From a state of profound isolation, Burma has moved rapidly and conspicuously on to the world stage, especially in the assertion by its people of the need for basic human rights. Spontaneous mass demonstrations began in August 1988. At first an instinctive reaction to a quarter-century of official repression and gratuitous military violence, the demonstrations formed part of a truly widespread popular movement, as tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of people met and marched, with the manifest support of the general population, which greeted, cheered and joined them. Events in Burma have tended, inevitably, to be overshadowed by those in its large neighbour to the north, where similar demonstrations occurred a year later. And the immediate outcome, both in Burma and China, seems to have been the same: their governments swiftly adopted methods of exceptional brutality in order to silence opposition.
The Burmese situation, however, is different, and unusual, in at least one fundamental respect. Out of the inherently disorderly phenomenon of spontaneous mass uprising, further disturbed and disrupted by violent military suppression, there has emerged a clear leader, advocating non-violent methods, who commands widespread admiration and support: Aung San Suu Kyi. Her position is at once formidable and extremely vulnerable: she is physically at the mercy of a military regime which retains power by use of force; yet the military has not so far dared to apply physical violence to her.
The emergence of Aung San Suu Kyi at the very centre of the Burmese struggle for human rights, and the unique role she has been able to play, are the consequence of three facts which have bound her life inextricably to the modern history of her country. Two of these are now widely recognized, but it is the third factor which has given them moment.
The first is that she is the daughter of the unquestioned architect of independent Burma in the modern period, Aung San. His role, as attested in many sources,1 was that of a unifying figure of unblemished character with a strong vision of a free, democratic Burma. His assassination, on the eve of independence, along with the cabinet of the transitional government he headed, had tragic implications for the stability of the new country. Not surprisingly, Aung San has become a powerful symbol and martyr of Burmese freedom. His legacy has made Aung San Suu Kyi an appropriate symbol of the people’s legitimate rights and aspirations.
Second, the identification of daughter and father carries with it the terrifying prospect of history repeating itself. The current military dictatorship came to power twenty-eight years ago, overthrowing the elected government formed by Aung San’s surviving associates in the aftermath of his assassination. Having established without free and fair elections a system based on a single socialist party, the military dealt with strikes, demonstrations and other popular expressions – for example, in 1962, 1974 and 1976 – with gunfire.2 When the period of mass demonstrations began in 1988, the government adopted a policy of intimidation and severe restrictions on freedom of information, making exact counts of persons killed or imprisoned impossible. On at least three separate occasions in the twelve-month period from August 1988 to July 1989 troops were instructed to break up mass demonstrations by firing directly and repeatedly into crowds, with intent to kill: government statements subsequently admitted several hundred deaths and over one thousand arrests; independent estimates have been much higher.3 The military naturally focused its attention on the leadership of the opposition. Most reports stress lack of information on the whereabouts and condition of many persons arrested; use of torture has been attested by reliable sources and many eyewitness accounts.4
Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under a very strict form of house arrest in her own home on 20 July 1989. All contact with her followers and access to the media to express her views were stopped. Her immediate demand that she should be subject to the same conditions of imprisonment as her followers was ignored. However, following a hunger strike of twelve days, in which she accepted only water, the military government agreed not to torture or maltreat her imprisoned followers. Reports now suggest that, once Aung San Suu Kyi had been effectively cut off from her supporters, the military government ceased to honour this promise.5
The historical legacy which Aung San Suu Kyi represents is undoubtedly very awkward for the military government; a second martyrdom would hardly be to its advantage, whether in the short or the long term. But these facts are not sufficient to explain the role which she has come to play, or the different treatment the government has, thus far, felt necessary in her case. We need, in short, to consider the words and actions which have been her specific contribution to a rapidly developing situation, a contribution which not only reveals her profound and wider reflection on the nature of human responsibility, but which enabled her to exercise a moderating influence both on her followers and, at least for a time, on the military government. At present her contribution remains the one locus of opposition and hope which the otherwise brutally effective techniques employed by the military have not been able to break.
In a few short months – from mid-August 1988 to mid-July 1989 – Aung San Suu Kyi, although not previously part of any opposition movement and, indeed, present in Burma for personal reasons unconnected with the popular uprising, began to make her distinctive position known. First by open letter to the government, then in speeches to public meetings and demonstrations, in the formation and leadership of the National League for Democracy (NLD), and in her own tours of the country – conducted, when necessary, at gunpoint – she stuck consistently to a small number of fundamental themes, which made her the moral and spiritual focus of the popular movement to restore human rights. These themes may be briefly summarized:
1 Priority must be given to the restoration of human rights – freedom of speech, of assembly, of political organization, of information, free elections, freedom from fear – which are currently denied in Burma, and which are the only true basis for national unity and social evolution. Political and economic reform, she maintains, will only be possible after these rights have been constituted in Burmese society.
2 The only legitimate and effective means to this end are nonviolent ones.
3 The conduct of states and their governments requires principles which must always be distinguished from personalities, factions and merely tactical issues. This means, in the Burmese case, that it is not the military as such which is the enemy of human rights; the military remains, at base, a friend, and has its own legitimate sphere in government (for example, to maintain secure borders). The problem of human rights has arisen in Burma because the military, under the dictatorship of Ne Win, usurped the exercise of government. It should return to its normal, honourable role.
4 Personal and collective discipline is crucial. Short-term objectives – such as mass demonstrations, the formation of political parties and elections – are worthless if human rights are not consistently observed. Members of the NLD, and all other opponents of the military dictatorship, must not actively provoke the military to do anything more than lay down its ill-chosen methods.
These principles reflect the inspiration which Aung San Suu Kyi derived from her study and reflection on Gandhi’s philosophy and practice of non-violent civil disobedience. They were demonstrated repeatedly in the conduct of her campaign of public meetings and demonstrations; and they remain no less evident in her cool response to the intimidation and slander which the military government has continued to direct against her. Long-term observers of the Burmese scene stress that it was Aung San Suu Kyi who first introduced the issue of human rights into Burmese political discussion. These matters will be discussed in more detail below.
Popular passions naturally mounted during the year of mass demonstrations, as government acts of violence increased. Many student leaders who played an important role in the early stages of the uprising, and who were themselves willing to consider violent means, were imprisoned, killed or driven into hiding.6 Under such severe pressures, and against tremendous odds, Aung San Suu Kyi’s reasoned insistence on the sole legitimacy of nonviolent means and the priority of human rights has proven the only enduring answer: by her example, and her prevention of bloodshed, she was able to establish a real alternative for the people, who otherwise face only submission. As student representatives told a foreign correspondent, ‘Aung San Suu Kyi is our only leader. She’s the only one left. There is no one else.’7
The third and crucial fact about Aung San Suu Kyi’s unique place in Burma today thus stands out very clearly. Facts of parentage may have provided her with immediate and special public recognition; her heartfelt and determined insistence on higher principles is certainly appropriate to the deep reverence in which the memory of her father is generally held. But it is the guidance she has brought to a highly unstable situation, sustained by the personal force, courage and sound judgement manifest in her words and actions, that continues to provide the main hope for Burma.
The arrest and long isolation of Aung San Suu Kyi – now of more than two years.’ duration – place the strongest possible importance on the response of the international community. Without her active presence, and the principled approach she has taken, prospects for stability and peaceful development are far from clear. The military government has indicated the road it proposes to follow. The elections which were held in May 1990 resulted in a landslide victory for Aung San Suu Kyi’s party: it gained some 392 of the 485 legislative seats at stake in the National Assembly, representing 72 per cent of the 13 million votes cast.8 The military government’s own party meanwhile captured a mere ten seats.9 The results were interpreted both in Burma and internationally as a referendum on Aung San Suu Kyi’s proposed leadership of a free and democratic Burma, and, more specifically, as her personal triumph.10 The military, however, has simply refused to hand over power, keeping her and other opposition leaders under lock and key, and using its superior force and intimidation to maintain control. International observers having declared the election free of corruption, the military have not dared to declare it void. Instead, it has indicated that it will consider the transfer of power only when a new constitution is written, and more particularly one of which it approves.11 As the National Assembly can scarcely convene with less than a fifth of its members, the situation remains at a standstill.
Such a cruel parody of the democratic process points the way to continued violence. The military’s determination to retain power despite widespread opposition is paralleled also in the presence of armed separatist movements among the main non-Burma ethnic groups – the Karen, Shan, Mon, Kachin and others. Many young Burmans have been compelled by circumstances to join these groups, some to be trained in arms by them.12 Civil war, which has already torn apart Cambodia, has become a definite possibility in Burma.13 The three facts which have led to Aung San Suu Kyi’s unique role in the Burmese struggle for human rights have also made her the natural and primary focus of international attention. In 1990 she was awarded in Norway the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize for Human Rights and the European Parliament awarded her the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. The aim here is to bring together for a wider audience a summary of the main elements in the development of Aung San Suu Kyi’s thought and action in defence of human rights in Burma. In the following two sections her position is set out – in her own words, as far as possible – against the chronology of recent Burmese history. This is followed by a brief recitation of the international response to date.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Non-Violence and Democracy
To understand the present situation in Burma, it is necessary to consider more closely Aung San Suu Kyi’s own life and practice of non-violence. Her insistence that violent and non-violent means belong to strictly separable domains of human action reflects her personal experience of the sad consequences of their mixture in Burmese history. Perhaps more important, it reflects careful study – over many years – of the ideas, problems and constraints which shaped her father’s short life. While Aung San Suu Kyi has been directly inspired by his example, the problems of continued militarism and factionalism which he foresaw – and which overtook him at his assassination – led her very early to seek general principles of moral, social and political action which not only incorporate the lessons of his life but would also help to reestablish and sustain the framework of Burmese democracy which remained tentative and fragile at his death.
Aung San is remembered by the Burmese today not only as father of the nation but also as founder of its army. The term by which he was widely known – Bogyoke – was an expression of admiration for what he had achieved for Burma and of respect for his selfless attitude to power.14 His army was built up for the sole and express purpose of asserting Burmese nationhood against British and Japanese colonial control; its existence was a major factor prompting the peaceful transition to an independent Burma which he successfully negotiated. Under his influence the Burma Independence Army was not a weapon used against other ethnic groups; Aung San was sufficiently able to restrain factions within its ranks that it became possible to integrate a battalion of Karen troops, and for a Karen general to assume command of the army during the first years of independence. Nor did the army become involved in countering the potentially divisive activities of socialist and communist groups, most of which Aung San was able to persuade to participate in elections.
The potential dangers, however, of a strong military in the context of a new democracy were something of which Aung San was well aware, and cautioned against: a military which engages in politics dishonours itself and earns the hatred of the people.15 For his own part, he resigned his military position at the point when the political phase of independence negotiations began. But the circumstances of his assassination provide telling evidence of his prophecy of problems to come: he was killed, without provocation, by a small number of soldiers loyal to a jealous political rival.16
Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old when her father was assassinated. The army as a whole remained loyal to her father’s precepts of non-intervention in politics during the early years of the democratically elected government of U Nu. Aung San Suu Kyi has attested its positive role at this time, making clear her own identification with her father’s military legacy: ‘as a child I was cared for by his soldiers’; ‘I have a rapport with the army. I was brought up to regard them as friends.’17 However, when the army leadership passed to Ne Win in the mid-1950s, a quiet consolidation of power began. When the military seized control of the government in 1962, Aung San Suu Kyi was with her mother, who was then Burmese Ambassador to India.
Aung San Suu Kyi was seventeen when the coup d’état took place. Her schooling in India, and then a two-year course in political science at Delhi University, thus came at a time and age when she needed to come to terms with events in Burma for herself. It was during this period that she acquired her lasting admiration for the principles of non-violence embodied in the life and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. Her campaign of civil disobedience in Burma was directly inspired by that example. She cited both Gandhi and Martin Luther King as models.18
She continued her education at Oxford University, where she studied Modern Greats (Politics, Philosophy and Economics), ‘because economics seemed to be of most use for a developing country’.19 Following a period of employment at the United Nations Secretariat in New York, she married the British Tibetologist, Michael Aris. While living in England and raising a family of two sons (born in 1973 and 1977), she continued to visit Burma regularly, and engaged in research and teaching in Burmese studies at Oxford. This happy and comparatively peaceful period of her life gave her time to write, and it led to a visiting scholarship at Kyoto University in Japan and a fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study in Simla.
Her enduring concerns are apparent in her main works, a short biography of her father20 and studies of Burmese social and political thought in the period leading up to independence.21 ‘In my thoughts,’ she remarked in a BBC interview, ‘I have never been away from my country and my people.’22
From childhood I have been deeply interested in the history of the independence movement and in the social and political development of Burma. My father died when I was only two years old, and it was only when I grew older and started collecting material on his life that I began to learn how much he achieved in his thirty-two years. I developed an admiration for him as a patriot and statesman. Because of this strong bond I feel a deep responsibility for the welfare of my country.23
Aung San Suu Kyi’s writings, although interrupted and, consequently, left incomplete by her return to Burma and involvement in recent events, deserve our attention. The biography of Aung San, for example, is no partisan statement, but a clear narrative in neutral language of the development of his thinking and the main events in his life; her candid treatment of his strengths and weaknesses helps us to understand the substance underlying the observation, made by several foreign correspondents, of the ‘mystical awe’ in which Aung San Suu Kyi, as Aung San’s daughter, is regarded by the common people. Her first public appearance, on 26 August 1988, has been described by Aung Lwin, a well-known actor and subsequently a member of the National League for Democracy, now imprisoned by the government: ‘We were all surprised. Not only did she look like her father, she spoke like him also: short, concise and to the point.’24 Her message emphasized widely acknowledged themes of her father’s: her democracy rests on deep personal commitment; that national unity only comes through discipline; that strictly fair treatment of opponents must be maintained, whatever legitimate grievances the people may hold against them; that a leader’s view must be subject to wider debate; that violent means are the legitimate function of the military, belonging to a separate sphere outside politics; and that basic human rights must be established first – meaning, in particular, open and free elections in a multi-party system. Like Aung San, she expressed a deep distaste for power politics and political manoeuvring behind the scenes. Her entry on to the political stage, like Aung San’s, was because the obstruction of democracy by the government of the day left no other alternative: ‘I could not as my father’s daughter remain indifferent to all that was going on.’25
Similarly, her monograph comparing intellectual life in Burma and India under colonialism is something more than an academic account of why the independence movements in the two countries developed differently. Her research, not surprisingly, is bound up with her own intellectual development: the comparison of India and Burma gives rise to those aspects of Burmese history which make Gandhi’s philosophy the appropriate basis for a moral and practical response to Burma’s troubled modern history. It is Aung San Suu Kyi’s recognition of the relevance and singular importance of Gandhi’s teachings to Burma that distinguishes her contribution, and which represents a major step beyond the position of her father.
Her starting point in the essay is well known in the history of national movements in South Asia (and elsewhere). In both countries an admiration for European culture ran up against the brute facts of British political and military domination, leading to an attempt by local thinkers to formulate fundamentally Burmese and Indian national identities and ideologies which would none the less be able to draw selectively on the best aspects of European experience. Aung San Suu Kyi lays particular stress on (i) the village basis of Burmese democracy, (ii) the Burmese attitude to education as a moral, activity embracing all aspects of person and nation and (iii) the relatively short period in which Burmese leadership has had to mature. Her treatment of these themes helps us to understand how she came to see a non-violent Gandhian approach to democracy as the historically legitimate – and realistic – course of action in Burma:
(i) The history of Burmese society is notable for the relative absence of hierarchical structures. Monarchy existed without a noble or leisure class between the king and the people, and ministers of state were consequently drawn from the villages. Daily life in the villages was self-governing. British abolition of the Burmese monarchy left a society not only lacking rigid castes or an emerging bourgeoisie, but without a politically aware intellectual élite. The tradition of local village government, however, remained, and did not disappear with British rule. Aung San Suu Kyi notes that it was precisely from such humble village contexts that Gandhi drew inspiration;26 and that, just as Gandhi’s thinking inspired a wider Indian literature espousing the wisdom and strength of village government, so in Burma national consciousness was rooted in a literature espousing the moral and economic autonomy of the traditional village.27
(ii) The emergence of the national movement in Burma owes directly to this fundamental egalitarian tendency. The traditional bases of this movement, although resting in Buddhism rather than explicitly in Gandhian philosophy, none the less found nonviolent, mass expression:
In Burma, with its lack of an effective leadership, the people had to fend for themselves in the twentieth century as they had done throughout their history. Traditionally, the Burmese had always had a great respect for education. Unlike India, where ancient learning had been confined to the higher castes, education had always been universally available in Burma. And this education was connected with the teachings of the Buddha who had pointed out the way to nirvana. Thus, to be educated meant more than the mere acquisition of book learning; it meant the mastery of the supreme knowledge that would lead to enlightenment. A people with such a view of education could not take easily to the British policy which saw education as a practical training for the new jobs and opportunities that had been created under colonialism … there was also in the Burmese mentality an ingrained resistance to élitism. It was a widely held belief that education of a national character should be made available to as broad a section of the population as possible. And it was this belief which lay behind the boycott against the Rangoon University Act of 1920 … on the grounds that such [a university as the British were planning] would have the effect of limiting education to the privileged few.28
Aung San Suu Kyi goes on to point out how the boycott resulted in the creation of National Schools, financed by public subscription and based on ‘an amalgam of the patriotic spirit and the western tradition of learning’; and that the first generation of Burmese leaders – which included Aung San and his associates – was the direct product of this system.29
(iii) The young men who emerged from the National Schools in the 1930s consciously ‘strived to broaden the base of nationalism and to give it an intellectual framework’.30 But like Gandhi in his youth, they were sometimes susceptible to foreign doctrines which they had not properly digested; most of them, caught up in the tide of the times, embraced socialist ideologies because the opposition of such doctrines to colonialism and capitalism gave them a progressive character – even though the relative absence of class exploitation made Burma an unlikely candidate for such models.31 The central problem of the new generation was, consequently, to forge a link between ideas and action; here Aung San Suu Kyi singles out Aung San, not only because he cited Gandhi amongst the world figures to whom Burmans looked for guidance, but because Aung San (possibly echoing Gandhi’s ultimate scepticism of European morals, and his idea of the need for unceasing action) was led by his own practical efforts to set aside the stock European ‘isms’ of the period; for him ideas and actions ‘followed each on the other in an uninterrupted chain of endeavour’.32
The concluding note to her study emphasizes the unfinished nature of the independence movement. In implicit reference to her father’s death, she writes: ‘The younger generation of leaders appeared too late to bring about effective changes before the outbreak of the Second World War. Developments in Burma after 1940 took many abrupt twists and turns; and to this day, it still remains a society waiting for its true potential to be realized.’33
Later history has confirmed that the fusion of ideas and actions which the first generation of national leaders had sought was not attained. The national movement led, after a brief period of democracy, to a quarter-century of military dictatorship, under a programme of ‘Burmese socialism’ which has been criticized both within Burma and without for having neither intellectual coherence nor economic good sense.34 As Aung San Suu Kyi has written, ‘Actions without ideational content lose their potency as soon as the situation which called for them ceases to be valid. A series of pragmatic moves unconnected by a continuity of vision cannot be expected to sustain a long-term movement.’35
A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration.36
Aung San Suu Kyi’s writings and speeches in the course of the year of mass demonstration returned again and again to the theme of a ‘revolution of the spirit’ and its meaning in the context of Burmese and wider South Asian history. It is clear from her analysis of past Burmese experience, outlined in the preceding paragraphs, that the popular uprising of 1988 could in her view never hope to succeed unless its demands were anchored in a ‘continuity of vision’ such as her father had for a time achieved – but which none the less must go beyond his vision. The immediate need for action – the transformation of her ideas into some kind of practical programme – arose from the rapidly escalating conflict between demonstrators and the military in August and September 1988. Reading her essay ‘Freedom from Fear’,37 which belongs to the tense period of confrontation between the people and the military regime, we can begin to discern how the connection between her thought and action took shape. Starting from the thesis that ‘It is not power that corrupts but fear’, she proceeds directly to explaining the effects of military repression in terms of moral categories (a-gati, or corruption; abhaya, or fearlessness) familiar to a Burmese audience. Where just rule has become corrupted, ‘the burden of upholding the principles of justice and common decency falls on the ordinary people’. The means available to them in this struggle may seem unbalanced by the advantages of modern weaponry held by the army. But the courage of an Aung San or a Gandhi are alike models for ordinary people; and where Aung San provided an example with which Burmese can and do identify, it was Gandhi, in his doctrine and practice of non-violence, who showed how the principle of abhaya could be instilled in the people. Aung San Suu Kyi underlined this parallel to the immediate post-war era by calling the current Burmese situation ‘the second struggle for national independence’.38 It is to her role in the opening phase of this struggle that we now turn.
The Second Struggle for National Independence
On 13 March 1988 riot police were sent to deal with a small student protest. The students threw stones and, in response, the police opened fire. One student was killed. The event became the focus of much wider discontent, not only with such senseless violence, but against repressive government policies, both social and economic. During the next five days, demonstrations spread; the universities were closed, and townspeople joined the students. One writer, on the basis of twenty hours of interviews with participants in this and later opposition activities, has reported that these demonstrations involved 12,000 to 15,000 persons: over 200 were killed (including 41 officially admitted to have suffocated in a police van), and those arrested were subjected to beatings and torture; some women were raped repeatedly.39 When the government enquiry reported on 9 May that only three students had been killed, and ignored the treatment of detainees, the whole process of spontaneous protest, often with violent outcomes, began again, now spreading beyond Rangoon, and continuing on into July and August.
The same writer has also provided evidence detailing other aspects of the military government’s policy in this period, including the incitement of communal violence40 and the extraordinary session of the Burmese Socialist Programme Party (the party Ne Win established as the basis of the one-party state following the military take-over in 1962). At that meeting Ne Win formally resigned as head of government, in a speech which both encouraged multi-party elections and supported the violent conduct of the riot police. Any impression that the government might in fact be changing was rapidly quashed by the appointment of Sein Lwin, a close associate of Ne Win, who was responsible for the first use of riot police to suppress popular protests in 1962.41
In retrospect it is clear that the government was hardening its position; according to the London Times (8 August 1989) and Guardian (18 August 1988), two to three thousand persons were killed by riot police during the period from 8 to 13 August; The New York Times (11 January 1989) cited a further thousand deaths on 18 September 1988. As Lintner details, although protests started peacefully, the participants, when confronted by police or troops, turned to violence: stones, poison darts, even beheadings. The violence spread to more than forty places all over the country, and in most of them the numbers killed have never been reported. Troops fired on staff at the Rangoon General Hospital; the secret police began a series of night raids, arresting any possible demonstration leaders in their homes; the escalation of violence, in short, proceeded on terms in which the government, with its superior arms, retained the advantage.
Despite the growing scale of the demonstrations, there remained no single, clear agenda of demands: some focused on release of detainees and compensation for the victims’ families; others began to attack the accumulated wealth of the Ne Win family, and to call for elections. It was clear at least that some admission of wrongdoing on the part of government was needed if demonstrations were not to continue to grow. On 12 August, Sein Lwin resigned after a violent reign of eighteen days, and it was clear that the military was once again considering its position.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s intervention begins at this crucial moment, with her open letter to the government of 15 August 1988, proposing that a consultative committee be formed, composed of respected independent persons, who would steer the country towards multi-party elections. The letter (a copy of which is included in this volume) stresses the need for restraint from violence on the part of the government and demonstrators, and the release of persons arrested. It gained the support of U Nu, the last elected Prime Minister, and other pre-1962 leaders.
Only a few days later on 26 August, the occasion of a general strike, Aung San Suu Kyi addressed a crowd of several hundred thousand people outside the Shwedagon pagoda. At the very beginning of what was to be a sustained campaign, she set out, to mass acclaim, the principles of personal commitment, discipline, unity, non-violence and the restoration of basic human rights – and especially multi-party democracy – which form her creed and the legacy of Aung San and Gandhi discussed above. Aung San Suu Kyi’s emergence was duty noted in the international press:42 the government was at this time reported as uncertain of what course to take; here, surely, in the unexpected entry of the daughter of a national hero, who expressed due regard for the military traditions of Burma, was someone to whom the military could turn?
It was not to be. For a few weeks the military experimented with a more lenient policy, but demonstrations continued to swell, and on 18 September a military council was established (the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC) to rule the country. All existing judicial institutions were abolished, meetings of more than four persons were banned, and arrangements for arrest and sentencing without trial were reaffirmed. Paradoxically, political parties were now allowed to form – provided, apparently, that they did not meet! The government policy set out in Ne Win’s speech of ‘resignation’ was thus being carried out; and the extent to which Ne Win had really retired from the scene, or was in fact directing government policy in private, naturally became a matter of increasing popular conviction. Against this background, the Gandhian tradition of non-violent civil disobedience and unremitting action advocated by Aung San Suu Kyi acquired renewed relevance.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s own role and activities increased steadily as the government tightened its grip – that is, until her house arrest on 20 July 1989. Amnesty International has noted that an estimated 3,000 political prisoners were detained between 18 September 1988 and 1 July 1989, although it has only been able to compile minimal data on 107 of them.43 The sequence of events during this period is perhaps most easily summarized by a chronological outline summarizing the main developments.
It is important to recall, in considering this chronology, that every speech and public statement made by Aung San Suu Kyi represented an active violation of the government ban on opposition meetings and activities; and that, aside from the interviews given to the foreign press, many events in which she was involved took place in the presence of armed troops. Each event thus provided a pointed opportunity to spread her message of nonviolence and human rights to an ever wider audience. The chronology shows, in addition, her remarkable ability to check the occurrence of violent confrontations, to control the less disciplined passions of her followers and to gain the endorsement of non-violent approaches from other groups. The meetings and interviews listed represent a tiny fraction of her activities or, indeed, of what was going on in the country at large. Burma remains a secretive place: it will probably be many years before we have access to the whole story.
The events included in the following chronology took place against a background of mounting arrests, official harassment, and summary executions. Much of this background is detailed in the Amnesty International report cited above, as well as in the reports of foreign correspondents and embassy officials of western governments. As the military government confiscated Aung San Suu Kyi’s papers at the time of her house arrest, and have made external contact with her impossible, the chronology has been compiled on the basis of printed sources, chiefly newspapers and journals. Its main purpose is to provide a cohesive account of what would otherwise be a disparate and uneven public record.
24 September 1988: The National League for Democracy (NLD) was formed by Aung San Suu Kyi, together with Tin U and Aung Gyi, senior military officers who had previously broken with Ne Win and were for a time imprisoned by him. Its founding statement emphasized the principles enunciated by Aung San Suu Kyi in her address of 26 August. The NLD rapidly came to be regarded as the largest opposition party, with a formal membership estimated between one and three million persons.44
Aung San Suu Kyi appealed to the international community to condemn recent military violence against unarmed Burmese civilians, including children, Buddhist monks and students; the appeal was addressed to foreign ambassadors in Burma, and the Secretary-General of Amnesty International, suggesting that the strongest possible concern be raised in the United Nations General Assembly Debate on 27 September.45
16 October 1988: Aung San Suu Kyi called the attention of Amnesty International to the military government’s policy of forced conscription: young men are seized, bound and transported to areas where the army is fighting insurgent forces; there the young men are used as ‘porters’ of military supplies, and are driven ahead of troops in order to detonate mines laid by the insurgents.
28 October 1988: An interview in Asiaweek magazine with prominent leaders of the second largest party, the Democratic Party for a New Society (DPNS), which is closely associated with the main student group, the All-Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), signalled their abandonment of armed struggle as their current strategy, in favour of co-operation with parties advocating non-violent means.46
30 October–10 November 1988: Aung San Suu Kyi toured more than fifty towns in Pegu, Magwe, Mandalay and Sagaing districts, and Shan State. ‘Even in relatively small towns … tens of thousands of people turned out in the streets, in effect defying the ban on outdoor gatherings of more than four persons. The army, surprisingly, did not interfere; there were even reports of soldiers presenting flowers to the entourage.’47
3 December 1988: Aung Gyi left the NLD to establish his own party, alleging communist infiltration of the NLD. Although he was unable to substantiate his claim, it was immediately taken up by the military government. Commentators such as S. Sesser, a friend of the U Thant family and observer of the Burmese situation for many years, subsequently remarked that, in light of Aung Gyi’s intimate association with Ne Win, ‘there is some merit to the view that Aung Gyi might have been planted by Ne Win to discredit the opposition’.48
8–18 December 1988: Aung San Suu Kyi toured Moulmein and south-east Burma; she was preceded by army vehicles with loudspeakers, warning people not to receive her. Thousands of people defied that order, and the welcome she received in Moulmein was as enthusiastic as the one in the north. After her trip, thirteen local NLD workers were arrested – and on 19 December the SLORC warned the political parties ‘to behave; this is not the time to incite the people … if [politicians] want democracy, it is necessary for them to abide by rules, orders, laws and regulations’.49
In this period, foreign correspondents remarked on several forms of harassment to which Aung San Suu Kyi was subjected: authorities banned NLD campaign signs; soldiers distributed crudely drawn cartoons alleging that she indulged in abnormal sexual practices and had had several husbands, etc.; repeated statements were made in the media that she was surrounded by communist advisers; and so forth.50
27 December 1988: Daw Khin Kyi – Aung San’s widow and Aung San Suu Kyi’s mother – died in Rangoon, at the age of seventy-six. In the ensuing days 20,000 people visited the family home to pay respects to Daw Khin Kyi and Aung San Suu Kyi.51
2 January 1989: Thousands joined in the funeral procession of Daw Khin Kyi. Before the funeral Aung San Suu Kyi appealed to her supporters to be ‘calm and disciplined in sending my mother on her last journey’. No violent incidents occurred as the procession moved towards a site close to the Shwedagon Pagoda, Burma’s most sacred shrine, where the body was entombed. ‘What the events surrounding the funeral tell us,’ said a western diplomat,
is that Aung San Suu Kyi is bringing unity and order to her National Democracy League, which is the biggest opposition party. She has shown the army very clearly that she is no flash in the pan but a political force to be reckoned with. The size of the funeral procession and its discipline was a significant gesture of support for her. To be able to restrain the hotheads among her followers as she is doing augurs well for the future.52
23 January 1989: At the end of Aung San Suu Kyi’s tour of the Irrawady district during mid-January, NLD spokesmen reported that thirty-two of its supporters and two supporters of the Democratic Party for a New Society were arrested in connection with non-violent gatherings to which Aung San Suu Kyi spoke. Amnesty International reported that ‘most of them were reportedly later released on bail, but their current status is unknown’; Amnesty also reported that a further fifteen to twenty-five NLD members were arrested in this period.53
14 February 1989: After a campaign trip to the Shan State in the north-east, Aung San Suu Kyi said in an interview broadcast by the BBC that NLD activists there had been threatened that they would be arrested once she left the area. She again called for the lifting of Order Number 2/88 (banning public meetings), saying that it was a ‘great obstacle’ to the organizational efforts of political parties. This call was repeated in several interviews published during the remainder of the month.54
13 March 1989: The anniversary of the first student death was declared ‘Burma Human Rights Day’ by the NLD and other political parties; in addition to an NLD rally at its Rangoon office, a rally was held at Rangoon University, attended by Aung San Suu Kyi. Both rallies passed without violence, despite the presence of troops and interruptions by police loudspeakers.
25 March 1989: In an interview broadcast by All India Radio, Aung San Suu Kyi further clarified the NLD position, in response to the demands of student organizations on the formation of an interim government. She returned the discussion once again to first principles: she declared that her party was ‘aiming neither for an interim government nor for the election, but [was] seeking the attainment of basic human rights as soon as possible’. She said that her party’s position was that ‘if these basic human rights are achieved, one of the rights – free and fair elections – will materialize’.55
At this time government radio reported using troops to break up an NLD supported demonstration; according to Amnesty International, the march in question was organized by high-school students, and
both Aung San Suu Kyi and senior ABFSU figures … counselled against staging marches because of the danger of clashes with the security forces, but had been successful … The sources agree that fleeing students took refuge in Aung San Suu Kyi’s house, as well as other private residences in the area where they hoped they would not be arrested.56
26 March 1989: In a further interview she expressed sympathy for students who had fled to border areas and joined armed insurgent groups. But she reiterated, ‘I don’t believe in the armed struggle.’ She said:
In order to have free and fair elections, we must create the kind of condition in which elections can be free and fair, which means that first of all the people must be entitled to basic human rights and democratic freedom. We must have these basic human rights so that people are allowed to believe what they want to without fear of arrest or intervention or unfair treatment. And we must have freedom of speech, publication and assembly.57
At a press conference on the same day,
Aung San Suu Kyi denied the authorities’ suggestions that the NLD was inciting demonstrations. At the same time she called for the release of those arrested in connection with them. She reportedly said that although some NLD supporters had been involved in the gatherings and speech-making, the party leadership had actively tried to prevent demonstrations, and emphasized that the party continued to maintain a policy of achieving democracy through peaceful means. Aung San Suu Kyi said she had consistently told young dissidents not to make defamatory statements against the armed forces, ‘because there is a difference between the armed forces and those who abuse the power of the armed forces …’ She said the NLD had often said it welcomed investigations, questions, or consultations related to any incidents raising dissatisfaction within the SLORC, but that these offers were never accepted.58
31 March 1989: In an interview
Aung San Suu Kyi alleged that more than 160 people had been arrested in connection with anti-military gatherings and speech-making since 14 March … The NLD leader estimated that more than a thousand people had been detained for political activities since September 1988, and said she believed many were held without charge and had no access to legal representation … March arrests ‘indicate we are still a long way from the basic freedoms to take us to free and fair elections’.59
5 April 1989: In a further tour of Irrawaddy District the following attempt was made on Aung San Suu Kyi’s life:
As she was walking down the street with some followers during a campaign visit, six soldiers under the command of an Army captain jumped down from a jeep, assumed a kneeling position, and took aim at her. She motioned her followers to wait on the sidewalk, and she herself walked down the centre of the road towards the soldiers. ‘It seemed so much simpler to provide them with a single target than to bring everyone else in,’ she said. ‘It was at this point that a major ordered the captain to revoke the shooting orders.’60
18–19 April 1989: In a press conference to mark the Burmese New Year, Aung San Suu Kyi ‘called for a dialogue between the military government and the opposition parties, a request that has so far been refused by the army’. She also ‘criticized foreign businessmen for dealing with the government and “coming to do business when it is a matter of life and death for all of us”’.61
24 April 1989: In a BBC interview,
Aung San Suu Kyi reiterated that it was not the intention of the NLD ‘to cause a rift between the Defence Forces and the people, and we do not want the Defence Forces to break up’, but complained that ‘one traditional chorus group after another is being arrested, probably because they criticized the government’.62
(During the traditional New Year celebrations, NLD members staged political satires depicting the lack of democracy, in front of party headquarters in Rangoon.)
21 May 1989: In an interview, Aung San Suu Kyi expressed support for the reopening of schools (closed since August 1988), provided that the authorities created a peaceful atmosphere.
While reiterating her long-standing call for an end to restrictions on freedom of assembly and opinion, Aung San Suu Kyi also continued to counsel students and others against organizing possibly unruly mass gatherings or attacking the military and government unfairly … She said her speeches explained ‘that democracy doesn’t just mean demonstrations’ and that ‘freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom to abuse anyone you feel like abusing’. She said that while ‘working for basic human rights’, she also used her speeches to emphasize the need for ‘discipline’, and that she was committed to working within the guidelines laid down by the military authorities, as long as she was convinced it was ready to hold free and fair elections.63
2 June 1989: Military spokesmen announced that the martial law regime would remain even after the elections scheduled for May 1990; it would not relinquish its right to rule until parliament had decided on a new constitution and form of government under that constitution. Aung San Suu Kyi responded to this by saying that the NLD could not participate in elections ‘until the question of power transfer is resolved’; and that the ‘NLD had always said and accepted the fact that there are officers within the Defence Forces who are good, who prefer freedom of movement for democracy in accordance with the people’s desire, and who wish the Defence Forces would remain neutral with dignity’. She declared that the NLD had ‘no desire whatever to confront the Defence Forces’.64
5 June 1989: In response to the military government’s announcement of restrictions on printing and distributing opposition statements, Aung San Suu Kyi ‘said she believed that the NLD and other legally registered political parties had the right to publish documents, and that her party would continue to do so since this was its main form of communication with the public’. The NLD position was that the ‘law should be interpreted as giving political parties the right to print and publish freely, and that it would therefore ignore the authorities’ efforts to require it to obtain their approval before publishing party materials’.65
21 June 1989: A memorial service was held at the NLD headquarters in Rangoon, after which wreaths were laid at Myenigon Circle, where protestors in past months had been killed. Aung San Suu Kyi was briefly detained by security forces, during which time a conflict broke out between demonstrators and police; shots were fired, killing one person (as it turned out, a member of the government party). Aung San Suu Kyi later condemned the military for breaking up what had been a peaceful ceremony; ‘if the military resort(s) to arms every time anniversaries are held for those who died during pro-democracy movements, the shedding of blood will never end’. She claimed that the authorities were ‘trying to imply that we were trying to incite unrest, but it’s nothing like that … We are not interested in that.’ ‘Unless there are human rights and democratic freedoms, I don’t think these elections are going to be the kind of elections we want.’66
22 June 1989: The military government published an eight-page special press supplement, ‘devoted mainly to denouncing the NLD as communist-inspired and accusing Aung San Suu Kyi of everything from blasphemy to trying to split the army’.67 At this time government radio cited her as saying:
There are two sides within the Defence Forces; one side represents the Defence Force personnel who honourably stand on the side of the people, while the dishonourable ones only strive to prolong their hold on power. We shall have to do a lot to influence them. Some stand openly on the side of people while others do so in a reserved way, and there are also others who oppose the people.
Official radio further cited Aung San Suu Kyi as saying:
The issue of reopening the schools should be reconsidered as it could give rise to renewed disturbances … when the schools reopened she would not like to tell the students either to attend or not to attend … but those who attend as well as those who do not attend schools are to wage a struggle for democracy.
Referring to a meeting on 17 June in Sanchaung township, the broadcast described Aung San Suu Kyi as saying that ‘the people should observe laws that are just but should not obey laws that are unjust … the NLD would stand on the side of the people and defy authority’. According to the broadcast, all of the above remarks constituted evidence of ‘fomenting disturbances and [encouraging] the people and children to defy authority’. In reply, Aung San Suu Kyi told journalists ‘that she and her party were anti-communist’; she reportedly admitted that some NLD figures had previously been communists or had communist connections, but said that all of them had already rejected this ideology and were no longer party members.68
26 June 1989: Aung San Suu Kyi further responded, in a press conference,
by charging that General Ne Win, [who is] still widely believed to control Burma behind the scenes, was responsible for alienating the army from the people, fashioning the military into a body responsive solely to him … She also denied she was a communist or sacrilegious, and reminded the country’s military leaders of two Buddhist precepts, against lying and killing. She said the National League would continue to print uncensored political pamphlets, defying recent military government restrictions, because such printing rights were guaranteed under a 1962 law. In addition she announced plans to commemorate other important dates in Burmese history: July 7, when, in 1962, the government blew up the building housing the Rangoon Students Union; July 19, Martyrs’ Day, when, in 1947, her father was assassinated … August 8, when, last year, the army opened fire on unarmed demonstrators, and unleashed a week of military slaughter; September 18, when, last year, the military officially assumed power amid a wave of shootings. And she invited the Burmese military leaders to join hands with her, in an effort to prevent further disturbances.69
Amnesty International added that Aung San Suu Kyi ‘reportedly said that basic human and democratic rights were currently “being eroded bit by bit” and that “repressive acts [were] getting worse”, so it was the duty of everyone to “defy unlawful commands in the present struggle for democracy”’. She also reportedly vowed that she and the NLD would be ‘disciplined and systematic’, specifying that ‘We shall not resort to unjust or secretive measures or instigate violence.’ She denied that she was trying to split the military, but reiterated her belief that ‘some elements in the military and SLORC were against all forces of democracy’ because they hoped to enable Ne Win to retain power. ‘The opinion of all our people,’ she continued, was ‘that U Ne Win is still creating all the problems in this country.’70
30 June 1989: SLORC spokesmen reiterated that Aung San Suu Kyi’s tours, meetings and speeches constituted violation of the ban on public gatherings, and hence constituted attempts to create disturbances. They cited speeches made at Myenigon (21 June), various places in Rangoon (22 and 23 June), Bago (23–24 June), Insein (25 June) and Tamwe (29 June), and warned that ‘effective action’ would be taken to stop such activities.71
At about this time, Aung Lwin and Tin Win, members of NLD Executive Committee, were arrested; Amnesty International has cited both as prisoners of conscience who have not been released.
In an interview at about this time Aung San Suu Kyi
continued her criticisms of Ne Win and again denied allegations of communist influence over the NLD … She said allegations about communist influence were part of an effort by some military leaders to create suspicions about her and the NLD among other elements in the army, explaining that ‘having fought the communist insurgents for years and years and years, the army has very strong feelings about communism’.72
Aung San Suu Kyi reportedly spoke to a peaceful gathering of some three thousand people. About one hundred NLD members are said to have urged the crowd to refrain from causing any disturbances and to have directed traffic. Student activists were apparently absent from the gathering, and there was no shouting of slogans or any expression of anti-government sentiment. In her speech, Aung San Suu Kyi reportedly made no direct criticism of the military government, but objected to the authorities’ restrictions on the publication of printed material.73
3 July 1989:
Aung San Suu Kyi reportedly spoke to a peaceful gathering of some 10,000 people who assembled near Sule Pagoda Road in [Rangoon’s] Pabedan Township. Hundreds more people are said to have crowded the balconies of buildings along the street as Aung San Suu Kyi spoke from the NLD township office. She is said to have urged military authorities to meet political parties to ‘thrash out existing misunderstandings’ and ‘to use political means to solve political problems rather than the force of authority’. She is said to have pointed to the peaceful crowd as proof people did not want violence, declaring: ‘If there is no provocation, people can gather peacefully without any disruption.’ She exhorted the crowd to support the movement for democracy ‘with discipline and courage’, and neither to expect to ‘get democracy overnight’ nor to settle for ‘pseudo-democracy’.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s 3 July call for a dialogue between political parties and the military authorities came on the same day that she was reportedly designated by a group of opposition parties as their representative for such talks. In a statement issued that day, the parties declared their belief that the chances for elections in May 1990 were ‘in danger of fading away’ because of what they described as the ‘repressive actions of the SLORC’. The statement reportedly said a ‘timely and suitable political solution’ needed to be found to ‘prevent further deterioration of the situation’ and called for a dialogue ‘as a first step’ towards this.74
5 July 1989: ‘Aung San Suu Kyi spoke to a crowd estimated at more than 10,000 people who gathered in [Rangoon’s] Chinatown district. She reportedly reiterated demands for democratic change and protested against harassment and arrest of NLD members.’75
5 July 1989:
Aung San Suu Kyi gave speeches in [Rangoon’s] Pazundaung and Bothathaung Townships, which she estimated attracted audiences of 10,000 and 20,000 … she reportedly asked NLD followers to continue to adhere to a ‘peaceful, non-confrontational’ struggle for democracy. Declaring that the party was planning to go ahead with memorial activities on 7 July, she said they would be peaceful and that their purpose was not ‘to make confrontation’. Instead, she said ‘the spirit to hold the commemoration is just so we can take lessons from the past’.76
At this time SLORC Chairman General Saw Maung appealed specifically to Aung San Suu Kyi not to infringe on the ban against public meetings.
7 July 1989: Aung San Suu Kyi and Tin U addressed a meeting at the NLD headquarters, to mark the anniversary.
About two hundred people attended the meeting, including representatives of about seventy other political parties many of whom are allied with the NLD … Foreign news media reports said ‘several thousand’ people gathered as she spoke. According to an NLD spokeswoman, Aung San Suu Kyi spoke of the hopelessness of the authorities’ efforts to solve problems by force, as several truckloads of armed troops stood by in the vicinity.77
Aung San Suu Kyi explained that the NLD had decided not to participate in the student demonstrations on 7 July because it believed demonstrations were ‘not the only way to carry out the struggle’ or for people to show how they felt about the authorities. She reiterated that the NLD did ‘not want violence’, but refused to rule out the possibility of its participation in street demonstrations, saying that its commitment to non-violence did ‘not mean we are going to sit back weakly and do nothing’. She also said that the party would not use ‘communist methods’, but would employ civil disobedience. She said that this type of political activity had ‘a great history’ and pointed out that she had recently begun putting forward Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King as models in her speeches. She reiterated her belief that U Ne Win was behind the SLORC’s refusal to hold a dialogue with the opposition. She declared that the NLD wanted ‘the army to realize that they have been made to play the role of thugs, to make sure that a few old men can remain in power’. She said: ‘We want the army to remain neutral. That is what a professional army ought to do.’78
10 July 1989: In an interview
Aung San Suu Kyi confirmed that the NLD was still planning to hold gatherings to mark such dates as her father’s assassination, the resignation of U Ne Win … the demonstrations and killings of 8 August 1988, and the military coup of 18 September. She reportedly again stressed that these gatherings would be based on the NLD’s principle of non-violence, and that the party was not seeking any confrontation with the security forces. She said the NLD wanted a democracy movement that was ‘strong, but in a peaceful and disciplined way’, adding: ‘We don’t want violence.’
On the same day Aung San Suu Kyi spoke to a crowd near Rangoon’s Sule Pagoda which she estimated at 30,000, vowing that her party was going to continue its campaign of civil disobedience against what she described as ‘unjust laws’. She declared: ‘What I mean by defying authority is non-acceptance of unlawful orders meant to suppress the people.’ However, she also said that ‘at the moment our civil disobedience consists in putting out as many pamphlets as possible in defiance of the SLORC’. She added, ‘There’s nothing violent about it. It’s no more violent than is necessary in banging the keys of a typewriter.’ In this speech she continued to criticize U Ne Win and alleged that he remained politically powerful. She said her party was ‘convinced that U Ne Win is still pulling the strings from behind Saw Maung’.79
16 July 1989: Aung San Suu Kyi said that her own and other opposition parties would go ahead with plans for their own Martyrs’ Day ceremonies on 19 July and other anniversary gatherings despite the repeated warnings from the government. According to foreign news media interviews, she declared: ‘We don’t have any intention to seek a confrontation … We do not want any trouble … We intend to carry on peacefully with our rallies … We will continue to hold anniversaries … to protest the use of arms to solve political problems.’ She added she expected that political arrests would continue on a daily basis up to 19 July and increase thereafter. According to foreign news media reports, she and other top NLD figures expected that those likely to be arrested soon included herself and other members of the party’s original Executive Committee. This body was therefore expanded from nine to thirteen members in the hope that the authorities would not be able to detain the entire party leadership.80
The SLORC at this time announced further regulations ‘allowing military officers, even those of junior rank, to arrest political protesters and administer one of three sentences on the spot: three years at hard labour, life imprisonment, or execution’.81
17 July 1989: Aung San Suu Kyi said in an interview that the new regulations allowing summary trials by military tribunals were ‘part of a series of repressive measures which have been taken against the people’. She said NLD members, students and young people were still ‘going to go to the Martyrs’ Mausoleum and lay wreaths’ in a ‘very quiet and peaceful’ way. She added that in her view ‘people are fed up with all these restrictions and of course all the arrests’. She promised that NLD members would not create problems on Martyrs’ Day, but warned, ‘there’s always the possibility of problems if armed troops are running around’.82
18 July 1989: Aung San Suu Kyi responded to the authorities’ allegations about NLD involvement in bombing incidents. She reportedly said that acts of terrorism were ‘entirely against the principles of our party’. She added that the NLD accepted ‘the possibility’ that those detained ‘could well be NLD members who have taken to such acts’, but that the party condemned the bombings ‘very, very strongly’, and that if they were indeed guilty they would be expelled from the party.83
19 July 1989: In anticipation of NLD and other opposition ceremonies on Martyrs’ Day, the SLORC deployed several thousand additional troops in Rangoon, bringing in an estimated twelve light infantry battalions. A 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. curfew was also ordered. The NLD decided to cancel its march; in so doing,
it believed it was acting to save lives, because it ‘had no intention of leading our people straight into a killing field’. The NLD had issued a warning that people should stay indoors to ‘let the world know that under this military administration we are prisoners in our own country’ … Aung San Suu Kyi said the army ‘could easily have found an excuse to open fire’ on marchers. She expressed her belief that the authorities had shown that ‘the only way they know how to handle the situation is by bringing out force and more force’… She added that the NLD considered the main aim of its recent activities was to oblige the authorities to observe the rule of law by organizing people to ‘ask for basic human rights [and] democratic freedom’.84
Amnesty International has noted that
despite the official curfew and the NLD’s call for people to stay off the streets, some 3,000 mostly young people reportedly attempted to march to a statue of Aung San near [Rangoon’s] Kandawgyi Lake to lay wreaths. The NLD reportedly denied they were party members. They are said to have dropped wreaths in the road when soldiers armed with automatic rifles, grenade launchers and truncheons chased them away with a baton charge and beat some of them. According to one account, an eyewitness said he saw ‘about twenty-five or so soldiers advance … in line’ with ‘bayonets levelled’ at one group, which they ‘pursued down a side street’. He said that soldiers dragged some of them out and beat them, and that he ‘saw about fifteen or twenty picked up and put in a truck’.85
20 July 1989: According to Amnesty International, in the military build-up for Martyrs’ Day, eleven truckloads of troops were stationed outside Aung San Suu Kyi’s home. When she tried to leave to pay a private visit to the Martyrs’ Mausoleum, she was prevented from doing so, and forced back inside. The military government announced that she and NLD Chairman, Tin U, were being placed under house arrest for a period of up to twelve months, during which they would have access only to immediate family members. Their telephones and all other means of communication were cut. Meanwhile the authorities began arresting other members of the NLD Executive Committee. After this new wave of arrests, the London Times estimated that as many as two thousand NLD supporters were in prison. Amnesty International was able to identify six members of the Executive Committee as imprisoned, as well as Aung San Suu Kyi’s immediate staff.86 The New York Times cited US Embassy statements of ‘credible, first-hand reports of routine and sometimes fatal mistreatment of pro-democracy democracy figures in custody. The abuses reportedly include beatings and torture.’87
Aung San Suu Kyi, in response to her house arrest, ‘demanded a transfer to Insein jail in Rangoon and asked to be kept under the same conditions as supporters who were arrested as part of the crackdown on her party’.88 She immediately began a hunger strike when her request was ignored. The strike, during which she accepted water only, lasted twelve days. The military government explicitly denied that her hunger strike was taking place, although it was widely reported in the international media. Her strike stopped only upon her ‘receiving solemn assurances from the [Burmese] authorities that her supporters were not being subjected to inhuman interrogation and that their cases would be dealt with by due process of law’.89
The Popular Mandate Denied
Aung San Suu Kyi’s hunger strike was described at the time as ‘the most serious challenge the Burmese military government has faced’.90 Forty of her supporters similarly marked the anniversary of the 8 August massacre with a fast at the NLD office in Rangoon. They demanded the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and reiterated NLD appeals for political freedom.91 Buddhist monks on the same day took advantage of a feature of their monastic routine which the military could scarcely obstruct: they turned out in a show of large numbers on the streets, ostensibly as part of their daily round of receiving food from the faithful – staging what was seen as a silent march in protest at the government clampdown.92
However, as these examples show, once the compelling force of Aung San Suu Kyi’s imaginative leadership was removed, the opposition was reduced to isolated and for the most part symbolic gestures. The government thenceforward concentrated on tightening its grip. Tin U, Aung San Suu Kyi’s associate and NLD Chairman, was sentenced to three years hard labour. U Nu and the leaders of his small party were rounded up and also put under house arrest. The ban on political meetings and the censorship of election pamphlets could now be effectively enforced. Western journalists were banned. The campaign of vilification against Aung San Suu Kyi continued, without her being given opportunity of reply. Her name was struck off the list of eligible candidates for the election.93 When her husband, Dr Michael Aris, arrived in Burma to visit her, he was apprehended by the military at the airport; all information as to his whereabouts and condition was refused, despite repeated protests by British and other western embassies. The world only learned that Aung San Suu Kyi had survived her hunger strike when he was at last allowed to meet with embassy officials in the presence of military personnel. In fact, the government did not mistreat Dr Aris, only confining him to house arrest together with Aung San Suu Kyi. However, after January 1990 they have refused to allow him or any other family members to visit her. Their teenage sons have been deprived of their Burmese citizenship. Since July 1990 even postal contact with her has been broken off.
By its own heavy-handed tactics, the military appears to have convinced itself that it was actually succeeding in stifling the desire for human rights, and that, in the apparent absence of Aung San Suu Kyi and her senior associates, the people would have no option but to vote for the military’s own National Unity Party (NUP). Foreign journalists (although not Burmese specialists) were allowed into the country to observe the election and, in the event, were able to confirm that the military, despite its conduct to that point, made no attempt to intimidate voters on election day. Nor was tampering with voting boxes reported.94
The result was an overwhelming victory for the NLD, which took more than 80 per cent of the seats; parties allied to the NLD, notably the United Nationalities League for Democracy (the UNLD, representing non-Burman ethnic minorities), took nearly 14 per cent. The NUP failed to win any seats in Rangoon, even losing those in which military voters vastly outnumbered civilians, and in which its party leader was the candidate. The situation was summed up by a western diplomat who remarked: ‘Burmese throughout the country were often unaware of the NLD candidate they were actually voting for. But they had all heard of Aung San Suu Kyi. It was yes to her and no to Ne Win …’95 Aung San Suu Kyi’s influence was unmistakable in one of the most important features of the poll: ‘There was not a single reported incident of violence or misbehaviour on the part of the public on election day. The Burmese went to the polls with unity and dignity.’96
The election, however, did nothing to stop the military government’s monopoly of force. It waited until just before the first anniversary of Aung San Suu Kyi’s arrest to announce formally that all opposition to its policies remained forbidden, and that, as far as it was concerned, the election did not alter its monopoly of legal as well as military power. Small popular demonstrations none the less marked the anniversary of Aung San Suu Kyi’s arrest and the second anniversary of the 8 August massacre. In Mandalay, troops opened fire on a small 8 August rally, killing at least two students and two monks, and leading to a major nationwide boycott by monks, who refused to administer religious services to the military, the police and their families. On 29 August the NLD and UNLD jointly called on the government to convene parliament, to lift restrictions on human rights and to release Aung San Suu Kyi and Tin U.
The military government responded characteristically to these several developments. Claiming that the monks’ boycott was communist inspired, monasteries were raided, some religious organizations banned, and many monks imprisoned under threat of the death sentence. According to Amnesty International,97 between October 1990 and January 1991 ‘more than 25 members of parliament representing the NLD were reported to have been sentenced to terms of imprisonment ranging from 10 to 25 years … Throughout 1990 reports of torture and ill-treatment of prisoners were received from prisons in urban centres and in ethnic minority areas.’ Civilians continued to be forcibly conscripted as porters by government forces, and used by troops as ‘human minesweepers’. At the end of October 1990 only four of the members of the Central Executive Committee of the NLD remained at liberty.
There has been widespread international condemnation of the military’s continuing policy of repression, and of its attempt to deny the popular mandate given to Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD in the elections of May 1990. While member countries of the European Community, Japan and the United States have withdrawn all programmes of bilateral aid to Burma, and called repeatedly for the transfer of power to the elected parliament,98 Amnesty International and the media have, as noted, continued to document the pattern of arrest, torture and denial of human rights for which the military government is responsible. In September 1990 the European Community led an eighteen-nation protest (with Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden and the United States) against human rights violations in Burma. All arms sales to Burma from these countries have been placed under strict embargo. The British government has condemned in particular the treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi, especially the refusal of visits from her husband and children. In May 1991 the British Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, speaking at a meeting between the European Community and ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) reiterated the Community’s concern at the abuse of human rights in Burma, and sought active support from ASEAN in observing the arms embargo.99
There can be little question that international awareness of the situation in Burma was changed dramatically by the emergence of the cohesive movement for human rights led by Aung San Suu Kyi. Her presence has, more than anything else, concentrated the world’s attention on the problems there, and has continued to do so, as the award of the Sakharov Prize and the Rafto Prize, and the Nobel Peace Prize for 1991, clearly indicate. The military government, very conscious of her continuing power to influence events, has offered to release her on condition that she agrees to forsake her campaign for human rights, and leave Burma. This offer she has not deemed worthy even of consideration, despite the very real personal danger in which she remains.
In the course of the last three years, Aung San Suu Kyi has had to lead not only her people but the western world as well through a considerable learning process. In the early days of her campaign, the media found themselves casting about, often wildly and superficially, for some category in which to put her. The English press proposed that she was like Benazir Bhutto or Corazon Aquino – but at the same time had to admit that, unlike these women leaders, she inherited no party organization, and that the Burmese military government (unlike those of General Zia and President Marcos) was still very much in control. More important, the appeal of such leaders was not based on nonviolent struggle. In the American press, Aung San Suu Kyi was compared both to George Washington and Jane Fonda. The French press suggested that Burma was an ‘Asian Poland’, and that Aung San Suu Kyi was like La Pasionara, the Spanish Republican leader. Such bizarre comparisons seem now to have been replaced by a recognition of Aung San Suu Kyi as a different kind of figure, a person whose international stature has to be defined in primarily moral terms, and that it is by the conviction and application of her vision of human rights in Burma that a sea change in the situation there has become possible. Perhaps Aung San Suu Kyi’s hunger strike is the crucial reminder in all of this that the model, in her case, is a very different one. At the time of her hunger strike, the London Times referred to Aung San Suu Kyi simply as ‘Burma’s Gandhi’.100