Everything Is Broken (19 page)

Alice, a Burmese friend who works as a translator, expressed similar feelings. She was having trouble sleeping and had become very nervous. One day she heard a helicopter fly overhead and was convinced that the generals had decided to bomb Rangoon. “I know such thoughts can’t possibly be true,” she said, “but I still feel afraid.” She had stopped going to pagodas and was only comfortable praying in private, in front of the family shrine that most Burmese Buddhists keep in their homes. Recordings of monks chanting and preaching were only played at a low volume so as not to arouse the suspicions of the authorities. “At least they can’t see what we are doing inside our homes,” said Alice. “They can’t see us light candles or hear us when we pray inside.”

Despite the hopelessness and helplessness that had engulfed so many people, there were still those who refused to believe it was over. I heard tales of monks arming themselves on the Thailand-Burma border and marching toward Rangoon to retake the city. Though the holy army never materialized, the rumor took some time to fade and was even bolstered by new details with each retelling (the United States had covertly provided the monks with guns and grenades; the monks were recruiting in monasteries along the way and had formed a force that was seven hundred strong). In Mandalay and Rangoon there were predictions of new protests set for various dates. But the dates came and went without event.

More subtle methods of demonstration were also being employed. A few people wore yellow (the color of the NLD) or black (to signify mourning for the dead). Wreaths of red flowers were placed around the city at locations where people had been killed. Though I never saw any, Ko Ye explained that it was considered a dangerous activity to distribute the flowers, and that each wreath was laid in what he called “a hit-and-run operation.” Some men had shaved their heads in solidarity with the monks, but when they went out in public they wore baseball caps to hide their baldness.

One evening in Rangoon, I went for a drink with Ko Ye, who tried to convince me that the pause was simply the lull between battles. Ko Ye argued that the protests would continue sooner or later, because they were not predominately about democracy or religious ideals; they were about desperation. Monks and laypeople have become interdependent in ways that go beyond the daily alms round, he said. With few social services factored into the government infrastructure, many monasteries provide care for people in need, such as orphans and AIDS patients. As the economy worsens, people are less able to donate money and goods, and the monasteries have become overburdened and underresourced.

“The root cause is economics,” said Ko Ye. “The people will continue to get poorer, and they will continue to go out on the streets to protest, and the government will continue to shoot them. This will happen again and again until the underlying economic problem is properly addressed.”

At the end of the evening, having filled up an ashtray with cigarette butts and emptied a few bottles of beer, Ko Ye made a toast. I couldn’t tell if he was being facetious or sincere when we clinked our glasses together and he said, “Here’s to the revolution!”

I stayed in Burma for a few weeks before returning home to Bangkok, but nothing more happened. I left with the disorienting feeling that I had watched history being rewritten before my eyes. At the end of the year the UN released a report that estimated at least thirty-one people had been killed during the crackdown and that a further seventy-four were missing. But the regime had done such a thorough job of cleaning up its crime scene that the full details of what happened during those heady days in September would probably never be known.

B
y the time I was able to get to Naypyidaw, the events of September 2007 had been subsumed by the tragedy of Cyclone Nargis. People in Burma had said to me that what the regime did to the monks in September was the worst act that could possibly have been committed, a hostile attack on the country’s religion that struck at the soul of each individual Buddhist. But, just half a year later, the regime blocked international efforts to deliver aid after the cyclone in May 2008, leaving hundreds of thousands of people destitute in the wake of a natural disaster. More than ever, I wanted to visit Than Shwe’s citadel. Having seen the aftermath of the regime’s cruel decisions and unconscionable policies, I wanted to go to the centrifugal point of the regime’s malignant power and see what kind of brave new world the senior general had created for himself.

In early 2009, I made inquiries about traveling to Naypyidaw. Though no official announcement was ever made, the prohibitions on foreign visitors appeared to have been lifted. By then, Than Shwe’s city was being billed as a tourist destination in publications that listed the country’s must-see sites. One glossy guide even ran advertisements for the city’s fancy hotels and numerous golf courses.

Yet it still wasn’t particularly easy to get to Burma’s capital city. Buses left Rangoon every night, but at the bus station there was confusion as to whether it was permitted for bus companies to take foreigners to Naypyidaw. A Rangoon travel agent informed me that there were only three flights a week to the capital, and that all flights were fully booked for the few weeks I was able to travel. In the end, I hired a car and driver from a tour company willing to take me after first checking that there were indeed no existing travel restrictions for foreigners.

It was raining as we drove out of Rangoon in the late afternoon, and the crowded downtown streets rolled past in a blur of brightly colored umbrellas and
longyi
as people hurried to escape the rain. We soon left the city behind and began traveling northward along a busy highway, past pagodas, tea shops, and wooden rest stops set up along the roadside. After about an hour, the car turned off the main road and pulled up at a shiny new tollbooth. The modern construction seemed out of place against the dusty, old-world landscape. This, the driver explained, was where the road to Naypyidaw began.

The road to Naypyidaw was an empty and eerie thoroughfare that cut an almost unswerving line through desolate countryside. For most of the journey, the car I was in was the only vehicle on the road; the purpose-built eight-lane highway to the capital was supporting the traffic of a tiny country lane. There were few road signs and no streetlights. It was nighttime when we stopped to stretch our legs, and I stepped out into a blackness so complete that it seemed to swallow up the car’s headlights. Wild elephants reportedly roam the shrublands and sometimes amble across the highway, but all I saw was one small, unidentifiable animal. Caught in the diminishing beam of the car headlights, its eyes glowed green and its black body looked hunched and worried as it scurried across the road.

We arrived at Naypyidaw around midnight, and on first glance the city was a welcoming spectacle. The wide streets were, like the road we had just come along, devoid of any life, but they were at least well lit, with orderly rows of bright streetlights—a public amenity seldom available in other Burmese cities. The driver drove directly to the hotel zone, the only place where foreigners were allowed to stay. The zone comprised a number of luxury hotels, all designed in a similar style, with villas dotted across a man-made landscape of rolling green hillocks. Built and run by companies belonging to cronies of the regime—such as Max Myanmar, Asia World, Htoo Trading—the hotels were well-appointed affairs with tennis courts, swimming pools, and spa services.

Despite the late hour of my arrival, the manager and six eager staff were waiting for me at the hotel where I had made a booking. I was ushered into a plush entrance hall and presented with a cocktail glass of fruit juice by a waiter wearing maroon silk pantaloons. Once my guest registration forms were filled in, another pantaloon-clad bellboy loaded my luggage onto a golf cart and drove me to my villa. The room was elegantly decked out with teak flooring, moody watercolors of traditional Burmese scenes on the walls, and a pair of gold satin slippers at the foot of the bed. CNN was available on television and there was a Yellow Pages directory for Naypyidaw on the desk. Having read cloak-and-dagger accounts written by foreign journalists who had snuck into this forbidden city, this pleasant welcome was not at all what I had expected.

At the hotel restaurant the following morning, a smiling waiter brought me food from the breakfast buffet, cheerfully toasting bread and serving up slices of crisp honeydew melon and Chinese pear. The other diners appeared to be preparing for their morning meetings with the government. There was a table of Singaporean businessmen deep in discussion with their Burmese colleagues, a Western representative of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime studiously leafing through a report, and a few smartly dressed men typing at their laptops. It felt a little like sitting in a roomful of courtiers who, while preparing to petition the king, were dining in splendor in the outer reaches of the palace.

 

 

 

NAYPYIDAW IS NOT
the sort of place you can stroll around. It is a vast and sprawling city built on a grand scale. Wide boulevards feed into landscaped roundabouts decorated with immaculate arrangements of palms and flowering plants. The buildings are huge and set far apart on large plots of land. City hall is a palatial structure with a long sweeping driveway. At the fire station, three lollipop-red fire engines are parked in a spacious lot beneath a high-roofed garage. There are few cars on the roads, and the only people I saw on my first day there were workers tending the young saplings planted alongside the thoroughfares and at the expansive roundabouts. Wrapped up in long-sleeved shirts and wearing conical straw hats to protect themselves against the blistering sun, they seemed tiny and insignificant against the monumental backdrop of Naypyidaw.

Though it is often assumed that relocating the capital was done on a whim of the senior general—inspired by a portentous dream he had had or a prediction by one of his astrologers—there may also have been practical considerations. Naypyidaw is more defensible in the event of an invasion by foreign powers, as it is inland and backs onto a protective mountain range. Rangoon, by contrast, is located by a major waterway and is vulnerable to an attack from the sea. It was earlier in 2005, the same year the regime began shifting the capital, that the United States announced Burma’s inclusion on a list of “outposts of tyranny” around the world, along with Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Zimbabwe, and Belarus. Having watched the United States invade Afghanistan and Iraq, Burma’s generals—who come from a generation of men born while their country was under the rule of foreign invaders—may well have felt the need to fortify themselves against possible attacks.

According to the traditional model of Asian states, power emanates outward from the citadel, and Naypyidaw’s central location in the heart-land of the country also makes it a more functional headquarters. Moving the seat of government away from Rangoon provided the generals with the added benefit of being able to maintain control in the event of civil unrest. When civil servants joined in the protests during the 1988 uprising, numbers on the streets were swelled and the government came to a standstill, as there were few employees left to manage day-to-day affairs. In Naypyidaw, civil servants are housed in a special zone cut off from the mainstream population, thereby lessening the likelihood of a similar scenario.

Than Shwe was apparently lauded for his foresight as the move to Naypyidaw came just in time for the ruling administration. During September 2007, civil servants and government offices were safely located a couple hundred miles away from the upheavals and were therefore unable to join in or be influenced by the protesters. The move also saved government offices and military personnel from the destruction and disruption caused by Cyclone Nargis. One government minister is said to have stood up during a meeting and thanked the senior general for having the wisdom to lead the government to a safe haven.

When I arrived in Naypyidaw, Than Shwe’s vision was still very much a work in progress. At various points around the city, construction sites were being excavated and pyramids of timber and brick were piled alongside the road. There were areas of unused land enclosed in fancy gold-tipped fencing and barren stretches where nothing had been built yet. But the city had come a long way from what I had seen in the early photographs and was beginning to display the trappings of a proper metropolis. The hospital and school had been completed. The authorities were aiming to create unrivaled centers of health and learning in Naypyidaw by poaching the best doctors and teachers from institutions around the country (when the regime summons you, it’s hard to say no).

Though there was a covered market surrounded by a few small shops and a handful of restaurants, there was still much that was missing. In an upmarket shopping zone with identical rows of empty shops linked by chirpy pink pavements, there was nothing for sale. And the city had few cultural attractions; there were no historical sites, no cinema or theater, and only one museum (showcasing gems). It was rumored that the national museum would be transferred from Rangoon, and plans had been set in place to shift the national library to Naypyidaw (much to the dismay of students and academics in Rangoon). In this made-to-order city, Naypyidaw’s urban planners seemed to be working against a checklist that detailed the necessary requisites of a capital:

For lack of anything else to do while in Naypyidaw, I went to visit the Water Fountain Garden. It was one of the city’s touted attractions, but I must have arrived on the wrong day or at the wrong time, as all the water fountains had been turned off and the gardens were mostly deserted.

The park had lots of hopeful features, but they had all been poorly or cheaply constructed. Farther along in the gardens there was a pond with stone dolphins leaping out of the water in neat formation, but the sculptures were already beginning to crack and the tail on one of the dolphins had fallen off into the water. A flowering vine had been trained into the shape of a heart so that couples could sit inside it and have their photographs taken, but the heart was scrappily rendered and the grass around it was parched and brown. I later read in a local publication that a “third phase of construction” on the Water Fountain Garden was about to begin, and that the gardens were to be extended with additional features. An army colonel was quoted as saying that the gardens were an important attraction for local people, government employees, and visitors.