“WE WANT THE PRESIDENT TO MAKE SOME SORT OF MEMORIAL TO HONOR THOSE WHO FELL DURING THE ‘88 UPRISING.”

–Daw Khin Htay Win, mother of Ma Win Maw Oo, one of the victims of the crackdown on the 1988 pro-democracy uprising

The eighth-standard girl’s final wish is a shocking one in Myanmar society, where a deeply rooted traditional belief has it that a person’s soul can’t rest in peace until his or her name is called out by the family to share their merit with the deceased.

“As a mother, I don’t want her soul to wander,” Daw Khin Htay Win said with a deep sigh. “But I have to respect her wish and my husband’s promise to her,” she added, explaining why the family hasn’t shared their merit with their daughter for the last 24 years.

Despite Myanmar’s recent democratic reforms, the family said they still don’t feel that they can call for merit to be bestowed upon their daughter’s soul this year.

“You cannot say democracy is now flourishing in our country,” U Win Kyu told The Irrawaddy recently, sitting in front of an enlarged picture of his daughter in the family’s one-room shack on the outskirts of Yangon.

“As long as we don’t have a president heartily elected by the people, we cannot call her name to bestow merit upon her soul,” he said. His wife nodded in agreement.

Both parents remember Ma Win Maw Oo as a “good” daughter who supplemented the family income by selling sugar-cane and traditional snacks in the streets. She wanted to be a singer inspired by the Myanmar pop star Hay Mar Ne Win (not related to then dictator Gen Ne Win). She hated injustice, so when the country’s people rose up against military rule in 1988, she knew she had to join.

“It was her burning sense of [the government’s] injustice that took her life,” said Daw Khin Htay Win.

Min Ko Naing, the most prominent student leader of the 1988 uprising, said that Ma Win Maw Oo and others who gave their lives for the cause of democracy did not do so in vain.

“If possible, I wish I could tell her we are still marching to the goal she wants by crossing the bridge she and other people built by sacrificing their lives,” he said.

Since Ma Win Maw Oo’s death, her family has had an extreme dislike of the army. But, as time goes by, their hatred towards Myanmar’s military men diminishes. U Win Kyu said he prefers to let bygones be bygones, and is not interested in seeking justice for his daughter.

“My daughter was brutally killed and I myself also used to have bitter feelings towards the army,” he said. “But now I’ve come to realize that it was her destiny to face that kind of death. We no longer hold a grudge.”

But they still want something.

“We want the president to make some sort of memorial to honor those who fell during the ‘88 uprising,” said Daw Khin Htay Win, adding that that would be the best way to assuage the grief of families who lost loved ones in the struggle to restore democracy.

“If it really happened, it would fill us with pride and joy,” she said.

In 1988, Myanmar hosted some of the largest demonstrations in recorded history. These began officially on Aug. 8, the supposedly auspicious “8/8/88” in a country run by “retired” generals, numerologists and soothsayers. Although Myanmar’s political volcano had been rumbling for at least a year, the world was still caught unawares by the sudden tumult in a country that had essentially been forgotten. Foreign press access was minimal. The story then got knocked off the world’s top slot when the C-130 Hercules carrying Pakistan’s president, Gen Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, mysteriously fell out of the sky on Aug. 17.

The failed 8/8/88 rebellion lasted nearly six weeks. It followed 26 years of bizarre and xenophobic misrule by strongman Gen Ne Win. Late that year, when there was still some lingering hope of change, an old Asia hand predicted it would take at least as long to put right the damage the old general had wrought. As we look back from 25 years on, that prediction has turned out to be grimly true. A quarter century down the road, can any lessons be learned from the failures of Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement in 1988?