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Washington Post Cover
Army Rulers Tighten Iron Grip on Burma
Opposition Leaders Jailed, Rebels Repelled
By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, May 24, 1999; Page A16
RANGOON, Burma?The military junta that has controlled
this isolated
nation for the last 11 years has sharply increased
efforts to stamp out its
political opposition and eradicate rebel guerrillas
from the country's remote
jungle regions, according to diplomats and other
analysts here.
In the past seven months, the government has
detained, threatened and
tortured opposition party members in "dramatically"
increasing numbers to
eliminate the opposition "once and for all," a
Western official said.
At least 150 senior members of the National League
for Democracy,
headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi,
are being held in
government detention centers. As many as 3,000 more
political prisoners
are held in Rangoon's notorious Insein Prison. The
government has forced
or coerced nearly 40,000 others to resign from the
opposition party in
recent months, diplomats said.
The crackdown by Burma's military rulers not only
heightens existing fears
among foreign democracy and human rights advocates,
but promises to
strain further Burma's relations with the United
States and other powers.
Political repression in Burma -- and evidence that
the ruling junta is
engaged in international drug trafficking -- has
already spurred Washington
to isolate the country, Southeast Asia's largest
politically and economically.
Relations between Suu Kyi and the junta deteriorated
in March, when the
government refused to grant a visa to her terminally
ill husband, British
academic Michael Aris, who died March 27 in England.
The government
said Suu Kyi should travel to Britain to visit him,
but she feared that the
generals would use her departure as an opportunity to
exile her
permanently. Without the protection afforded by her
broad international
support, she feared that her party would be wiped
out.
In a videotape delivered in April to the the U.N.
Human Rights
Commission in Geneva, Suu Kyi said Burmese government
oppression had
"worsened greatly" in the past year on a scale that
"the world has not yet
grasped." She called on the United Nations to issue a
firm resolution
supporting human rights in Burma that would be "more
than just mere
words."
"What we have suffered over the last year is far more
than we have
suffered over the last six or seven years," she said
on the tape.
While they have cracked down on Suu Kyi and her
supporters, soldiers
have sharply increased their campaign of burning and
looting villages in the
eastern hills, driving ethnic minority refugees into
Thailand in numbers that
alarm relief workers.
These minority groups have been fighting for nearly
50 years for regional
autonomy. Since the generals seized power in 1988,
they have negotiated
cease-fires with 16 groups, but guerrillas and
soldiers continue to clash
regularly. In recent months, officials say the
government has sharply
increased a systematic, village-by-village crackdown
that appears to be
aimed at forcibly bringing the rebel regions under
Rangoon's control for
good.
Human rights officials and diplomats say the problem
is growing fastest in
Shan state in northeastern Burma, where the
government's military sweep
has left thousands dead or homeless or forced them to
flee to camps in
Thailand. About 120,000 Burmese refugees live in 16
camps just inside the
Thai border; nearly 2,000 arrived in February alone.
"There's definitely an intensification in the last
few months. There's nowhere
people can really feel secure inside now," said Kevin
Heppner of the
Karen Human Rights Group, which operates in Thailand
on the Burmese
border.
Heppner, who travels frequently into Burma to
document cases of human
rights abuses, said villagers report being terrorized
by new "death squads"
believed to be controlled by the government's
military intelligence chiefs.
These squads sweep villages and conduct on-the-spot
executions of
"anyone who is suspected of helping the guerrillas in
any way at any time in
their life," he said.
Burma is one of the world's most closed societies.
Soldiers with shiny
bayonets patrol the streets, and the government bans
most journalists.
Those who enter on tourist visas are deported when
they attempt to
interview Suu Kyi or her associates. People on the
street know that talking
about politics with foreigners can lead to severe
punishment.
Burma, about the size of Texas, is the largest
country in area in Southeast
Asia. Its 50 million people are among the world's
poorest, largely because
of chronic government mismanagement. Generals with no
training in
agriculture visit farms and tell farmers where, when
and how to plant their
crops, in a practice known as "leaving necessary
instructions."
Inflation is at least 70 percent; the country has
virtually no hard currency
reserves. Most of the country is without power for at
least 12 hours a day,
forcing many homes and businesses in Rangoon to use
generators.
Gasoline is rationed at three gallons a day per
person. There are virtually
no street lights and most traffic signals do not
work. Trucks and buses in
the capital are relics; the fleet even includes some
Studebakers.
The drinking water is largely unsafe. Most people
survive on subsistence
farming, but droughts, floods and the appropriation
of food by government
troops have led to an increase in hunger in rural
areas.
Foreign investment in Burma dropped nearly 100
percent from 1997 to
1998, largely because of the Asian financial crisis.
Investors based in
Thailand, Malaysia and other once-booming economies
were suddenly
broke.
Foreign products are rare; major companies such as
Motorola Inc.,
PepsiCo Inc., Heineken NV and others pulled out years
ago. McDonald's
is not here, but MacBurger serves up burgers with
counterfeit golden
arches and a vaguely familiar clown character painted
on its windows.
Wood pulp is the main ingredient in the fat
cigarettes almost everyone
smokes.
At the same time, the government spent millions to
restore the Shwedagon
Pagoda, the historic golden temple complex in the
heart of Rangoon,
described by Rudyard Kipling as a "beautiful, winking
wonder." The
renovation took more than a ton of new gold plating,
and poor villagers
were asked to donate gold and jewels to adorn the
gilded spires.
Much of Burma's income is believed to derive from the
world's most
prolific heroin-producing region, the Golden
Triangle, where Burma,
China, Thailand and Laos come together. The Burmese
government has
long been a willing participant in the trade and
remains so, despite its
insistence that it is cracking down on drug lords,
U.S. officials said. In
protest, the United States and most Western nations
refused to attend an
Interpol drug conference held in February in Rangoon.
Despite the grim economic picture, the Burmese
government spends
roughly 40 percent of its budget on the military.
Since the generals took
over in 1988, the military has doubled to 350,000
troops and is building
toward 400,000.
A junta spokesman, Lt. Col. Hla Min, told reporters
last week that
Burma's arms purchases and force buildup in the past
decade were
necessary to combat ethnic rebel insurgents. "We have
been portrayed as
a very dangerous race of people, but before we
purchased all this
equipment we were one of the most poorly equipped
countries in the
world," he said.
But as the military has grown, some hospitals have
been closed to new
patients two days a week, and the national university
has been closed more
than half the time since the current rulers took
over.
Last summer, Suu Kyi and her party demanded that the
government
convene parliament with the members chosen in the
1990 election, which
the government invalidated after Suu Kyi's party won
more than 80
percent of the contested seats. The government
responded to the demand
with a harsh new campaign, rounding up and detaining
most of the party
members elected in 1990. About 75 have been released,
but 150 remain in
custody.
The government has closed opposition party offices in
villages throughout
the country. Each day in the government newspaper,
the New Light of
Myanmar, hundreds of members of Suu Kyi's party are
reported to have
resigned. Officials here said the resignations are
largely the result of military
intimidation; in other cases, a Western diplomat
said, resignations are the
result of mistreatment that includes beatings, sleep
deprivation and forced
hunger.
Despite the government's brutal tactics, even some
Suu Kyi supporters say
that her standoff with the junta has gotten nowhere.
They suggest that it
may be time for her to seek more flexible tactics.
"It's time for her to be pragmatic and recognize the
reality a little," said one
Asian diplomat in Rangoon. "When you're in the ring
with Mike Tyson, you
don't try to break his nose; you box clever. And
she's not boxing clever.
She's got to play politics a little more."
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