Bkk Post - Editorial - The number i

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Subject: Bkk Post - Editorial - The number is up in Rangoon

Bangkok Post - Sep 9, 1999.
Editorial
The number is up in Rangoon

Among the more bizarre of the Rangoon junta's efforts to suppress any
expression of dissent on 9-9-99 was a request by military authorities in
Myawaddy to their counterparts in Thailand. The request was simple enough:
Please keep the Burmese out of Burma. Thai authorities were asked to tell
the employers of thousands of Burmese workers that their days off had been
cancelled and that if they wanted to go to Burma they should do so at
another time.

Strange though the request was, it was not altogether out of character for
an illegitimate regime that has listened to its own propaganda for so long
that it is in danger of believing it. The appeal to the Thai authorities
also betrays a belief on the part of the regime that any citizen who has
been abroad must be a threat to its stability. The victim of an economic
shambles courtesy of the military government, the average Burmese worker is
now seen as a potential enemy of the state merely for crossing the border in
search of employment.

The request to the Thai authorities has come as just one of many measures
intended to ensure that today passes off without any event that the military
could construe as a threat to its existence. Curfews have been declared,
citizens have been arrested, security units are redoubling their efforts to
prevent the risk of people meeting and talking with one another. According
to the official version, however, none of this is taking place because the
populace is disloyal to the outfit now calling itself the State Peace and
Development Council and 9-9-99 is just another day to all but the
superstitious.

But by its very own actions and attempts to deny and conceal them, the
military regime has demonstrated clearly that even though it may not be
superstitious, it does not regard today as just another day. It has every
reason to be wary of 9-9-99 not so much for reasons of numerology but
because the numbers may also be regarded as a rallying point for a
population which would otherwise be unable to organise anything. With a
stranglehold on the media, universities closed, communities infested by
junta eaves-droppers and severe restrictions on public assembly, the people
of Burma needed and found a way to put those four numbers to good effect.

The generals, as a result, are jumping at shadows, seeing threats from
within and without the country's borders, and in this respect they are
making a correct assessment because the only people who want them to
continue in power are themselves. It is reasonable to speculate that the
dictatorship is as scared of what today might bring as it is baffled by it.
While there have been calls for action and warnings of military activity by
the various groups ranged against the regime, Rangoon is facing what may be
considered a formidable yet invisible challenge. Fresh in the minds of
people who have endured decades of brutality and bungling at the hands of
the military is the memory of 8-8-88, the date of the atrocity in which the
junta slaughtered thousands of people in the interests of its own particular
interests. The opposition is unlikely to offer the military another
opportunity of that nature.

Since 1988, the junta has changed in form but not in substance, enjoying a
different acronym but continuing to feed off an oppressed people who yearn
for the democratic order they have for so long been denied. They do not want
rulers who are reviled on the international scene, with the exception
perhaps of Asean and its gullible apologists. Nor do they want to be
associated with a regime that likes to do business with drugs traffickers.
Through 9-9-99, the people are saying that dictatorship has had its day and
has failed. The generals would do well to listen.