Office of the Commander-in-Chief
Military Headquarters
Rangoon
July 1988
The retired chairman sat in the chair from which he had seized the office of power over the land. He looked gravely at the gathering of the generals before him, who seemed like little chickens scurrying to the protective wings of their mother. He was glad that they needed him.
‘Comrades,’ the chairman addressed the gathering, dispensing with the usual formalities that went with these meetings. The tone in his voice reflected a concern that had set in. He wanted an immediate solution to the menace of Aung San Suu Kyi, before the present government buckled under pressure to her.
‘We have to act now before this nonsense of democracy affects our troops.’ The chairman was direct and to the point. He didn’t believe in an ambiguous play of words.
‘We understand that the situation is volatile,’ replied a general promptly. They were as concerned as the chairman of the portent of Aung San Suu Kyi’s call for democracy, and knew that once they lost the loyalty of the troops, they didn’t have a chance.
‘If the league ever came to power, they would arrest all of us,’ predicted another. The generals might have taken karmic consequences lightly in their next births, but they were not prepared to surrender their present life to an inquisition by a people they had abused.
‘We have far too much blood on our hands,’ observed another senior officer, who was in charge of law and order with the current civilian government.
‘I’m sure they’ll indict us with a whole lot of charges,’ voiced one of the generals heading the Ministry of Finance.
The generals also feared that, apart from political and humanitarian crimes, they would also be held accountable for economic crimes. The economic collapse of the country had forced them to trade in teak and elephants for immediate revenue. Industry and commerce had languished with atrocious mismanagement, and sanctions against the country’s few exportable commodities— including chilies by certain nations—were getting difficult to circumvent. Worse still was the fact that, although once described as the rice bowl of Asia, they now had nothing to export. They were importing!
‘Gentlemen,’ the youngest of them, heading the Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, then raised his hand for attention, ‘the problem is that our sister is the daughter of Aung San!’ he reminded them.
The misgiving in his statement was shared by all at the meeting, and was the only factor in their consideration that hindered them from resorting to the old tried-out method to which they had become accustomed. The people’s adulation of Aung San Suu Kyi was reviving in the people the memory of General Aung San, which made her invulnerable.
‘What about international reaction?’ asked a councillor in command of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
‘She is yet to acquire media significance abroad. If we act quickly and shrewdly, we can contain their interference,’ replied the general heading the Ministry of External Affairs.
‘This is purely an internal matter and we have the right to handle a domestic problem the way we see fit,’ offered the intelligence chief. ‘Other countries do it, and so can we.’
‘Yes,’ acknowledged the army chief, ‘but we need to be a little more subtle.’
‘The Americans weren’t subtle with their native Indians, nor with their Negro slaves,’ remarked the intelligence chief. ‘And don’t forget the English; they’re as ruthless with their Irish.’
They were all voicing their apprehensions, the chairman noted with satisfaction. Like him, none of them believed that the party of Aung San Suu Kyi would adopt an attitude of reconciliation. The NLD would have their hardliners as well, who would take the opportunity to seek retribution, the council members feared. They most dreaded the spectre of personal scores being settled in the Insein Prison.
‘All right!’ interrupted the chairman, rapping the table with his knuckles and silencing the deliberations of the delegation of generals. ‘I have discussed the matter at length with General Kin Maung Nyunt and General Myo Mint, and we have pieced together a plan. First, I will retire. I will resign from the party and the junta.’
He had deliberated assiduously for hours on end with the two generals, concocting a profusion of strategies and rationale, gleaning, rejecting and retaining the plausible in the search for a solution to a problem that had caught them off guard. They needed a ploy which, when applied, would appear to be reasonable to the lay public and minimize their aggravation, and possibly pre-empt international criticism. The three had decided that the actions of the council of generals had to appear legitimate, as if dealing with a matter of national security. Eventually, the architects of oppression had pieced together a plan to squash a common threat that came from a lotus, which had chosen to push through the muck of moral stagnation and claim a place under the sun for her people. The plan was simple.
‘Comrades, we’ll stage a coup! But we need her to lead circumstances to it,’ the chairman announced. ‘We will have the Butcher to replace the current civilian in office. Yes…the Butcher. We have pleaded with her to abandon her political ambitions, but I’m afraid we have failed. Regrettably, she will continue her demand for multi-party elections and the folding of this government. There are bound to be further meetings, of that I’m sure.
‘Now, we will let her have a couple of meetings in order to uncover her sympathizers and wait for the moment when the crowd gets larger, giving General Myo Mint an opportunity to plant his agents amidst them.
‘What we have to do is to identify the machinery that is supporting her. Any perceivable foreign involvement would be wonderful because we need not go any further. We crush her party immediately.
‘In any event, even if we fail to perceive a foreign hand in her movement and, therefore, cannot discredit her movement, I expect that, due to our passivity, these meetings will get larger, noisier, and hopefully unruly.
‘That is the moment when the army will promulgate martial law immediately, citing disturbance of public peace as justifiable cause,’ the chairman expounded.
This, he calculated, would take care of the students whom he foresaw as the vanguard of the movement. It was always the students and the intelligentsia all over the world who were problematic, thought the chairman sourly. His eyes narrowed in fury at the thought of the students.
‘In conjunction,’ the chairman continued, ‘we will paralyse the people with the fear by a massive presence of the military wherever sister Suu Kyi organizes her meetings, ostensibly, of course, to prevent violence or riots and destruction of public property.’
This, he reasoned, would alienate and discourage the general public from active support of the democratic movement. There would be many who would recall the shooting of the dogs, the students and workers in his time, he was sure and grinned with satisfaction. He had taken great pains to impress upon his fellow countrymen that Buddhism, a profound religion as it was, had no hold on an army, and that he would not hesitate to let loose its dogs of war on the people at the slightest provocation.
‘General Myo Mint’s men will instigate and encourage confrontation during these curfews from behind, and the officers of the Tatmadaw must be given to orders to shoot. That will be the Butcher’s job! There has to be a shooting so terrifying that it must numb the will of the people. Do you understand?’ the chairman demanded of General Khin Maung Nyunt, flailing his fists wildly in the air as traces of spittle flew from his mouth.
‘After the shooting, a new cabinet must be formed within forty-eight hours, ease out the Butcher, consolidate your leadership and legitimize army rule,’ the chairman instructed. ‘Call it the State Law and Order Restoration and Council or Committee, whatever, it doesn’t matter, but that entity will be all-encompassing and will control everything in the country. In short, it will bring back the Tatmadaw in direct power.
He had nominated a successor to the current failing government, an avid hardliner who would remain unyielding and steadfast in the execution of the plan.
‘The committee will then agree to the people’s demand for elections at a convenient time, alleviating their aggravation, and will proffer an invitation to this so-called NLD to participate,’ the chairman said.
‘Then we will churn up the media,’ he propounded, looking at the general in charge of the Ministry of Information and Broadcast.
‘The media will be under complete control of the state’s law and other restoration council or committee, and will start a propaganda campaign against sister Suu Kyi and her party— alluding to her British connection if we haven’t established any foreign involvement by then, and insinuate that she is a tool of foreign imperialist working for the destabilization of our country.’
‘General Myo Mint will have, by then, identified the leaders of her party for special treatment, and coerce them into denouncing her or quitting her party. His men will eliminate the fastidious ones,’ the chairman stated, and sat down exhausted after his tirade on the anatomy of terror.
‘We shall see, then, who will win the elections,’ he contended.
The generals were in accord. The chairman was certain that the plan would seal the loyalty amongst them, for each of them needed an exit from this predicament as much as he did. He was satisfied that they would implement the plan to the letter. Reposed with his authority and power again, he relaxed into the chair, but he had not finished yet. The tense creases around his mouth broke into a malevolent grin before he announced his coup de grace.
‘There is another matter to be taken care of,’ he said. The generals propped in their seats attentively, evincing their unabashed chauvinism for the chairman.
‘You see, every time people want to run away from us,’ he said sagaciously, ‘they run to the Karens.’
It boggled the chairman’s imagination that of all the ethnic groups, his people had invariably chosen to run to the Karens. Why not the Shans or some other ethnic group, he wondered. He felt quite insulted that his people saw in the Karens an indomitable protector, tough enough to deter his army from pursuing and punishing them.
‘Yes, Chairman,’ exclaimed General Khin Maung Nyunt. He hated the Karens who, with impunity, had constantly thwarted the attempts of the Tatmadaw to dislodge them from their strongholds. The humiliation of repeated failure with this ethnic group had grated his ego for, as the commander-in-chief of the army, he had failed to make good his obligation of success to the council.
‘We should be receiving another shipment of arms now: grenade launchers, heavy mortars and some field artillery as well… 105s and 155s,’ the chairman announced.
You may deploy these weapons with your men suitably around the camps of those dogs as soon as the rains get over,’ he instructed.
‘Yes, Chairman, I will make sure to do that,’ accepted General Khin Maung Nyunt gratefully.
‘And when the rascals cross into the Karen camps,’ the chairman continued, ‘order your men to blast the sons of bitches with everything they’ve got. Get the Karens, too. Let’s wipe them out and their Kawthoolei!’ he thundered, bringing his fist crashing down on the table with such force that a tumbler jumped involuntarily, spilling its contents on the draft of the plan. He looked at the commander-in-chief of the army and said, ‘Send the Butcher. He’s best suited for the job.’
The chairman and the generals had now thrown the dice and, with one throw, hoped to contain Aung San Suu Kyi’s attempt to restore democracy and simultaneously exterminate their arch enemies, the Karens, once and for all. Before the generals left, the chairman issued a directive, saying, ‘Those of you who will be involved in civilian affairs must get out of uniforms and wear civilian clothes when the new cabinet is formed. The new government must appear to have civilians as much as possible, at least in the beginning.’
‘Good thinking, sir,’ endorsed the council.
‘That way, the common people will feel that the future will shift towards civilian rule eventually,’ a general remarked.
The chairman had, however, refrained from disclosing another element to crown the plan for the time being. Once the coup was accomplished, he would advise the new cabinet to promise economic reforms and a new era of wealth and prosperity to the nation. There would be a liberalization of the economy. He had already decided on allowing foreign investors into the country. He would instruct the new regime to actively solicit foreign investments, set up collaborations and huge development projects in major sectors like oil and natural gas, mining for minerals, construction of roadways and any other that would make it lucrative for the greedy foreigners, so that a women’s cry for democracy would sound inconvenient to them. He would look at Singapore, Japan, China, Korea and Australia. He would look at France. He would look at America. He would even look at India. Simultaneously, the new cabinet would also undertake a massive national reconciliation programme in the country…the scale of which, he was certain, would win over the monks, the scribes and the scholars, the educated and the illiterate, and with money coming their way, their political will. He envisaged the national programme attaining great popularity amongst the people, reducing Aung San Suu Kyi’s movement to meaningless babble and an embarrassment, eventually a threat to their newly acquired well-being. That was when she would have been contained.
He gloated diabolically over the checkmate in his scheme to render the opposition impotent, and toyed with the idea of amassing a fortune for himself and his henchmen in the near future. He, of course, would bracket the best contracts and think of those hush-hush islands, and bathe regularly in dolphin blood, as he did earlier, to stay young and enjoy his wealth. He had four billion dollars with him already in a Swiss bank, and properties in Germany and Austria.
‘Damn it,’ cursed the chairman. His instincts had warned him that the fates of the Iranian Shah and the Marcos of the world could befall him in time, but had delayed that with all his might for as long as he could. Shaking off the fleeting premonition, he reassured himself with the thought that the Burmese were still a meek and gullible people. He glanced at the solemn face of Aung San, staring down at him accusingly from its golden frame hanging on the wall. The chairman shrugged his shoulders and turned his back on the mute photograph. The protégé had been independent of his mentor, and he would rid himself of the mentor’s legacy as well if she pushed him to the wall.