down. (As adherents of the Theravada branch of Buddhism, the Burmese monks beg for their food in the neighborhood in order to give the lay population a chance to gain merit by donating to them. A begging bowl turned upside down means the monks are not accepting alms from the military junta, and so it is a severe statement of moral censure against the brutality of military rule.)
The monks set a deadline for the army to apologize, but that day came and went with no word from the military regime. On the second and third days, more and more monks came out to protest, walking at a fast clip through the flooded streets. As happened in Burma in 1988 and also with other lesser-known crises since 1962, the demonstrators quickly progressed from demands for a system change to demands for democracy. Their numbers grew exponentially, and by Sept. 25, a reported 100,000 demonstrated in Rangoon.
This appears to have frightened the ruling junta, and as rumors of troop movements emerged, the violent crackdown of Sept. 26 and 27 started. By all accounts, the brutality is continuing, with more arrests and the torture and mistreatment of those under detention.
As I watched these events unfold from afar, the most exasperating part of all this was being unable to do anything much about it -- even as I was sure on Sept. 25 that the crackdown would come in the next 24 hours. To my dismay, I was right. In the following days, civilian demonstrators and monks were shot at with live ammunition and rubber bullets, sprayed with tear gas, and beaten with sticks. There were also widespread reports of torture and mistreatment in prison and in the closed university campus buildings into which the arrested were herded. The buildings were so cramped that the detainees all had to stand, as there were up to a hundred people in each small classroom.
In the post-crackdown Burmese world, Ibrihim Gambari, U.N. special envoy for Burma, made a trip to Rangoon from Sept. 29 to Oct. 2. He was immediately "abducted" by his military guides and taken off to Naypyidaw, the government's new Brasilia-type capital city in central Burma. Then Gambari was spirited off to Lashio, near the Burma-China border, to see a stage-managed mass meeting, which the SPDC had allegedly coerced or paid civil servants to attend. No observer has ever been taken in by these junta "shows," and yet the military persists in staging them.
It was assumed Gambari would stay at the Traders Hotel in downtown Rangoon, so the Burmese people tried to rally there. But the junta changed the bus routes to prevent protesters from reaching the site, and cleaned up the broken glass, abandoned flip-flops, and bloodstained streets outside the hotel. When bus drivers who weren't aware of the route changes let off passengers in front of the Traders, they were set upon by the police and beaten with batons.
Gambari met with both Gen. Than Shwe and the other important members of the junta in Naypyidaw, as well as democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at the government guesthouse on Inya Road. But it was unclear what Gambari and the junta members spoke about, let alone agreed upon, during the brief visit -- even though, on Oct. 5, Gambari debriefed the U.N. Security Council in New York on his trip to Burma.
Gambari said his mission had been to assess the situation, deliver clear messages from the U.N. secretary general to the Myanmar authorities, and to promote dialogue between the government and the opposition. He stressed that night raids and arrests should end and the curfew should be lifted. (And indeed, it has since been lifted.) Gambari also told the Security Council that his mission was a process, not an event, and so one mission by itself could not solve the fundamental challenges facing Burma. This may have been the understatement of the year.
At the debriefing, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad requested an immediate end to the violent crackdown, for all citizens to be released as well as all political prisoners, and for the SPDC to restore all public communication links such as the Internet. Other similarly strong statements came from Italy, Panama, Peru, and Qatar, countries which don't have much contact with Burma. The SPDC's U.N. representative, Kyaw Tint Swe, followed by TV cameras, shambled shamefacedly out of the assembly, pointedly ignored by the other delegates who crowded around Khalilzad. Swe had insisted that the situation had returned to normal, and "people all over Myanmar were holding peaceful rallies." These were, of course, coerced mass rallies. Smuggled-out video of the events shows stony-faced people sitting stoically in rows.
Using its time-honored tactic of arresting everyone on the scene, including street vendors, the SPDC is reported to have arrested up to 3,000 people, only some of whom it has released. Independent and dissident sources say up to 200 were killed in the first days of the crackdown, and organizations such as the Association for the Assistance of Political Prisoners, Burma (AAPPB) are keeping lists with names. Yet the junta insists, ridiculously, that only 10 people were killed, including the Japanese photojournalist Kenji Nagai (who was shot at point-blank range).
Gambari's second post-crackdown trip to Burma ended last Thursday, and things did not seem to be going well on the diplomatic front. Moreover, with the junta apparently afraid that more photographs of the atrocities will leak out, Internet communications have been placed under the control of the Burmese ministry of defense. To my mind, that says it all.
Throughout its 45-year history and especially since 1988, the junta has arrested and then released people in waves, but the numbers of prisons and prisoners are increasing. Most dissidents served very long sentences that were imposed without proper trials. Many have died in prison, including at least one prisoner who died of torture recently. The people are cowed, but a few days ago about 200 monks in Pakokku again demonstrated silently. The U.S. Campaign for Burma's Aung Din said at a Senate hearing on Oct. 2 that local authorities were going door to door with photographs from video taken during the demonstrations. They typically can spend months trying to find "the leaders."
Meanwhile, other distressing news items are emerging daily. A source who wishes to remain anonymous told me that all the Pakokku citizen journalists who first sent word of the monks' protests to the outside world were arrested. One journalist was reportedly taken into custody upon stepping outside an Internet café, after he spoke with a foreign radio station.
So what is the way forward? There are a few important steps toward resolving the crisis in Burma. A mix of targeted sanctions, diplomacy, both first track and second track, and activism should be used, and this seems to be what is happening now. (On Oct. 19 President Bush announced he was extending sanctions on Burma.) These policies are not contradictory and can be fine-tuned and finessed to be used together. I am also grateful to see that, this time around, international players are paying a lot more attention to India and China, which are strongly emerging industrialized nations with superpower ambitions in both Asia and the world. India and China are also increasingly cozy with each other, while more economically linked through trade and outsourcing to the United States.
Gambari, the U.N. Special Envoy, has so far traveled a great deal to New Dehli, Beijing, and Singapore, and seemed to be making progress, but since his second trip to Burma, there appeared to be a good deal of backsliding on the part of the junta. Even before he arrived, the SPDC sent a letter to the U.N. Development Program resident representative Charles Petrie, telling him he was no longer welcome in Burma. The U.N. insists the development projects will go on without Petrie, but this is clearly the Burmese generals flexing their muscles again.
Gambari should continue his diplomatic missions to Burma. His mandate must be broadened and deepened, and his role amped up from mere facilitator to negotiator. He may need to continue this process for the next 18 months to five years. It is unrealistic to expect instant results, as questions of political culture and practice are involved. In Rangoon, and perhaps also in Mandalay and Pakokku, Gambari needs to have his own local office and staff, along with international human rights monitors. (He now works out of the UNDP office.) Official photos of his arrival at Rangoon airport showed him being greeted inside the building only by Petrie, so apparently there was no official welcome. This is a classic cold-shoulder technique often used by the junta.
During his second post-crackdown visit, Gambari did not get to meet Sr. Gen. Than Shwe, but he did meet some junior generals. He sat on the floor to meet some high-ranking Buddhist abbots, but he did not get to see any of the 1988-generation political activists, nor any political prisoners. Gambari did manage to see Aung San Suu Kyi for an hour before he left for the airport. In Singapore Gambari read a statement from Suu Kyi to reporters.
In her statement Suu Kyi reiterated her willingness participate in dialogue: "In the interest of the nation, I stand ready to cooperate with the Government in order to make this process of dialogue a success and welcome the necessary good offices role on the United Nations." But Suu Kyi has always said this. The junta, not she, is the real barrier to change.
The SPDC continues to allow UN representatives into the country. UN Human Rights Envoy professor Sergio Pinhiero was to start a five-day visit this Sunday. This is the first time in four years that Pinhiero has been granted an entry visa. (A previous visit was cut short when the professor discovered a listening device under the table while he was talking to a leading Burmese dissident inside Insein Prison.) Gambari has also been told by the SPDC authorities that he is welcome to come to Burma again.
At the same time, there are many reasons why Gambari, or Suu Kyi, for that matter, has not been seen smiling in recent news photographs. The monks' leader, U Gambira, was arrested on Nov. 4, the day his op-ed appeared in The Washington Post. And Su Su Nway, a leading dissident in hiding, was arrested today. (Burma is 12 hours ahead.) Earlier Reuters reported that the SPDC rejected Gambari's proposal of three-way talks between the junta, Suu Kyi and the UN facilitator.
But Ko Htike, a London-based blogger who obtained many images during the crisis from his contacts inside Burma, says the Burmese people knew all this already. It is what they have come to expect from the junta.
