IN a letter to her husband written soon after the near-death incident at Danubyu, Suu tried to make light of the risks she was now running, making her High Noon encounters with the army sound more like a rather mucky Girl Guide camp. “Alas, your poor Suu is getting weather-beaten,” she wrote, “none of that pampered elegance left as she tramps the countryside spattered with mud, straggly-haired, breathing in dust and pouring with sweat.”1
The self-portrait does not convince: It is very hard to imagine the sylph-like Suu, the very embodiment of Kipling’s “neater, sweeter maiden in a cleaner, greener land,” running with sweat; Ma Thanegi, herself a very ladylike Burmese, was awed by the way Suu sailed through these journeys. “Hours and hours of travel, with stops for her speeches, meetings with supporters etc., and she could do that for days on end, still looking fresh and peaceful,” she noted in her diary.
But even less persuasive is the jolly, carefree mood Suu evokes in the letter. Brigadier Myint Aung’s intemperate captain may have been particularly melodramatic in the way he tried to enforce the regime’s martial law provisions, but he was not out of step with SLORC—a point borne out by the honors he was later to receive from the regime. The truce between the two sides after the death of Suu’s mother in December was no more than a memory now; both were bitterly aware that they were heading for a showdown in which only one would remain standing. A joke current in Rangoon in those days went that Ne Win’s favorite daughter Sanda had challenged Suu to a duel. Suu declined, saying “Let’s just walk down the street together unarmed and see which of us gets to the other end alive.”2
Of course the contest was absurdly unequal. The army had already shown itself capable of terminating the democracy protests by the simple stratagem of slaughtering a few thousand demonstrators. Since those bloody days in September, very few people had ventured out into the streets to protest. Yet this impertinent woman held public meetings day after day, in flagrant breach of martial law, and her presence provided the pretext for thousands to come out and greet her. Why not do what Captain Myint U had so nearly done in Danubyu and simply eliminate her?
Two factors stayed the regime’s hand. One was who she was. Because of her father and his unique and central place in independent Burma’s founding myth, she was the closest thing the nation possessed to royalty. The generals felt the tug of that themselves—hence the presence of General Saw Maung and Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt on her doorstep in December, offering condolences on her mother’s death. For forty years the Burmese state had elaborated and glorified the cult of Aung San; Ne Win’s chief claim to legitimacy was that he had been that fiery young general’s comrade in arms. It was what ensured the loyalty and unity of the armed forces, however crassly the Old Man and his underlings might govern. Pull down that column and the whole house could come crashing down.
The second factor was that, as young American protesters had chanted at the National Guard on the streets of Chicago in 1968, the whole world was watching. Despite coming to politics so late, Suu was quick to realize that her familiarity with the outside world, her fluent English and her ease at communicating with foreigners gave her a huge advantage over her insular, monolingual and deeply paranoid antagonists.
Burma’s encounters with the outside world had for a century and a half been unremittingly bruising, from their serial humiliations by the British to the catastrophe of the Second World War, which saw the country devastated twice over. By bottling the country up, Ne Win had insulated it from most of the turbulence which shook Southeast Asia during the postwar years: He had saved it from being sucked into the Chinese civil war and the Vietnam War. But in Suu the army had an enemy who had spent half her life abroad and for whom foreign parts held no terrors. This advantage of hers was constantly to throw the regime off balance: They could never be sure what their treatment of her might provoke the foreigners to do. Fear that the United States could attack them was one of the motives for moving the capital from Rangoon to an up-country site well inland in 2006. As recently as 2008 they seem to have been genuinely afraid that the Americans could use Cyclone Nargis as a pretext to invade.
So while keen to reassure Michael that the worst that menaced her was mud and sweat, on her return to Rangoon Suu was also quick to make sure her diplomat friends knew all about what had happened. She paid an urgent visit to Martin Morland, the British ambassador, at his residence, to brief him, while Ma Thanegi also got busy. Nita Yin Yin May, the embassy’s information officer and a friend of Ma Thanegi’s, immediately sent news of what had happened to the BBC. Within a few days, Danubyu was fast becoming a legend both at home and abroad.
Nita Yin Yin May, OBE, courageous information officer at the British Embassy and NLD activist imprisoned in 1989 when she was already pregnant. She gave birth in prison. She now lives in London and works as a producer for the BBC.
“April 7th,” Ma Thanegi wrote on her first day back in the office, “early to work and managed to send word of Danubyu incident to Bangkok through a family friend of Ma Suu . . . She typed the weekly news release herself and also sent letter to Asiaweek which she had translated herself . . . . Central Executive Committee meeting, very long one. Wrote out draft of very gentlemanly and furious letter to SLORC about Danubyu incident. All very worried at close shave.”
*
Meanwhile the show had to go on, the schedule was set. The very next day they went back once more to the Irrawaddy Delta—this time bound for the village where Suu was born. Though her parents’ home was in Rangoon, her mother had taken refuge here with her two young sons in the last weeks of her pregnancy after Aung San had defected to the Allied side in the war. And now the people of the village were eager to welcome their most famous daughter.
“April 8: left Rangoon 6 AM from Nan Thida Jetty,” Ma Thanegi wrote. The last and longest stretch of the journey was “by cart, a very long way under blazing sun . . . Lovely lunch at monastery. The village donated 20 bags of rice to NLD. Ma Ma was feeling guilty about taking them until they assured her they have enough food for themselves.
“April 9: got up at 4:30 to leave Dedaye by 5:30. Ma Suu said, ‘What a scandal if I said ‘Matabu, matabu, I’m not getting up, I’m not getting up and went back to sleep . . . ’ I said no scandal, everyone else would cheer and go straight back to sleep.”
After passing through many small delta villages they arrived at last at the tiny spot where Suu was born.
Arrived at Hmway Saung Village where Daw Khin Kyi gave birth to Suu while hiding from the Japanese. That village so proud of it.
First we went to monastery then to large stage built in the fields. No shade for the audience yet they had waited in that summer sun for hours. Whenever Suu apologizes and tries to cut short her speeches because of hot sun and people sitting in their full rays they call back no, no, it’s not hot, denying the very existence of that fiery ball.
Since we came by car we couldn’t see the place where Daw Khin Kyi landed over forty years ago. So three of our boys including Win Thein, the hothead who had carried the party flag at Danubyu, went to investigate in the name of historical research.
But the Burmese capacity for taking it easy got the better of them. “They saw some boats moored and decided to snooze in them a while. They can nap anywhere and under whatever conditions. They were still sleeping when we unknowingly left after about one and a half hours. There were so many cars and so many NLD supporters hanging on to the cars welcoming us or seeing us off from place to place, sometimes we feel like a circus traveling with its audience.
On to Hmone Gyi village and a speech there . . . Discovered three boys missing and Ma Ma worried sick. I wasn’t so worried. They eventually caught us up by boat, arriving a little after 10 PM.
April 10: Ma Ma wore a yellow jacket, brown longyi. Left Pyapon village 5 AM by boat. Kyontar village and Kyowar Kyauk village welcomed us with music from the full traditional orchestra. Long boat ride, nearly seven hours, changing boats twice, small fast ones.
As the NLD party puttered on through the muddy waters of the delta, Burma’s biggest annual holiday was stealing up on them: Thingyan, the annual water festival, ushering in the new year, when problems large and small are forgotten and for a few wild days everyone says exactly what is on their mind, however unthinkable that may be the rest of the year.
But a full year of revolt had put the festival in a new and menacing light. The temptation for the students to let rip with their true feelings about the regime would be hard to resist—and in fact to channel and encourage those emotions the NLD had organized a competition for the most humorous and hurtful anti-regime slogans, to be bawled out by contestants outside the party’s head office during the festival days. But could the army be relied on to take the abuse lying down, as those in power had laughed off such acts of lèse-majesté in years past? Ma Thanegi was not at all sure they would. “I felt apprehensive about this Thingyan thing,” she confided to her diary, “as it is a good excuse for SLORC to start gathering up our NLD people.”
“April 11,” she wrote, “Ma Ma wore pink jacket, red Shan longyi, left Kadon Kani at 5:30 by boat arrived at a village where people very scared . . . Arrived in Bogalay 1 pm, big crowd, flowers, arrived Maung Kyaw town at 6 PM for overnight stay.” The students in the party were already getting in training for the festival. “Our boys shouting anti-regime Thingyan slogans at tops of lungs, practicing for slogan competition to be held in Rangoon.
“April 12, first day of Thingyan. Left Mawkyun at 6 AM when we were supposed to leave at 5. Boat trip the whole day . . . Passed by Bon Lon Kyaung village, Thingyan songs played from loudspeakers and two very rough-looking types danced in welcome. All through day water splashed on our boat.”
Now they were heading back to Rangoon for the culminating days of the festival. But the city, normally a scene of wild celebrations at this time, was sullenly silent, closely guarded by the army.
Spent night on boat, traveling all night when we were supposed to be back in Rangoon that night.
April 13: Arrived 6 AM at Nandigar jetty in Rangoon. Driving through city, saw the streets were deserted, no water festival pandals of any kind—there were only about three in town.3 As we came home in the back of the pick-up truck, a couple of the kids with us waved the big NLD flag.
We all went first to Ma Ma’s house where we got down. We noticed a large stage at gate of 54 and enormous loudspeaker system. I don’t think Ma Ma realized to what an extent this slogan competition had grown.
We chatted a bit at the house, then went with seven boys in car to go home. As we got near to a restaurant almost opposite the NLD office a MP [military policeman] stopped us and we saw an army truck parked nearby. One army captain strode towards the car and told us angrily to get down. We got down. The captain kept asking who had been waving the flag from our car. One of our boys had run towards the house as soon as we were stopped so Ma Ma received the news that we had been stopped. By that time a crowd had gathered across the street. We were searched then told to get in the army truck and taken to Tatmadaw park, to the Army outpost there.
Though now under army arrest, they affected the relaxed, light-hearted manner that had become Suu’s trademark. Ma Thanegi noted:
Very pleasant place, hollyhocks, some white geese, green grass. We were asked the usual and none too intelligent questions, name age etcetera . . . we answered the questions very casually and not at all worried, we said what lovely geese and so on, made the young thin MI guy furious.
We heard later that first Ma Ma and then [party chairman] U Tin Oo had arrived at the scene of our departure and were sitting down by the side of the road refusing to move until we were released . . . A lot of wireless calls, rushing to and fro of army etcetera, and a chastened captain took us back to NLD, we were stunned to see the crowds there, Ma Ma sitting on a kerb stone. Ma Ma thanked the captain and we marched home, Ma Ma making sure we walked ahead . . .
The stress was beginning to tell. Suu gave an impromptu press conference at the house to protest at the detention of her colleagues, then Ma Thanegi went straight home and stayed there. She wrote:
Worried about the Thingyan pandal and slogan competition. I kept phoning to see if everything all right, everything okay.
April 14: Stayed home to paint. Very hot and constantly worried. Ma Ma ill, stayed in bed till evening when she went to see the slogan competition.
April 15: Apparently all okay at NLD . . . Ma Ma better, stayed in bed a bit.
April 16: Competition still on . . .
Though Ma Thanegi was not there to see it, the competition had become yet another stand-off between the party and the army, with the NLD office ringed by rifle-toting soldiers, who were obliged to listen as one student after another, drunk with the reckless festival spirit, bawled out poison and defamation about them and their masters. The regime took the opportunity to arrest several of them, but the blitz Ma Thanegi had been dreading failed to materialize.
That afternoon, Suu fought off her illness to attend the finale.
“Ma Ma made closing speech at competition, saying it was a tradition of Burmese to let off steam every year by shouting political slogans during water festival, government should have sense of humor and grace about it or words to that effect, SLORC probably foaming at mouth and shrieking.”
Probably—but they were also taking emergency measures to ensure that the spectacle was never repeated, and that those responsible paid the price. On April 16th, as Suu was making her plea for tolerance, they set up what they called the Committee for Writing Slogans for Nationals, whose goal was to make sure that any and all slogans bellowed during Thingyan “aimed for national unity.” Within a week, NLD members accused of dreaming up the offending slogans were being hauled in.
There were still moments, however, for taking consolation in the simple, elegant customs of Burmese tradition.
“April 17: New Year’s Day, to office, cleaning up reports and letters and stuff. To NLD hq in afternoon for Buddhist ceremony.” Burmese Buddhists believe they gain merit—take steps along the road to Nirvana—by releasing fish and birds from captivity, and New Year’s Day is an auspicious time to do it. “Our boys and girls released fish and birds,” Ma Thanegi wrote. “Two brown doves either would not or could not fly, and we brought them back to house. Ma Ma was holding one cuddled against her and they sat and preened and ate rice at the marble-topped round table where she has her meetings. I was visualizing them sitting on CEC heads during meetings and happily dropping liquid bombs.” But she was duly punished for her malicious thoughts. “As I went home on bus I was soaked with water thrown by somebody—it never happened on New Year’s Day before.”
*
Within days Suu, Ma Thanegi and their colleagues were packing for yet another trip: the last leg of a nationwide journey that had more in common with a triumphal circuit than a campaigning exercise.
In her diary a few days earlier Ma Thanegi had recorded the return of an NLD party from Kachin state in the far north of the country, “looking dirty, bedraggled and exhausted.” They had been arranging Suu’s most ambitious tour yet, this time to the Kachin region in the far north, whose ethnic army, fighting for the autonomy of this overwhelmingly Christian corner of the country, had for years been one of the best-trained and most formidable of the regime’s ethnic enemies. It was another pilgrimage in Suu’s father’s footsteps—he had visited the regional capital, Myitkyina, in December 1946.
The first leg of the journey, to Mandalay, took thirteen hours. Now the punishing schedule of the past months was telling on practically everyone.
April 24: Ma Ma wore pale blue plain longyi, blue lavender print jacket, looked very lovely. Left Rangoon at 4:30 AM in two cars. Arrived in Mandalay at 5:45 PM and shocked at heat of everything, air, dust, furniture, water, even reed mats which are supposed to be cool.
On the way Tiger had been very sleepy twice so U Win Htein took over the wheel . . . I have been so busy these days that I felt sleepy as never before on a trip. Ma Ma insisted I lay my head on her shoulder while she held me. Preparing for bed, I told Ma Ma that when we are over 80 we will be laughing over all this craziness. Ma Ma said that if anything goes wrong we won’t be able to laugh.
April 25: Ma Ma wore mauve longyi and darker jacket. Spoke at two monasteries . . . Back to house, lunch, long baths and to the station at 3 PM.
Low-intensity official humiliation, sometimes apparently decreed directly by Ne Win himself, was becoming an everyday experience, though sometimes it backfired.
“SLORC or, as we were actually told, ‘orders from above,’ state that Aung San Suu Kyi must queue up at the station and buy her own ticket. They thought it was an insult but we know it to be good publicity. Crowd stood around to watch, offered sweets, drink, food, sandwiches . . .”
It was the first time they had traveled in Burma’s notoriously slow and cranky trains. They managed to obtain two sleeper berths between the whole party, which they used in shifts “We all took turns sleeping, Ma Ma and I slept from 12 midnight to 6 AM next day.”
But if the regime was determined to make them suffer as they moved around, their ever-swelling body of supporters made them feel like kings and queens.
At every stop NLD and public were there to give flowers, food and expensive dishes, Seven-ups, Cokes etc., each can cost 30 kyats, we’ve never had so much Coke in our lives. Icy cold too. Even in the dead of night local NLD members turned up smartly dressed, I remember elderly men in perky gaung baungs and large matrons dressed to kill in silk and nets, and there we were as usual a bedraggled, dusty, dirty, sweating, untidy bunch of wild-looking people.
Once our train stopped alongside an army train and troops craned their necks to see Ma Ma, most of them smiling. . . . Ma Ma was in upper bunk where at first she didn’t want to sleep; we insisted as window too close to lower bunk.
The precaution was justified. “After midnight as we settled down in our bunks with lights out we heard men at the next stop shouting ‘Where is she, can’t see her!’ and shining torches all over the place. They were just friends, Ma Ma and I giggled and kept very still.
April 26: spent more than half the day on the train. We had heard horror stories about people climbing in through the windows and squatting everywhere with their black market goods and chickens but our trip went smoothly: No crowds, no long halts, but whistle stops at unscheduled halts so crowds could welcome Ma Ma with huge smiles and sky-raising shouts, “Long live Aung San Suu Kyi,” “Good health,” “God help Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” “May her wishes come true,” they would chorus. Or where there is forced labor working as porters for the army, they chorused, “May she be free from the Six Evils.”
A traditional Burmese salutation is to wish one’s friends free of the “five evils”: government—Burma’s problem with oppressive rulers is nothing new—fire, thieves, water and enemies. “Number six, the latest addition,” Ma Thanegi explains, “means the Army.”
Several of the most senior NLD people maintained a daily routine of vipassana meditation—but it was hard to keep it up on a journey like this.
“Uncle U Hla Pe tried his best to meditate but I wonder how far he got with our monkeys around. We heard small beeps coming from somewhere among our luggage up in the racks, Aung Aung finally located it as coming from a brown holdall, we asked who owned it and no one owned up . . .”
In the carriage the reaction to its discovery was hysterical.
Local people are so used to KIA [Kachin Independence Army] blowing up trains etcetera that they panic at the slightest beep. I was getting worried, people in some compartments so alarmed they shrieked and ran out near to the loo, we thought it was a time bomb.
Aung Aung was just about to throw [the holdall] from the window when Uncle Hla Pe came out of his meditative trance and yelled that it was his. Close shave, he nearly had to travel a month with just the clothes on his back. It was his alarm clock, he couldn’t shut it off and it gave us trouble all the way, it would beep on and on at every dawn driving Ma Ma wild. I and others just snored on.
Late that afternoon they arrived in the Kachin capital, Myitkyina, and the usual round of large public meetings got under way, some of which required a change of costume.
April 27: In the afternoon Ma Suu changed into Lisu costume: very wide skirt, jacket and lots of beads and a cute beaded head dress, all this to visit Lisu party office. I was away at the market when she was changing, I came back to find her sitting among our kids, blushing furiously. It suits her very well, she always says she hates to look a fool in fancy dress, but she never looks foolish.
April 28: At one Kachin house Ma Ma was given a gift of a basket of food to symbolize blood relationship, just as one was given to Bogyoke [Aung San] over 40 years ago. It is a large basket to be slung on the back in which were food including rice, salt, meat, vegetables, bread.
April 30: Po Chit Kon village: one old lady after seeing Ma Ma half sang to her grandchild, “Oh this ruler of our kingdom, a pretty thing, a pretty little thing . . .”
Hopin, Nan Cho, Ywa Thit Gyi, Lwin U, Nant Mon, Maing Naung, Ma Mon Kaing, Yan Ton, Nant Pade, Takwin, Myo Thar, Leimee, Kyunpin Thar, Alei Taw . . . Village after village after village, interspersed by monasteries and pagodas, and at each stop an ecstatic crowd, a presentation of gifts, a speech—yet another speech, of the 1,000-plus Suu was to deliver during this six-month epic of traveling. It was becoming less a journey, more an extended hallucination. This was what happened to national heroes returning from conquest—not to “a pretty little thing” steadily and vengefully pursued by the nation’s rulers.
May 1: Someone presented Ma Ma with whole peacock tail cut from killed bird, such a pity, that large unwieldy thing traveled with us getting frayed and dirty.
. . . Nearly trampled to death by about 30,000 shouting welcome . . . Ma Ma went all the way on the bonnet of the jeep, half leaning half sitting.
Next place stayed in large house—just before bedtime Ma Ma found out owner was a Scrabble freak and said she wanted a game. I said no Scrabble it’s bedtime. She half sang out “Okay Ma Thanegi!” and jumped into bed.
May 2: Old lady Buddhist yogis danced slowly in a circle. While Ma Ma was speaking SLORC tried to lure people away with free video show. Apparently nobody went along.
Ma Ma shampooed hair at 10:45 pm, only place to plug in hair dryer was shrine room so dried it there.
May 3: One old lady waved us on and stood there crying . . . Through dust got a glimpse of one old lady sat on side of the road, making bowing obeisance to our car as if to a monk . . .
During long discussion speech I and a few boys went upstairs and had nap, boys on large mat, me on my wrinkled wrap in the corner. We have been going on rough roads in heat and dust and not getting enough sleep, we tend to curl up like kittens and catnap when we get the chance, of course Ma Ma can’t do this.
They descended from the Kachin hills to the fiery heat of the Burma heartland.
Into Sagaing division and immediately it became very hot . . . Winding rough tracks of journey through semi-jungle . . . As always meetings until bedtime for Ma Ma, everyone exhausted. Some of the boys are ill.
May 4: dark blue longyi and dark blue jacket, got up at 5:30, thankful for small blessings as not 3:30 or 4, had to travel in high lorry as road too rough for jeep. Stopped at villages along way where they asked Ma Ma to speak, served tepid sticky cold drinks which we didn’t have the heart to refuse.
A lot of us coughing . . .
May 5: beige longyi, beige jacket. Left Inndaw at 5:30, huge cheering crowds everywhere with flowers and banners and music.
Tagaung was like a kiln. A shop nearby selling tamarind juice and we bought it by the potfull. So many people lining the road it took two hours to drive from outskirts to NLD office.
Very hard to get any kind of privacy, people will peer and peep in everywhere, once even when Ma Ma was on the loo unless boys and I can scout and stand guard . . .
*
For the next leg of the journey they went by boat, and Ma Thanegi’s longer, more meditative entries reflect the different pace of traveling by water. All of them got their breath back.
May 6: Blue jacket, dark blue Kachin longyi. As I said to Ma Ma, It’s horrible to get up at 3, she said you’re telling me. We walked to jetty at 4 am, not many NLDs up as they didn’t believe we would get up at 3 even though we said we would. On boat Ma Ma sometimes sewed names on boys’ longyis as we sat in small cabin . . .
At Shwegu, NLDs there unable to handle crowd, I was nearly trampled on as I tried to make my way to the car, then I wasn’t able to climb on board until Tiger took me by the waist and threw me in head first, this my usual entry into cars or boats when public too enthusiastic.
Ma Ma stood up in front, I just behind ready to punch anyone too vigorous about greeting her. You wouldn’t believe how people grab her hands and once one stupid girl pulled her head down to kiss her so hard Ma Ma nearly hit her head on the jeep frame. We were furious. Aung Aung and I would punch them in the chest just to get these girls off Ma Ma.
May 7: Orange jacket, dark blue longyi. We heard early call to prayer from mosque. Talking lightly about “God,” Ma Ma suddenly remembered how Kim said “bless me” whenever he sneezed. Her face really lights up and she loses her tired look whenever Alexander or Kim are mentioned. When she is tired but unable to rest I try to turn the conversation to the boys . . .
The thousands of miles spent crammed together in transport of every kind were bringing the women very close together. Ma Thanegi confided:
I love Ma Ma, but it’s not a personality cult, not because she is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi but because she is herself. I’ve always been a loner without much attachment to family and I never thought I would think of anyone as a true sister as I do her.
At Bamaung we learned that during the night the army cars had thrown anti ASSK leaflets all over town. Speech at Bamaung NLD then to house where we will stay, very hot . . .
For past few days boys have been bragging about swimming in cool cool rivers, Ma Ma and I green with envy, that night we decided to evade nanny, which is Aung Aung, and sneaked off for a dip with only two or three boys in the know.
We somehow managed to evade forever-gaping friends of Ma Ma because she was wearing a cap and thanks to lack of electricity in Burmese towns it was quite dark, also first day of new moon.
The water was lovely, almost ice cold, and we would discover warm and cold currents and tell each other exactly where with great excitement. Never enjoyed a bath so much before, so different, Ma Ma, said from pouring water over yourself.
Suu had now been back in her homeland for more than thirteen months, much the longest period since her childhood, and whatever illusions she may have held about her people were falling away.
Ma Ma getting to know well the Burmese character, the bad side. Said she is fed up to the teeth with pushy egoistic stupid people. She is getting to know the true Burmese character and is getting depressed by it. I have a feeling she is too idealistic and emotionally vulnerable. Easy-going as we Burmese are, we are totally selfish, ostrich-like in dealing with unpleasantness and very short-sighted.
When she is in a pensive mood I would search her face and feel a deep sorrow that so many burdens are on this frail-looking and gentle person. I think she needs to be more cynical to deal with the Burmese and of course hard-hearted to some extent. She feels hurt when people complain about the rudeness of our boys, I tell her politeness would not penetrate the thick skulls and dim minds of these people.
She came back after a hot trek in the sun to some village or other smelling strongly of cheap scent. It’s usual for enthusiastic ladies to spray Ma Ma with perfume that they all think great, and the perfumes are either something called Concord or Charlie, Charlie is slightly more expensive, or Tea Rose, the scent of rose, and we are beginning to recognize these three. Ma Ma is more often sprayed with Concord and we hate this spray business. These ladies are not too careful where they aim the nozzle. Sometimes it gets into her face or her mouth, she has to be careful about moving her face or it would go into her eyes. She said you know Ma Thanegi I’ve gone up in the world, they sprayed me with Charlie instead of Concord.
May 9: Couldn’t stop so Ma Ma made speech from boat without going ashore. They gave us packets of fried noodles.
Onboard boat cabin very hot so Ma Ma sits on deck and chats to boys or reads travel book by Patrick Leigh Fermor, saying she likes to remind herself that there are other lives than the crazy one she’s leading.
But then there was the risk of plummeting into memories of the life she had lost.
“After giving a speech from the boat she sat sewing for a while in the cabin, mending some of the boys’ shirts.” The mundane domestic task whisked her back to Oxford, and the home she couldn’t go back to; “the happy highways where I went/ And cannot come again.”4
“In the small, grimy cabin we shared, she talked for a while about Alexander and Kim. She said that she used to sew name tags onto her sons’ shirts for school, then she fell silent. As she sewed she had tears in her eyes, she said nothing more. I was lying down with my hat over my eyes, I could see her trying not to cry. Then she said, I had better concentrate on my new sons.
“She never let on, except as jokes, how much she missed her family.”
*
Min Kyaung Kon village: speech at monastery. At 6:30, just as it was getting dark, we arrived in Katha, lots of women and children, much more than before, never before seen such wildly happy children. They told us happily that all the men have been taken as porters so only we kids left. Ma Ma said all her depression left her when she saw them. Loud cheers. Three or four kids squatting on sloping bank to see into the boat stood up in turn, Ma Ma at the railing, they told Ma Ma that they would carry on and were not afraid, Ma Ma said in that case she would come to Katha to be protected by these kids if she runs into trouble in Rangoon. Loud cries of we’ll protect you, we’ll look after you.
Archway of red flame-of-the-forest flowers, lovely. Ma Ma and I and others slipped away to ancient pagoda to pray. It was the birthday of her brother Aung San Lin, the one who died so young. She would say to me, “what we could have done together . . .”
May 11: Left Tagaung at 5 am, hot even at dawn. Ma Ma could not find her lipstick and kept saying, where are you you damn thing. She remarked to me, I know I’m tired when I get to the point of talking to my lipstick. Boys talked and yelled in their sleep last night, she said they have no lipstick to talk to.
That town had been razed by fire a few weeks ago. Met some old ladies who escaped with just the clothes on their backs. Cheerfully told us they have nothing now as they sat puffing on big cheroots with fragrant nakao on their cheeks.5
May 12: Left 5:30 by our own cars. When we saw our cars yesterday evening we were so glad, I kissed our car and said I love you car. Tiger, the owner/driver of that car said it was like meeting his girlfriend.
On our way to Mogoke . . . 6:40 AM arrived at Hsar Hpyu Taung village . . . Ma Ma had taken a sleeping tablet and was nearly out, she felt so sleepy, I held her as she napped in the car. At villages where we had to stop she would collect her wits, think rapidly and make speeches, no mistakes, no blurred words, she just looked a bit bewildered.
We put up at large old house at Mogoke. Old as it was the house had bath and loo attached, to Ma Ma’s joy, she would jump up and down and clap her hands at news of such luxury. A double bed for her, with as usual a lacy net, white this time. She lay back on the bed and said, just my luck, my bed always festooned with bridal lace and here I am all alone!
Wherever they went the masses of supporters and the wild acclaim were the same.
May 13: She was wearing a sequined jacket and sequined Arakan longyi. Left Kyut Pyin at 7 AM for Mogoke. Cloudy and cool. People from Mogoke met us on the way in cars then followed us, about 50 cars in all. Near Mogoke we met about 40 kids on BMX bicycles and also dozens of motorbikes. One fat lady waiting by the side of the road thrust 3,000 kyats in cash into Ma Ma’s hands.
Ma Ma stood up in green pickup sheltered by umbrella against drizzle. It took over two hours to get to the football field, people screaming greetings all the way. At the football field near lake and pagoda there were so many people who sat in the rain, keeping their umbrellas closed so that people behind might see Ma Ma. She stood on table under large colorful beach umbrella. It reminded me of the first time I saw her at the Shwedagon assembly last August: mud, rain and a packed field.
Such a crowd came out to hear Ma Ma that all the stores closed, including the ruby exchange, which never closed for any reason. Local people spoke with awe of the ruby exchange closing for Ma Suu.
At entrance to town army made an appearance, stopping motorbikes, taking down names of those without helmets, etc. Well, they had to do something. Never saw such crowds in my life . . .
*
Wherever she went, north, south, east or west, Suu was met by vast crowds who hailed her as their ruler, their savior, their redeemer; “This ruler of our kingdom,” as the Kachin grandmother chanted, “a pretty thing, a pretty little thing . . .”
Did it go to her head? In some respects, clearly not. She remained touchingly, enchantingly human, as Ma Thanegi’s diary brings out so well. She would get down from the stage after another triumph—and go into the kitchen of the place where they were staying and slice mangoes for the bodyguards. With the applause for her latest speech ringing in her ears, she would duck into the squalid little cabin of the boat in which they were traveling and sew patches on “the boys’” shirts.
But where was it all heading? How well did she read her adversaries?
Ma Thanegi, who was later to fall out with her bitterly, had a better opportunity than anybody to observe her at close quarters, warts and all. “With her idealism and high standards of honesty,” she wrote long after the rift, “she sometimes seemed to me so much like a small child, with that deliberately composed dignity you see in young children when they are not sure of things and sensing (but at the same time not really aware of or understanding) the manipulations or shrewd dealings or lies of adults . . . In spite of her strength of character I see her as vulnerable, an innocent cast to the wolves.”
Two things were happening at once. On the one hand the National League for Democracy, the officially registered political party of which she was secretary general, was touring the country, meeting the people, preparing as best it could for multiparty elections to be held under the auspices of the ruling military junta, when they would be ranged against the former ruling party and a host of others. So far so legitimate, so almost normal.
But at another level there was a war going on—a war for the future and for the identity of Burma. Her country, Suu said, had gone dramatically off the rails, and now it was her duty, as her father’s daughter, to put it back on the right track.
This pitted her not against the other political parties but against the army itself—and against the Burmese state that the generals had fashioned. It was all wrong, she said, they would have to start again from scratch.
Overwhelmingly, the people were on her side. No one could doubt it. But how did you get there from here? What process did she envisage?
By casting Ne Win and his circle as the ones responsible for leading the country to perdition, she cut away the ground from under them. The deal offered by General Saw Maung was multiparty elections leading to democratic rule, a process to be supervised by SLORC. But by heaping doubt on the legitimacy of the army’s rule, she undermined their role in the process.
She had every reason for doing so, given the many thousands of unarmed protesters the army had massacred to stay in power. It was a revolutionary posture: It echoed the calls for the overthrow of army rule emanating from the ethnic armies on the border, and the thousands of students who had joined them there. Yet the difference was that she was in the heart of the country, with the army watching her every move, and she had committed her party to nonviolence.
So what did she foresee? A march on Rangoon by millions of her supporters, herself like the French Revolution’s Marianne, brandishing the party flag? Ne Win and Saw Maung and the rest clambering on board the last helicopter and flying away, like the Americans leaving Saigon, like Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos fleeing Manila? Khin Nyunt tamely surrendering the keys to the kingdom like Poland’s General Jaruzelski?
Looking back on those hectic months from more than twenty years later, knowing, contrary to the excited claims at the time, that history did not in fact end after all, it is easy to underestimate the intoxication in the air.6 It is with the wisdom of hindsight that we see her and her party’s errors. But one wonders if wiser counsel might not have seen that they were headed, quite fast, into a cul-de-sac.
According to Ma Thanegi, there were some in the party’s Central Executive Committee who argued the case for cutting a deal with the army, for the sake of effecting a democratic transfer of power. She singles out Kyi Maung, the former army officer who had been with Suu from the outset and who was to lead the party to its election victory after Suu and the other top leaders were detained. “Around that time, I was talking to U Kyi Maung and U Win Tin,” she wrote in her diary, “and U Kyi Maung said to us that what we must have is a democratically elected government. If in exchange we have to guarantee the generals’ security or their wealth, never mind: We must give them anything they want.”
But harsher voices insisted on ratcheting up the pressure, and they were to prevail.
*
The party set about undermining the regime at the most fundamental level: by hijacking the calendar. March 27th was Armed Forces Day, the annual occasion for a Kremlin-style parade of military hardware through the center of Rangoon. This year it also marked General Ne Win’s return to the spotlight, his first public appearance since his explosive speech to the party the preceding July. But the NLD succeeded in stealing the show, despite Number One’s cameo: They told the world they were renaming the event Fascist Resistance Day—the name given it by Suu’s father—and making it the occasion for popular demonstrations against the “fascist” army. In the first major demonstrations since the September bloodbath, thousands of students took to the streets of Rangoon and Mandalay.
Two weeks earlier the NLD had sprung another constitutional ambush on the regime by declaring March 13th Burma Human Rights Day—the first anniversary of the killing of student protester Maung Phone Maw, the outrage that precipitated the uprising. More new holidays were to be declared as the year wore on. Every nation is defined by the holidays it marks; it is the way the story of the nation punctuates the passage of time. By proclaiming these new or revived national holidays, the NLD tried to wrest that function away from the regime, further weakening its legitimacy.
Then there was the question of religion. As her threat to the regime increased, Suu’s enemies continued to claim that she was surrounded by communists. In Burma’s simplified political landscape, the opposite of a communist was a Buddhist, and the best way to prove that your enemies lied was to play up your piety. In fact this came easily to the NLD. Everywhere they went the monks provided hospitality. They also accepted Suu’s alms and turned out in sizeable numbers to listen to her speeches, steadily building a spirit of fraternity and complicity between the party and the sangha.
The monks had been central to the legitimacy of the Burmese kings: The palace sustained the sangha in material ways, paying for the building and maintenance of their pagodas and monasteries; conversely the sangha, by receiving alms from the court and performing ceremonies and rites at the king’s behest, endorsed his right to rule. That was the rock on which the pre-modern Burmese state rested.
The destruction of the monarchy by the British smashed that symbiotic, sanctified model of governance—which is the main reason the monks were in the vanguard of protest throughout the colonial period. Burma’s first prime minister, the pious U Nu, had strongly revived the bond with the monks—but the self-consciously “modernizing” Ne Win had spurned it as an anachronism, leaving a fine vacuum for the NLD to occupy.
Then there was the whole question of what democracy might involve. When SLORC had announced multiparty elections in September 1988, it seems to have been acting on two assumptions: One, that the mass of people would vote for the only party they had ever heard of, the BSPP, rebranded the National Unity Party (NUP); and two, that the votes of those that didn’t vote NUP would be so divided that they would have no weight. General Saw Maung, the regime’s new figurehead, promised that after the elections the army would return to barracks and have no further political role; and when he saw that 235 political parties had registered for the election, he must have congratulated himself on the success of his plan. Burma could emerge from this democracy charade with international esteem—and with the army still in charge behind the scenes, as before.
But during Suu’s epic journeys in April and May 1989, that prospect began to change. The NLD began to consolidate its position, building bridges with other parties and ethnic groups that threatened this comfortable scenario. Aung San Suu Kyi, wrote Gustaaf Houtman, “had such success making alliances between many political and ethnic groups, much like her father . . . that it looked as if she had the ability to unify the opposition in a manner that would leave no political role” for the army.7
On every front the army was getting squeezed. It was time for it to fight back.
*
For the regime, Aung San was now the problem. Fundamental to the creation of a modern Burmese identity in the preceding half century, he had now been hijacked by his daughter and her followers. Far from being a benign symbol of military rule, he was becoming the rallying cry of the revolution. It was time to unhitch Burma from Aung San. That this was an urgent necessity became clear from the One Kyat Note fiasco.
Practically all currency notes in Burma since independence bore Aung San’s image—just as every town had its street and square named after him, every public office had its framed portrait of him, every schoolchild had his or her head full of his courage and wisdom. But when the regime introduced a newly designed one kyat note in 1989, the designer showed his anti-regime feelings in a very delicate manner.8
The note was to bear a watermark with Aung San’s image—the usual high cheekbones, pursed lips and chilseled jaw of the national hero. But by subtly softening the lines of the jaw and making slight modifications to the nose, mouth and cheeks, the father’s image morphed into the likeness of his daughter.
The note was printed and in circulation before this elegant act of subversion came to the regime’s notice: All around the country people hoarded the notes, whispered about them, and pointed out how the designer had also incorporated the figures 8/8/88, the date of the general strike, into his design of concentric petals on the watermark. As soon as the scandal was discovered the note was withdrawn from circulation—and from then on no Burmese banknotes ever bore Aung San’s image again.
Nothing was said about it, there was no Moscow-style airbrushing of the past, but Aung San’s legacy began to fall into disrepair like an abandoned pagoda. The museums dedicated to the hero were no longer kept up. While Aung San Suu Kyi was attacked as a vassal of the colonialists and a sexual libertine whom her father would have disowned or killed, the museums in the village of Natmauk, in the restored house where he was born, and in the grand house at 25 Tower Lane, the family’s Rangoon home at the time of his death, were allowed to run down. Every year in the run-up to July 19th, Martyrs’ Day, the date of his assassination and the biggest national holiday of the Burmese year, Rangoon University professors used to fan out into the city’s schools to give lectures on the meaning and achievement of the hero’s life. But not this year, and not ever again.9
So in the absence of the founding father, what did SLORC have to offer? It was a subject that was clearly preying on the generals’ minds—and on May 30th, less than a week after Suu’s return from the far north, they hit on something original.
On that date they set up a twenty-one-member “Commission of Enquiry into the True Naming of Myanmar Names.”10 Though notionally a scholarly body, all but four of its members were from the military. If Aung San had forged an identity for the nation in the chaos of the Second World War, the challenge for the generals was to go much further back—by building a bridge to the line of kings that the British had deposed.
All over South Asia the postcolonial era has seen the rejection of names associated with the imperialists: Ceylon became Sri Lanka, “Holy Lanka,” Bombay became Mumbai, Madras became Chennai, Calcutta Kolkata and so on. Often these changes were promoted by populist tub-thumpers, but the governments that enacted them were democratic ones, and the decision followed a period of study and debate.
Not so in Burma: There was no consultation, no attempt to test the people’s mood on the subject—and precious little time for the commission to do its work. Less than three weeks after it was set up, the “Adaption of Expressions Law” came into force, changing Burma to Myanmar, Rangoon to Yangon and so on for every town and village in the country.
The change made very little difference to Burmese people themselves: The words “Bama” and “Myanma” have both been used by Burmans for their country for centuries. The change was intended for international consumption: It was a way of saying that, far from being a transitional set-up as originally conceived, SLORC planned to stay in power and had every right to do so because it was rooted in the ancient past, in the proud era of kings, long before the land was contaminated by the colonialists. It was a way to insist on international respect and recognition—and five days later, despite the rushed process, the UN (and the New York Times) duly recognized it.
*
All the while the repression of the democracy movement continued as hundreds more activists and protesters were locked away. By the end of June the number was said to be 2,000—by the end of July it had escalated to 6,000. The mood of confrontation was building rapidly.
The question for Suu was, how to combat it? How to oblige the regime to stick to its promise of elections, ensure that they were free and fair, and then guarantee a handover of power?
Yet in the increasingly frenzied atmosphere, that goal—which would have required the regime and the party to be on speaking terms—was lost sight of. Perhaps it was taken for granted that the elections would be a farce. Perhaps it was merely that the rapidly increasing rate of arrests, and the growing mood of mutual recrimination, made talks of any sort between the two sides out of the question.
And so rather than moderating her side’s expectations, Suu chose this moment to up the ante further.
As dialogue was impossible, this was a war in which slogans had become the ammunition. All over the country SLORC began erecting huge signs with Orwellian calls to discipline and patriotism; they dot Burma’s towns and cities to this day. The NLD retaliated during the water festival with their competition to produce the most pungent anti-regime slogans anyone could think up. Now, Suu announced, her party’s defiance of the regime would be enshrined in all its literature, in a permanent call to nonviolent resistance.11 Speaking on June 5th, she inaugurated what she called her party’s campaign of civil disobedience. The campaign’s slogan, exhorting the Burmese public to “defy as of duty every order and authority not agreed by the majority” would be printed in all the party’s literature starting the next day, June 6th. The right of the regime to command obedience would be denied at every turn.
It was a move that some of her colleagues had resisted. The campaign, originally suggested by U Win Tin, the veteran anti-regime journalist on the party’s Central Executive Committee, was under discussion, Ma Thanegi remembers, but notes in her diary that “before it was decided on another CEC member called U Chan Aye presented a paper saying the NLD should instead try to work with SLORC. I heard that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was thinking about it. But then some of the students in the party asked her if she was afraid—and she discarded the idea of dialogue at once. It is very easy to push her buttons.”
The civil disobedience campaign was a watershed for the party. After that, said Ma Thanegi, “Everyone knew it was going to be dangerous. Some students living in Ma Suu’s compound had monks chant a special mantra for the deceased over them, in preparation for sudden death. Some of them became monks or nuns for a few days.”
Some people in the party’s office who did not want to face the consequences melted away, and quietly severed their ties with the party. “But,” said Ma Thanegi, “almost all of us around Daw Aung San Suu Kyi felt it would not be loyal to abandon her in the face of danger.”
The regime’s reaction was furious and instantaneous: On June 6th they threatened action against any printers who followed the NLD’s instructions, and soon afterwards launched a countrywide blitz on NLD publications. A week later 800 printers and publishers were summoned to a compulsory meeting and warned unequivocally to toe the SLORC line. “Decisive action” would be taken, they were told, against any of them who “slandered” the junta or the army.
Both sides were painting themselves into their respective corners. A military spokesman said martial law would remain in place even after elections had been held, and that it would not surrender power until a new constitution had been agreed by parliament. Suu countered by saying that the NLD could not participate in elections “until the question of the transfer of power is resolved.”
Then, in a speech delivered on June 26th, Suu broke the taboo that had retained its force throughout this year of tumult: She attacked Number One by name, spelling out the charges which could be read between the lines of her address at Shwedagon.
“General Ne Win,” she declared, “[who is] still widely believed to control Burma behind the scenes, was responsible . . . fashioning the military into a body answerable only to him . . . The opinion of all our people is that U Ne Win is still creating all the problems in this country.” He “caused this nation to suffer for twenty-six years,” she pursued, “and lowered the prestige of the armed forces.”12
It was a breathtaking assault: the distillation of a lifetime of antipathy, dating back to the effective exiling of her mother when she was sent to be ambassador to India in 1960. Suu could not guess the consequences of these words, but she knew enough about their target to guess that they could be severe. This was the all-powerful dictator who had not hesitated to have civilian protesters murdered in their hundreds and thousands. And even trivial annoyances provoked him to wild, disproportionate violence. One of his several wives had deserted him for good after he hurled a heavy glass ashtray at her in a rage, injuring her. When the peace of his lakeside villa was disturbed by a Christmas party at a nearby hotel in 1975, he had personally stormed round with a platoon of soldiers and taken part in beating up and humiliating the guests and destroying the band’s instruments. When a European woman stood up to complain, he grabbed her party dress, ripped it down the front, and threw her back into her chair.13 And this was the man whom Suu now chose to seize by the horns.
*
In the same speech, Suu rolled her party’s siege engine up to the junta’s walls. She introduced Burma’s new calendar of martyrdom. The generals might demand that their country be called by a different name now, but if the NLD had its way they would have to swallow a raft of holidays to commemorate atrocities for which they were responsible: The people’s uprising of 8/8/88, the Saw Maung crackdown of September 18th; Martyrs’ Day, July 29th, with the list of martyrs brought up to date; and the most immediate, and the one aimed most precisely at Ne Win, the twenty-sixth anniversary, on July 7th, of the demolition by high explosives in 1962 of Rangoon University’s Student Union building with an unknown number of students inside, the event which had ushered in Burma’s authoritarian era. Each of these dates, Suu told the press conference, would be marked by mass demonstrations.
What, besides reminding the world of how the army had treated its own citizens, would be the point of these demonstrations? For SLORC, which continued to believe, or claim to believe, that Aung San Suu Kyi was a puppet of the communists, it was as clear as day: This was the planned revolution. “They [the NLD] planned to start a mass uprising,” General Khin Nyunt, number two in SLORC, told a press conference in early August, “by inciting the people at Shwedagon pagoda as part of the confrontation campaign of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on July 19th, Martyrs’ Day. Should that instigation have failed, they planned to try again on the anniversary of the ‘Four-Eights’ [8/8/88]. Had the mass uprising taken place, they planned to garner more forces from within [the country] to oppose the government while from the outside the members of the Democratic Patriotic Army trained by the Communist Party of Burma would move in. They planned to move politically as well as militarily until an interim government was established.”
There is no indication that the NLD had prepared such a plan; Suu’s commitment to nonviolence had been so consistent and was by now so well-known—and endorsed by the pacific and disciplined behavior of NLD rallies, even the huge ones—that a violent takeover with Suu at the head was literally unthinkable. “We don’t have any intention to seek a confrontation,” Suu insisted to the New York Times’ Steven Erlanger in a telephone interview. “We intend to carry on peacefully with our rallies. We do not want any trouble.”14 At a rally outside the Sule pagoda in downtown Rangoon on July 3rd, attended by more than 10,000 people, she urged SLORC to agree to hold talks with opposition parties in order to “thrash out existing misunderstandings.”
But there had never been much talking between the two sides. And this time the regime’s answer came not in words but deeds: the arrest the following day of Win Tin, the journalist who had been there at the creation and who was one of the most combative and articulate figures in the party. It was a blow that stunned his colleagues, Suu included, and from which the party struggled to recover. He was to remain in prison for nineteen years.
More answers came within days. The army rolled back into town, sealing the university completely to prevent the gathering for the planned commemoration of the destruction of the Student Union building. And lest anyone question the need for that many troops to control a nonviolent movement, bombs started going off, one that same day at an oil refinery in Syriam, killing two refinery workers and badly injuring a third, a second on July 10th at Rangoon’s City Hall, killing three and injuring four. Three young NLD members were picked up and accused of the refinery bombing. “Now it is obvious who is behind the recent bombing,” said Khin Nyunt, “and plans to disrupt law and order.”15 The allegation, given the NLD’s nonviolent track record, was laughable—but menacing. As a foreign diplomat remarked, the bombings could be terrorism—or the work of agents provocateurs, providing the excuse for another crackdown.
A bare week remained to Martyrs’ Day: The Burmese state’s founding rite was now embroiled in bitter recrimination. The aim of the ceremony was to recall those who had died for Burma’s independence and inspire the country with gratitude and patriotic pride; instead it now threatened to add yet more pages to the martyrs’ roll, and further stain the nation with blood and hatred.
SLORC decided to pretend that nothing had happened in the intervening year. On July 16th, reverting to the mode of icy protocol last glimpsed on the eve of Daw Khin Kyi’s funeral, they sent round an invitation to University Avenue, politely requesting Aung San Suu Kyi’s presence at the Martyrs’ Mausoleum, near the Shwedagon, for the usual annual event. Also included in the invitation was U Soe Tint, an old friend of Suu’s family, the principal of Rangoon’s State School of Fine Arts and Daw Khin Kyi’s regular escort at the event in years past.
The leaders of Suu’s party convened to consider the invitation. “After CEC meeting,” wrote Ma Thanegi, “Ma Suu decides she will not attend. She will march with her followers later, after the official ceremony, when the mausoleum is opened to the public.” She was sticking to the party’s plan, come what may. “NLD was quite sure it could control the masses—but SLORC almost accused NLD of planning a mass revolt,” Ma Thanegi wrote. One Burmese journalist, a veteran stringer for Agence France-Presse called U Eddie Thwin, desperately tried to obtain the regime’s assurances that it would not slaughter the marchers as long as they remained peaceful. “He was at the daily press conferences of SLORC and kept asking questions to find out if we would be safe if we simply marched and did nothing else.” After great persistence he was rewarded with a reply in the affirmative. “Finally he got the reassurance, I think on the evening of 18th,” she wrote. “He called me and I told Ma Suu about it.”
But at almost the same moment SLORC sent army trucks with loudspeakers round the city to send out a very different message. There was to be no marching: People were free to pay their respects to the nation’s martyrs on July 19th as usual, but only in ones and twos. A new martial law decree, number 2/89, laid down that any groups approaching the mausoleum consisting of more than five persons would be subject to three years’ imprisonment, life imprisonment, or death, sentences that could be imposed by army officers on the spot, with no need for a court hearing.
That evening, too, Burma’s brief experiment with glasnost came to an abrupt end. The last accredited foreign correspondent to leave Rangoon was Reuters reporter David Storey—perhaps the first and last correspondent to be deported from the country despite having his visa in order. “I was picked up at my hotel at night on the 18th, after curfew, although I had a valid journalist visa,” he recalled. “I was treated firmly but politely and it was clear that they did not want any journalist to cover the events that followed. I was taken to the airport in a jeep, guarded by a section of the troops, and had to spend the night on a cot on the floor in the departure lounge. The following morning I was put on the first flight to Bangkok.”16
So subscribers to the Reuters wire service were not to learn what happened late on the evening of July 18th: The thousands of fresh troops rumbling into the city, including battalions that had been used to crush the protests the previous August; the road blocks set up on main roads and the barbed wire stretched across them; the hundreds of what Military Intelligence deemed to be troublemakers picked up; the particularly ugly detail of the city’s hospitals being told to prepare for an influx of casualties. Telephone and telex lines to the outside world were cut, and Burma went back into its shell.
*
It was at dawn on Wednesday, July 19th, Martyrs’ Day, that Suu and her colleagues learned of the army’s preparations.
“I arrived at Ma Suu’s home around 7:30 am,” Ma Thanegi wrote in her diary. “By tradition a food offering for monks took place at the party’s headquarters at dawn on the 19th of every month. Present at the offering was a party member called Soon Kyway who had arrived on foot from Tharkayta, a satellite town. She told Daw Aung San Suu Kyi that she saw many checkpoints on the streets and feared for Ma Suu’s safety. Others, too, urged Suu to reconsider her plans.”
The dreadful massacres of September 18th and 19th, 1988, which had also been preceded by army warnings, were still a garish memory. There was no reason to suppose the army would behave any differently this time.
“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi then decided she would not march out,” Ma Thanegi went on. “She wrote out a message, which she had someone type up on wax duplicating paper, saying that in order to protest people must stay home and boycott the ceremony. She signed it, then hundreds of copies were printed and people sent off immediately to distribute them all over town.” Explaining the decision, Suu told her party colleagues, “We do not want to lead our people straight into a killing field.”
Before the age of Facebook it was not simple to call off a major rally at the last moment. And, anyway, after days of feverish preparation, many students were unwilling to fall into line.
“Thousands of students disregarded Suu’s message,” Ma Thanegi wrote. “For days now they had been hyped up over the march. They did not meet at the football field as planned but marched out from their own meeting places.”
The army stopped them from approaching the mausoleum. “Many beaten up with batons and many thrown in jail,” she wrote. “All through the morning we got news of students being chased and beaten up on their way to the mausoleum.”
A surprising number succeeded in evading arrest. “About 10:30 AM Moe Hein came running to Ma Suu’s house to tell her about how many had managed to escape from the army by running away. Her only comment was, ‘Why did they run? Why didn’t they sit and take it?’ before stalking off into her office. I thought, she’s thinking about Gandhi and the salt march.”
No deaths were reported on July 19, 1989—in contrast to the thousands massacred exactly ten months earlier. Suu’s hastily duplicated flyer had helped to avert a bloodbath. But the real confrontation still lay ahead.
*
Nobody could be sure what was going to happen next, but it was clear that it would be nothing good: The rift between the two sides had gone too far to be mended. Many people in the movement were already in prison. The rest would not have long to wait.
“The next day Aung Aung [Suu’s head of security] called me very early,” wrote Ma Thanegi, “saying it was not wise to come, things looked bad. I said in that case I should be there.
“When I got to the house, Ma Suu told me that the previous night she could not sleep until she had decided that she should be arrested.” If that was to be the fate of her colleagues, Suu was determined that she would share it. “Then, she had a good sleep and she had just told Aung Aung to call the local authorities to tell them to come and arrest her [. . .] The party’s Central Executive Committee arrived for a meeting around 9 AM and by 9:30 the compound was surrounded by troops and no one was allowed in or out. I heard that U Nu, Burma’s first democratic prime minister, came to the gate in his car but was turned away by the soldiers.” An inveterate opportunist, the man who a year before had insisted that he was still the legitimate prime minister had turned up wearing a rice farmer’s bamboo hat, the NLD’s electoral symbol.
Into this moment of high drama stumbled Suu’s two sons, visiting their mother for the first time since Christmas—without their father, who had had to stay behind in Scotland where his own father had just died. They brought a surreal air of boyish normality with them. “Ma Suu had a lunch meeting with the CEC,” wrote Ma Thanegi, “while I ate with Kim and Alexander. I kept Kim company, playing Monopoly with him.” It was the family’s favorite game, and had been the occasion for Suu and Michael’s rare clashes of temper (for which reason they had given up playing).
“The army allowed the CEC to leave around 2 pm,” she went on, “and after that we sat around chatting while some of the boys [the student bodyguards] took naps.” The surreal mood persisted; a perverse, infectious mood of gaiety stole up on them. “We all agreed that Suu would not be put under house arrest,” Ma Thanegi recalled, “as people might march up and rescue her.” Nonetheless, that Suu would be arrested was now taken for granted.
We wondered where she would be taken to. No one seemed at all worried; we chatted amiably and cheerfully, cracking jokes. Suu asked us who would stay with her and everyone said they would. I said I would, I only needed to have my art materials brought in for me.
Around 4 PM an army officer came to the gate and asked permission to see her. We all walked out to the gate, Ma Suu and I first dabbing on some perfume which I had with me in my holdall. We said to each other that we refused to be arrested without French perfume.
She and her sons were escorted into the house and the rest of us into the large bamboo shed at the end of the garden used for classes and meetings. We sat around, and one MI asked Ko Myint Swe to make a list of who would like to stay in the house. He did so, but we knew that was not going to happen. It grew dark; we could see moving bright lights in the house and knew they were taking videos.
We were then herded out onto two large trucks parked near the front of the house. I went inside to take my bag of clothes that I keep under my desk, and my holdall. Ma Suu ran to fetch lavender soap and a large tube of toothpaste for me plus her expensive leather sandals which she said were very good for trekking. I told her I doubted if I would be walking anywhere but she insisted. We hugged and told each other to take care. Neither of us had a look of sadness, despair, or fear on our faces.
Ma Thanegi and her colleagues were taken to prison. Aung San Suu Kyi was put under house arrest for “endangering the state,” Section 10(b) of the penal code.
Nine months later, despite the fact that all its senior leaders were under lock and key, the NLD won the general election by a crushing majority, gaining 392 of parliament’s 485 seats. Overall, parties opposed to SLORC and army rule won more than 94 percent of the seats.
But Suu remained in detention, and the army remained in power.
She was not to emerge for nearly six years.