Everything Is Broken (20 page)

Water Fountain Garden, check.

Over the few days I stayed there, I saw plenty of fissures in the show-piece of Naypyidaw. In stark contrast to the imposing buildings were the secluded shantytowns where the laborers who were building the city lived. At the foot of a hill behind air-conditioned restaurants catering to well-to-do diners, I saw a cluster of huts cobbled together from scraps of leftover building material. The flimsy shelters looked as if they could be blown away by even the slightest of breezes. While automatic sprinklers soaked the landscaped greenery of the roundabouts in Naypyidaw, the surrounding area struggled for water. In the old town of Pyinmana, which is connected to Naypyidaw, running water was not always available and horse-drawn carts went house-to-house delivering water from wooden barrels.

Many people I have spoken to, both in- and outside Burma, think that Than Shwe may not even realize the full extent of the country’s woes. Surrounded by yes-men, he makes few forays around the country and, when he does travel, his trips are planned meticulously. Some years previously, when I traveled through the north of the delta region, I noticed that the road had been recently upgraded. The potholes had been filled in with still-sticky tarmac and neat yellow lines painted down the center of the road. There were shiny new street signs and intersections decorated with potted trees and flowering plants. I later learned that the road was given a makeover because the senior general would be using the route on his way to Ngwe Saung Beach for a holiday. Though I didn’t have a chance to see the road after the general had driven down it, I could easily imagine that the trees and street signs had been packed away and driven off to the general’s next destination, where they would be laid out again, courtesy of the Department of Pleasant Scenery for the Esteemed Commander in Chief.

Bad news does not filter upward in Burma. Government staff afraid of punishment or dismissal find ways to omit unpleasant information from their reports and opt instead to put the best possible spin on what facts they do include. On paper, crime is negligible in Burma, and theft is reported to be a rare occurrence. Pupils pass their exams with flying colors and the country’s literacy rate is ludicrously high (94.83 percent). As news and statistics progress further up the hierarchy, they are said to gain more and more distance from the actual truth. By the time a report or newspaper is placed on the senior general’s desk or an officer reads him a brief, it may bear little, if any, resemblance to reality. It is a phenomenon that a friend of mine lyrically refers to as “no bad news for the king.”

With hardly any people walking along its broad streets and none of the lively street life of Rangoon, Naypyidaw had a quiet, almost ghostly atmosphere. At the time of the relocation, political analysts expressed concern that the already ostracized regime would become more isolated. Naypyidaw definitely felt cut off. There were no international companies or organizations based there. Though foreign governments had been allotted land to build new embassies in Naypyidaw, none of them had taken up the offer and they had all kept their embassies in Rangoon. At the time of my trip, there was only one representative of the outside world planning to establish an embassy in Naypyidaw, and that was North Korea.

The city’s star attraction, listed in the Yellow Pages and mentioned in the glossy tourist guide, was the Naypyidaw Zoological Gardens. I had heard a lot about this zoo. Many animals had been moved there from the old zoo in Rangoon built over a century ago by the British. In a scene reminiscent of Noah’s ark, leopards, lions, hippos, vultures, snakes, deer, elephants, monkeys, bears, zebras, turtles, and crocodiles were loaded onto trucks and transported to new enclosures at Naypyidaw. Additional animals were also acquired. The Bengal tigers were left to prowl restlessly around their mildewed carnivora house at the Rangoon zoo as two infinitely more exotic Siberian white tigers were purchased from China for Naypyidaw’s menagerie.

According to the leaflet, the Naypyidaw zoo is home to eighty-one different species. The complex is built in the style of an open zoo with few cages. Lazy, long-armed gibbons live on their own private islands. Eagles and vultures swoop beneath the almost invisible net of an aviary set around a picturesque lake. The white tigers pace within an enclosure that boasts a waterfall and mini mountains. The baboon and his fiery harem rage along a clifflike outcrop of rocks. But the zoo’s greatest success by far has to be the much talked about penguin house, home to the country’s first and only colony of penguins.

Keeping penguins alive in the scalding hot plains of central Burma requires prodigious amounts of air-conditioning, and the penguin house was icy cool. It was built in the rough shape of an igloo with cement frosted to emulate a block of ice. The walls of the interior were painted in mimicry of the endless skies of the Pacific Ocean and the room was bathed in a luminous blue light. The aquarium-style enclosure allowed visitors to marvel at the flightless birds both on land and under the water.

The twenty-five African black-footed and Humboldt penguins seemed a merry bunch as they waddled inelegantly on the fake ice and chased each other through the water. The penguin house was surely the most crowded place in the city as a steady stream of visitors—families of civil servants and the odd day-tripper from nearby Pyinmana—filed through. A young girl stood with her face pressed up against the glass, mesmerized by the underwater antics. A group of monks sat for a long time on the benches that lined the wall and gazed in silence at the cavorting penguins. One of the monks told me he liked the penguins so much that he was on his third visit. The penguins were definitely a success.

As I was leaving, I examined a miniature model of the zoo on display in the entranceway and noticed that there had been no penguin house in the original plan. I pictured Than Shwe solemnly walking around the model before construction began. As he leaned over the tiny plastic trees and matchbox-sized animal shelters, the senior general may have said that the kangaroo run should be a little longer and the hippo pond a tad wider. These details were easy to fix, but consternation and kerfuffle undoubtedly ensued when the senior general asked where the penguin house was. Every
proper
zoo possesses a few crowd-pleasing penguins to show off to its visitors—the omission was an unforgivable oversight. And so, I imagined, it was at the last minute that space had to be found for a penguin house at the Naypyidaw zoo as staff set about acquiring air-conditioning units and frantically looking for an available colony of penguins.

Penguins, check.

 

 

 

THERE ARE NO HAPPY
endings for military rulers in Burma. The country’s history is littered with untimely demises and surprise betrayals. Once dead and gone, the hapless leaders are often erased from the history books. Their photographs and portraits disappear and their names are expunged from the public record.

The army’s own founding father, Aung San, died a sudden and violent death at the hands of a rival politician. Once revered in the chronicles and pageantry of the
Tatmadaw
, the historical importance of this legendary hero has been whittled away over the past few decades, ever since his daughter, Aung San Suu Kyi, came to prominence as a strong opponent of the ruling junta during the pro-democracy movement of 1988. Aung San’s image no longer hangs in public offices. His picture was once featured on Burmese currency notes but has been replaced by a mythical lion known as the
chinthe
—an image that contains no political innuendo.

The gradual disappearance of Aung San, nicely coined as “Aung San Amnesia” by one scholar, extends to architectural reminders of his former existence. Take, for poignant example, the Bogyoke (General) Aung San Museum, set in the house where Aung San and his family were living when he was killed. Located down one of the winding shady lanes that leads north of Kandawgyi Lake, the colonial home had lovely light-filled rooms and a turreted tower with a view of the Shwedagon Pagoda. Though the house itself must once have been quite grand, the museum displays I saw inside during my first visit on one of my earliest trips to Burma were rather pitiful. The museum received few visitors and those who did go often had to seek out the caretaker to gain entrance. The rooms were sparsely furnished, with the same furniture that was in place during Aung San’s time. The family dining table had a plastic replica of Aung San’s favored breakfast—a basic meal of beans and
naan
bread. Some of his books were placed in a glass cabinet along with the iconic greatcoat he wore in London. Aside from these few items, the rooms were mostly empty.

This neglected memorial to Burma’s greatest hero seems destined to fade even further into insignificance. The last time I visited, the gates at the bottom of the hill were padlocked shut. People in the neighborhood said the museum was closed for renovation and would be opened soon but, whenever I returned over the following months, it was still closed. “Ah,” said a Burmese friend knowingly when I told him about the museum’s closure: “It must be under
permanent
renovation.”

The infamous dictator Ne Win, who had fought alongside Aung San for Burma’s independence, came to a miserable end in 2002, when his family was charged with plotting to overthrow the government. Though the aged ruler had officially retired, his son-in-law and three grandsons were imprisoned, and he and his favorite daughter were placed under house arrest. When Ne Win died later that year, there were no military honors or special recognition for the seemingly omnipotent leader who had ruled the country for more than a quarter of a century. His body was cremated hurriedly and his remains were tossed in the Rangoon River.

Whether their endings are precipitated by natural causes or dastardly plots, few of Burma’s top generals have been able to retire peacefully in recent years, and there are plenty of other examples of Burmese leaders meeting sticky endings.

Saw Maung, who took over leadership of the army in 1988 before Than Shwe, began to behave erratically in public and then retired for health reasons (rumors at the time suggested he had been poisoned with drugs that made him insane, or that he had been given a lobotomy). He died five years later of a heart attack.

When Lieutenant General Tin Oo was killed in a helicopter crash in 2001, he was the fourth most senior general; though no conclusive investigation results were ever released, the helicopter reportedly went down after a grenade exploded onboard.

In 2004, the all-powerful head of military intelligence, Khin Nyunt, was ousted from his position as prime minister. He was charged with bribery, corruption, and high treason, among other crimes. His military intelligence unit was dismantled from top to bottom, allegedly resulting in the arrests of over six hundred intelligence officials and the sacking of hundreds more lower-ranking members of his staff. There were reports that soldiers took over Rangoon’s main crematorium to burn the bodies of intelligence officials who had not survived their interrogations.

And the man who replaced Khin Nyunt as prime minister did not last long. In the month following September 2007, Lieutenant General Soe Win died of leukemia at the age of fifty-nine. Soe Win was dubbed the “Butcher of Depayin” for his role in organizing the attack on Aung San Suu Kyi’s cavalcade in 2003 in which an estimated seventy people were killed. Many people I spoke to in Burma believed that his death was karmic retribution. In a macabre fairy-tale twist, Soe Win’s twin brother died just a month before him of the same disease.

It was the same for Burma’s kings. The palace chronicles tell of men from humble origins who rose up to slay the monarch and assume the crown. The royal courts were rife with wicked princes and evil queens scheming to overthrow the throne. King Thibaw, the last of Burma’s kings, ordered a massacre to eliminate any contenders to the throne that ended in the deaths of over eighty of his royal siblings and cousins.

Life in the upper echelons of today’s military is just as treacherous. Than Shwe, who rose to power under Ne Win, has picked up the late general’s tactic of keeping his most loyal supporters close while expelling rivals or moving them to inactive posts. Of the nineteen original generals in the State Law and Order Restoration Council set up in 1988, Than Shwe is one of only two remaining generals; most of the others were demobilized in a mass purge in 1997. Regional commanders, who can accumulate great power and wealth from their fiefdoms, are periodically reshuffled to neutralize any potential threats.

Yet enemies lurk around every corner, and even the most trusted of comrades must be viewed with suspicion. The Burmese man whose family had military connections once told me of a dinner described to him by a high-ranking officer. Seated at the table was the spy chief Khin Nyunt and another leading general, Maung Aye. The dinner was convivial and Maung Aye displayed great deference to Khin Nyunt by spooning curries onto his plate in the traditional meal-time sign of respect for a senior. Maung Aye, however, was involved in a plot to unseat his fellow general, and the very next day Khin Nyunt was ousted from the junta.

Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken and written about how life in Burma is controlled by fear. While fear pervades civilian life, it is also prevalent in the army, from the lowliest private right up to the most senior general. Than Shwe must look back at the kings (one of whom he may or may not be the reincarnation of ) and his predecessors in the military (some of whose downfalls he has machinated) and wonder what his own fate will be. In a sense, the senior general is trapped by the unforgiving cycle of Burmese history. If he relinquishes power and the regime falls, he could face a Nuremberg-style trial for war crimes. If he holds on to his position, the possible outcome could be assassination or deposition. It is the cruel logic of legend that the aged king must inevitably lose his grip on power and be usurped by the younger, stronger prince.