My Last Conversation WithAung San Suu Kyi

As the people of Burma rise up again, we have had a rare sighting of Aung San Suu Kyi. There she stood, at the back gate of her lakeside home in Rangoon, where she is under house arrest. She looked very thin. For years, people would brave the roadblocks just to pass by her house and be reassured by the sound of her playing the piano. She told me she would lie awake listening for voices outside and to the thumping of her heart. "I found it difficult to breathe lying on my back after I became ill, she said."
That was a decade ago. Stealing into her house, as I did then, required all the ingenuity of the Burmese underground. My film-making partner David Munro and I were greeted by her assistant, Win Htein, who had spent six years in prison, five of them in solitary confinement. Yet his face was open and his handshake warm. He led us into the house, a stately pile fallen on hard times. The garden with its ragged palms falls down to Inya Lake and to a trip wire, a reminder that this was the prison of a woman elected by a landslide in 1990, a democratic act extinguished by generals in ludicrous uniforms.
Aung San Suu Kyi wore silk and had orchids in her hair. She is a striking, glamorous figure whose face in repose shows the resolve that has seen her along her heroic journey.
We sat in a room dominated by a wall-length portrait of Aung San, independent Burma's assassinated liberation fighter, the father she never knew.
"What do I call you?" I asked. "Well, if you can't manage the whole thing, friends call me Suu."
"The regime is always saying you are finished, but here you are, hardly finished. How is that?"
"It's because democracy is not finished in Burma . . . Look at the courage of the people [on the streets], of those who go on working for democracy, those who have already been to prison. They know that any day they are likely to be put back there and yet they do not give up."
"But how do you reclaim the power you won at the ballot box with brute power confronting you?" I asked.
"In Buddhism we are taught there are four basic ingredients for success. The first is the will to want it, then you must have the right kind of attitude, then perseverance, then wisdom . . ." "But the other side has all the guns?"
"Yes, but it's becoming more and more difficult to resolve problems by military means. It's no longer acceptable."
We talked about the willingness of foreign business to come to Burma, especially tour companies, and of the hypocrisy of "friends" in the West. I read her a British Foreign Office press release: "Through commercial contacts with democratic nations such as Britain, the Burmese people will gain experience of democratic principles."
"Not in the least bit," she responded, "because new investments only help a small elite to get richer and richer. Forced labour goes on all over the country, and a lot of the projects are aimed at the tourist trade and are worked by children."
"People I've spoken to regard you as something of a saint, a miracle worker."
"I'm not a saint and you'd better tell the world that!"
"Where are your sinful qualities, then?"
"Er, I've got a short temper."
"What happened to your piano?"
"You mean when the string broke? In this climate pianos do deteriorate and some of the keys were getting stuck, so I broke a string because I was pumping the pedal too hard."
"You lost it ... you exploded?"
"I did."
"It's a very moving scene. Here you are, all alone, and you get so angry you break the piano."
"I told you, I have a hot temper."
"Weren't there times when, surrounded by a hostile force, cut off from your family and friends you were actually terrified?"
"No, because I didn't feel hostile towards the guards surrounding me. Fear comes out of hostility and I felt none towards them."
"But didn't that produce a terrible aloneness ...?"
"Oh, I have my meditation, and I did have a radio . . . And loneliness comes from inside, you know. People who are free and who live in big cities suffer from it, because it comes from inside."
"What were the small pleasures you'd look forward to?"
"I'd look forward to a good book being read on 'Off the Shelf' on the BBC and of course to my meditation .... I didn't enjoy my exercises so much; I'd never been a very athletic type."
"Was there a point when you had to conquer fear?"
"Yes. When I was small in this house. I wandered around in the darkness until I knew where all the demons might be . . . and they weren't there."
For several years after that encounter with Aung San Suu Kyi I tried to phone the number she gave me. The phone would ring, then go dead. One day I got through.
"Thank you so much for the books," she said. "It has been a joy to read widely again." (I had sent her a collection of T S Eliot, her favourite, and Jonathan Coe's political romp What a Carve Up!.) I asked her what was happening outside her house. "Oh, the road is blocked and they [the military] are all over the street . . ."
"Do you worry that you might be trapped in a terrible stalemate?"
"I am really not fond of that expression," she replied rather sternly. "People have been on the streets. That's not a stalemate. Ethnic people, like the Karen, are fighting back. That's not a stalemate. The defiance is there in people's lives, day after day. You know, even when things seem still on the surface, there's always movement underneath. It's like a frozen lake; and beneath our lake, we are progressing, bit by bit."
"What do you mean exactly?"
"What I am saying is that, no matter the regime's physical power, in the end they can't stop the people; they can't stop freedom. We shall have our time."

By John Pilger

Burmese Troops Gun Down Protestors

Over the past two days, the Burmese military regime has brutally suppressed large anti-junta protests in the major cities of Rangoon and Mandalay, breaking up crowds with tear gas, batons, rubber bullets and live rounds. The state media reported that nine people died in clashes on Thursday, but reports from activists, diplomats and a handful of foreign journalists suggest the figure could be considerably higher.

The crackdown began on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning when troops raided monasteries, including the Shwedagon Pagoda and Sule Pagoda in Rangoon, arresting hundreds of Buddhist monks. Five key monasteries, which have been centres of opposition, were declared no-go areas and sealed off to prevent protestors from gathering.

In one incident, soldiers forced their way into the Ngwe Kyar monastery in South Okkalapa, a suburb of Rangoon, Wednesday night and arrested about 100 monks. Thousands of people gathered in nearby streets and began pelting the troops with stones. Eight people, including a high school student, died when soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons.

Up to 70,000 people defied a military ban and marched in Rangoon on Thursday. Protests reportedly took place in Mandalay and other centres, including Sittwe, Pakokku and Moulmein. In central Rangoon, near the Sule Pagoda, some 20 truckloads of troops and police set up roadblocks. As protestors threw stones and bottles, the security forces responded with shots and tear gas. Eyewitnesses said the military gave people 10 minutes to disperse and started firing.

Among the dead was a Japanese journalist, Kenji Nagai, 50, who was photographing the clashes. The state media claimed that a stray bullet had killed him, but amateur video shown on Japan’s Fuji television showed him being deliberately shot.

Reports of protests yesterday were scanty. The country’s main Internet connection had been cut, blocking the stream of photographs, video and reports that were reaching the outside world in previous days. The mobile phone network was also not functioning. While officials reported damage to an undersea cable, there is little doubt that the generals have ordered the censorship.
A correspondent for the London-based Times described smaller protests near the Sule Pagoda and clashes of young demonstrators with heavily-armed security forces. “It was a loose, ragged, frustrating day in Rangoon, a day of baton charges, beatings and many rumours of much worse. I saw soldiers levelling guns, firing volleys of hard rubber pellets, as well as chases and arrests,” he wrote.

Agence France Presse reported that up to 10,000 people were involved in protests yesterday in central Rangoon and repeatedly confronted troops and police. A separate group of around 500 marched through the streets and were applauded by onlookers. In Mandalay, thousands of young people on motorbikes rode down a major thoroughfare toward a blockade set up by security forces, but were driven back.

The police round up of opposition leaders, including members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi, is continuing. An NLD official told the media that two prominent leaders, Hla Pe and Myint Thei, were arrested in raids on their homes. Members of the 88 Generation Students Group, an organisation formed last year by veterans of the 1988 protests against the junta, have been detained.
International hypocrisy

Students, young monks and ordinary people are displaying great courage in confronting the junta and its troops, and demanding basic democratic rights and better living standards. However, the limited character of the opposition’s political perspective is underscored by its appeals to the UN and major powers to intervene.

The condemnations of the junta by US President George Bush, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other leaders reek of hypocrisy. The Bush administration and its allies are no more concerned about democratic rights in Burma than in Iraq, where the US military is every bit as ruthless as its Burmese counterparts in suppressing popular opposition to its continued occupation.

Washington’s objection to the Burmese junta is not its suppression of democratic rights, but its close alignment with China. Over the past week, the American media in particular has tried to pin the blame for the junta’s violence on the failure of Beijing to take sufficiently strong action. A Washington Post editorial on Thursday, for instance, was entitled “Save Burma: Will China and Russia give green light to a slaughter of monks?” It criticised the two powers for blocking a UN resolution condemning the violence in Burma.

No doubt, China and Russia are cynically supporting repressive regimes to advance their economic and strategic interests. But they are not alone. In the case of Burma, India quietly dropped its criticism of the junta and is seeking to extend its economic and diplomatic influence in the country. Burma’s largest trading partner is not China, but neighbouring Thailand, which is ruled by a military dictatorship with tacit US support. The Bush administration’s campaign on Burma is not motivated by concerns for ordinary Burmese, but is aimed at establishing a pro-US regime in Rangoon as part of its strategic encirclement of China.

Moreover, one can safely predict that the present media adulation for the protestors would rapidly change if the demonstrations and marches began to take a more radical direction. Unlike the protests of 1988, which involved significant sections of workers, the recent demonstrations have been, to date, largely dominated by monks and students. The entry of substantial sections of working people into political action would not only shake the junta, but would reverberate through the region and internationally.

Far from being endowed with great strength, the Burmese junta is acting from a position of weakness. Despised by the majority of the population, the generals are confronting a profound economic crisis. Despite the development of offshore gas fields, the economy is plagued by inflation, which is running at an estimated annual rate of 20 percent, and chronic shortages of investment and foreign exchange. Economic analysts generally treat the official claims of high growth rates with scepticism. In 2003, the regime declared a growth figure of 5.1 percent, even as it confronted a private banking crisis and banned the export of six major crops.
The gulf between the pampered lifestyle of the generals and the poverty confronting the majority of the population is staggering. More than 90 percent of the population live on less than 300,000 kyat (about $US300) a year. An estimated 43 percent of children under the age of five are malnourished. On average, nearly 70 percent of household income is spent of food—that is, surviving from one day to the next. Spending on health care and education amounts to just 1.4 percent of GDP—less than half that of Indonesia, the region’s next lowest spender.

The latest protests were triggered last month by the junta’s decision to slash price subsidies on petrol, diesel and gas, increasing transport costs and sending the price of basic items skyrocketting. Opposition leaders, however, have not sought to mobilise the social discontent of ordinary working people to bring down the junta, but rather deliberately limited the protest demands.

A statement released by the 88 Generation Students and the All Burma Monks Alliance last week listed just three demands: the release of political prisoners, economic well-being and national reconciliation. Like Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD, these groups are seeking to use the protests and international diplomacy to pressure the regime into dialogue and a compromise power-sharing arrangement. The NLD’s basic program, which consists of implementing IMF-dictated reforms to open Burma up to foreign investors, would be just as catastrophic for ordinary working people as the junta’s economic policies.

The conclusion that some of the veterans of the 1988 protests appear to have drawn is that their previous demands were too radical. In fact, the opposite is the case. In 1988, the junta was reeling under the impact of strikes in the oil industry, transport, postal services, telecommunications and factories, as well as widespread protests. It managed to cling to power by striking a deal with the NLD to end the protests in return for elections in 1990. Having stabilised their rule, the generals simply ignored the outcome of the poll, suppressed the opposition and continued in power.

Myanmar monks stage biggest anti-junta march

YANGON (Reuters) - At least 5,000 monks and nuns, applauded by thousands of onlookers, marched in Yangon on Sunday, the largest demonstration yet in Myanmar in a rare wave of protests against the ruling generals.
A day after a dramatic appearance of support for the marchers by detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, monks prayed at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, devoutly Buddhist Myanmar's holiest shrine, then marched through the city.

About 100 nuns joined one band of more than 2,000 monks, then marched to the centre of the former capital.

It was one of five protest marches by monks in the city and there were at least two in Mandalay, a major centre of the monkhood, ahead of a quarterly summit of the generals who have ruled the former Burma for 45 years.

There were no signs of trouble at Sunday's protests.

Plainclothes police kept watch, but there were no uniformed officers or soldiers in sight and people on the streets applauded as the marchers passed.

Protest marches by monks have become more regular, a sign that what began as civilian anger at last month's shock fuel price rises is becoming a more deep-rooted religious movement against the generals.

In New York, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed sympathy for the protesters and denounced the military.

"The Burmese people deserve better. They deserve (the) right to be able to live in freedom, just as everyone does," she said.

"The brutality of this regime is well known and so we'll be speaking about that and I think the President (George W. Bush) will be speaking about it as well," she told reporters.
The mood was cheerful in Yangon, with many people seeing the emergence of Suu Kyi from her lakeside villa as a sign the military, which has put down a 1988 uprising ruthlessly, was being flexible.

"OVERWHELMING"

It was the first time she had been seen in public since her latest detention began in May 2003. For many onlookers, already stunned by police allowing marching monks through the barricades sealing off her street, it was overwhelming.

Wearing an orange blouse and a traditional wraparound skirt, she emerged from a small door in the iron gate to the house, her hands held palm to palm in a gesture of Buddhist supplication.
"Some of us could not control our tears," one witness told Reuters after 1,000 monks held a 15-minute prayer vigil at the house to which Suu Kyi is confined with no telephone and needing official permission, granted rarely, to receive visitors.

However, on Sunday, the barbed-wire barricade at the entrance to her street was reinforced by four fire engines, several police vans and dozens of police carrying riot shields who refused to allow a group of 200 marching monks through.

News of Suu Kyi's appearance incident spread rapidly on a day when the monks marched despite Yangon being lashed by 11.54 inches (29.31 cm) of rain, the highest recorded in 39 years.

"The monks showed their courage, strong determination and discipline while the regime showed flexibility," a retired government official said. "I think this incident has shown us that we can sort out any problem among us amicably."

The generals are due to hold a quarterly summit in their new capital of Naypyidaw, carved out of the jungle, perhaps as early as Monday. Dealing with the protests is sure to top the agenda.
The protests, which began on August 19 after huge fuel price increases prompted a midnight round up of the democracy activists who organised them and now face up to 20 years in jail, appear far from over.

On Sunday, a group of monks, one of them wielding a bullhorn, chanted a new slogan: "Our uprising must succeed".

A group calling itself the All Burma Monks Alliance urged ordinary people for the first time "to struggle peacefully against the evil military dictatorship" until its downfall.

By Aung Hla Tun