PROLOGUE
1. “A voter can choose not to vote,” one such homily noted: New Light of Myanmar, October 2010.
2. 94 percent of the seats: NLD won 392 seats out of 447, about 80 percent; its ethnic ally the Shan State NLD won 23 seats; other ethnic NLDs won another 7 seats, giving a grand total of 94.4 percent.
3. State employees and others were dragooned: interview with expatriate aid worker in Rangoon, November 2010.
4. We discussed how to take advance votes from members of thirty civil societies in Rangoon: Irrawaddy website, November 2010.
5. We have won about 80 percent of the seats: Agence-France Presse wire, November 8, 2010.
6. NLD-Liberated Areas: Burmese political parties are barred by law from having branches overseas, hence the name of this party, staffed by exiles from Burma and loyal to the NLD in Burma.
7. There is no legal basis for detaining her any longer: Agence-France Presse wire, November 13, 2010.
8. Soldiers armed with rifles and tear-gas launchers pushed aside the barbed-wire barriers blocking University Avenue: Los Angeles Times, November 14, 2010.
9. The previous week an NLD veteran, one of the party’s founders, released from prison after nineteen years, had told me: U Win Tin, interviewed by the author in November 2010. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi: Daw is the honorific prefix used for women of middle age and above; “Ma” for younger women.
PART ONE
1. insisted on being described as a housewife: on her visa application for Japan in 1986; interview with Noriko Ohtsu.
2. Thant Myint-U, grandson of U Thant, in his book, The River of Lost Footsteps, casts Suu as little more than a footnote: “She wasn’t facing the Raj . . . These were tough men who played a very different game” in Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (2006) p.337.
3. Michael W. Charney, in his History of Modern Burma: see “Aung San Suu Kyi’s personal connections to the West . . .” in Michael Charney, A History of Modern Burma, Cambridge University Press, 2009, p.169. Her positive role for the mass of Burmese is disposed of in the phrase: “ASSK was . . . becoming a permanent symbol of popular opposition to the government,” p.177.
4. A previous biographer, Justin Wintle, comes to the eccentric conclusion: Justin Wintle, Perfect Hostage, Hutchinson, 2007, pp.419–20.
5. Aung San was a boy from the provinces, shy, a poor speaker, with abrupt manners, and prone to long unexplained silences : Aung San Suu Kyi, Aung San, 1984.
6. But the Burmese experience was very different: see “Intellectual Life in Burma and India under Colonialism” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, Penguin Books, 1995.
7. In lower Burma the British had refused to accept the authority of the thathanabaing, the senior monk authorized by the king: cf. Donald Eugene Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma, Princeton University Press, 1965.
8. big enough to scare away the crows: tour guide in Mandalay to author, March 2008.
9. They “proclaimed the birthright of the Burmese to be their own masters”: Aung San Suu Kyi in her short biography of her father, included as “My Father” in Freedom from Fear.
10. Burmans and Indian Muslims: Burman refers to the ethnic group, who have been dominant and the majority for some centuries.
11. the Japanese tatemae, what appeared on the surface, might speak of Burmese independence, but the honne, the unspoken reality, would be that “mighty Nippon” remained firmly in charge behind the scenes: cf. Takeo Doi, The Anatomy of Dependence, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 1973.
12. William Slim, the British general: see Field Marshal Viscount Slim, Defeat into Victory, Pan, 2009 (first published 1956), p.594.
13. He told journalists that he wanted “complete independence”: Aung San Suu Kyi, “My Father,” op cit.
14. Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old when her father died, “too young,” as she put it, “to remember him”: Aung San Suu Kyi, Preface in Aung San, p.xiii.
15. how a great civilization, which had been under the thumb of the imperialists for far longer than Burma, had not lost its soul: cf. “Intellectual Life in Burma and India under Colonialism” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear.
16. A Burman to all outward appearances, but entirely out of harmony with his surroundings: cf. ibid, p.113.
17. Rammohun Roy set the tone for the Indian Renaissance: ibid.
18. General Ne Win: the head of the army; information from author’s interview with Bertil Lintner and others.
19. From her earliest childhood: Michael Aris, Introduction, Freedom from Fear, p.xviii.
20. Again and again she expressed her worry that her family and people might misinterpret our marriage and see it as a lessening of her devotion to them: ibid.
PART TWO, CHAPTER 1: LATE CALL
1. sewing, embroidery: cf. interviews with Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, Rider, 1997.
2. shinbyu: the coming of age ceremony which all Burmese Buddhist boys undergo: cf. Donald Eugene Smith, Religion and Politics in Burma and George Scott (aka Shway Yoe), The Burman, His Life and Notions, Macmillan,1882. (George Scott published his book under the pen name of Shway Yoe, leaving the impression that the author was Burmese.)
3. MPhil: author interview with Anna Allott.
4. Michael and Suu were about to turn in for the night: on March 31, 1988.
5. In Burma health care is ostensibly provided free of charge: Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, Penguin, 2010, no. 44, Uncivil Service (2).
6. Outside on the city streets, the mood was dark and growing darker: the main source for my detailed description of the events of 1988 and 1989 is Outrage by Bertil Lintner, Review Publishing, 1989.
7. It emerged in April that the regime had sought and obtained from the UN the humiliating status of “least-developed nation”: cf. David I. Steinberg, Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know, OUP USA, 2010, p.77.
8. Rather than soothing the already inflamed temper: Bertil Lintner, Outrage, p.71.
9. Sir, may I request you . . . not to get involved or you will regret it: quoted in Outrage, p.72.
10. We held a big meeting on the Prome Road campus [north of the city center] on June 21st: quoted in Outrage, p.75.
11. The word ‘monsoon’ has always sounded beautiful to me: Letters from Burma, no. 29.
12. In a letter to her parents-in-law: private information.
13. an island of peace and order: Michael Aris, Introduction, Freedom from Fear, p.xvii.
14. “When we first arrived,” Michael wrote: unpublished letter from Michael Aris to Anthony Aris, August 5, 1988.
15. Dear delegates: quoted in Bertil Lintner, Outrage, pp.83–4.
16. “The atmosphere,” Michael wrote: unpublished letter from Michael Aris to Anthony Aris, August 5, 1988.
17. “The nation,” wrote Bertil Lintner, “and possibly even more so the diplomatic community in Rangoon, was flabbergasted”: Bertil Lintner, Outrage, p.85.
18. Sein Lwin’s takeover: unpublished letter from Michael Aris to Anthony Aris, August 5, 1988.
19. “Dissatisfaction among the public gave way to hatred,” wrote Lintner. “‘That man is not going to be the ruler of Burma”: Lintner quoting an unnamed Western diplomat in Outrage, p.90.
20. During the uprising of 1988 he sent messages of solidarity to Burmese students in Tokyo: author interview with Dr. Maung Zarni, who also provided the subsequent analysis of the operation of the dynastic principle in Burma.
21. She, like the whole country, was electrified: Michael Aris, Introduction, Freedom from Fear, p.xviii.
22. Suu’s house quickly became the main center of political activity in the country and the scene of such continuous comings and goings as the curfew allowed: ibid., p.xx.
PART TWO, CHAPTER 2: DEBUT
1. She must also have known the truth behind the rumor: this story came from a Burmese source who requested anonymity.
2. Ne Win himself was among the people she invited over for lunch: information from Aung San Suu Kyi, reported orally to Ma Thanegi and recorded in the latter’s diary. All quotes from Ma Thanegi come from unpublished diaries and other writings in the author’s possession, used with her permission.
3. Perhaps he had noticed the flag flying at her gate: the diaries of Ma Thanegi.
4. I replied that I would never do anything from abroad, and that if I were to engage in any political movement I would do so from within the country: Aung San Suu Kyi, “Belief in Burma’s Future” in Independent, September 12, 1988.
5. U Kyi Maung, a colonel in the army who had been imprisoned for years for opposing Ne Win’s coup: cf. Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, interview with U Kyi Maung, p.x.
6. He met her first, he said, “by chance, at the home of a mutual friend here in Rangoon. It was back in 1986”: quoted in The Voice of Hope, p.236.
7. A Burmese Muslim whose tall figure and craggy face betrayed his roots in the subcontinent: interview with Bertil Lintner, Burmese sources.
8. “He took her round Rangoon,” said Lintner, who subsequently got to know him: interview with author.
9. “My impression when I arrived was that the situation was extremely tense,” he said later: quoted in Bertil Lintner, Outrage, p.91.
10. The first serious demonstration actually occurred on the afternoon of August 3: Dominic Faulder, “Memories of 8.8.88” on Irrawaddy website.
11. A fifteen-year-old schoolboy called Ko Ko took to the streets of central Rangoon on August 6th along with thousands of others: interview with author, Rangoon, November 2010.
12. “Despite its overwhelming superiority of force, the regime is today under siege by its people,” Seth Mydans wrote in the New York Times: Seth Mydans, “Uprising in Burma” in New York Times, August 12, 1988.
13. “The euphoric atmosphere prevailed all day,” wrote Bertil Lintner: Outrage, p.97.
14. The tanks roared at top speed past [Sule] pagoda, followed by armored cars and twenty-four truckloads of soldiers: Mydans, op cit.
15. staff at the hospital where her mother had once worked believed the army had killed 3,000 civilians in cold blood: quoted in Los Angeles Times, August 17, 1988.
16. Aung San Suu Kyi played no part in the demonstrations: interview with Indian journalist Karan Thapar in July 1988.
17. As Bo Kyi, one of the leaders of the students, put it, “When we staged demonstrations in 1988, in March, April, May”: author interview with Bo Kyi, Mae Sot, November 2010.
18. But Maung Maung had lost whatever intellectual respectability he might once have claimed when he wrote the official hagiography of Number One: Gustaaf Houtman, “Aung San’s lan-zin, the Blue Print, and the Japanese occupation of Burma” in Reconsidering the Japanese Military Occupation of Burma (1942–45), edited by Kei Nemoto, ILCAA, Tokyo 2007; Patricia Herbert, Obituary of Dr. Maung Maung in Guardian, July 13, 1994.
19. “I was twenty-six,” Nyo Ohn Myint remembered: interview with author, Chiang Mai, November 2010.
20. I appealed to her to meet the student movement. She said no [...] Aung San’s bravery—everything: interview with author.
21. On August 15th, she and Hwe Myint, one of her earliest political allies, wrote to the Council of State: xerox of original document courtesy of Martin Morland.
22. nursing her gravely ill mother, keeping her sons up to the mark with their studies: private information.
23. U Win Tin, a stubbornly contrarian journalist who had been silenced for years by Ne Win . . . Three groups formed around her, he explained: interview with author, Rangoon, November 2010.
24. Despite his communist background and the help he was providing to Suu, Thakin Tin Mya, her gatekeeper, was a member of the ruling BSPP: cf. Thierry Falise, Aung San Suu Kyi: Le Jasmin ou la lune, Editions Florent Massot, Paris, 2007. Translated here by the author.
25. So please don’t launch any attacks on him, and don’t incite the people to do so, either: quoted in Aung San Suu Kyi: Le Jasmin ou la lune, p.73.
26. Ralph Fitch, an English merchant who saw the pagoda in 1586, called it “the fairest place, as I suppose, that is in the world”: quoted in Norman Lewis, Golden Earth, Eland, 1983, p.272.
27. a misty dazzlement: quoted in Norman Lewis, Golden Earth, pp.272–4.
28. the focus during the 1920s and 1930s of the first mass demonstrations against British rule: see Gustaaf Houtman, Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics, ILCAA, Tokyo (available on Google Books) for an illuminating account of the transgressive effect, for the ruling generals, of Suu’s appearance at the national shrine.
29. Overnight thousands of leaflets were printed, stigmatizing Suu as the puppet of a foreign power: cf. Thierry Falise, Aung San Suu Kyi: Le Jasmin ou la lune.
30. One of her advisers urged her to don a bullet-proof vest for protection. “Why?” she retorted. “If I was afraid of being killed, I would never speak out against the government”: Thierry Falise, Aung San Suu Kyi: Le Jasmin ou la Lune, p.78.
31. “We didn’t go along the main road,” Nyo Ohn Myint the lecturer recalled: interview with author.
32. In those days the population of Rangoon was about three million: interview with author.
33. It has been said with some authority that she read her speech from a prepared text: a full video of the speech can be found on YouTube. An English translation is published in Freedom from Fear.
34. “It was so direct and down to earth,” said Bertil Lintner: interview with author.
35. “Reverend monks and people!” she shouted: Freedom from Fear, pp.192–8.
36. See note 15, Part Two, Chapter 2.
37. My first impression was that she was just another general’s daughter: quoted in documentary Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear directed by Anne Gyrithe Bonne, Kamoli Films, Denmark 2010.
PART TWO, CHAPTER 3: FREEDOM AND SLAUGHTER
1. And it was Aung San Suu Kyi—the “governess” as she has been labeled, the Burmese “Mary Poppins,” the “Oxford housewife,” the political ingénue: epithets favored by Justin Wintle.
2. one paper called Phone Maw Journal, named after the student whose killing by the army in March had ignited the revolution, informed its readers: cf. Lintner, Outrage.
3. “The Rangoon Bar Association took its courage in both hands and issued a signed protest calling for change,” he recalled: Martin Morland, “Eight Minutes Past Eight, on the Eighth of the Eighth Month,” unpublished essay.
4. a student recently returned from Rangoon called Pascal Khoo Thwe was caught up in the excitement: cf. Pascal Khoo Thwe, From the Land of Green Ghosts, Harper Collins, 2002.
5. A young woman called Hmwe Hmwe who had joined the democracy movement in Rangoon traveled to Mandalay: Lintner, Outrage, p.119.
6. In Mandalay, the young monks’ organization. . . had resurfaced: ibid, pp.119–20.
7. The army evidently hoped that things would get so out of hand that the people would have had enough and beg the old regime to come back: Morland, “Eight Minutes Past Eight, on the Eighth of the Eighth Month,” op cit.
8. On September 5th, four men and one woman were caught outside a children’s hospital: Lintner, Outrage, pp.121–2.
9. the future of the people will be decided by the masses of the people: quoted in Outrage, p.126.
10. his pithy formulations of how to apply the simple truths of Buddhism to solitary confinement had a powerful influence on Suu herself: see Part Four, Chapter 3.
11. “I thought to myself, let’s see what this lady is up to,” he said later. “Now is the time, a revolution is stirring: quoted in Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.237.
12. From the age of seventeen until nearly fifty, my life was a struggle: ibid., p.279.
13. Two years later, accused of involvement in an abortive coup, he was sacked and jailed: cf. Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps.
14. My [old army] colleagues urged me to address the public: quoted in Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.275.
15. “We agreed that I would meet her,” he remembered, “and that I would go alone”: ibid., p.276.
16. “On September 16th,” as Burma historian Michael Charney records, “the State Council announced that”: Michael Charney, A History of Modern Burma, p.158.
17. sweep everything aside, bring everything down, rush in on human waves shouting their war cries to the cheers of outsiders, and establish their occupation: Michael Charney, A History of Modern Burma, p.157
18. Any high-ranking army officer who had taken an armed infantry unit into the capital and declared his support for the uprising would have become a national hero immediately: Lintner, Outrage, p.127.
19. The city of Rangoon, and indeed the whole country, ran disturbingly smoothly without Big Brother: Morland, “Eight Minutes past Eight, on the Eighth of the Eighth Month.”
20. Nyo Ohn Myint recalled, “My first job was buying fried rice at the restaurant nearby . . .”: interview with author.
21. In order to bring a timely halt to the deteriorating conditions on all sides all over the country: Lintner, Outrage, p.131.
22. It had started drizzling shortly after the brief radio announcement: Lintner, Outrage, p.132.
23. Walking through Rangoon was an eerie experience: Terry McCarthy, “Fragile Peace Settles on Rangoon” in Independent, September 21, 1988.
24. Some people began banging pots and pans inside their houses in a desperate show of defiance: Lintner, Outrage, p.132.
25. Through loudspeakers mounted on the military vehicles, the people were ordered to remove the barricades: Lintner, Outrage, p.132.
26. A spokesman for Tin Oo commented, “This is a coup d’état by another name. This ruins everything”: quoted in Terry McCarthy, “Burmese Army Coup” in Independent, September 19, 1988.
27. All through the night we were kept awake by the noise of machine gun fire: interview with author.
28. “It is better that I should be taken off to prison,” she told them: quoted in author’s interview with Nyo Ohn Myint.
29. The machine gun was pointed straight at the front gate: interview with author.
30. At least 100 people—and perhaps four times that number—were shot dead in the streets of Rangoon yesterday: Terry McCarthy, “Burmese Army Coup” in Independent, September 19, 1988.
31. No one in the large column that marched down past the old meeting spot near the City Hall and Maha Bandoola Park saw the machine-gun nests: Lintner, Outrage, p.133.
32. The Burmese Red Cross was working furiously to gather the wounded and dead from the streets: Terry McCarthy, “Burmese Army Coup” in Independent, September 19, 1988.
33. police mingled with the crowds to observe us, having prudently abandoned their uniforms: Pascal Khoo Thwe, From the Land of the Green Ghosts, HarperCollins, 2002, p.173.
34. “We fled,” he said, “because we realized that this time it was different”: Lintner, Outrage, p.147.
35. Suppression associated with the coup led to between 8,000 and 10,000 deaths: Michael Charney, A History of Modern Burma, p.161.
36. I went up there with a couple of other journalists and we had a long chat in her living room looking over the lake: interview with author.
37. I would prefer not to remain in politics if I can avoid it: quoted in Terry McCarthy, “Burma Opposition will not Give in to Army Rule” in Independent, September 20, 1988.
38. “We do not wish to cling to state power long,” he insisted. On the contrary, he spoke of “handing over power to the government which emerges after the free and fair general elections.” “I am laying the path for the next government,” he said, and “I will lay flowers in the path of the next government”: quoted in Gustaaf Houtman, Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics, p.44.
39. “It’s going back to the 1962 formula,” a man near the Sule pagoda in central Rangoon told McCarthy: Terry McCarthy, “Fragile Peace Settles on Rangoon” in Independent, September 21, 1988.
40. During the day he carries a revolver: quoted in Terry McCarthy, “Ne Win Still Fights for Control” in Independent, September 28, 1988.
41. someone who had spent nearly half her life in England, a country where the words “Glorious Revolution” refer to an event, exactly three hundred years before, in which no lives were lost and which set British democracy on such a big, fat keel that it has been gliding forward ever since: the overthrow of King James II by British parliamentarians, who invited the Protestant William of Orange to invade the country and replace him. The agreement between William and Parliament, resulting in the Bill of Rights of 1689, created the unwritten but still effective English Constitution and drastically reduced the risks of a return to an absolute monarchy.
PART TWO, CHAPTER 4: THE FUNERAL
1. he was “passionate about books”: see later ref. to Ko Myint Swe, p.237.
2. All effort is now being put to establish the National League for Democracy: fax from Michael and Suu to relatives in England, St. Hugh’s archive.
3. “the throne was painted over with representations of the peacock and the hare,” according to George Scott: Shway Yoe (Scott’s pen name), The Burman, His Life and Notions, pp.449–50.
4. I am working . . . to achieve the kind of democratic system: Aung San Suu Kyi, “Belief in Burma’s Future” in Independent, September 12, 1988.
5. In 1874, King Thibaw’s predecessor, King Mindon, informed that William Gladstone’s Whigs had lost the general election in Britain, remarked, “Then poor Ga-la-sa-tong [Gladstone] is in prison I suppose. I am sorry for him. I don’t think he was a bad fellow”: quoted in Houtman, Mental Culture . . ., p.214. I am greatly indebted to Dr. Houtman for his book and for his conversation and insights into democracy in the Burmese context.
6. The Burman is the most calm and contented of mortals: Shway Yoe (George Scott), The Burman, p.65.
7. “Traditional Burmese education did not encourage speculation,” she wrote: “Intellectual Life in Burma and India Under Colonialism” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.93.
8. emphatically rules by what is called in the Western kingdoms the right divine: Shway Yoe (Scott), The Burman, pp.454–5.
9. Gandhi was of a practical turn of mind that looked for ideas to suit the needs of situations: “Intellectual Life in Burma and India under Colonialism” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.108.
10. Let anybody appear who can be like such a leader, who dares to be like such a leader. We are waiting: in Donald Bishop, “Thinkers of the Indian Renaissance” and quoted in turn in “Intellectual Life in Burma and India under Colonialism” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.128.
11. a loose confederation of political parties and local influential leaders and strong men: Steinberg, Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know, p.53.
12. Gustaaf Houtman cites three reasons why the concept of “opposition” has failed to gain any traction in Burma: Houtman, Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics, p.214.
13. “In Burma,” writes Houtman, “those who declare themselves opponents to the regime are either extremely courageous or extremely foolish—there is little in between”: Houtman, ibid.
14. “I went wrong,” she told U Win Khet, one of her close assistants, privately, “but not without a reason”: quoted in Wintle, Perfect Hostage, p.295.
15. He had left Rangoon in late September or early October, ostensibly for a “holiday in Maymyo,” the British-built hill station northeast of Mandalay: Ma Thanegi papers.
16. Aung San Suu Kyi was “surrounded by communists” it was claimed; she was “going the same way as her uncle’s Burma Communist Party”: writers of opinion columns in the Working People’s Daily, and Khin Nyunt.
17. General Saw Maung, visited University Avenue the evening before the funeral to sign the condolence: Steven Erlanger, “Burmese, Still Under Military Rule, Settle Into a Sullen Waiting” in New York Times, January 9, 1989.
18. I hope this occasion has been an eye-opener: Terry McCarthy, “Rangoon Peaceful for Funeral of Widow” in Independent, January 3, 1989.
PART TWO, CHAPTER 5: OPEN ROAD
1. She was coming to open a new NLD office in a suburb on the outskirts of Rangoon: interview with the author.
2. it was at the town of Panglong, in the far north of the region, in February 1947, that Suu’s father signed a historic agreement: cf. Martin Smith’s classic book on Burma’s insurgencies, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, Zed Books, 1991.
3. It costs a lot to keep Gandhi poor: Sarojini Naidu, quoted by Jyotsna Kamat, “India’s Freedom Struggle” on www.kamat.com.
4. she had not touched alcohol since experimentally sampling sherry with Indian friends in the ladies loo of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, more than twenty years before: see Part Three, Chapter 3, p.197.
5. Boys very interested in traditional dress, esp. that of the Padaung women: “Padaung women” are the so-called “giraffe-necked women” who wear numerous brass rings around their necks.
PART TWO, CHAPTER 6: HER FATHER’S BLOOD
1. In a letter released internationally by his lawyers, the regime’s former critic repeated his earlier accusation: Loktha Pyeithu Nezin, Rangoon, March 16, 1989, translated in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, March 18, 1989.
2. “I don’t believe in armed struggle,” she told a journalist during these difficult days, “but I sympathize with the students who are engaged in armed struggle”: quoted on BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, April 3, 1989.
3. by the spring of 1989, press estimates of membership ran as high as three million, in a total population of around 50 million: Terry McCarthy, Independent, April 19, 1989.
4. Two days later Erlanger returned to the subject in the long New York Times piece, which probably did more than anything else to put her on the world map: Steven Erlanger, “Rangoon: Journal: A Daughter of Burma, but can she be a symbol?” in New York Times, January 11, 1989.
5. The water festival of Thingyan, the Burmese New Year: in the original Indian myth, the King of Brahmas lost a wager with the King of Devas, Thagya-min, and was duly decapitated, but his head was too hot to be allowed to touch the ground and was passed from the hands of one goddess to another. As it was too hot to hold, it had to be cooled by the pouring on of water. A more generic explanation is that this is one of many traditional rain-making festivals. Cf. Scott, The Burman, His Life and Notions.
6. In front of me was a young man holding our NLD flag: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.52.
7. She explained that the captain’s rejection of her proposal to walk at the side of the road struck her as “highly unreasonable”: The Voice of Hope, p.52.
8. In a later interview she said of that split-second decision, “It seemed so much simpler to provide them with a single target”: Fergal Keane, “The Lady Who Frightens Generals” in You magazine, July 14, 1996.
9. The fact that she had survived the army’s attempt to kill her was proof positive of her high spiritual attainment: Houtman, Mental Culture . . ., p.328.
10. She was “a heroine like the mythical mother goddess of the earth,” one admirer wrote three years later: Gustaaf Houtman, “Sacralizing or Demonizing Democracy” in Burma at the Turn of the 20th Century, ed. Monique Skidmore, University of Hawaii Press, 2005, p.140.
1. Alas, your poor Suu is getting weather-beaten: “Dust and Sweat” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.225.
2. A joke current in Rangoon in those days went that Ne Win’s favorite daughter Sanda had challenged Suu to a duel: Wintle, Perfect Hostage, p.319.
3. no water festival pandals: in India and Burma a pandal is a temporary shrine set up during a festival, usually made of wood, and the focus of festival revelry.
4. the happy highways where I went/ And cannot come again: lines from A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad.
5. fragrant nakao on their cheeks: Burmese women grind the bark of particular trees into creamy paste and apply it to their cheeks as a face cream. Nakao is a type of bark.
6. history did not in fact end after all: in The End of History and the Last Man, published in 1992, Francis Fukuyama argued that the revolutions that ended the Cold War signaled the end of ideology as a factor in the world’s divisions.
7. “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: Houtman, Mental Culture . . . , p.46.
8. when the regime introduced a newly designed one kyat note in 1989, the designer showed his anti-regime feelings in a very delicate manner: the fullest account of the one kyat note fiasco is in Small Acts of Resistance by Steve Crawshaw and John Jackson, Union Square Press, 2010.
9. give lectures on the meaning and achievement of the hero’s life. But not this year, and not ever again: my account of the dismantling of the Aung San cult owes much to Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics by Gustaaf Houtman.
10. On that date they set up a twenty-one-member “Commission of Enquiry into the True Naming of Myanmar Names”: Michael Charney, A History of Modern Burma, pp.171, 173; Houtman, Mental Culture . . . , pp.43, 49.
11. Now, Suu announced, her party’s defiance of the regime would be enshrined in all its literature, in a permanent call to nonviolent resistance: cf. Houtman, Mental Culture . . .
12. “General Ne Win,” she declared, “[who is] still widely believed to control Burma behind the scenes, was responsible for alienating the army from the people”: Houtman, Mental Culture . . ., p.17.
13. When the peace of his lakeside villa was disturbed by a Christmas party: Harriet O’Brien, Forgotten Land, Michael Joseph, 1991, pp.104–6.
14. “We don’t have any intention to seek a confrontation,” Suu insisted to the New York Times’ Steven Erlanger: Steven Erlanger, “As Tensions Increase, Burma Fears Another Crackdown” in New York Times, July 18, 1989.
15. “Now it is obvious who is behind the recent bombing,” said Khin Nyunt, “and plans to disrupt law and order”: quoted in Keith B. Richburg, “Myanmar Moves on Opposition, 2 Leading Activists Under House Arrest” in Washington Post, July 22, 1989.
16. “I was picked up at my hotel at night on the 18th, after curfew, although I had a valid journalist visa,” he recalled: quoted in Lintner, Outrage, p.174.
PART THREE, CHAPTER 1: GRIEF OF A CHILD
1. If the British sucked our blood, the Japanese ground our bones: quoted in William Slim, Defeat into Victory, p.590.
2. He became more and more disillusioned with the Japanese: ibid.
3. The arrival of Aung San, dressed in the near-Japanese uniform of a Major General, complete with sword: ibid., p.591.
4. He went on to say that, at first, he had hoped the Japanese would give real independence to Burma: ibid., p.593.
5. My father died when I was too young to remember him: Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.3.
6. “I have a memory of him picking me up every time he came home from work,” she told Alan Clements: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.83.
7. I don’t remember my father’s death as such: ibid., p.75.
8. How long do national heroes last? Not long in this country; they have too many enemies: quoted in Wintle, Perfect Hostage, p.141.
9. I never felt the need for a dominant male figure: ibid., p.83.
10. She was such a dignified woman with a very distinctive voice: interview with author.
11. My mother was a very strong person: ibid., p.86.
12. There was a Buddhist shrine room at the top of the house: interview with author.
13. My mother was very good: ibid., p.196.
14. “I was very close to him,” she said: ibid., pp.75–6.
15. It was not something that I couldn’t cope with: ibid., pp.75–6.
16. “When I was young,” she said, “I was a normal, naughty child”: ibid., p.63.
17. “Ours was a mixed school,” her friend Tin Tin remembered: interview with author.
18. This tightly planned section of the city was “imperial and rectilinear”: Norman Lewis, Golden Earth, p.14.
19. These massive columns now rise with shabby dignity from the tangle of scavenging dogs and sprawling, ragged bodies at their base: ibid., pp.14–16.
20. The school was on Sule Pagoda Road in the middle of town, north of the pagoda: interview with author.
21. politics has always been linked to literature and literary men have often been involved with politics, especially the politics of independence: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.61.
22. When I was about twelve or thirteen I started reading the classics: ibid.
23. Before the coup Burma was the one country in Southeast Asia with a really good economy: interview with author.
24. At the weekend we had jam sessions: interview with author.
25. “The Burmese,” writes Michael Charney, “had achieved independence without a revolution”: Michael Charney, History of Modern Burma, p.72.
26. The last occasion when Burmese affairs had been strongly featured in the British press: Norman Lewis, Golden Earth, p.22.
27. His delusions did not last long. They were “stripped away: ibid., p.22.
PART THREE, CHAPTER 2: THE GANG OF FIVE
1. I soon hated my new school and till well into adulthood would avoid going anywhere near it: from Bungalows, bageechas and the babalog, in Remembered Childhood—Essays in Honor of Andre Beteille, eds. Malavika Karlekar and Rudrangshu Mukherjee, Oxford University Press New Delhi, 2009.
2. Delhi, characterized by much heat and disorder: Harriet O’Brien, Forgotten Land, p.57.
3. Her mother was shrewd, funny and generous: quoted in Edward Klein, “The Lady Triumphs” in Vanity Fair, October 1995.
4. She also met his daughter Indira, shortly to become prime minister herself, and her sons Sanjay and Rajiv: when Suu was visited in Rangoon by India’s Foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao, in June 2011, Suu recalled her friendship with Rajiv Gandhi and asked Ms. Rao to pass on her greetings to his widow, Sonia Gandhi.
5. always full of good gossip about the latest political intrigues which she dispatched with much wit and humor: ibid., pp.58–9.
6. In Delhi Suu learned, at an impressionable age, the ways of “the argumentative Indian”: the title of a book (pub. 2005) by Amartya Sen, the Nobel Prize-winning Bengali economist.
7. Both in their different ways had a world outlook: quoted in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.116.
8. In Delhi Suu was discovering the great cry of freedom, written in English, of Rabindranath Tagore: these lines from the poem “Walk Alone” by Tagore were quoted by Suu in her address to the University of Natal on April 23, 1997, on being given the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. The address was read in her place by Michael Aris. “Many of [his] verses,” she wrote, “even in unsatisfactory translation, reach out to that innermost, elusive land of the spirit that we are not always capable of exploring by ourselves.”
PART THREE, CHAPTER 3: AN EXOTIC AT ST. HUGH’S
1. I was really annoyed!: interview with author.
2. Every male who met Suu had a little bit of a crush on her: interview with author.
3. She had strong views about her country, and about right and wrong: interview with author, London, 2010.
4. We got to know each other in Oxford, as freshwomen at St. Hugh’s College, in 1964: Ann Pasternak Slater, “Suu Burmese,” published in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, pp.292–300.
5. When I first got to know her as a student I can remember her talking very proudly about her father: interview with author, Oxford, 2010.
6. my mother, who was another foreign oddity: Lydia Pasternak Slater, chemist, translator and poet and the youngest sister of Boris Pasternak.
7. four years after the Lady Chatterley trial and two years after the Beatles’ first LP: “Sexual intercourse began/ In nineteen sixty-three/ (which was rather late for me)—/ Between the end of the Chatterley ban/ And the Beatles’ first LP” from “Annus Mirabilis” by Philip Larkin. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D. H. Lawrence was first published by Penguin Books in 1960, more than thirty years after its original publication in Italy: its exculpation under Britain’s new Obscene Publications Act on grounds of literary merit was a major cultural event.
8. “When we first arrived,” Pasternak Slater’s memoir continued: in Freedom from Fear, p.293.
9. he carried around one of the works of John Ruskin, and his social philosophy was based as much on primitive English socialism as on anything suggested by the Vedas: Unto This Last by Ruskin had a dramatic impact on Gandhi’s social philosophy; he carried a copy of the book with him at all times, and in 1908 he translated it into his mother tongue, Gujarati.
10. Aung San Suu Kyi was, briefly, a pupil of mine when she was reading for the honors school of PPE: Mary Warnock in a review of The Voice of Hope, in the Observer Review, May 25, 1997.
11. She was curious to experience the European and the alien: Pasternak Slater in Freedom from Fear, p.294.
12. Suu set out, a determined solitary figure in the early morning haze: ibid., p.295.
13. She was curious to know what it was like: Pasternak Slater in Freedom from Fear, p.295.
14. She was more comfortable with Indians than with Brits to begin with: interview with author.
15. It wasn’t a romance. It was an utterly genuine friendship: interview with author.
16. Suu “was much more interested in getting to meet Algerians and in what was happening in the country than in the many parties to which she was invited”: Ma Than É, “A Flowering of the Spirit: Memories of Suu and her Family” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, pp.275–91.
17. She didn’t want to be doing PPE: interview with author.
18. He was in Queen’s College. We knew each other but were not chums: interview with author.
19. One university friend mentioned that she was still talking about him “at least a year after she left Oxford”: private information.
20. Some of her Indian friends did not approve of Hyder. “He was a bit of a sleazeball,” said one: university friend of Suu who requested anonymity.
21. She would discuss these things with me when she came to Burma: interview with author.
22. Aung Gyi had been a subordinate of Ne Win’s in the 4th Burma Rifles during the war: cf. Michael Charney, History of Modern Burma, pp.120–1.
23. The only reliable classes were those who contributed to the material needs of society, such as the peasants and the industrial workers: ibid., p.122.
24. in a letter written years later: private information.
PART THREE, CHAPTER 4: CHOICES
1. Her Oxford friend Ann Pasternak Slater worried for her: Ann Pasternak Slater, “Suu Burmese” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.295.
2. “She called me Di Di,” she remembered—the affectionate Indian equivalent of “aunty”: author interview with Lady Gore-Booth, and quotes from documentary Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear.
3. From a diplomatic point of view, we should have said “Go”: interview with author.
4. He and his identical twin brother, Anthony, were born in Havana, the sons of an English father, John Aris, and a French-Canadian beauty, Josette Vaillancourt, whom he fell in love with and married while working as ADC to the Governor General of Canada, Lord Tweedsmuir (better known as the thriller writer John Buchan): thanks to Lucinda Phillips for details about her family.
5. He was smitten from the word go: Anthony Aris, interview with the author
6. as Norman Lewis put it, “through failure to spend a token period as a novice in a Buddhist monastery, the foreigner has never quite qualified as a human being”: Lewis, Golden Earth.
7. While he was still at Durham: interview with author.
8. “Getting to and from New York University meant a long bus ride,” Ma Than É wrote: Than É, “A Flowering of the Spirit” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.284.
9. “I see myself as a trier,” Suu told Alan Clements: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.33.
10. A more believable explanation is that, within those few weeks, Suu discovered that Professor Trager was on friendly terms with high officials in the Ne Win regime: the true reason why Suu dropped out of Frank Trager’s course was one of several questions I gave to Suu, in writing, during our meeting at her party’s headquarters in March 2011, but she declined to answer them. A future biographer may be more lucky. Trager’s friendship with Ne Win cronies is mentioned by Robert Taylor in “Finding the politics in Myanmar” in Southeast Asian Affairs, Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, June 2008.
11. U Thant “saw no reason why I should not go wherever I wished”: Norman Lewis, Golden Earth, p.33.
12. U Thant said that the railway service from Rangoon to Mandalay was working: ibid., p.23.
13. “Thant’s dream,” wrote his grandson, Thant Myint-U, “had been to become a civil servant in the British Burma administration.”: Than Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps, p.271. Much of the detail in this chapter is culled from this work.
14. “in real life no less dreadful than it sounds” according to Thant Myint-U: ibid., p.333.
15. a rambling seven-bedroom red-brick house: ibid., p.38.
16. “U Thant and his family would be warmly welcoming,” Ma Than É remembered: quoted in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.285.
17. We liked him and his wife and children: ibid.
18. “Some members of the [Burmese] delegation had said they would like to meet us, she wrote: ibid., p.286.
19. Suu’s calm and composure were for me very reassuring: ibid.
20. Soon afterwards she was writing to thank her brother-in-law-to-be: private information.
21. Suu made a choice. She decided that a husband and children would be greatly preferable to a career in the UN, however brilliant it was promising to be: Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, pp.286–7.
22. With six months’ more hard slog in a city she had learned to dislike: private information
23. Recently I read again the 187 letters she sent to me in Bhutan from New York: Michael Aris, Introduction in Freedom from Fear, p.xix.
PART THREE, CHAPTER 5: HEROES AND TRAITORS
1. It was a lovely ceremony: quoted on Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear video.
2. the World’s End and Gandalf’s Garden: the World’s End, a section of Chelsea close to the Gore-Booths’ home, named after a local pub called the World’s End, became one of the centers of London hippy culture in the 1960s and 1970s and home to an influential boutique called Granny Takes a Trip. Gandalf’s Garden, named after the wizard in the Tolkien trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, was the home of a mystical community of that name which ran a shop in the World’s End and published a magazine of the same name.
3. serious, sad, uncertain: Pasternak Slater in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.295.
4. the local cuisine, in which pork fat and chilies played a dominant role, was largely inedible, she confided to a friend in Rangoon: recorded in Ma Thanegi’s diaries.
5. she left 54 University Avenue once a year, for an annual medical check-up: Ma Thanegi’s diaries.
6. “Never before,” wrote Thant Myint-U, “had a call for the overthrow of a UN member state government been made from inside the UN”: Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps, p.311.
7. The Buddhist funeral service went as planned: ibid., p.313.
8. We put the coffin on a truck and thousands and thousands of us marched towards Rangoon University campus: interview with author in Rangoon, March 2011.
9. placed on a dais in the middle of the dilapidated Convention Hall, ceiling fans whirring overhead in the stifling heat: Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps, p.313.
10. We took it to the site of the students’ union building: former activist interviewed in Rangoon, March 2011, on condition of anonymity.
11. At about six that morning we were woken up at our hotel by a phone call: Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps, pp.314–15.
12. “The abiding image I have of the U Thant riots,” wrote Harriet O’Brien: O’Brien, Forgotten Land, p.223.
13. officials of the government called Suu in and asked her if she planned to get involved in “anti-government activities”: Aung San Suu Kyi, “Belief in Burma’s future” in Independent, September 12, 1988.
14. “Uncle, I’ve heard that these days you are mostly looking after your grandchildren,” she told him chidingly: Kyaw Zaw, My Memoirs: From Hsai Su to Meng Hai, Duwun Publishing, 2007. I am grateful to Dr. Maung Zarni for drawing my attention to this anecdote and translating it from Burmese.
15. a pretty but impractical house: Pasternak Slater in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.296.
16. Memories of that time are still sunlit but with a sense of strain: ibid.
17. When I called in the afternoons with my own baby daughter: interview with author.
18. “Michael and Suu complemented each other, it was a marriage made in heaven,” said Peter Carey: quoted in documentary Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear.
19. “It was actually her husband Michael who I got to know first,” Noriko said: there are two sources for Ms. Ohtsu’s reminiscences in this chapter: a written account of her friendship with Suu, first published in the Japanese monthly magazine Sansara in November 1994, translated into English by the author and Junko Nakayama; and an interview with the author in Oxford in 2009.
20. She could be very critical and very disapproving—to me and certainly to Michael: interview with author.
21. It was Suu who gave the copy-book parties with all the traditional party games: Pasternak Slater in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.297.
22. For the first fifteen years of the marriage it was all Michael: Carey quoted in documentary Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear.
23. I think Suu thought that he could actually have pushed his way a bit more: interview with author.
24. “She was very much casting around for a role for herself,” remembered Carey. “She said, is this my destiny to be a housewife, the partner of an Oxford don?”: quoted in documentary Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear.
25. Ann Pasternak Slater said, “She was becoming more serious, more focused, more determined, more ambitious”: ibid.
26. a volume of essays: Tibetan Studies in honor of Hugh Richardson, edited by Michael Aris and Aung San Suu Kyi, published by Serindia Publications.
27. All those years spent as a full-time mother were most enjoyable: Suu TV interview, included in documentary Aung San Suu Ky—Lady of No Fear.
28. description of himself as a sickly, unwashed, gluttonous, thoroughly unprepossessing child: “My Father” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.4.
29. not so much to extremists as to the great majority of ordinary citizens: ibid., p.37.
30. It was on one of these visits that she struck up a friendship that was to prove important to her later on: Ko Myint Swe was wrongly identified by Justin Wintle in Perfect Hostage as U Tin Moe. The latter, a poet, is much older than Ko Myint Swe, who was a writer and member of the staff of Rangoon University Library. Ko Myint Swe was jailed in July 1989 with other NLD activists. I am indebted to Ma Thanegi for this information.
31. “We read several novels together,” said Allott: interview with author.
32. In an interview years later, Suu said, “When I was young I could never separate my country from my father, because I was very small when he died and I’d always thought of him in connection with the country”: Suu TV interview, included in Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear.
33. a first kikkake: Japanese for a chance, an opportunity, a start, a beginning, a clue.
34. In Japan she had her first encounter with Burmese students: Yoshikazu Mikami, Aung San Suu Kyi: Toraware no Kujaku, translated by Junko Nakayama and the author, 1990. The title means “Captive Peacock.”
1. Suu told an American journalist: quoted in Edward Klein, “The Lady Triumphs,” Vanity Fair, October 1995.
2. As the plane taxied to a halt: Michael Aris, Introduction to Freedom from Fear, p.xxiii.
3. The gates were opened and we drove in: ibid., p.xxiv.
4. A military officer came to give her his personal assurance: ibid., p.xxiv.
5. Suu recovered her weight and strength: ibid., p.xxv.
6. “As a mother,” she told Alan Clements, “the greater sacrifice was giving up my sons”: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, pp.140–1.
7. a declassified American embassy cable revealed that the torture of political prisoners included burns to the flesh by cigarettes: Lintner, Outrage, p.175.
8. He was a lovely man. Before 1988 he would travel around the country and give lectures on literature: interview with author, Chiang Mai, November 2010.
9. At the time he entered Insein Jail he was already suffering from a chronic disease: Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, no. 39, Death in Custody (2).
10. When a little spark turns into a big flame, it will burn away all the dirt that exists in this world: many thanks to Khin Myint for this translation.
11. translates into Burmese as nyein-wut-pi-pyar; literally, “silent-crouched-crushed-flattened”: in Houtman, Mental Culture . . ., p.377.
12. “Glass splinters,” Suu wrote: “Freedom from Fear” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.182.
13. The effort necessary to remain uncorrupted in an environment where fear is an integral part of everyday existence: ibid., p.182.
14. It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute: ibid., p.183.
15. I had not even thought of doing this: Michael Aris, Introduction, Freedom from Fear, p.xxv.
16. “I did not have a teacher,” she wrote some years later, “and my early attempts were more than a little frustrating”: Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, no. 40, Teachers.
17. much value is attached to liberality or generosity: quoted in Houtman, Mental Culture . . . , p.355.
18. Even before her release in November 2010 some correspondents were speculating on her perhaps imminent retirement: CNN reporter, November 13, 2010.
19. A reader’s letter published by the Financial Times in 2011: letter from Dr. Frank Peel, Financial Times, February 5, 2011. As quoted by the paper, he wrote that she would “soon have a position akin to a queen mother in the UK.”
20. to quote Burma authority Robert Taylor, could now be “on the cusp of normality”: Robert Taylor, “Myanmar in 2009: On the Cusp of Normality?” in Southeast Asian Affairs, 2010.
21. “In India,” she wrote, “political and intellectual leadership had often coincided: “Intellectual Life in Burma and India under Colonialism” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.128.
22. We were looking for the human Burma: quoted in ibid., pp.119–20.
23. When people have been stripped of all their material supports: “Towards a True Refuge” in Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p.247.
PART FOUR, CHAPTER 2: LANDSLIDE VICTORY
1. More than a quarter-century of narrow authoritarianism under which they had been fed a pabulum of shallow, negative dogma: “In Quest of Democracy” in ibid., page 168.
2. But at least they had a manifesto to work from: my thanks to Tom White, late of the British Council in Rangoon, for a copy of this document.
3. At the last minute the regime had allowed the foreign media in: interview with author.
4. But the military has so far refused to be drawn: Terry McCarthy and Yuli Ismartono, “Opposition Vote Leaves Burma’s Rulers Stunned” in Independent, June 15, 1990.
5. We don’t know who is our enemy and who is not: ibid.
6. The army is indicating that the elected body will not be a national assembly: Terry McCarthy, “EC to End Boycott of Burmese Junta” in Independent, June 15, 1990.
7. Khin Nyunt, the ambitious heir apparent, the man “who breathes through Ne Win’s nostrils”: epithet quoted by Roger Matthews in “A Beaten, Tortured People” in Financial Times, May 19, 1990.
8. It is our duty to hold an election so that a government can be formed: Saw Maung addresses meeting on “regional consolidation,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, June 12, 1990.
9. Virtually every credible scholar of Burma has demonstrated: Michael Aung-Thwin, “Reality in Burma differs from myths” in Honolulu Star-Advertiser, February 4, 2011.
10. The election was held to elect the Pyitthu Hluttaw, the national assembly: interview with author. In a review of Perfect Hostage published by the Far Eastern Economic Review in June 2007, Bertil Lintner elaborated as follows: “In fact Khin Nyunt had said before foreign military attachés in Rangoon on September 22, 1988, ‘Elections will be held as soon as law and order has been restored and the Defense Services would then systematically hand over power to the party which wins.’ He didn’t say a word about the need for a new constitution. And on May 31, 1989—a year before the election—the junta promulgated a pyitthu hluttaw election law. A pyitthu hluttaw in Burmese is a “people’s assembly,” i.e. a parliament, not a constituent assembly, which is a thaing pyi pyitthu hluttaw—a term never used before the 1990 election.”
11. We have been very lenient [towards her]: Khin Nyunt responds to claims about the transfer of power, BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, July 16, 1990.
12. [SLORC] seemed to think they were doing me a tremendous favor by letting me communicate with my family: Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.146.
PART FOUR, CHAPTER 3: LONG LIVE HOLINESS
1. The only practicable way for a foreigner to approach Manerplaw was from the Thai side: my account of Manerplaw appeared in the Independent Magazine on May 25, 1991 under the headline “The Road to Manerplaw.”
2. The first thing colonial rule denies a people is their history: Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, p.31.
3. the natural routes of migration: ibid., p.31.
4. “When Yuwa [God] created the world he took three handfuls of earth and threw them round about him,” goes the Karen creation myth: Shway Yoe, The Burman, His Life and Notions, p.443.
5. How could anyone expect the Karen people to trust the Burmans: Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity, p.62.
6. During independence negotiations the Karen held out for their own homeland: The fact that wars between the ethnic groups on Burma’s borders and the Burmese Army have continued ever since independence enables the Burmese regime to claim that military rule has been the only way to keep Burma from breaking up. With the exception of the Karen, whose grievances are explained in this chapter, the truth is the opposite: As during long periods of military rule in Pakistan, it is the nation’s alleged peril that justifies the army clinging to power—and thus prompts them to ensure that the embers of war never go out. Yet the Panglong Agreement prefigured a very different national arrangement. As Dr. Maung Zarni wrote in Irrawaddy in June 2011:
While there are “natural” ethnic prejudices among Burma’s “communities of difference” (in terms of religion, ethnicity, and ideology), these prejudices don’t automatically evolve and deepen themselves into ethnic hatred and intractable conflicts. After all, Aung San Suu Kyi’s father . . . was able to work out a multi-ethnic treaty on the eve of the country’s independence.
On the basis of ethnic and political equality, the country’s minorities, with legitimate historical claims over their own ancestral regions, agreed to join the post-independent Union of Burma.
This was no small achievement in the face of various attempts to mobilize ethnic grievances by local minorities and majority political elites . . .
The country’s conflicts regarding different ethnic communities are political because they are fundamentally rooted in the minorities’ demands for, and the Burmese ruling classes’ rejection of, the recognition that modern, post-independence Burma was the result of the voluntary coming together of different ethnic groups which were all equally indigenous to the land. “Ethnic Conflicts are the Generals’ Golden Goose,” (Irrawaddy, June 21, 2011 [italics added]).
A new Panglong Conference has been one of Aung San Suu Kyi’s and the NLD’s principal goals since her release from detention—one the regime seems determined to thwart.
7. They welcomed us and took care of us like their own children: quoted in Peter Popham, “The Road to Manerplaw” in Independent Magazine, May 25, 1991.
8. bodhisattva: in Burmese “bodhisatta” is “one who has vowed to become a Buddha” according to Sayadaw U Pandita. The term is more commonly used in Mahayana Buddhism than in the Theravada school found in Burma. “In Mahayana Buddhism, a bodhisattva is a being who seeks buddhahood . . . but renounces complete entry into nirvana until all beings are saved . . . A bodhisattva provides active help, is ready to take upon himself the suffering of all other beings, and to transfer his own karmic merit to other beings”: Entering the Stream: an Introduction to the Buddha and his Teachings, eds. Samuel Bercholz and Sherab Chödzin, Rider, 1994, Glossary. But there is an analogous teaching in Theravada Buddhism, as Suu pointed out in Letters from Burma, no. 40, Teachers: “In Prome, a holy teacher told me to keep in mind the hermit Sumedha, who sacrificed the possibility of early liberation for himself alone and underwent many lives of striving that he might save others from suffering.”
While Suu’s admirers compare her to such figures, her detractors writing for Burma’s state media often refer to her as a nat or spirit such as “Anauk Medaw,” the Queen or Mother of the West. As Houtman points out, the interesting thing is that her enemies do not deny that she has supernatural characteristics, but claim that they are malignant ones. (cf. Houtman, “Sacralising or Demonising Democracy?” in Burma at the Turn of the 21st Century, pp.140–3.)
9. Visiting Burma in 1990, Kei Nemoto, a Japanese scholar, observed, “There seems to be a big discrepancy between Burmese people’s expectations of Suu Kyi and her own image of the future, democratic Burma”: Houtman, Mental Culture . . . , p.283, footnote.
10. This story was believed even by people living in big cities like Rangoon or Taunggyi: Professor Nemoto, “Aung San Suu Kyi, Her Dream and Reality,” 1996, cited by Houtman in Mental Culture . . . , p.283, footnote.
11. “The military has raided more than a dozen monasteries,” the Washington Post reported: William Branigin, “Myanmar Crushes Monks’ Movement” in Washington Post, October 28, 1990.
12. authority was found in Aung San’s writings for the dramatically anti-democratic change of direction dictated by Ne Win: Gustaaf Houtman: “Aung San’s lan-zin, the Blue Print and the Japanese occupation of Burma” in Reconsidering the Japanese Military Occupation of Burma, ed. Kei Nemoto, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, 2007. The discussion in this chapter owes much to Gustaaf Houtman’s monograph Mental Culture . . .
13. Ana and awza, just like authority and influence, blend into one another: Houtman, Mental Culture . . . , p.169.
14. Sometimes I didn’t have enough money to eat: quoted in Edward Klein, “The Lady Triumphs” in Vanity Fair, October.
15. “I would come down at night,” she told another reporter: Fergal Keane, “The Lady Who Frightens Generals” in You magazine, July 14, 1996.
16. her speech of thanks, delivered by Michael on her behalf: speech given on April 23, 1997, text in St. Hugh’s archive.
17. I started off on the basis that I would have to be very disciplined: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.143.
18. “Not long before my house arrest in 1989,” Suu wrote later, “I was granted an audience with the venerable U Pandita”: Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, no. 40, Teachers.
19. those closer to the goal of nibbana or liberation: nibbana is the Burmese spelling of Nirvana.
20. the venal Burmese businessman: U Po Kyin.
21. This revolutionary idea became the seed of a mass movement, Burma’s mass lay-meditation movement: exhaustively explained in Ingrid Jordt, Burma’s Mass Lay Meditation Movement: Buddhism and the Cultural Construction of Power, Ohio University Research International Studies, 2007.
22. You were quite surprised when I told you how much we laughed together on the day of Suu’s arrest: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.253.
23. Like many of my Buddhist colleagues, I decided to put my time under detention to good use by practicing meditation: Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, no. 40.
24. “There were times when I did more meditation because I was getting better at it,” she said: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.145.
25. “We want a better democracy, a fuller democracy with compassion and loving kindness,” she was to say years later: Houtman, Mental Culture . . . , Appendix 2 (D18).
26. General Ne Win [ . . . ] . . . was responsible for alienating the army from the people: quoted in Houtman, Mental Culture . . . , p.17. See also Part Two, Chapter 7, p.151.
27. U Pandita spoke of the importance of samma-vaca or right speech: Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, no.40, p.159.
PART FOUR, CHAPTER 4: THE PEACE PRIZE
1. “When I knew I was going to be free, I didn’t know what to think,” she said a few days later: quoted in documentary Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear.
2. Archbishop Desmond Tutu exulted: from Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Foreword to the second edition of Freedom from Fear, 1995, p.xv.
3. During the years that I spent under house arrest: ibid.
4. “What I need,” she said, one month after her release, “is a proper office for our democracy party”: Tim McGirk, “Suu Kyi Keeps Flame of Democracy Alight” in Independent, August 21, 1995.
5. “Dear Suu,” read the letter from Rachel Trickett: St. Hugh’s College archive.
6. “Alexander was extraordinary,” he said: interview with author.
7. In the short term, however, the ascent of General Than Shwe to the chairmanship of SLORC in Saw Maung’s place was a boon for Suu and her family: this discussion of Than Shwe is heavily indebted to Benedict Rogers, Than Shwe: Unmasking Burma’s Tyrant, Silkworm Books, 2010.
8. The comments of those who had dealings with him are uniformly unflattering: quoted in Benedict Rogers, Than Shwe: Unmasking the Tyrant.
9. another “obdurate and unimaginative” soldier according to a retired British diplomat: the source of this quote requested anonymity.
10. whence they had fled to escape waves of brutal sectarian persecution by the Burmese Army: the Rohingya are the worst persecuted of all Burma’s mistreated ethnic minorities, partly on account of their being Muslim rather than Buddhist. To escape persecution and seek a better life, many have crossed the border contiguous with Arakan state, where they are concentrated, into Bangladesh, but although Bangladesh is a majority Muslim state they have been treated like pariahs there as well, confined to improvised refugee camps in appalling conditions. Their sufferings continue today.
11. Instead she agreed that she would indeed do as he proposed and leave Burma—on four conditions: announced, with a sardonic twinkle in his eye, to a press conference by Michael Aris; see documentary Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear.
12. Both the empty “dialogue” and Suu’s release nine months later reveal the importance of Japan’s influence on the regime: Gustaaf Houtman, in Mental Culture. . . and in conversation, contributed and clarified several ideas in this discussion.
13. A British diplomat who served in Rangoon from 1996: interview with author. The retired diplomat asked not to be named.
14. The military’s primary provision from the inception of the process: Steinberg, Burma/Myanmar: What Everyone Needs to Know, p.142.
15. “Aung San Suu Kyi’s initial intention,” he wrote, “appeared to have been to visit a monk greatly respected by both the people”: Houtman, “Sacralising or Demonising Democracy” in Burma at the Turn of the 21st Century, p.148.
16. “In contrast to the aggressive, destructive quality of hatred,” wrote Sayadaw U Pandita, “metta, loving-kindness, wishes the welfare and happiness of others”: Sayadaw U Pandita, In This Very Life, Wisdom Publications, 2002, p.190.
17. It is metta. Rest assured that if we should lose this metta, the whole democratic party would disintegrate: Houtman, “Sacralising or Demonising Democracy,” op. cit.
18. There is a special charm to journeys undertaken before daybreak in hot lands: Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, no. 1: The Road to Thamanya (1).
19. The road had become worse as we traveled further and further away from Rangoon: ibid., p.4.
20. As we approached Thamanya, the quiet seemed to deepen: ibid., no. 2, p.17.
21. No project could be successfully implemented without the willing cooperation of those concerned: ibid., no.4, p.17.
22. Suu, as Houtman sees it, gave the regime two choices: Houtman, “Sacralizing or Demonizing Democracy,” op. cit.
PART FOUR, CHAPTER 5: HEROES AND TRAITORS
1. “a follower they [i.e. the West] had raised,” they said, but SLORC would “never accept the leadership of a person under foreign influence who will dance to the tune of a foreign power”: “Voice of Myanmar” radio broadcast, January 27, 1992, quoted in Charney, p.176.
2. “melancholy, long, withdrawing roar”: lines from Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach.”
3. the country will be in ruins: Khin Nyunt, quoted in BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, “Khin Nyunt addresses lawyers on their defects and why a woman should not lead,” February 3, 1992.
4. For six weeks I had been holed up in a hotel room in Rangoon waiting for a telephone call from Aung San Suu Kyi’s office: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.22.
5. He’s upstairs gathering medicines: Alan Clements, Aung San Suu Kyi, The Voice of Hope, p.22.
6. Suu had argued that it was “not yet time to invest” in Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, no. 11, A Note on Economic Policy.
7. When she began telling foreign investors to stay away, I told her that it would hurt the people, who need jobs. She replied, “People will just have to tighten their belts.” I said, “There are no more notches”: interview with author, March 2010.
8. The point of no return came when the Indian writer Amitav Ghosh quoted the “no more notches” line in a piece about Burma published by the New Yorker in August 1996: collected in Amitav Ghosh, Incendiary Circumstances: A Chronicle of the Turmoil of Our Times, p.183.
9. “Khin Nyunt’s man worked on Ma Ma Thanegi successfully,” he said: this Burmese source, who requested anonymity, has good contacts on both sides of Burma’s political divide.
10. “All political matters were under the control of Counter-Intelligence Department,” he wrote in an e-mail: e-mail correspondence with author, 2011.
11. Just because [these governments] have decided on a policy of constructive engagement, there is no need for us to think of them as our enemies: collected in Amitav Ghosh, Incendiary Circumstances, p.185.
12. Burma gets only 1.4 percent of the number of tourists who visit Thailand, 200,000 compared to its neighbor’s 14 million: Irrawaddy, June 2011.
13. “We want people to come to Burma,” he said: Kenneth Denby, “Let People See Our Suffering” in The Times, November 4, 2010.
14. individuals coming in to see the country, to study the situation in the country, might be a good idea: Phoebe Kennedy, “Welcome to Burma” in Independent, February 21, 2011.
15. will ultimately help open Burma to travelers: ibid.
16. “If the army really wants to kill me, they can do it without any problems at all, so there is no point in making elaborate security arrangements,” she told The Times: quoted in Wintle, Perfect Hostage, p.382.
17. The refusal to allow Aung San Suu Kyi to hold roadside talks . . . meant that a great tension settled upon Rangoon in the latter part of 1996: Monique Skidmore, Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004, p.7.
18. It took several weeks: quoted in ibid., p.9.
19. Generals are not content to control only the flow of information in the public domain: ibid., p.14.
20. he insisted on staying on in “the only place he could ever regard as home,” as Michael Aris later put it: Dr. Michael Aris, “A Tribute to James Leander Nichols,” St. Hugh’s archive London, July 23, 1996.
21. The glaring light of adversity: Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, no. 33, p.131.
22. According to the teachings of Buddhism: ibid, p.133.
23. He was “her knight in shining armor,” said one friend, “the one who was defending and fighting for her and trying to slay the dragon for her”: Suzanne Hoelgaard (quoted) in the documentary Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear.
24. In the first twenty years of their marriage: Carey quoted in Aung San Suu Kyi—Lady of No Fear.
25. Michael stayed with me once in Bangkok after the house arrest started: interview with author.
26. He was overly cautious: interview with author.
27. the warm encouragement of the Prince of Wales: Prince Charles and Michael Aris became friends after the latter gave the Prince a detailed briefing on court etiquette and many other questions before the Prince’s first visit to Bhutan. In the last weeks of Michael’s illness Prince Charles invited him to Highgrove, where he agreed to become Patron of Michael’s putative Foundation. Anthony Aris added, “The Rausing family secured the prosperity of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at Oxford with a magnificent donation of $200,000 just before Michael’s death.”
28. “I don’t think Suu ever realized how much he did,” she said: interview with author.
29. He was offered this teaching fellowship in Sanskrit at Harvard: interview with author.
30. A western diplomat: the source of this quote wishes to remain anonymous.
31. I arrived as a memorial ceremony to Michael was in progress: interview with author.
PART FIVE, CHAPTER 1: MEETING SUU
1. “He was a fascinating figure,” he said, “much more approachable than the other top generals”: interview with author.
2. Khin Nyunt was the main force behind the revitalization of religion during the 1990s: interview and e-mail correspondence with author.
PART FIVE, CHAPTER 2: NIGHTMARE
1. “The USDA has become a very dangerous organization,” she said in 1996: Houtman, Mental Culture . . ., page 119.
2. Wunna Maung, one of her bodyguards, said later in testimony to the US Congress: description of events up to, including and after Depayin massacre draws on the following sources: records of US Congress Ad Hoc Commission on Depayin Massacre, http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs/Depayin_Massacre.pdf; interviews with Suu’s driver at Depayin by Democratic Voice of Burma, http://www.dvb.no/analysis/depayin-and-the-driver/12828; “Depayin considered as crime against humanity,” Asian Legal Resource Center, http://www.article2.org/mainfile.php/0206/112/; detailed account of massacre on Ibiblio Public Library and Digital Archive, http://www.ibiblio.org/obl/docs/Yearbook2002-3/yearbooks/Depayin%20report.htm; Benedict Rogers, Than Shwe, op. cit.
3. Suu wore a sky-blue silk htamein (the female longyi) and a large cluster of yellow jasmine flowers in her hair, and her heavy fringe flopped down over her eyebrows: video of Monywa speech on YouTube; translation of transcript on World News Connection, May 30, 2003, via LexisNexis.
4. We watched helplessly and tried to show courage: report of Ad Hoc Commission on Depayin Massacre, Bangkok, July 4, 2003.
5. I was taken in a car with darkened windows, and we changed cars along the way: Benedict Rogers, Than Shwe, op. cit.
6. Maung Aye and Khin Nyunt approached Than Shwe: e-mail correspondence with Aung Lynn Heut.
7. It is not power that corrupts but fear: Aung San Suu Kyi, “Freedom from Fear” in Freedom from Fear, p.180.
PART FIVE, CHAPTER 3: THE SAFFRON REVOLUTION
1. My first teacher was very interested in politics: interview with author.
2. Ingrid Jordt, the American anthropologist and former Buddhist nun: I am greatly indebted to Ingrid for e-mails and conversations containing ideas and wisdom which illuminate the following pages.
3. In Burma we look upon members of the sangha as teachers: Aung San Suu Kyi, Letters from Burma, no. 40.
4. The Burmese were in no doubt, says Jordt: they expected any day that Than Shwe would “descend head first into the hell realms”: when Burmese kings have committed such black acts as killing monks, the only way left for them to cling to power, Burmese believe, is by following the “dark arts,” the so-called “lower path”: praying to nat spirits, making use of alchemy, calling on the services of weiksas (wizards) and engaging in the practice of yadaya, which involves symbolically enacting events one dreads, to prevent them coming to pass. The Thamanya Sayadaw, the much-esteemed monk visited by Aung San Suu Kyi in 1995 and 2002 (see above), died in 2003 at age ninety-three. His body was embalmed and placed in a specially built mausoleum near his temple, and became the focus of a large pilgrimage cult. On April 2, 2008, some six months after the suppression of the monks’ revolt, however, fourteen armed men in military uniforms burst into the mausoleum, locked up the guards in a neighboring building, then stole the late abbott’s embalmed body.
Ingrid Jordt explained, “Rumor immediately circulated that the military was performing lower path magic. It was said that Than Shwe’s bodaw (teacher of the magical arts), in consultation with his astrologers, recommended that the monk’s body be roasted and some of the flesh eaten in order to gain the power of the monk.” When Cyclone Nargis struck Burma one month later, the popular explanation was that this was cosmic retribution for Than Shwe’s impious act of cannibalism.
PART FIVE, CHAPTER 4: THE PEACOCK EFFECT
1. John William Yettaw, who lives in a small mobile home in the Ozark Mountains, Missouri, is a four-times married Vietnam War veteran: this account of Yettaw’s misadventures is largely based on Robert Taylor’s summary, from a translation of the records of the proceedings of the Rangoon court where Yettaw and Aung San Suu Kyi, were tried, in his article “Myanmar in 2009: On the Cusp of Normality?” in Southeast Asian Affairs, 2010.
2. NLD sources have referred to him, not without reason, as “a nutty fellow” and “that wretched man”: however, Suu sent a private message to NLD colleagues saying that Yettaw was ill and telling her supporters not to attack him (private information).
3. neither I nor Kenneth Denby nor even John Simpson: Kenneth Denby is the nom de plume of The Times’ intrepid correspondent in Burma. John Simpson is the veteran BBC foreign correspondent celebrated above all for single-handedly “liberating” Kabul from the Taliban in 2001.
4. British ambassador Mark Canning, who was to hear her testify: quoted in Phoebe Kennedy, “Suu Kyi testifies that she did not violate her house arrest” in Independent, May 27, 2009.
5. Phoebe Kennedy wrote: ibid.
6. being the daughter of Bogyoke Aung San: from Robert Taylor, “Myanmar in 2009: on the Cusp of Normality?” in Southeast Asian Affairs, 2010.
7. The Chrysler ad featuring Suu climaxes with the car they are trying to sell smashing down a wall. The subtext is not hard to fathom: the political frivolity of the car manufacturers who piously adopt Suu’s image to sell their goods was brought home by one of the sequels to the Lancia ad: a new Italian campaign for Lancia’s Ypsilon model starring French movie star Vincent Cassel and with the catchline “Il lusso è un diritto” (“Luxury is a right”).
8. The ICG conclusion quoted by Marshall: International Crisis Group, Asia Briefing no. 118, Myanmar’s Post-Election Landscape, March 7, 2011.
9. Burma has a special place in my heart: Helvey interview with Metta Spencer in Peace Magazine, vol. 24, no. 1, p.12.
10. When I was up at Cambridge one day: ibid.
11. [Sharp] started out the seminar by saying, “Strategic nonviolent struggle is all about political power. How to seize political power and how to deny it to others”: Suu and Gene Sharp have never had the opportunity to meet, but if they did it is likely they would agree on the fundamental questions. In The Voice of Hope, Suu said, “We have chosen the way of nonviolence simply because we think it’s politically better for the country in the long run to establish that you can bring about change without the use of arms . . . Here, we’re not thinking about spiritual matters at all . . .” She reiterated the point when she responded by telephone to a question after her first Reith Lecture for the BBC in June 2011, saying, “I do not hold to nonviolence for moral reasons but practical and political reasons.” She quoted Gandhi as saying that if he had to choose between violence and cowardice “he would choose violence any time.”
But Suu protests too much when she disavows the moral arguments for nonviolence. She has always been vulnerable to attack by those in the movement who favor violence, and this is how she tries to deflect their criticisms: One recalls how, back in 1989, she told a journalist, “I don’t believe in armed struggle but I sympathize with the students who are engaged in armed struggle.” Yet, as this book indicates, her ideas about nonviolence and the “revolution of the spirit” are in fact rooted in her religious convictions.
12. “Resorting to nonviolence tactics,” wrote Thant Myint-U: Thant Myint-U, River of Lost Footsteps, p.337.
13. a contaminant to a nonviolent struggle . . . the greatest contaminant: Helvey interview with Metta Spencer in Peace Magazine, vol. 24, no. 1, p.12.
14. “In recent years,” Sharp writes in the book’s recently updated first chapter: Gene Sharp, From Dictatorship to Democracy, The Albert Einstein Institution, p.1.