I saw Rakhine State for the first time from the air. It was 2014 and I was flying from Thandwe in the south to Sittwe, where this story has its climax. The Bay of Bengal was all manner of blue, the rivers running from the mountains were like silver threads and the land itself, almost empty of roads, was a deep, extravagant green. It was beautiful.
I was on a tour of exploration then. Myanmar had only been open to the world for a few years. Hillary Clinton, the American secretary of state, visited in 2011. Barack Obama, the American president, visited in 2012. Those who had left the country, like me, were finally returning.
I was born in Rangoon eight months after the 1962 military coup that led to fifty years of military rule. Although I left with my parents as a tiny baby, I have always felt a strong connection to the land of my birth. Especially as my grandparents and great-grandmother remained in Burma until I was in my late teens. The opening up of Myanmar was of great significance to me. On the one hand, I was excited to see this forbidden country; on the other, I was frightened by what I might find, or by what might happen to me while I was there.
My fear was based on the experience of my parents and grandparents. My mother fell pregnant with me when she was a masters student and tutor at Rangoon University. On 7 July 1962, she had terrible morning sickness and so stayed home. She missed the massacre of students at the hand of army troops on 7 and 8 July. My parents could hear the gunfire from their house.
As a child growing up in Canada, I learned to look forward to the blue aerogrammes from my grandparents, written on my grandmother’s old manual typewriter. The aerogramme paper was incredibly thin and light and called onionskin. Postage was by weight and every ounce counted. I remember my mother sending back parcels of things my grandparents could not get: bras, golf balls, socks, toffee and medicines. They badly wanted light bulbs, but my mother knew these wouldn’t survive the trip. We never visited Burma ourselves, as my parents had hoped we would. We weren’t allowed visas to return.
My grandmother left Burma after my grandfather died, settling ultimately with my uncle in Seattle, USA. When my grandmother finally came to Canada – and I got to meet her for the first time – she brought few possessions and was in need of supplies. I remember we took her to a shopping mall so she could buy makeup. I was about Hasina’s age then. All of a sudden my grandmother stopped dead in the mall, her face pale. ‘I’ve forgotten my ID card,’ she told my mother in a panicked voice. ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ my own mother reassured her, ‘we don’t have those here.’
I saw the consequences of Myanmar’s sad history. Once a kingdom ruled by the Konbaung dynasty, ‘Burma’ was colonised in 1886 by the British, who promptly exiled the royal family and ruled the country as a province of India. During the colonial period, all non-British in Burma were treated as second-class citizens. Burma was granted independence after the Second World War. The new country was immediately plunged into civil war. By the early 1960s, the military decided to step in to keep control.
Military rule was a disaster for the ordinary people of Myanmar. It was the reason my parents chose to leave. The country changed. What was once prosperous became poor. The government, in fear of further student protests, dismantled the education system. Books, art, the news and movies were all heavily censored. Parents stopped their children from reading books, because they were frightened reading about new ideas would get their children into trouble. Phones and especially mobile phones were priced so high that ordinary people could not afford them. Owning a mobile phone was equivalent to owning a luxury car. Over those fifty years, Myanmar became what is known as a pariah state – an outcast cut off from the rest of the world.
Fifty years is a long time to be afraid. Which is why it was so exciting for me to visit Myanmar in the early part of this decade – things looked like they were changing. It seemed for the better.
Sadly, while some people in the country have enjoyed greater freedoms, others have not. Their experience of political change has been one of violence and terror and loss. The Rohingya have been victims of this violence in Myanmar. There are others including the Chin and the Kachin.
Flying across the state, it is easy to see one of the reasons why things are so tough in Rakhine. It is a poverty-stricken state. While the green swathes directly beneath my flight path were incredibly beautiful, they also showed that there were hardly any factories or businesses and with no roads, it would be hard to get crops and fish to market. There is no economic buffer, no safety net. I’d like to say things are changing, but as I write this, there are reports of Arakan Army activity in the state. It would seem the people of Rakhine will have to wait for peace.