Spymaster

Finds Himself Face To Face With One Most Powerful And Feared Men

AunG ZAW G ZAW

One retired major general gave me a sense of how deeply the infantry officers distrusted U Khin Nyunt and his underlings. The general said he always carried two pistols, even while working in the war office, when the spy chief was still a member of the ruling junta. When I asked why, he replied: “To defend myself,” leaving me to guess whom he felt threatened by.

During our meeting, U Khin Nyunt barely touched the food in front of him as he spoke about his time as a prisoner of the repressive regime he helped create. It was October 2004 when his elaborate intelligence apparatus was dismantled, shortly after he was removed from power and detained on charges of insubordination and corruption. “I was just a prisoner. We had nothing,” he told me of his years under house arrest. His wife, Daw Khin Win Shwe, sat next to him, nodding.

He said the family’s only regular source of income under house arrest was from selling orchids. When that wasn’t enough, they also sold personal belongings—mostly expensive items acquired during trips abroad.

Even at his lowest point, however, he never lost his wry sense of humor. When he and his wife were taken to Insein Prison in 2005 and a kangaroo court gave him a 44-year suspended sentence, he sarcastically said: “Thank you very much.”

But he didn’t take his new status as a victim of the regime lightly. Speaking in a rising voice, he told me about being cut off from the outside world, with only state-run media to keep him informed. “We had no telephone, no satellite TV, no Internet,” he said. Only after four years was he allowed to receive a visitor, his former mentor U Tint Swe, who had served as a minister under U Ne Win.

In keeping with his new, more spiritual outlook, U Khin Nyunt blamed his misfortune on bad karma from a past life, although most people in Myanmar would probably say he hasn’t even gotten what he deserved for his crimes in this life.

When I asked him if he thought he was the victim of a power struggle between the army and intelligence factions in the former regime, he waved the suggestion away, saying there was no such division. Before he could say more, his wife told him to be quiet.

During our more than hour-long conversation, he never criticized those who reduced him to his current humble circumstances. Others, however, are not so forgiving toward the generals who ruled Myanmar with an iron fist for so many years, destroying countless lives and dragging the country into poverty and international disgrace. Some of the innocent victims of military rule say that U Khin Nyunt and his former boss U Than Shwe should both apologize for the enormous harm they’ve done to the country—but nobody really expects that to ever happen, since Burma’s rulers have no tradition of showing contrition for their abuses of power.

Far from showing concern for the effects of his own misdeeds, U Khin Nyunt seemed, despite his apparent equanimity in the face of his fall from grace, more preoccupied with the injustices done to him. I felt that he still seethed with anger at the man who orchestrated this fall, who now enjoys a comfortable retirement in Naypyidaw, where he peacefully passes his time reading his favorite books. But he would never express this anger because U Than Shwe is, by all accounts, still very keenly aware of what is going on in the country since he handed power over to President U Thein Sein, who, like many others, still regularly pays obeisance to him. As U Htay Oo, the vice chairman of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, told me of the man who founded the party: “He was always a very strategic think, and still is.”

After spending a year trying to talk with U Khin Nyunt, I realized after our meeting that he was still as elusive as ever—and with good reason. For I knew that if he had opened up and said everything on his mind, there would have been hell to pay—not just for him, but also for those who have yet to atone for what they have done to Myanmar and its people.