THE FACE OF RESISTANCE
Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s Fight for Freedom
AUNG Z AW
The Face of Resistance
Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma’s Fight for Freedom
aung zaw
mekong press
Contents
Acknowledgments. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
The Lady.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 The Hero’s Daughter Returns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Two Lost Decades.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Free at Last. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 April 1 By-Elections. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
The Comrades.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 The National League for Democracy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 88 Generation Students. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 The Next Generation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 The Social Activists.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 The Media. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Ethnic Groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 The Sangha. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 The International Community. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 The United Nations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
The Unfinished Struggle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 The Thein Sein Government: A Turning Point?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Suu Kyi Takes Center Stage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 Homecoming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Looking Forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Index of Names. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
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1
The Lady
The Hero’s Daughter Returns “We want democracy!” my student activist colleagues and I chanted as we marched toward Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon. It was August 26, 1988, and we were on our way to hear Aung San Suu Kyi’s first public speech, an event that would mark one of the most significant political turning points in the history of Burma. At the time, however, we knew very little of the slim, graceful woman who has since become a pro-democracy icon and who has come to be referred to as “The Lady.” We knew that Suu Kyi was the daughter of General Aung San, Burma’s beloved military hero who led the struggle for independence from Great Britain, but was assassinated just before that goal was realized. We also knew that she lived abroad and was married to Michael Aris, a British scholar and Tibetologist. We knew little else. “Can she speak Burmese?” asked one colleague. The answer was yes, but none of us had been sure until two days earlier when Suu Kyi had visited Rangoon General Hospital—the site of a massacre that had occurred on August 10, 1988, when soldiers had opened fire on nurses and activists— and spoke briefly in Burmese to the people gathered outside. We were also unsure of what a woman who had lived comfortably overseas since the age
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2 | the lady of fifteen would have to say to the suffering people of Burma and young student activists such as me. Regardless of what language she spoke, the real question was whether she could relate to the causes for which we had been fighting: democracy and human rights for the people of Burma. Feeling curious but skeptical as we joined the hundreds of thousands of people gathered outside the pagoda and waited to hear Suu Kyi speak, I reflected on the events that had seasoned me as an activist and brought me to Shwedagon that day. In 1985, I began to spend time on weekends with a group of intellectuals who were much older than me, most in their fifties and sixties. Some were famous, well-respected poets, writers, editors, publishers, and former political prisoners. These were the people who would later inspire me to become a journalist, and they sparked my interest in Burma’s political struggle. Among others, they included Tin Moe, the late poet laureate of Burma, Thaw Ka, Win Tin, and Dagon Taya, a well-respected writer and poet who had been a student activist in the 1930s, as well as a friend of General Aung San. We began holding regular discussions on Burmese and world literature, and the group became known as the Insein Sarpay Wine, or Insein Literature Circle, because it had been established in Insein Township, the area of Rangoon in which I lived. Many respected literary gurus were invited to address the weekly sessions, and we also met informally throughout the week. In the mornings we would sit in a teashop and share our thoughts on literature or the capital’s latest political gossip, then, in the evenings we would go to a liquor store where I saw firsthand how some of Burma’s famous writers became heavy drinkers. They did not stop until the last drop had gone. At first, we carefully avoided sensitive political topics as the gatherings were illegal and we were worried about the possibility of regime agents and informers monitoring our activities. On one occasion a police officer, a writer himself, attended a meeting. His presence panicked some of my colleagues and that day our discussion focused on literature and nothing else. Despite our attempts otherwise, we soon discovered that it would be
the hero’s daughter returns | 3
impossible to ignore political issues. At one meeting, some former political prisoners who had come back from Coco Island Prison, where they had spent years, raised eyebrows when they brought up the topic of armed struggle. But, despite the fact that the country was stuck in the rut of General Ne Win’s “Burmese Way to Socialism,” I did not believe that armed struggle was a valid option, because, unlike many militant students at the time, I did not believe it would bring about the desired outcome. By 1987, everyone was yearning for change in Burma, and although no one knew when it would occur, many were predicting an uprising in the near future. In September, the regime announced the demonetization of all twenty-five, thirty-five, and seventy-five kyat banknotes without compensation, so we attended a small protest, and watched as other students set a government vehicle on fire. The government quickly closed the schools, but not before everyone could see that many students were now ready to go to extreme measures to resist the regime. As a twenty-year-old botany student at Hlaing Campus (also known as Regional College Two), I became part of an underground student network set up to resist the authoritarian rule of Ne Win’s regime, in an effort to help reverse the economic and social hardships it had inflicted on the people of Burma. It was at this time that I also received my first taste of underground publishing. A friend who had been a student activist in the 1970s and was a former political prisoner showed me the antiquated printing cylinder he used to produce underground antigovernment leaflets. This crude device, which worked like a machine rolling out dough, was strictly illegal—anyone found in possession of one was likely to be given a prison sentence of several years. But we were young and idealistic, and believed that students involved in politics should welcome arrest by the oppressive government we were fighting. At the time, being thrown in prison was not only an act of defiance towards the regime, it was also something of an initiation that one had to experience to earn the respect of fellow activists. My colleagues and I were finally arrested in March 1988, and the harsh reality of what it actually meant to be a political prisoner in Burma was driven home to us one blow at a time.
4 | the lady In the crackdown around the university protests in 1988, my arrest was predictable. In March, a brawl broke out between students and local residents in a teashop near the Rangoon Institute of Technology (rit). One of those arrested was the son of a local official, and when he was released from police custody, politically active students turned the situation into an antigovernment protest. The government sent in riot police who opened fire on the students. The next day we rushed to the campus, and we saw the blood and heard the stories of the previous night’s brutality. Revolution was in the air and everyone was now looking for an opportunity to rise up and confront the regime. On March 15, 1988, my colleagues and I were sitting in a teashop when we heard that a handful of fellow students were demonstrating and chanting slogans on the rit campus, so we merged with a group that was marching off to join them. The riot police had known that we were coming and had blocked the road into the campus. I walked with three other students to speak with the officer in charge, but he was not interested in talking or in letting our group pass to join the other protesters. The officer waved his pistol and several riot police standing behind him aimed their M16 rifles at us. “Do you want me to order them to shoot you now?” he asked. Then, more than twenty military trucks filled with soldiers appeared on the road—a sign that the army had taken over control of the situation from the police. The soldiers looked exhausted, having just been recalled from the front lines of the many ethnic conflicts in the border regions in order to reinforce the troops in Rangoon. Young officers no older than me stared at us as the trucks passed by. One of them pointed at his pistol menacingly. Realizing how serious the soldiers were about using deadly force to stop us from proceeding, we agreed to retreat to Hlaing Campus. Once back in relative safety, we immediately began to recruit students to join future demonstrations, and on March 17, we staged another protest rally that drew all of the students from the classrooms. We marched around the campus chanting, “Down with the government!” and I joined a group of students who stormed a room where loudspeakers and amplifiers were stored, and after negotiating with a handful of professors, returned to the protest with the equipment.