The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition -- March 25, 1997
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Battle in Burma
By ALISTAIR HORNE
RANGOON, Burma--At last month's foreign
ministers' meeting in Singapore, the
Association of
South-East Asian Nations backed Burma's
application for membership, setting
itself on a
collision course with the U.S. and
the European
Union, which advocate sanctions aimed
at Burma's
military regime.
For Western liberal opinion, the
issue remains
Burma's deplorable record on
democracy and
human rights. Foremost among the charges
against the ruling State Law and
Order Restoration
Council, known as Slorc, is its
treatment of Aung
Sang Suu Kyi, 1991 winner of the
Nobel Peace
Prize. As my wife and I discovered on
a recent
private visit to her, Ms. Suu Kyi remains
sequestered, a highly vulnerable bird
in a cage
that is far from golden.
The Lady, as Ms. Suu Kyi is
reverently known
throughout Burma, is the daughter of
Aung San,
the national hero who opposed the
British, then
the Japanese in World War II, and
whom Burmese
regarded as the only man who could
salvage their
war-ravaged country. But Aung San and
his entire
cabinet were assassinated by
political rivals in
1947, and the country was then ruined
by 26
years of its own brand of inward-looking
socialism.
Landslide Victory
In 1988, economic collapse
precipitated mass
demonstrations that were crushed with
appalling
brutality by the military, which then
assumed
power under the unfortunate acronym
(it could
have been invented by the late Ian
Fleming). At
this point the Oxford-educated Ms.
Suu Kyi, who
was in Burma to tend her ailing
mother, found
herself swept up in politics. She
formed the
National League for Democracy, which
in 1990
won a landslide victory with 81% of
the vote in an
election forced upon Slorc by
internal and
international pressure. Slorc,
however, refused to
recognize the results, and Ms. Suu
Kyi, arrested
before the elections, endured house
arrest for six
years. In July 1995 she was released,
not having
seen her husband, Oxford don Michael
Airs, or her
two young sons during most of this time.
Ms. Suu Kyi's "compound," as she
calls it, at No.
54 University Avenue in Rangoon, is
still sealed
off by the army. Visitors can only
enter by special
appointment. Carrying a parcel of
books, photos
and other articles from her husband,
we were
quite disagreeably harassed by armed
soldiers
and plainclothes "guards" at each of two
roadblocks, liberally photographed
and forced to
sign a registration book. Our taxi
driver fled the
scene, in evident discomfort. Our
luggage,
however, was not searched.
Surrounded by the bravely challenging
red flags
of her party, Ms. Suu Kyi's compound
consists of
her late mother's once elegant but
now badly
decayed stucco house, overlooking a
lake on
whose banks some of Slorc's worst
atrocities
occurred in 1988, and several modest
huts. One
of them houses a Slorc security post;
it became
evident later that our conversation
had been
bugged. Hammers were at work running up a
small conference center for the big
Union Day
holiday the following week (in the
event, half of
the estimated 5,000 NLD supporters
who arrived
were turned away by the police).
Despite the rigors
of recent years,
Ms. Suu Kyi looks
younger than her
53 years, a
slender woman of
delicate beauty.
She has an
engaging sense of
humor, and laughs
gaily when I say I
intend to
photograph the
guards, en
revanche, when
we leave. But underneath one senses a
steely
seriousness, and deep commitment.
Are things getting better? I ask.
"No," she replies,
"it was worse over the past year,
with more
arrests of our people in the middle
of the night."
Some of them received seven-year
sentences.
"You won't see people arrested at
night, but now
you have seen a little of what it's
like, outside."
She herself receives letters only
four times a year,
and so relies greatly on the BBC
World Service
radio for information from the
outside world.
"Every day they write something nasty
about me
in the papers--particularly about my
Western
contacts," she says. Amnesty
International
confirms the personal attacks on Ms.
Suu Kyi are
becoming "increasingly strident."
When she goes
out she is accompanied by escorts
from the Slorc
Military Intelligence--"They say it's
for my safety,"
she tells us. In November her
motorcade was
attacked by thugs with iron bars.
Pressure from outside has helped, she
says:
"Slorc is not impervious to
international opinion."
She remains committed to the principle of
sanctions, even though some claim
they hurt her
people. Does she think that, as with
Augusto
Pinochet in Chile, the generals will
go one day?
"They don't have Pinochet's
self-confidence; they
are very suspicious of people trained
abroad," she
says, referring to the "Chicago Boys"
who saved
the Chilean economy. Perhaps the
Slorc generals
are fearful of retribution? "We have
said many
times that everything is negotiable,"
she replies.
Ms. Suu Kyi's house is austere, with
absolutely no
concessions to traditional
femininity. Leaving, we
asked: What about her everyday life?
"It's taken up
with politics--three meetings this
morning, now
your visit this afternoon, then
another meeting this
evening," she replies. "I have books,
and videos
but I don't have time to watch them."
Looking at the fragile grille on the
windows, and
the few frail men from her NLD at the
entrance to
the compound, one appreciates just
how at risk
she is. Some of her supporters fear
she may be
assassinated, like her father. What
she says she
most fears is to be forced into
exile, like
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, though some
admirers
think this would be best for her safety.
Indeed, over the past eight years of
military rule,
Amnesty International has assembled a
devastating dossier of Slorc's human
rights
abuses. These include forced labor
and chain
gangs, atrocities against the Karens
and other
minority rebels, brutal relocations
of entire
communities, and arbitrary
imprisonment of Ms.
Sun Kyi's deputies, some of whom have
died in
jail. Last month, ironically on
Burma's Union Day,
the army launched a new offensive
against the
Karen rebels in the east, driving
many thousands
of civilian refugees into Thailand
and producing
fresh reports of tortures and killings.
In Mandalay the tourist is confronted
by Slorc
slogans as provocative as anything
from the
Soviet Union at the height of the
Cold War:
"Oppose those relying on external
elements,
acting as stooges, holding negative
views," for
instance, and "Crush all internal and
external
destructive elements as the common
enemy."
Yet, except for a few obvious signs of
malnutrition, except for a fleeting
glimpse of a
police truck as densely packed with
prisoners as
those in "Schindler's List," and
except for armed
soldiers supervising building of a
road--I saw none
of the alleged abuses. Then again, I
was a tourist.
Even trained experts of the
International Red Cross
failed to pick up on torture by the
Greek Colonels.
Although they are not allowed to
travel more than
25 miles outside of Rangoon without
official
permission, some senior Western
observers say
Slorc's record is not all bad. In
recent years, they
say, a great deal of building and foreign
investment has helped create a new
middle class,
with parallels to Franco's Spain. Foreign
businessmen, like Jim Sherwood, an
American
who has pioneered the efficient Road
to Mandalay
cruise ship on the Irrawaddy river,
take a much
more robust line. Sanctions, Mr.
Sherwood says,
would be totally counterproductive
and likely to
drive Slorc back into the introverted
posture from
which Burma has just begun to emerge,
make its
rule harsher and reverse the growing
prosperity of
ordinary Burmese. Expanded trade,
tourism and
other contact with the outside world,
he says,
make for the best way of leading
Slorc out of its
present ways.
One university graduate and supporter
of Ms. Suu
Kyi voiced to me another reason for
opposing
sanctions: If the West pulls out, she
said, the
Chinese, already pressing on the
door, will take
over. Meanwhile, in Singapore last
month, the
Asean foreign ministers prepared to
accept Burma
as one of their own. And in their
polite Southeast
Asian way, they warned the West to
mind its own
business on human rights in Burma.
"In Asia,"
declared Singapore Foreign Minister
S. Jayukumar,
"we marry first and expect the bride
to adapt her
behavior after the marriage."
Looming Confrontations
Yet if Burma is admitted to Asean
this summer, as
is likely, confrontation looms. The
Asean foreign
ministers' next meeting with their EU
counterparts
is scheduled to take place next
spring, in
London--and current British policy
does not allow
visas for Slorc representatives. U.S.
Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright has urged
quickening the
pace toward sanctions for Burma. To
many in
America, Ms. Suu Kyi is the new Nelson
Mandela--and an even more charismatic
figure. As
a former U.S. ambassador close to the
White
House remarked to me, "We regard San
Suu Kyi
as the legally elected head of the
Burmese
government; therefore, if she calls
for sanctions
we must do what she wants."
Recent reports from Rangoon,
meanwhile, allege
much heavier military activity than
normal. Will
Burma become a new South Africa--or
Southeast
Asia's next killing fields?
Mr. Horne, a fellow of St. Antony's
College,
Oxford, is author most recently of
"How Far From
Austerlitz? Napoleon 1805-1815," due
out from St.
Martin's in May.