Living Silence in Burma (8 page)

Saw Tu also spoke of a case in one village where everyone put their votes in the black box, meaning they were against the constitution. Military authorities went to the village and asked the residents, ‘Are you for us or against us?’ Then they made the villagers vote again. That time, they all put their votes in the white box.

In town, the military authorities could not easily order people to vote again, but they made it clear that there could be consequences for those who dared to vote against the constitution. In Saw Tu’s district, how people voted was obvious to the officials on duty because of the way the ballot boxes were arranged. The curtain around the voting area reached only to about knee height and the two boxes were placed far apart. It was not possible to stand next to the box for ‘yes’ votes and reach the box for ‘no’ votes. Saw Tu remembered that some townspeople who voted against the constitution were put under watch, but the clerks were able to protect some ‘no’ voters by pretending not to know who they were. The clerks were reluctant to turn in their friends, particularly since many of them were not all that hopeful about the new constitution themselves.
Bertil Lintner reported a similar occurrence in Shan State, where some of the student vote-counters took it upon themselves to move ballots from the ‘no’ box to the ‘yes’ box, because they didn’t want anybody to get in trouble.
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With the development of a one-party system, General Ne Win sought to use the BSPP to cement the allegiance of civil servants and others to his military-backed government. In the 1970s, party membership was open to all, and not joining carried negative consequences. Party members took over many of the administrative posts at all levels of government, and civil servants were expected to become members.

Saw Tu said he had no interest in joining the party and just wanted to put his energy into teaching. But the officials kept after him, and he finally gave in. He said he was pressured more than most, because the officials hoped that if they could win him over, they could use him to bring in more Karen members. Although he didn’t even bother to fill out the entire application form, he was soon presented with his party membership card. Following that, on many ceremonial occasions, such as Independence Day and Union Day, he and other civil servants were ordered to give speeches praising the BSPP and denouncing the Karen National Union (KNU), which had been fighting for autonomy since 1949. Many Karen in his district had sons or relatives who had joined the KNU.

I asked him whether he didn’t feel as if he was promoting the BSPP government by making such speeches. He replied that the speeches were meaningless, because everyone knew they had been written by the party. Even if you wrote the speech yourself, he said, you had to give it to the BSPP for editing. Still, I wanted to know, didn’t he feel anything when he read those speeches? He replied, ‘Actually, internally I didn’t feel quite right.’ He had been a university student in Rangoon then and had joined his friends at the 7 July demonstration. He had also seen his fellow students shot down. But he felt that he had to go along with the authorities now that he was a headmaster. He explained, ‘You had to act in a certain way so that they would trust you. Only then could you work safely for your people.’

Saw Tu travelled to mountain villages, encouraging young Karen to get an education. But the authorities suspected he was trying to link up with the rebels. Finally he did just that. He and his family joined the KNU.

There were civil servants who refused to join the BSPP, but they often suffered as a consequence. Because healthcare was nationalized, all doctors and nurses belonged to the civil service and were expected
to become party members. Dr Aye Win, who did not join, talked about having to attend monthly indoctrination sessions for the first two years of his service. But he felt that medicine, not politics, was his business. He knew that if he didn’t join, he might not get a promotion or he might get transferred to a remote area, but he decided that wasn’t important. His first supervisor didn’t mind, but he warned Dr Aye Win, ‘It may be hard for you in your next posting.’

His next assignment was at a hospital in a Karen town in a ‘brown’ area. The military refers to districts where both government and anti-government forces operate as ‘brown’ areas. ‘White’ areas are totally under government control and ‘black’ areas under opposition control. Dr Aye Win remembered that, at first, the BSPP members there thought he was a member and treated him well. But once they found out he wasn’t a member, they began pressuring him. They reported that he wasn’t doing his job properly and criticized him for treating all patients without asking whether they belonged to an insurgent organization. The local party authorities told him that as a township medical officer, he was expected to be a role model for the community.

One day the BSPP authorities announced that there should be a hospital clean-up with community participation the following Sunday. Dr Aye Win said that was not necessary because the staff were already taking care of the cleaning. But the party members told him that the people should feel that they were helping others. Dr Aye Win asked, ‘Why are you forcing people to volunteer? I’ll take any real volunteers, but not people who are forced to do this work.’ This only exacerbated his problems with the party authorities. Eventually, he had to leave the district.

As much as the BSPP government encouraged people to join the party in most areas of the country, in the predominantly Chin town of Kalaymyo, Chin citizens were often prevented from joining. At that time, there was no anti-government insurgency movement in the area, and relations between the Christian Chins and Buddhist Burmans in Kalaymyo were good, with frequent cases of intermarriage. ‘But’, said Salai Zal Seng, a Chin church leader living in Kalaymyo, ‘the administrative body wanted to split us.’ Chin citizens found it difficult to become BSPP members, with the result that less than a quarter of the 900 BSPP members in the township were Chins. The township committee was also dominated by Burmans, with only an occasional Chin member. Frustrated by this, Salai Zal Seng’s father, a civil servant, asked the township military commander, Captain Soe Win, why the distribution of power was so uneven. Captain Soe Win replied, ‘Do you think that power is given by the sharing method?’ Salai
Zal Seng’s father insisted that he saw no reason why power couldn’t be shared since everyone was living together without any problems. The captain didn’t say anything but had Salai Zal Seng’s father transferred to a remote district on the Indian border.

In central Burma, many people who became party members also had high ideals and were committed to working for their country, but they found they could do little. Ohn Myint was a third-generation BSPP member who lived in a large town in central Burma. Both his parents and his grandfather were members of the party. He himself attended many of the training courses given by the party’s youth organization. But, by the time he was in high school, he realized the BSPP wasn’t really working for the people. He recalled, ‘My grandpa was one of the leaders of our BSPP unit, and they had to hold meetings every month.’ He explained that at first they took the job seriously. They would discuss local problems and write reports for their superiors, but there was never any response, so later they stopped holding meetings, and Ohn Myint helped write the reports for his grandfather. He said: ‘I could just copy the old one and change the date.’

The judicial system also offered little hope of a fair hearing. Under the Revolutionary Council, courts were run by a panel of three judges, at least one of whom had to have some legal training. During the BSPP period, the three judges were elected, but had to be party members. The chairman of the three judges was generally a military officer, while the other two judges came ‘from the people’ and frequently included individuals with little education. From the government’s perspective, a lack of education was not a problem. Loyalty and honesty were more important. Good people could be taught what they needed to know, but smart people could be tricky and less reliable.

Daw Mi Mi, a female lawyer during this period, explained that a lawyer would usually be there to act as an adviser to the people’s judges, but they generally took their advice from the BSPP township council instead. Besides the political influence of the council, corruption was a constant problem. In non-political cases, rich men could often pay off everyone involved: doctors doing autopsies, police and judges. At a minimum, they could get their sentences reduced, if not thrown out. Sometimes the police took bribes from both sides, and tried to confuse the case by bringing in fake evidence or destroying real evidence. With civil servants’ salaries too low to cover monthly living expenses, corrupt practices soon permeated many interactions between the public and the administration.

Although many civil servants did attempt to perform their jobs well, the
system favoured those who did not challenge their superiors. Corruption was a far smaller crime than insubordination.

General Ne Win had originally governed with the promise of efficiency and improving national welfare, but things were falling apart. Lower-level officials realized it was safer to report only what their superiors wanted to hear, often masking the severity of problems under their jurisdiction. At the same time, no one wanted to take responsibility for making decisions, for fear of being punished. Thus, civil servants and party functionaries tended to send even small issues up to higher levels, with the result that little effective work was actually carried out.

The increasing presence of military intelligence agents, or MI, who functioned like a secret police in other countries, also dampened people’s desire to speak out about problems. Besides plainclothes intelligence agents, there were also informers in neighbourhoods and many workplaces. As a result, most people appeared to be obedient even if they didn’t have faith in the government’s policies.

General Ne Win had originally shunned bringing religion into state affairs, both because of his government’s socialist ideology and because he wanted to rein in the influence of the monks. In 1962, monks were ordered to register with the government, a stipulation that was rejected on religious grounds as monks are perceived to be above the realm of worldly affairs. When some monks protested in Mandalay, the demonstration was broken up by troops, who shot several of the protesters.
¹⁰
In 1965, the regime organized a
sangha
(monks) conference, which established an official monks’ organization, the
Sangha Maha Nayaka
, and began registering all monks. Protesting monks were arrested, and several monasteries, where dissent was most fervent, were closed down.

By the late 1960s, however, General Ne Win was beginning to demonstrate a more public interest in Buddhism. While this may have been a reflection of his faith, it was also a way to gain some legitimacy with the majority Burman Buddhist population, for whom religious practice was central to their identity.
¹¹
General Ne Win also began looking to Buddhist merit-making, astrology and sympathetic magic in support of his political ambitions. This was not particularly surprising to most Burmese, who frequently turn to such practices themselves. As much as Buddhism might ask people to recognize that all attachment is suffering, most people are still concerned with their daily affairs; in particular, job security, health and the well-being of loved ones. They are looking for meaning and control over their lives, and by building pagodas and making merit in other ways, they hope to maintain or improve their status.

At the same time, a belief in spirits, astrology and fortune-telling helps people make sense of why they get sick, why they get into trouble, and how to get out of these situations or prevent them altogether. Burmese parents have the astrological charts of their children calculated and written out soon after their birth. These charts indicate the general course of the child’s life, but mothers continue to have readings done at significant times for more specific predictions. Astrologers are consulted about the appropriate date for weddings, shop openings and Buddhist ordination ceremonies. People also seek out the services of other types of fortune-tellers, who make their predictions based on palm reading, intuition or other signs. Unlike in the West where fortune-tellers and astrologers almost exclusively emphasize the positive, fortune-tellers in Burma often predict life-threatening dangers, illness and other serious problems. Luckily, they also suggest measures (
yadaya
) that individuals can take to ward off these troubles.

General Ne Win frequently appealed to fortune-tellers for advice on how to prolong his rule. On one occasion, he reportedly shot his image in a mirror so that he himself wouldn’t be killed. Similarly, he had the lovely
go go
trees that provided shade along the road to his birthplace near Prome cut down, because the expression
go go that
, ‘cut down the
go go
trees’, also means to kill yourself. By removing the trees he believed that he could prevent his own political death. Most dramatically, in the mid-1970s he suddenly ordered cars to be driven on the right instead of the left. This was reportedly meant to stop the threat of a political attack from the right. Even today, a number of old cars in Burma sport steering wheels on the wrong side, making driving a precarious experience.

For many people, such actions, no matter how bizarre, suggested that General Ne Win had special powers on his side. This only reinforced a feeling of the futility of resisting. And despite dissatisfaction with many aspects of BSPP rule, some of the regime’s propaganda did appeal to Burmese citizens. In particular, the regime was successful in convincing most people that a strong unitary state was necessary and that the ethnic nationalist armies had to be defeated. In the press, the ethnic nationalist armies were portrayed as rapists and murderers, and, having never visited the remote areas themselves, many readers believed the accounts.