Aung San Suu Kyi (6 page)

Aung San Suu Kyi arrived at the meeting a few minutes late. She was, as always, wearing traditional Burmese clothes: a short-sleeved white blouse; a colorful Burmese sarong, known as a longyi; and a white flower in her hair. Her ever greater band of followers had heard rumors that the junta was planning to murder her, and therefore she was surrounded by a dozen young women who were all dressed identically so that it would be difficult to distinguish her from the group.

Suu Kyi felt calm and sure that her voice would carry out to the vast public, but she grew nervous when her party was barely able to make its way through the mass of people. She realized that the meeting was going to be well and truly delayed. She finally climbed up on the temporary podium in front of the pagoda despite all. Behind her the organizers had suspended a large portrait of Aung San and placed a flag from the 1940s freedom movement beside it. Once again: nobody could miss the symbolism.

The inadequate sound system and all of the people meant that most of them did not even hear what she said. But Aung San's daughter had come to give them support in the struggle against the junta, and that was enough. It was just the kind of support they needed. In all the dark times the people of Burma had been through since the military had escalated its violence, she herself acted as an arrow of light and life. “Such was the mood of yearning and anticipation that she could have recited a laundry list and still her every word would have been applauded,” wrote Justin Wintle in his book
Perfect Hostage
.

“We couldn't really picture her before the speech at Shwedagon,” says Maung, who was later to become a leading member of the democratic movement's youth league. “Many of us were pretty skeptical. She had lived her whole life abroad. What could she know about our problems? Could she even speak Burmese? But she convinced us.”

She gave her speech in almost perfect Burmese, and many of those who remembered her father were astonished too by the great resemblance between them. They looked alike, with the same slim figure and stately deportment, the same intelligent dark eyes, and the same clean facial features. They both had the same way of speaking as well. Aung San had been a more vociferous and agitating leader, more of a troublemaker, some might certainly say, but they had the same way of going straight to the core of a problem, without any circumlocution, and they used the same brief sentences and striking expressions.

She began her speech with a tribute to the students and other activists who had walked in the vanguard of the popular uprising, and she commanded there to be a minute of silence in homage to all those who had sacrificed their lives for a better future of their country. It must have been a magic moment, when half a million people turned from a noisy, seething mass into one that stood still and totally silent. After that Aung San Suu Kyi declared her reasons for choosing to get involved with the democratic movement:

A number of people are saying that since I have spent most of my time abroad and am married to a foreigner I could not be familiar with this nation's politics. . . . The trouble is that I know too much. My family knows best how complicated and tricky Burmese politics can be and how much my father had to suffer on this account.

She talked about her father's doubts about actually taking upon himself the role of prime minister after the independence. He had realized that the road forward after the liberation would be complicated and that great personal sacrifices would be required of those who stood at the head of the new nation. He had spoken about withdrawing and becoming an author instead.

Since my father had such a desire I too have always wanted to place myself at a distance from this kind of politics. . . . So someone might ask why should I now be involved in this movement. The answer is that the present crisis is the concern of the entire nation. I could not as my father's daughter remain indifferent to all that was going on. This national crisis could in fact be called the second struggle for national independence.

That final expression is utterly central for the mission Aung San Suu Kyi now took upon herself. She intended to carry on her father's work. The Burmese had been robbed of their independence through the military coup in 1962 and the oppression that followed it. Now she spoke persuasively for the transition to a multiparty system with democratic elections. On one point, though, it was clear that she differed radically from her father. Aung San never hesitated to use violent methods in the struggle for independence. In fact, he agitated actively to get the young nationalists in the 1930s to arm themselves. On the contrary, Aung San Suu Kyi was of the opinion that the new democratic movement must be a nonviolent movement. Violent protests would only give the junta an excuse to reciprocate. But despite her pacifist convictions, deeply rooted in Buddhism and Mahatma Gandhi's ideas, she asserted anyway that the army must have a function to fill even in the future democratic Burma.

I do not wish to see any split and struggles between the army which my father built up and the people who love my father so much. May I also from this platform ask the personnel of the armed forces to reciprocate this kind of understanding and sympathy?

Michael Aris and their sons, Alexander and Kim, stood behind her on the podium, and Nyo Ohn Myint, one of the young activists in the democratic movement, relates that
Michael Aris was proud but also full of doubt: “He had an expression in his face, kind of like: I'm going to lose my wife and my family and my privacy.” On their way from the meeting, Nyo Ohn Myint traveled in the same car as Michael Aris. Aung San Suu Kyi had decided that she and her husband should travel in different cars so that Michael would not have to be exposed to danger in the case of an attempt on her life.

“Everyone in the car was talking at once,” says Nyo Ohn Myint when I talk to him more than twenty years later. “But Michael Aris sat silent, looking out of the side window, deeply sunk in thought.”

Another one of those who listened to Aung San Suu Kyi that day was then twenty-year-old university student Khin (last name withheld). She had become involved in the demonstrations back in the spring. She had confronted the violence of the soldiers, and several of her friends had been mistreated and thrown into prison.

“When I heard Aung San Suu Kyi speak, tears were streaming down my cheeks,” she said later, after having been compelled to go into exile. “I wept. I knew at once that she was the person we had been searching for. She would be able to lead the democratic movement.”

The weeks after Aung San Suu Kyi's speech were tumultuous. After the massacres in August, it was no longer possible to control the masses of people, and the student groups that had led the demonstrations were not numerous enough to keep the most violent elements away. At least fifty security agents got in the way of aggravated mobs, who hanged them from the nearest lamppost or chopped off their heads with homemade machetes.

Aung San Suu Kyi did what she could to cool the heated mood and repeated time after time the significance of nonviolent methods. But it did not help. The mob continued rampaging, and now the military had been given all the excuse it needed in order to retake control again. On September 18, when the rest of the world had its attention focused on the first events at the Olympic Games in Seoul, Gen. Saw Maung sent out a bulletin that the military had once again taken control. (The date was not selected randomly: 1 + 8 = 9, and September is the ninth month. Ne Win and his astrologer still ruled from the wings.) The civilian Maung Maung was removed from office as prime minister and returned to his role as historian. The group who were now to govern the country called itself the State Law and Order Restoration Committee (SLORC). For the second time in a short while, a state of emergency was declared throughout the country, and for the second time the population responded by carrying out massive protests.
Hundreds more lives were claimed yet again when the soldiers opened fire against defenseless civilians.

This time the military was considerably more structured and better organized than when it had crushed the demonstrations on August 8. The aim was to create an example as a lesson to others, once and for all.

The coup and the violence that followed it resulted in a wave of refugees who crossed the border to Thailand. Thousands of young students—activists who had been at the head of the protest movement—made contact with the guerrilla troops belonging to the ethnic minorities and joined the armed battle against the junta.

Amid this chaos, General Maung sent out information that the country was to change its name from Burma to Myanmar. Burma was a colonial name, which apart from anything else had not included the country's ethnic minorities, he asserted. The only problem was that the ethnic minorities considered just the opposite to be true. Myanmar was the name of the ancient Bamar kingdom, and the change of name was understood by most of the ethnic minorities to be an expression of the junta's ambitions to be the supreme rulers. Burma was the name given by the British, but it was also a state of which the minorities could see themselves as being a part. The democratic movement in its turn saw the name change as a cheap attempt on the part of the junta to launder their dirty reputation. This is the explanation as to why the democratic movement in exile, like most of the mass media in the world, uses “Burma” nowadays, whereas diplomats within the United Nations and other more formal institutions use the name “Myanmar.”

Saw Maung also sent out a bulletin—somewhat surprisingly—that the junta was planning to carry out a democratic election. This information was a direct reaction to the popular protests. He realized that something had to be done to prevent the revolt from becoming a full-scale revolution.

Aung San Suu Kyi received the news via the radio in her mother's bedroom on the second floor of the house on University Avenue. “My strongest feeling was doubt,” she said long afterward. “I doubted the sincerity of the junta, doubted that they really had the intention to have a free and fair election.”

This doubt was justified. Behind Saw Maung stood a number of unscrupulous types, like head of the security service Khin Nyunt and Gen. Than
Shwe, who was later to maneuver himself to the position as leader of the junta. They were coldly counting on the election leading to a split parliament. Ethnic and political groups would fight against one another just as much as against the military. In that situation the generals would in practice be able to continue running the country. The junta also possibly had an exaggerated and flawed view of public opinion. In Burma there were no independent sources of information. All the newspapers, radio stations, and TV channels were under the intransigent control of the censorship authority. Everything, even down to the most minute funeral notice, was examined in advance and adapted to be of advantage to the interests of the military junta.

In most such national systems with iron control, the population knows that the media lie. They often do not bother about what is in the newspaper since there are other underground channels for finding out what is really happening in the country. This insight does not necessarily reach those at the top. The members of the junta are fed with information by subordinates who want to ingratiate themselves and make a career for themselves, and who therefore adapt the information, wash it clean of all unpleasant truths, and say what the generals want to hear. In that situation it seems as though SLORC leaders had understood that they enjoyed a popular support that in fact had never existed. They actually believed that they would win the election. They believed that the millions who had protested in the streets represented, despite everything, a minority. An unparalleled blindness.

The generals first chose to ignore the power of the protests. They then did not see what was specifically new in the democratic movement that had grown up during the year. Never before had all of Burma's ethnic groups joined forces in the same demonstration procession. Never before had they been so united in their criticism of the junta's misrule. Apart from this, Aung San Suu Kyi had made her entrance onto the political stage. She gradually adapted to the thought of not only mediating in the political crisis but also leading the opposition. The combination of a special moment in history and fate had carried her to her homeland just when she was most needed. For the first time in more than forty years, the critics of the regime had a person they could all unite behind. Her name was Aung San Suu Kyi. For the first time since independence, the path forward was once again wide open.

It is easy to start a conversation with people in Burma. Despite years of repression and the network of informers maintained by the security police throughout the country, people still want to talk about their daily lives and their contempt for the country's rulers.

During a trip to Burma a couple of years ago, I visited a Christian organization whose main location was in Rangoon. One of the pastors told me about the resistance of the ethnic minorities against the junta and their struggle to be allowed to keep their own language and their own traditions.

After this meeting I crossed the road and went into a teahouse. It was the middle of the day and the heat was ridiculously oppressive. I ordered a Star Cola—Burma's equivalent of a Pepsi—and sat down to go through my notes. After a short while a man at the neighboring table started talking to me. It was only then that I noticed that he was wearing a military shirt. A worn-out green shirt without any officer's tabs. He may perhaps have been a soldier once, or he was possibly on leave.

The man, who was about twenty-five, asked what I thought about Burma, and since I was formally there as a tourist, I said all the usual things about beautiful pagodas and historical monuments.

“And what do you think about the economy?” he asked.

I looked up in surprise. Economy is a code word. When people ask about
that, it is usually an invitation to a conversation on politics. After that we carried on a whispered conversation about the regime, poverty, and the lack of development. We were not able to speak about Aung San Suu Kyi. I did not dare to go that far. But when the conversation had almost come to an end, I pointed to a picture on the wall depicting her father, Gen. Aung San.