Aung San Suu Kyi (11 page)

Aung San Suu Kyi means literally “Strange Collection of Brilliant Victories.” She was born on a Tuesday and in Burmese astrology every day of the week also stands for a number of personal characteristics. As a Tuesday's child Suu Kyi was expected to be an honest person with high morals. Her father was born on a Saturday, which means that he would become a troublemaker with a hot temper. The belief in the significance of birthdays is strong in Burma, and it is highly probable that parents' and other adults' expectations actually influence the personality that people develop, in the same way as social demands influence the degree to which we develop so-called typically “masculine” or “feminine” characteristics.

The Second World War in Burma ended only a few weeks before Aung San Suu Kyi was born. After the end of the war it was an open question at first as to which status a future Burma was to be given. From his vantage point in London, Winston Churchill assumed that the English commonwealth would be restored. He had not won a world war just to lose an empire. But Churchill did not succeed in convincing the English voters of his worthiness as a postwar politician. The Labour Party won the parliamentary elections in 1945, and with Clement Attlee as prime minister, the process was initiated to dismantle the most globally comprehensive superpower and its domination in the world.

Aung San and the other leaders of the nationalist movement had learned not to trust British promises, and this distrust was mutual to the highest possible degree. After the war the old colonial civil servants returned to Rangoon, and many of them still had their idea of Aung San and the thirty comrades as half-criminal troublemakers. One of those who distrusted the young generation of nationalists was the governor, Reginald Dorman Smith. When Japan invaded Burma he had fled to Calcutta, and he was bitter because the Bamar had not taken sides with the Allies right from the start. In his eyes Aung San was a criminal who ought to be brought to justice for war crimes.

Together with the administration in London, Dorman-Smith had produced a “White Paper” on the future status of Burma, since up until then the British were planning to govern the country in the same way as before the war. Aung San suspected that the White Paper was a way of delaying Burma's independence long enough for the British to have time to reestablish the old colonial system. The reconstruction of the country's economy and infrastructure was also to be reassigned to the same Western companies as those that had exploited the country's teak forests and mineral mining before the war.

Aung San did not exclude the possibility of a new necessity for armed struggle, and he prepared the nationalist movement for a guerrilla war. Straight after the recapture of Burma, the British had disbanded the nationalist army and about five thousand men had joined the new Burmese army that had been built the period between colonial rule and independence. Aung San was satisfied with that solution, but for safety's sake he built up a
militia, the PVO, as well as the regular army. Formally speaking, the PVO was involved in health care and social work, but in practice it was a private army under the leadership of Aung San.

At this point Aung San was confronted with a choice of action. In world history there is no shortage of leaders who have gotten stuck in the liberation phase and who have not understood the need to lay down their arms in time, thus creating a new system of oppression. If one looks at countries like Zimbabwe, Eritrea, or even Vietnam for that matter, the step from liberation to freedom seems to be the most difficult of all.

However, in precisely that situation Aung San showed that he was more than just a liberator. The struggle for independence had increased his tolerance, not diminished it. He had modified some of his most eccentric personal characteristics and matured as a political leader. He had three realizations. The first was that they could not have a dogmatic attitude toward the British. Even if he rattled his weapons he was basically convinced that negotiations and peaceful methods were now needed in order to build a durable independence. In the autumn of 1945 he left the army for this reason and continued his work as a civilian and politician instead.

The second realization was that the political factions within the nationalist movement must achieve lasting unity, otherwise the country would end up in civil war. Even before the Second World War the communists had opposed seeking help from Japan in order to drive out the British. They were of the opinion—absolutely correctly as would soon become evident— that Japan was a more brutal imperial power than Great Britain, and they wanted therefore to join the British in a common cause, fighting against Japanese expansion in Asia. However, Aung San and some of the other leading nationalists had had to sit still and not rock the boat. After the invasion the communists had become the opposition, and their leaders were being hunted down by the Japanese security service. Two of the leaders fled to India, but the most radical communist leader, Thakin Soe, remained in the country, and he was a perpetual source of worry. If the communists took to arms prematurely, then Aung San would be forced to fight against them. This would lead to civil war instead of a common struggle against Japan. Aung San persuaded Thakin Soe to avoid taking up arms until the time was ripe. The nationalist movement united itself in becoming a member
of the Anti-Fascist's People's Freedom League (AFPFL), with Aung San as its first official chairman. The AFPFL was to become the foremost political party in the country right up until the time when Ne Win seized power in 1962.

When the British returned, Aung San worked according to the same principle of unity. The opposition movement had to keep itself together, otherwise the British would exploit its disunity for their own ends.

The third realization was that it was necessary to get the ethnic minorities to join in the process. Aung San realized that this would demand negotiations and great diplomatic skill. The British had consistently favored these groups, and their antagonisms were reinforced by the progress of the Japanese and the Bamar nationalist army, the BIA. The Karens were hit particularly hard. The invading army advanced right through their traditional territories in southern and eastern Burma, and many of the soldiers who had joined up with the BIA as volunteers were former criminals who did not give a damn about what the civilian population thought about the Burmese army. When groups of Karen soldiers later carried out guerrilla attacks against the Japanese, Colonel Suzuki gave orders that they should make an example out of the BIA. Several Karen villages east of Rangoon were attacked and burned to the ground. Men, women, and children were shot to death.

Aung San realized that a Burma of the future would not work without the cooperation of the ethnic minorities, and even as early on as the first months of the Japanese occupation, he made regular visits to their leaders to win their confidence. An understanding developed slowly but surely between Aung San and the ethnic groups.

The rivalry between the nationalist leaders was also an integral part of this difficult equation. Several older right-wing nationalists tried to maneuver themselves into a leading position. Ba Maw, who had already been prime minister on two occasions, was one of the self-appointed candidates, as was U Saw, who had been prime minister under both the British and the Japanese rules. The governor, Dorman-Smith, preferred to speak with these two about the future of Burma, even though it was Aung San whose popular support was the strongest. Both of these politicians had, moreover, their own private militias. Neither of them was as large or influential as Aung
San's PVO, but the mere fact that they were able to launch their own force gave them influence in the shaky political postwar landscape.

At the same time the AFPFL was already on the point of splitting apart. The entire nationalist movement was being torn to pieces by internal conflicts, and early in the spring of 1946 Tun Ok, one of the more right-wing nationalists, attempted to get Aung San out of the way by accusing him of murder. Tun Ok said that he had witnessed how Aung San personally executed a man during the 1942 invasion of Burma.

This provided Dorman-Smith with a golden opportunity to get rid of the young nationalist leader, but he hesitated anyway. The British military leader Hubert Rance asserted that any action against Aung San would lead to civil war. Dorman-Smith summoned Aung San to him, and he confessed immediately. When the BIA had penetrated the jungle regions in the south, he had entered a village near the town of Moulmein. Several days earlier the villagers had arrested their own village chief, an Indian man, because he had been cooperating with the British. Aung San decided to make an example of him, and in a summary trial the man was condemned to death. After that, in front of the assembled villagers, Aung San himself was to carry out the sentence. He struck the man with a sword, but the man survived and Aung San had to order one of his men to kill him with a shot to the head. This bizarre episode casts a long shadow over the memory of Aung San. To DormanSmith, Aung San asserted emphatically that the execution had been carried out in a state of war and that he had only done his duty as a soldier and commanding officer.

DormanSmith chose to let the case rest but carried on working against both Aung San and PVO. His policy was not appreciated either by the politicians in London or by Lord Mountbatten, the head of the British command in India. Mountbatten was on the contrary impressed by Aung San's calm and integrity, and he understood him to be a unifying force in a Burma that already found itself on the point of total chaos.

Some months later Aung San won a significant victory when London decided to recall Dorman-Smith home. His replacement, Hubert Rance, immediately dissolved the political council that had acted as the country's interim government under British control. He later allowed the AFPFL to occupy the majority of the seats in a new council. It was never said aloud,
but it was soon also clear that the era of the White Paper was past. Aung San was appointed as vice chairman in the new council, second only to Rance, and he was also given responsibility for key issues such as defense and foreign affairs. And with that it was also clear that older nationalists like U Saw and U Ba Maw had lost their influence over the process of independence.

Aung San's promotion meant, however, that the AFPFL split into two sections. The communists had hoped for a more radical revolution. They had planned for comprehensive strikes and wanted to exploit the uncertain situation after the war to establish a socialist state with close relations to the Soviet Union. It was unthinkable for them to sit in some kind of transitional government in which the British still had the final word. Thakin Soe had already defected in the spring and fled to the Irrawaddy Delta. He had gathered together a minor guerrilla army (the Red Flag Communists) and was planning an armed revolt against the central government. At that point Than Tun and Thein Pe also broke away from the AFPFL and started their own communist guerrilla group, the White Flag Communists.

Their defection was a heavy breach of unity among the nationalists, but it also meant that Aung San no longer needed to pretend. His political rhetoric grew milder, and he appeared more and more as a pragmatic social democrat rather than as a bombastic communist. Whether it was his personal eminence or real conviction that made him change his image is difficult to say.

In January 1947, a delegation with Aung San at its head traveled to London to meet Prime Minister Attlee and to negotiate the final details in the agreement that was to give Burma its independence. On the way to England Aung San stopped in New Delhi, where he spent a few days at the home of Prime Minister Nehru. True to his habit, Aung San had not taken any notice of the dress code. He was wearing the same shabby uniform as during the invasion four years previous. Nehru laughed when he saw his Burmese colleague and tried to persuade him that a Japanese uniform was not the most suitable outfit for an official visit to 10 Downing Street. Nehru sent for a tailor who sewed a three-piece suit for Aung San; he is wearing it in all the photographs that have been preserved from the visit to London.

In New Delhi, Aung San held a press conference in which he confirmed that the Burmese delegation was planning to make specific demands in
London: total independence, meaning no British domination in any kind of diffusely composed commonwealth where the British would be on top as usual. He also repeated the threat of a new armed revolt. Before their departure the AFPFL had alerted PVO to full readiness if it should be seen that the talks with Attlee were a failure.

However, Aung San and Attlee reached a compromise, and at the end of January an agreement was signed confirming that Burma would become independent within a year. Democratic elections were to be held in April, and the newly elected parliament's first task would be to draw up a new constitution based on democratic and federal principles—federal in the sense that the ethnic minorities would have great influence in their respective regional states and that they would be guaranteed a certain number of seats in parliament and the government. The AFPFL would lead an interim government under British supervision.

The agreement worsened the split within the nationalist movement. U Saw was a member of the delegation but refused to sign the document, and as soon as he had returned to Rangoon he and Ba Maw started their own right-wing party and accused Aung San of having sold himself to the imperialists in return for personal power.

Aung San did not have time to worry about such accusations. They were predictable, and he had always counted on U Saw and Ba Maw starting their own party as soon as independence was a fact. Immediately after his arrival home, he traveled on to the little town of Panglong in the Shan state. Representatives from the ethnic minorities had gathered there to decide whether one state would be established within the borders we nowadays recognize as Burma, or whether they would continue with their demands for total independence. In principle there was nothing to hinder the second alternative. Economically they were of course underdeveloped, but that was the case for most of the Asian states after the war. Administratively, they would have great difficulties to overcome. Several of the regional states had during only a few decades gone from being local tribal communities to regional states in the British Empire. However, that did not make them any different from many other states that had been colonized and now had to build up their own societal structures. Geographically and demographically they were qualified, without a doubt. The Kachin state in north Burma is
about as large as Austria. The Shan state has a population today of around four million and is more extensive than most European countries.