The American Embassy
Rangoon
Ryan sipped his coffee before he took the guard. He had heard gunfire a few moments ago and was convinced of another tense day in Rangoon. He counted the days left before he flew out of the city to the Philippines for his vacation. He was sickened and terrified by the recent events in the city, and had hoped to get away from the calamity at the earliest. Most embassies, including his own, were flying out staff and citizens from the country, fearing another bloodbath. He now foreboded a prelude to an even bloodier confrontation between the conflicting forces in the country.
‘Good morning, sir,’ he greeted and saluted Undersecretary Mark Stevens who walked into the embassy. The marine sergeant then took up command of the guard at the gates of the embassy.
‘Sarge!’ shouted a guard at him an hour later, pointing northwards of the embassy. ‘Do you see what I see?’
‘They’re military trucks, aren’t they?’ Sergeant Ryan queried as he squinted in the glare of the sun. He counted a convoy of 10 army trucks.
‘Yup,’ acknowledged the guard.
‘Hey, what’s that?’ shouted another guard, pointing southwards. ‘Some kind of pilgrimage to the Sule?’
‘Jesus Christ! I’ll be damned!’ exclaimed Sergeant Ryan. ‘That’s no pilgrimage; that’s the Lady Suu Kyi’s party!’ The sergeant had recognized the red and orange banners, and the unmistakable symbol of the surging peacock.
‘Heck, I reckon there’s going to be some kind of scrap with soldier boys yonder there, and they’re sure as hell coming this way,’ the first guard said.
‘Alright guys, whatever it is, it spells trouble,’ Sergeant Ryan decided. ‘Get in now and lock the gates pronto while I go brief Mr Stevens.’
The sergeant rushed to the flight of stairs in the embassy while his men below hurriedly closed the gates, edgy now at the distinct chant of the crowd approaching the embassy. The army trucks had screeched to a halt in front of the embassy, cordoning the premises of the building when Sergeant Ryan barged into Undersecretary Stevens’ office. Stevens had heard the screech of tyres and the audible chant of the demonstrators.
‘Aung San Suu Kyi! Aung San Suu Kyi!’ the chant growing louder and louder as the crowd ran to the embassy.
‘Trouble, I suppose,’ Stevens remarked. ‘Somehow it’s always us they choose. Why not the others, I wonder?’
‘Poor sods!’ Sergeant Ryan hissed under his breath as he saw the commotion of streaming bodies, followed by the soldiers who began shooting.
‘They’re doing it!’ exclaimed Undersecretary Stevens, recoiling in horror as the crash of rifle fire struck a resonant chord with the screams of the demonstrators.
‘This is a massacre,’ Stevens said. ‘I’d better make my report.’
‘Gosh!’ exclaimed the sergeant, transfixed by the steady reports of rifle fire. ‘How can they do this to their own people?’
‘They’ve done it before, time and again, Sergeant,’ observed Stevens. ‘Slaughter is nothing new to them.’
Burton Levin, the US ambassador, saw army troops on rooftops picking off students and shooting those fleeing, and was stunned when an American diplomat was shot at while driving through the commotion.
‘By God, they’re being picked off like rabbits!’ he exclaimed.
The diplomat survived. The United States diplomatic staff helped students and political activists who managed to get through the embassy gates.
Elsewhere on Merchant Street, the Indian ambassador, Dr I.P. Singh, organized an emergency hospital in the library of the embassy.
A British military attaché was hit with rifle butts in the middle of Strand Street.
In a rare diplomatic condemnation, the Japanese ambassador, Ohtaka Hiroshi, asked the authorities to stop the crackdown on civilians after the first news of the shootings broke out.
On the 12th, the Butcher resigned on grounds of ill health.
The 13th left many protestors confused but jubilant that the Butcher was no longer in power. But the Tatmadaw still made its presence felt, exercising caution now with demonstrators, particularly in neighbourhoods totally under the control of the demonstrators. On the 19th, pressure to form a civilian government led to the appointment of Dr Maung Maung as head of government. Ne Win’s biographer and a legal scholar, he was the only non-military entity to serve in the Burma Socialist Programme Party. The appointment briefly resulted in a lull.
However, demonstrations resumed on the 22nd. About 1,00,000 people—including Buddhist monks—protested in Mandalay. About 50,000 demonstrated in Sittwe. Large marches took place from Taunggyi and Moulmein to distant ethnic states, where brutal military campaigns were conducted. Two days later, doctors, monks, musicians, actors, lawyers, army veterans and government office workers joined the protests.
On the 26th, Aung San Suu Kyi addressed half a million people at the Shwedagon Pagoda. It was at this point that she became a symbol of struggle in the eyes of the Western world.
Ne Win waited.
*
Phase one of the plan had been implemented. It was time now for the second phase of the plan to be put in motion.
The Burmese Socialist Program Party announced they would be organizing an election, but the opposition parties called for the immediate resignation of the party from government. They also rejected U Maung Maung, and demanded an interim government to organize elections.
Ne Win rejected both demands.
Protesters again took to the streets on 12 September as expected by him. Aung San Suu Kyi’s movement had relied on three expectations. First, daily demonstrations to coerce the regime to yield to their demands; second, encouraging soldiers to defect; and third, emoting an appeal to an international audience that awoke in August, with the hope that United Nations or United States troops would arrive to arbiter. By mid-September, the protests grew more violent and lawless.
Ne Win struck. As designed by the Burmese Machiavelli, his police and army began fraternizing with the protesters in the movement. Soon, the imbedded soldiers deliberately led protesters into skirmishes which his army won.
On 18 September 1988, the Tatmadaw retook power in the country and established the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), imposing more draconian measures than Ne Win had imposed. Of the 21 members of the council, not even one was a civilian. The SLORC imposed martial law and protests were violently broken up. Tatmadaw troops went through cities throughout Burma, indiscriminately firing on protestors. It is estimated that within the first week of securing power, 1,000 students, monks and schoolchildren were killed, and another 500 were killed whilst protesting outside the United States Embassy—recorded by a cameraman nearby who distributed the footage to the world’s media. Protestors were also pursued into the jungle, and some students took up training on the country’s borders with Thailand.
*
Yangon
January 1989
Aung San Suu Kyi’s mother had died on 27 December 1988. Throngs of supporters had showed up at the funeral. She criticized the brutality of the government and demanded democratic reforms. The generals realized that here was no longer a bud they could nip. The lotus had reached full bloom. Her meetings became more frequent and more provocative. She was displaying her mettle to the generals. During a meeting on 5th April, she was placed in front of a firing squad, but just before they were going to shoot, a senior officer stopped them. She was given the choice of staying in Burma under house arrest or leave and enjoy her freedom, never to return to the country.
Aung San Suu Kyi stayed.
The regime did the next predictable thing. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest in July 1989. The witch-hunt then commenced on schedule. The New Light of Myanmar, the state owned-paper, began splashing smear campaigns on the NLD, questioning the integrity of her followers and the leader of the movement. The intelligence arm resorted to untraceable acts of violence. Some members of the movement disappeared.
Aung Gyi and Tin Oo found themselves in jail again with other leaders of the movement with harsh sentences, and the chase of the dissidents began. The oracle of the erstwhile chairman had been above reproach; the dissidents and the students were heading for the Karen camps.
Kawthoolei!
*
India, 1990
The events in Yangon had interested the Karens as well—those in the jungles and those out of the country. The guerrillas on the southern hill tracks of the country thought their camps might get a needy respite from the attentions of the Burmese Army while it lavished its heat on the movement of Aung San Suu Kyi, allowing them a chance to repair the damage caused by the intermittent Burmese shelling. Unlike the guerrillas in Myanmar, the Karens abroad thought it possible that they might be able to visit relatives and set foot once again on the soil where they were born.
‘Simon, I’d like to visit Burma and stay there for a while,’ Dora expressed her wish.
‘You won’t get beyond the airport, Mom, even if you’re allowed to land,’ replied Simon.
He had been following the reports keenly and often thought about the other branch of his relatives in Burma, and had always wondered how they were getting on. Communication had ceased and Simon accepted that relationships tended to lose their lustre when time stepped in, and so, he distanced them over 20 years and more. They, too, would be struggling for a livelihood in an invidious environment like he was—with the exception that while his was just economic, theirs was political as well, and probably harder, since most of them would have returned to their villages.
‘Why? It’ll be a while only before Aung San Suu Kyi forms a democratic government in Burma,’ she countered.
‘Aung San Suu Kyi is the best thing that’s happened in Burma since the death of her father, Mom, but do you think the generals will give in easily?’ he asked mildly. ‘Don’t forget that they’ve placed her under house arrest already.’
‘The army might revolt,’ she offered. ‘After all, she is the daughter of Aung San, the father of the army.’
‘That,’ he concurred, ‘is an interesting angle; the younger fellows who have not yet prospered. Hmm…but they, too, would need a leader amongst them to stir them into action.’
‘Aung San Suu Kyi might be able to persuade their conscience if she can get to them, but I don’t know how she’d get anywhere near their barracks. The generals won’t allow it.’
Simon pursued the opportunity of his mother accepting the futility of dreams of returning to Burma.
‘Mom, you’ve heard of that old saying—“Old wine in new bottle”—haven’t you? It’s the same gang with a different label. They’re not even using a new bottle; they don’t have one. It’s the old man Ne Win still pulling strings behind the curtain and his puppets have nowhere to go,’ he commented.
This was not the French or the American Revolution, nor did Aung San Suu Kyi have suicidal firebrands like Che Guevara, Simon introspected. It was apparent to him that in order to disable the regime, a nationwide upheaval was called for; an upheaval where the armed forces, the police, the ecclesiasts and the academicians were in consonance with its people—including the ethnic groups. It was the only way in which Aung San Suu Kyi could affect a change in the country and reconstitute a government. And that process, Simon realized sadly, demanded more blood because the regime was past reason.
What she seemed to have, thought Simon, was her own incredible courage, a very frightened populace, several thousand educated brave people who bore no arms, and a sense of un-relatedness with the ethnic peoples that was any match to the guns of the generals. And if she pushed the generals any further, Simon was certain that they would claw back with the ferocity of a trapped, desperate animal. Possibly foreboding danger to her life, he feared.
*
27 May 1990
To Simon’s surprise, the generals finally called for elections with the confidence that Aung San Suu Kyi’s following would have been intimidated, and her party would be leaderless as she bravely bore the isolation of house arrest. Amazingly, the gamble of the generals backfired! Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD won a resounding victory in the elections, carrying the verdict of a people to the military regime. The game was over for the generals, or so she and her party thought in their premature and short-lived joy. Their backs to the wall now, the stunned SLORC did the only thing they could do. They ignobly reneged on their promise to the people and annulled the election’ results, and extended Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest.
The voice of national consensus was ingloriously castigated and denied its constitutional rights to government. In Yangon, a curtain had descended upon Aung San Suu Kyi—a curtain lacquered with the guilt of the generals, the impotence of a people and the wantonness of a young, uncivilized army.