Living Silence in Burma (7 page)

Through his Revolutionary Council, General Ne Win sought to remake Burmese politics and society. Land and wealth were to be redistributed, foreigners stripped of their assets, and self-serving politicians and capitalists replaced with loyal army men dedicated to serving the nation. Approximately two thousand civilian members of the country’s administration lost their jobs to military personnel.
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Security and administrative councils were also set up at the divisional, township and village levels in central Burma. The ethnic states lost what autonomy they had had, with security and administrative councils established there as well. These new military-guided councils served as the primary structure through which the Revolutionary Council interacted with society.

The Revolutionary Council instituted what it called ‘the Burmese Way to Socialism’, a programme that was originally supported by some intellectuals and politicians who felt that the AFPFL’s watered-down socialist policies had not gone far enough. For them, capitalism was linked with foreign exploitation, and they supported the regime’s decision to seal the country off from foreign investment. Between 1963 and 1965, all banks, industries and large shops were nationalized. Most of the businesses were run by Indians and Chinese; by taking state control, the government intended to return the profits to indigenous Burmese. In March 1964, the Revolutionary Council demonetized 50-kyat and 100-kyat notes, also with the intention of removing wealth from foreign hands. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Indian and Chinese business people lost everything and left the country. Those businesses that did not collapse came under state ownership.

Military men were brought in to run the businesses, but with little education or relevant experience, they found it difficult to handle their new jobs. In cases where skilled civilians remained on staff, the new bosses often felt threatened by them. With no other opportunities available, many experienced professionals and bright young people emigrated, starting the brain drain which has continued ever since. The Revolutionary Council appeared to be unconcerned by the departure of so many of its most talented people, but the effect on industry was devastating. Burma had been ahead of both Malaysia and Thailand in industrial production in the 1950s, but declined steadily from 1964 onwards.

Agricultural production was also profoundly affected. While land reform programmes carried through by the regime gave agricultural plots to many landless farmers, farmers were told that they had to sell their rice to the government, at below market prices. Frustrated with the new system, some farmers put less effort into their cultivation while others hoarded as much rice as possible and sold or bartered it surreptitiously on the black market. Because rice exports were one of Burma’s primary sources of foreign exchange, the dramatic fall in rice exports, from 1.8 million tons in 1963 to 0.3 million tons in 1968, made it impossible for the government to pay for necessary imports.
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Both industrial and agricultural production suffered. The regime responded not by liberalizing the sale of rice but by cutting imports, including machinery and spare parts. This further hindered agricultural development.

With the nationalization of shops also came the establishment of cooperatives, where people could buy their daily necessities at subsidized prices. At first the shops were well stocked and the government prided itself on taking care of the people. But soon stocks of even the most basic goods were insufficient, and waiting in line for rations became a part of daily life. To make up for the inadequacies of the cooperatives, a thriving black market emerged, with goods coming from Thailand and other neighbouring countries.
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In what at first seemed a positive development, the military regime announced that it would hold peace talks in Rangoon for all groups willing to participate. Safe passage to and from the talks was guaranteed. In 1963, many representatives of armed ethnic groups as well as communist leaders came to Rangoon, but the regime took a hard line with all of them. The communists were told to give up their armed struggle, and the regime refused to consider various ethnic nationalist demands for increased autonomy. When the talks broke down in November, students and others staged demonstrations. The universities were closed, and a number of students were arrested and sent to a penal colony on Coco Island.
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When the universities reopened a year later, a new system was introduced. One of the most significant changes was that teachers were made more responsible for the conduct of the students. The regime hoped to use the teachers as their eyes and ears to reduce the likelihood of more protests.

In the meantime, independent associations also started to come under pressure. Even library clubs, such as Pyone Cho’s in Rangoon, were forced to shut down. Pyone Cho and his university friends had established their library club in Pyone Cho’s father’s garage on 141st Street shortly before
the coup. The club had begun by having its members sweep the street and clear the drains every weekend. Members took turns volunteering for night shifts to watch out for fire, a frequent problem in those days. When people in the neighbourhood saw that the club was working for the good of the community, they began giving monthly contributions. The club boasted over one hundred members and rented out all kinds of books, including the anti-government poetry books and other literature written in commemoration of the 7 July killings. The club also staged citywide essay-writing competitions, sending announcements to all the schools and publicizing the winning essays in newspapers.

With police permission, the club held public lectures on big stages in the streets. People from all over Rangoon would come to listen. The club was so popular that many debate teams and writers’ clubs wanted to join, so they were taken on as affiliate members. Gradually, though, it became more difficult to acquire permits for public talks. When the library club committee decided to hold a debate between several famous writers at Gandhi Hall, with the provocative title ‘Man is worse than a dog’, they were originally denied permission by the police. The permit was granted only when a higher-ranking military officer overruled the police chief, thinking the club was planning to attack the deposed prime minister U Nu. Instead, the speakers discussed the dangers of military rule. Not long after, the regime announced that private associations had to register with the government or close down. After a visit from a government official in which they were told their club did not meet the new regulations, Pyone Cho and his friends had to shut the library and stop their activities.

As the Revolutionary Council expanded its control, most independent associations and newspapers were either absorbed by the government or forced out of existence. All publications had to pass through a newly formed censorship board. Private schools were nationalized, and a government-controlled Burmese-language curriculum was imposed throughout the country. Meanwhile most foreign missionaries, scholars and Western foundations were forced to leave and foreigners’ access to Burma was tightly restricted.

Independent trade unions were outlawed, and existing political parties were also compelled to disband, with the only legal political party being the government’s Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). Originally, membership in the BSPP was restricted to the military and the administration; the regime later expanded membership, however, and established other mass organizations under state control. As time went on, people’s avenues for participation in civic life were increasingly limited, although
citizens were welcome to join regime-sponsored organizations which were primarily dedicated to maintaining military rule. In these associations, there was little room for personal initiative or creative thought. The regime was looking for passive supporters, not freethinkers. This was the beginning of the constriction of civil society in Burma for many years to come.

Meanwhile, the effects of the government’s mismanagement of the economy became clear in 1967 when the scarcity of rice in Rangoon became a severe problem. Civil servants would sign in at their offices in the morning and then leave to spend the day searching for rice in villages outside the city. Although the government’s inappropriate procurement and distribution policies were largely to blame for the shortage, people’s anger turned against Chinese merchants, who controlled much of the black-market rice trade. Merchants were stockpiling rice, knowing they could sell it for a higher price as the crisis worsened. Some Burmese had also been irritated by the fact that the Chinese embassy was encouraging support for the Cultural Revolution among Sino-Burmese, including the wearing of Mao badges. Riots broke out, and the Chinese embassy and many Chinese-owned shops and homes were attacked. The military regime declared martial law and solved the problem by ordering all the warehouses to be opened and the surplus rice to be distributed. Dissidents have argued that this was an early example of how General Ne Win was able to deflect the people’s anger away from the regime and channel it into communal riots.
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The military regime sought to demonstrate its commitment to ensuring public safety by announcing sweeps to rid the streets of crime. The police were ordered to round up a certain number of criminals during each sweep, and in order to meet their quotas they often arrested people against whom they had no evidence. The detainees’ families were not informed, and victims were usually not tried. The prisoners could only hope that for one reason or another they would eventually be released.

Tint Zaw, a Rangoon University professor who was imprisoned for his connections with student activists and for his refusal to join the regime’s Burma Socialist Programme Party, met many such hapless prisoners during his years in prison. He remembered one bizarre case where the wife of a man who was arrested assumed that her husband had gone off with another woman. She put an announcement in the newspaper stating that he was her legal husband and anyone keeping him would be sued. In those days, prisoners were still allowed to read the newspaper, and the man saw the announcement about himself and showed it to
the prison officer. An intelligence officer was sent to question him and only then was he released. Tint Zaw himself was never charged for his ‘crimes’. When he was arrested he was invited ‘to stay for some time’ in prison. That ‘some time’ turned out to be nine years.

Although General Ne Win had hoped to win popular support with his nationalization and land reform programmes, they led to economic disaster. In order to establish a more legitimate administration, he decided to reorganize his government. He and nineteen other senior officers resigned from the military in 1972 and assumed civilian titles. He also announced that the regime planned to draw up a new constitution and institute a one-party system, with elections for a People’s Assembly (
pyithu hluttaw
) and local councils. In theory, the one-party system would give people a voice in managing the country’s affairs, but that was to prove illusory from the start.

The BSPP era, 1974–88

While the new constitution was being drafted, government authorities announced that citizens were welcome to send in their suggestions. But when several Chins wrote in recommending the adoption of federalism and a multiparty system, they were arrested. Perhaps because the Chins had always been loyal to the government and there were no
tatmadaw
troops in Chin State, the authorities felt they had to act particularly harshly to stifle such demands. As a result, a member of a Chin youth group who signed his name on a letter calling for a federal union spent ten months in solitary confinement, a Chin major in the
tatmadaw
served a two-year prison sentence, and a Chin public health assistant was imprisoned for several months, with his family having no idea what had happened to him.
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When the public health assistant was released, he was given a letter stating that he would never be permitted to work in Chin State again.

In December 1973 there was a national referendum in which people had to vote for or against the new constitution, which called for a unitary state under one-party rule. It received 90 per cent support with an astounding 95 per cent of eligible voters voting.
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Were people that delighted with the idea of one-party rule? Did so many ethnic minority voters support a unitary state? Many Burmese say that few understood the new system, but at least it offered the possibility of popular participation. Certainly some people hoped that greater civilian involvement would result in improvements. There were also instances of intimidation and ballot-box tampering, however, which appear to have helped to produce such resoundingly positive results.

Saw Tu, a high-school headmaster and a member of the election commission in Karen State, explained how the results were obtained in the remote area of the country where he worked. Saw Tu was the first from his township in Karen State ever to attend university. After graduating, he came back and taught in a district high school and was later promoted to headmaster. In 1973, he was appointed to the district commission responsible for overseeing the referendum.

He explained that, starting in the mid-1960s, the regime conducted a population survey of the distant hill villages through the cooperative shop in town. All the mountain villagers had to buy their goods at their designated cooperative shop (which carried no coffee, milk or sugar, because the authorities said mountain people didn’t need these luxuries). Whenever a villager came to the shop, the clerk asked for the names of all the residents in that person’s village. Because the villages were small, with only twenty or thirty families, the villager could easily name everyone. After some time, the authorities were able to obtain almost all the names of the villagers and villages, without ever having to travel there themselves. When the referendum was held, the government was able to use the name lists to their advantage. Everyone eighteen years old and over was supposed to vote in the referendum, but ballot boxes never reached the hill people in Saw Tu’s district. Yet when the results came out, he was astounded to see that they had all apparently voted for the constitution.