Burma on the Brink

The rickshaw driver led me out back. We strode through a sooty kitchen to a concrete staircase and down to a small, windowless basement where eight young women sat in opposing rows. Each brandishing two rounded wooden clubs, they were cudgelling small sheets of bamboo into impossibly thin, opaque squares to be slipped between the gold leaves that were being battered into existence upstairs. Their workplace was a reverberating inferno.

“Ears break,” murmured the rickshaw man as we climbed back above ground. But the workers exhibited a Zen-like patience as they focused on their single, repeated task. Under the totalitarian regime, there is no protection for them. The dominant religion—Rosie and the Shan people’s Christianity notwithstanding—is Buddhism and it is, perhaps, their main source of comfort.

The governing generals, loath to relinquish their power, are openly critical of the dangers of democracy. “The Western nations’ theory of democracy first, democracy second, and democracy third has not only failed in many developing countries but has created instability and chaos,” states a Myanmar government publication. “It is regretful that the development of the people of Myanmar is being hampered by the same nations expressing their desire to bestow Myanmar people with human rights, but who are in reality depriving the Myanmar people of their rights to development and prosperity.”

The imposition of increasingly punitive sanctions by many Western nations since 1991 has isolated Burma’s 42.5 million people from the rest of the world and prevented the country’s economy from keeping pace with its neighbours. True, Burma’s teak forests continue to be stripped for export to China and Thailand’s furniture factories. Burmese rubies and jade manage to slip through the barricade and onto Western fingers and throats. And there is always the heroin trade. But the bumpy two-lane highway between Rangoon and Mandalay is sparsely populated with trucks. Only a few barges travel the Irrawaddy River between the nation’s two major cities, and most of those are carrying old-growth teak trunks.

(As George Orwell, who served from 1922 to 1927 with the Indian Imperial Police in Burma, lamented in his first novel Burmese Days: “All the forests shaved flat—chewed into wood pulp for the News of the World or sawn into gramophone cases.” Interestingly, Burmese Days is widely available, an approved text in this censored land, much as Graham Greene’s The Quiet American is ubiquitous in Vietnam. Both books flay the imperial conquerors and paint the oppressed societies in sympathetic brushstrokes.)

In the marketplaces, lacquerware peddlers and jewel merchants display their beautiful fripperies, but few Western tourists buy anything. Since Burma is virtually disconnected from the world banking system, visitors usually bring just enough cash to live on. The few atm machines that exist are idle. Traveller’s cheques and credit cards are rarely accepted. And any tourist who carries a wad of cash becomes a target for robbers.

At a governmental level, Burma is the author of its own misfortune. In 1962, just fourteen years after Burma won independence from Britain, General Ne Win seized power and, for the most part, closed the country to the outside world. The cadre of younger generals who replaced the aging Ne Win, popularly called the “Puppet Master,” in 1988 were only marginally less dictatorial. However, the current leader, General Khin Nyunt, initiated a breakthrough of sorts by promising, in 2000, to pursue a seven-step road map to democracy.

The promise was made just two days after new U.S. sanctions — including a ban on all imports from Burma—came into effect. But it was not until May of this year—shortly after Razali Ismail, the United Nations’ special envoy to Burma, held talks with Nyunt and nld leader Suu Kyi—that the first step towards democracy and national reconciliation was taken.

On May 17, the convention opened at a military complex (and behind checkpoints designed to keep out the uninvited), in the town of Nyaung Hnapin, forty kilometres north of Rangoon. Although the snld and Suu Kyi’s nld were missing, a reported 1,076 delegates, including representatives from seven of the ten political parties recognized by the government, did attend.

The chairman of the assembly, Lieutenant General Thein Sein, promised a “disciplined, flourishing democracy desired by the people,” though no timetable was on offer. A code of conduct cautioned representatives against storming out of meetings or making derogatory comments. To ensure that everyone stuck with the plan, the government issued a document that featured “104 principles” to be followed by the delegates. These “principles” amounted to the junta’s agenda, and made this first step appear uncomfortably close to a goose step. Thirteen groups promptly unveiled their own agendas, proposing stronger autonomy for state assemblies and the decentralization of powers—including the right to raise local armies.