Living Silence in Burma (10 page)

In the 1970s, there were also pro-democracy supporters who turned to armed resistance. After U Nu was released from prison in 1966, he realized that he could do little to change the country from within. In 1969, he agreed to join with Edward Law Yone, a former newspaper editor who had also been imprisoned, and four members of the Thirty Comrades, in setting up the Parliamentary Democracy Party (later renamed the People’s Patriotic Party), based on the Thai–Burma border. Their plan was to launch joint attacks into Burma with the KNU and the New Mon State Party’s army, while also encouraging monks to lead demonstrations inside the country. Although the force was openly tolerated by the Thai government and had some early successes, it was unable to maintain its momentum. Besides financial problems, the leaders had difficulties working closely with the Karens because of continued differences of opinion over the political rights of the ethnic nationalities in a post-Ne Win Burma.
¹⁷

In addition to the Burman-led opposition forces, numerous ethnic armies seeking autonomy were continuing to battle against the regime during this period. The largest groups were the Karen National Union (KNU), the Kachin Independence Organization (KIO), the New Mon State Party (NMSP) and the Shan State Army (SSA), each with armies of several thousand members. Led by a mix of university-educated men and soldiers who had fought with the British, they were able to support themselves by logging, mining and maintaining toll-gates along Burma’s borders. With a constant stream of black-market traders going to and from neighbouring countries, those who controlled the toll-gates reaped huge profits. Some of the armies operating in the hills of northern Burma, including the CPB, also raised money through taxing the opium and heroin trade.

Most of the larger ethnic nationalist armies were anti-communist, but some of the smaller multi-ethnic groups, such as the Karenni State Nationalities People’s Liberation Front (KNPLF) and the Shan State Nationalities People’s Liberation Organization (SNPLO), trained with the CPB and adopted a communist-inspired organizational structure. Some factions in the KNU and the NMSP were also more left-leaning. At the same time, small armed groups of Muslims were operating in Arakan State, and Pa’o and Palaung forces were fighting for autonomy within Shan State.

Much of the mountainous territory controlled by the ethnic armies had never been under direct Burman rule, and the villagers considered Burman troops to be foreign invaders. The larger ethnic nationalist armies set up administrative structures as well as clinics and schools, where students were taught in their native tongues with Burmese and English introduced as second and third languages. The ethnic nationalist armies largely adopted defensive postures, trying to prevent
tatmadaw
troops from entering their areas but not organizing strikes deep into central Burma.

While most recruits came from villages in the ethnic areas affected by the civil war, young people of various ethnicities continued to make their way out from the plains to join these armies. Reasons included sympathy for members of their ethnic group, frustration with government policies, and the desire to live what they perceived as the heroic life of a guerrilla fighter.

Although alliances were formed between the various anti-government armies, many were in name only. Most of the ethnic nationalist armies distrusted the Burman-dominated groups, and their relations with other ethnic armies were also strained. Neighbouring ethnic armies sometimes
fought each other over territory, and differences in ideologies also kept them apart. Thus each army generally fought on its own, neither making any headway nor being forced to surrender.

Civil war was the normal state of affairs for many areas in northern and eastern Burma. The war affected not only the soldiers on both sides, but also all the civilians who lived in the military operation areas. Starting in the mid-1960s, the military regime ruthlessly implemented a policy known as the Four Cuts. The objective was to eliminate all forms of support to resistance forces by cutting their access to food, money, intelligence and recruits. Many villagers were forced to leave their villages and were often brutally treated and even killed, whether they had anything to do with the opposition forces or not. As Martin Smith has written in
Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity
: ‘For the
tatmadaw
in the Four Cuts campaign, there is no such thing as an innocent or neutral villager. Every community must fight, flee, or join the
tatmadaw
.’
¹⁸
As a result of
tatmadaw
campaigns in the Karen, Kachin and other areas, tens of thousands of people lost family members, their land and their homes.

Civilians in towns controlled by the government were also affected, because they could be rounded up as porters for military campaigns at any time. Young men were grabbed coming out of cinema halls or getting off ferries, and sent off to the front lines with no guarantee they would ever return.

Given the BSPP government’s lack of interest in resolving the country’s political problems through dialogue, it is not surprising that some Burmans and ethnic minorities joined armed resistance movements in an attempt to achieve their objectives by force. With none of these armies appearing to be making much headway, however, most Burmese became cynical about their abilities to effect change. Farmers continued farming, suffering arrests when they could not fulfil their paddy quotas. Smugglers continued smuggling, as legal imports continued to be restricted and domestic industry languished. And civil servants kept working for the government, whether they believed in it or not.

3 | Breaking the silence, 1988–90

    If somebody is against the government, we have to follow. We have to show that we also don’t like this way. (Son of a military engineer)

In 1987, the United Nations designated Burma a ‘Least Developed Country’, grouping it together with the poorest African nations. The public stayed quiet, but a few students and intellectuals, gathering in tea shops and friends’ houses, hatched plans and wrote articles intended to shake people out of their passivity.

One person involved in underground organizing since the mid-1980s was Moe Thee Zun. He had purposely failed his third-year university exams so that he could stay on campus longer. Like many other activists, he believed that the best place to cultivate anti-government activities was in the university, where there were a large number of single people more willing to take risks.

When the military regime announced the demonetization of 25-, 35- and 75-kyat notes on Friday, 5 September 1987, Moe Thee Zun and his colleagues thought their chance had finally come. Many people’s savings were wiped out in an instant, and the activists believed people would surely take to the streets. But after a small protest organized by university students, the regime announced the closure of the universities. As a result, nothing could be done on campus, and no protests coalesced on the streets. Families stayed quiet, hoping the government would eventually offer partial reimbursement, as it had after two previous demonetizations.

The universities reopened two months later, and exams were held immediately. Moe Thee Zun and some of his friends tried to stir up activity, but other students expressed no interest. Moe Thee Zun graduated, but he continued to frequent tea shops near campus, meeting with friends to discuss why Russia was transforming and the Philippines had already changed but Burma hadn’t. They shared books and formed study groups while continuing to recruit new members for their underground student union. Then, in March 1988, they got another chance.

A tea-shop brawl broke out between university students and local youths on 12 March. Because the young man who started the brawl was the son of a BSPP official, he was quickly released. Students gathered
in front of the police station to protest, and riot police stormed them, killing a student named Phone Maw. Phone Maw’s fellow students were outraged. They demanded that the government announce the truth about the incident in the government-controlled media. Instead, the regime’s spokesmen blamed the students for inciting unrest.

The next day demonstrations broke out at Rangoon Institute of Technology and Rangoon University. Students gave impromptu speeches about the need for a student union to represent their interests. Soon they also began demanding the end of one-party rule. On 16 March, students from Rangoon University decided to march towards the Institute of Technology campus a couple of miles away. When they reached Inya Lake on Prome Road, they found themselves squeezed between soldiers in front of them and riot police behind them. To their left were large homes surrounded by high walls. To their right was the lake.

Min Ko Naing, a student activist who later became famous, tried to convince the soldiers to let the students pass. But the riot police attacked from behind, the soldiers followed suit, and the students were trapped in between. Some fleeing students made it down alleys and over walls into people’s yards. Others ran into the lake with soldiers following them. Some students drowned because they couldn’t swim or because they were beaten unconscious by soldiers. Witnesses recalled being horrified to hear the soldiers shouting ‘Don’t let them escape!’ and ‘Kill them!’ as they beat the unarmed students. Several students were arrested and taken away. Forty-one suffocated to death in an overcrowded prison van. Later, word got out that some of the arrested female students were gang-raped. People were shocked. The event came to be known as the Red Bridge incident, because the site of the attack was a bridge that was splattered with blood.
¹

The next day, further demonstrations occurred at Rangoon University, where students gathered for Phone Maw’s funeral. His body had already been secretly cremated by the military, but students gave fiery speeches throughout the day, while military men surrounded the area and cut the electricity and water. No one could enter or pass food in, although students were allowed to escape through a small back gate.

Ye Min, a medical student from a rural town who had never witnessed a demonstration before, came with a few friends to see what was happening. By the afternoon, he was hungry and thirsty and felt worn down by the military pressure outside the gates. He was preparing to slip out the back when he saw a female student going up on to the makeshift stage. He decided that if she had enough courage to make a speech in these
conditions, he shouldn’t leave. Later he was arrested with others and questioned at length, because the military was worried that the protests which had started in two universities the day before now appeared to be spreading to the medical institutes. Approximately one thousand students were arrested that evening, while others were beaten and left, because there were not enough prison vans to take everyone.

The next day, a huge demonstration of over ten thousand people took place in central Rangoon, and many more were arrested. The regime closed the universities for two months. When they reopened on 1 June, Ye Min and three others learned they were to be expelled for attending the March demonstrations. That sparked a movement within the medical institutes to boycott classes until the four students were reinstated.

At Rangoon University, political organizing was also continuing, and Moe Thee Zun prepared to make his first public speech. Like Min Ko Naing (Conqueror of Kings), Moe Thee Zun was not his real name; to protect themselves from identification and arrest, and in imitation of the Thirty Comrades, many student leaders took on ‘
noms de guerre
’. Moe Thee means ‘hailstorm’, a pen name he had used for his poetry in underground publications. He added Zun, Burmese for ‘June’.

Moe Thee Zun recalled that, the night before, he wrote a goodbye letter to his parents, gave his younger brother a final hug, telling him they would meet again ‘when victory had been won’, and headed for the door. To his chagrin, his mother had suspected that he was up to something, so she had padlocked all the doors. He remembered, laughing: ‘She thought she had caught the fish, so she was satisfied and went to sleep. But there was a big tamarind tree, and one branch went to the second-floor window. My mother forgot that!’ He climbed down the tree, hopped on the back of his friend’s bicycle, and they pedalled off into the night.

The next day, he gave his speech. After explaining the history of the students’ movement since 1962, he stressed his belief that students should fight for all the people, not just for students’ rights. Specifically he urged the audience to denounce the demonetization and demand reimbursement. He insisted that because one-party rule was responsible for the country’s decline, students should demand that multiparty democracy be reinstated.

Then another group of students went up on to the stage and accused Moe Thee Zun and his colleagues of being too political. This group felt that the students should concern themselves only with student affairs, such as the release of arrested students, the construction of a memorial to students who had been killed, and the right to form a student union.

Finally, the students decided to vote on which policy they liked better after holding a debate. Moe Thee Zun emerged the winner, insisting that the students should fight for the overthrow of one-party rule, and there was no time to lose. He told the audience: ‘The opportunity will never come twice.’ That afternoon, the authorities arrived at Moe Thee Zun’s house to arrest him, but he had known better than to go home.

The following day, 21 June, thousands of students marched towards central Rangoon. They were stopped by riot police at Myenigone junction and showered with tear-gas. Some riot police shot bullets at the students as they shot handmade darts back at them. Eighty civilians and twenty riot police were killed.
²

The rest of the country was still quiet, but the government was nervous and closed the universities again. A night-time curfew was imposed and public gatherings banned, but some students set up a strike centre at the Shwedagon Pagoda. On 23 June, demonstrations broke out in Pegu, an hour’s drive from Rangoon, and resulted in seventy deaths. Meanwhile, students studying in Rangoon went back to their home towns, bringing with them news of the military’s brutality. The more active students visited many towns, trying to interest others in preparing for future protests.