The American Embassy in Burma, politicians such as US Senator Stephen Solarz, plus the world’s most famous political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi, are also reasons why Burma needs to remain under military control, according to the xenophobic government.
Buddhist-majority Burma, also known as Myanmar, is an isolated land where Internet is illegal for most people, domestic media is tightly muzzled, and citizens converse in whispers about politics.
The biggest country in mainland Southeast Asia is one of the world’s worst human rights abusers, according to London-based Amnesty International, US-based Human Rights Watch, and other monitors.
The government’s main mouthpiece, the English-language New Light of Myanmar newspaper, is now warning a new generation not to be like the previous one. This week it published, “The True Story of the So-Called 1988 Generation.” In 1988, the military staged an internal coup, replacing the generals who had been controlling the government since 1962.
MANY KILLED
When thousands of people responded by taking to the streets and demanding democracy, Washington and Suu Kyi saw their chance to seize power, the report said. The failed uprising left more than 1,000 protesters dead, plus countless others injured, imprisoned, or hiding in self-exile.
Today, Burma blames Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi and her supporters in America, Europe,
Thailand and elsewhere for conspiring with ethnic minority “terrorist” guerrillas, who have been fighting for autonomy, or independence, or simply to defend their villages and rice fields.
The military government, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), claims to have a sacred obligation to hold the nation of over 47 million together and stamp out “separatist rebellions” among its 135 officially recognized races.
Those being hunted in the jungles of Burma include the, predominantly Christian, Karen people, who have been fighting nearly 60 years in the oldest civil war of the world.
The latest challenge for the outnumbered Karen National Liberation Army is to halt what rights watchers describe as the Burma regime’s “biggest offensive” in nearly a decade.
“INDISCRIMNINATE BRUTALITY”
“It is difficult to imagine the indiscriminate brutality of these atrocities,” said Tina Lambert, Advocacy Director of rights group Christian Solidarity Worldwide, referring to reports of killings, burning of villages and the capture of civilians, including children.
Like many others, Karens have suggested they are ready to cooperate with Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy Party (NLD), which won a landslide election victory in 1990, to bring stability in the troubled nation. She wants the country to remain united, and tried to woo armed ethnic rebels to support her, but the regime refuses to allow her party to form a government.
Last month, Suu Kyi spent her 61th bithday under house arrest inside her mildewing, two-story villa in the capital, Rangoon, where she has languished for more than 10 of the past 16 years.
Burma insisted America worsened the confrontation, which now includes crippling, US-led, international economic sanctions amid calls by the United Nations and others for democracy. Burma’s military points to 1988 as the breaking point, and warns young people not to be fooled again.
In August 1988, “Aung San Suu Kyi and three [NLD] members arrived at the residence of the American ambassador, and held discussions with Mr. Solarz at the breakfast,” the New Light of Myanmar newspaper said, referring to the US senator’s visit to Rangoon at the time. After their conspiratorial meeting with students and others, riots erupted which needed to be crushed, it added.
CANNON FODDER
Those who participated in the pro-democracy insurrection were cannon fodder and dupes for Suu Kyi and her foreign backers, the report claimed.
“It was the people claiming themselves as leaders of democracy movements who exploited the students in the unrest.
They pushed the youths to the border and entrusted them to the insurgents, so that the artless youths changed themselves into expatriates.”
It stressed that, “Only some students, who would be useful to the colonial schemes, were brought to Western countries and helped to become dollar-earning national traitors.” Today, young people who obey Burma’s strict, sanitized, hermit society can succeed, the paper claimed.
But those who join politicians demanding peace and democracy, will fall by the wayside. “Youths became addicted to politics dangerously — in a way they were addicted to drugs and love — because of their surroundings, clever tricks of politicians, little political knowledge, or a personality cult,” it stressed in convoluted grammar.
“Not only love, but also drugs, politics and gambling could make a person blind,” the paper warned. Such rhetoric in Burma’s media is seen as an attempt to convince a new generation that they should not trust Suu Kyi, the United States, or others calling for an end to military rule.
“FINE TRADITIONS”
“There is a great difference between the fine traditions of old Myanmar students who fought the colonialists to regain independence, and the conditions of today’s so-called ’88 New Generation’ students who are merely lackeys of the colonialists, national traitors, and internal axe-handles,” the paper explained.
The regime uses the expression “axe-handles” to describe people it says are used by Suu Kyi and others to “destroy” the country.
Apparently feeling pressured despite, Burma’s generals have begun shifting the capital from Rangoon to the central city of Pyinmana. Foreign embassies in Rangoon were perplexed by the move.
“If you need to communicate on urgent matters, you can send a fax to Pyinmana,” Burma’s foreign ministry told stunned ambassadors in a recent memo.
(The ‘Letter From’ stories are part of BosNewsLife’s regular series on crucial developments of our time. Award-winning reporter, photojournalist and author Richard S. Ehrlich has covered Asia for 28 years for a variety of media, including as staff correspondent for United Press International from 1978 to 1984, based in Hong Kong and New Delhi. He also co-authored the non-fiction best seller “HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!” — Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews. The book, reviewed by Time magazine and other leading publications, looks beyond the red light of Thailand’s nightlife, and gives a rare insight in the often tragic and difficult relationships between prostitutes and their clients. Ehrlich, who was born in the US and is currently based in Bangkok, received the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism’s Foreign Correspondent’s Award in 1978. He speaks some Mandarin, Hindustani, Urdu, Thai, Spanish and French. Ehrlich can be reached for assignments and/or more information via website: http://www.geocities.com/asia_correspondent/news.html )
