Everything Is Broken (32 page)

We washed our sunburned faces in a rainwater jar and unfurled the mats. Someone found candles and lodged them in empty bottles that were then placed around the room. The chickens, initially alarmed by our arrival, settled into a wary watchfulness. We played tic-tac-toe in my notebook, scared one another with a few ghost stories, and then stretched out on the mats and went to sleep.

The next morning we wasted no time in leaving the village to return to Laputta. I was scheduled to be back in Rangoon that day, and I had no travel clearance to spend the night in a village far from town. I didn’t speak to anyone as we walked through the village back to where the boat was docked. It was barely dawn and everyone was busy. Children were trotting along the dirt pathways to get to school on time. Two men climbed out of the river, mud-drenched, carrying traps filled with crabs. A woman and her daughter were preparing food beneath their stilted house, pounding pungent shrimp paste in a stone mortar and releasing the scent of freshly crushed garlic into the morning air.

When our boat sailed out onto the river I saw that fishermen were already punting their wooden canoes along the river’s edge, slipping behind the newly sprouting
dani
that stretched out like a long green fence, as they made their way to the nets they had laid the night before. In the dewy post-dawn light, the water took on the rich, brown color of cocoa. Months of rainfall had brought some greenery back to the land. Unruly tangles of
beda
were beginning to grow along the edges of the creeks and stiller stretches of the rivers. The heat of the day had yet to descend, and when I dropped my hand into the water it felt cool and inviting. In that idyllic early morning, as the boat skimmed lightly above the surface of the river, it was hard to believe that anything terrible had ever happened there.

W
henever I think of Burma these days, the Buddhist parable of the blind men and the elephant comes to mind. In the age-old teaching, a king summons a group of blind men and places an elephant before them. Each sightless man is led to a different part of the elephant’s body to touch the animal and feel what it is like. The king then asks each in turn to describe the elephant.

The man who felt the rounded head says confidently that the elephant is like a water jar. Another, who felt the cylindrical foot, says the elephant is like a pillar. The man who felt the tusk says it is like an iron rod, and the one who felt the tuft of the tail says it is like a broom. Before long the blind men are arguing over their description of the elephant, since each one is convinced that his description is correct.

It is the same in Burma today. Given the regime’s restrictions on information and association, it is difficult to form any public consensus or verifiable version of the truth. While certain events can be accounted for with certainty, there is much that remains unknown. Like those blind men in the parable, it has become impossible for anyone to see or fathom the beast in its entirety.

In a society where nothing can be taken for granted, distorted truths, half stories, and private visions are, by necessity, woven into the popular narrative of events. Burma is a place where the government hides behind convoluted smoke screens. It is a place where those who sacrifice themselves for their country must go unrecognized and can only be lauded or remembered in secret. It is a place where natural disasters don’t happen, at least not officially, and where the gaping misery that follows any catastrophe must be covered up and silenced. In such an environment, almost anything becomes believable.

 

 

 

IN THE EARLY HOURS
of a muggy Rangoon morning in May 2009, exactly one year after Cyclone Nargis, a fifty-three-year-old American man reportedly tied two planks to his sandals to improvise swimming flippers and ducked into the warm waters of Inya Lake. Using plastic five-liter water bottles for buoyancy, he paddled under cover of darkness to Aung San Suu Kyi’s house. After spending two nights there, he swam back across the lake. At 5.30 A.M. on May 6, he was fished out of the water by a police inspector and was later charged with secretly entering Aung San Suu Kyi’s house, violating his tourist visa, and breeching the restriction on swimming in Inya Lake under the Rangoon municipality’s Water Supply and Sanitation Rules.

Aung San Suu Kyi was charged with violating the terms of her house arrest, under the law safeguarding the state against the dangers of subversive elements, for failing to report a visitor to her home. Her two female companions, a mother and daughter who live with her and help to look after her and the house, were also charged.

When the trial began later that month, it instantly became a favorite topic of conversation in Rangoon. I was in Burma at the time, and at some point in every conversation someone would inevitably ask,
So, what news of The Swimmer?

We pieced together The Swimmer’s personal details from international news sources and Burmese state media. His name was John William Yettaw. He was a retired bus driver from Missouri and a Mormon. He apparently had attempted to visit Aung San Suu Kyi in the same manner the year before, in November 2008, though her helpers had prevented him from meeting with her. Yettaw stated in court that he had believed Aung San Suu Kyi’s life was in danger. It had been revealed to him in a dream that someone would attempt to assassinate her, so he had swum across the lake to warn her and to save her life.

During her defense, Aung San Suu Kyi told the judge that she had not committed any crime. According to her lawyer, she pointed out that the security detail around her compound must not have been working properly as no visitor should be able to enter unnoticed. She and her helpers pleaded not guilty.

There was plenty of detail available on the proceedings. State newspapers informed us that when Yettaw swam across the lake he carried with him a camera tightly wrapped in plastic, a pair of pliers, a screwdriver, a flashlight, and twenty-eight dry-cell batteries. Further peculiar and unexplained details were released, such as the items Yettaw had left behind at Aung San Suu Kyi’s house, which included two black chadors, two pairs of gray stockings, and a volume of the
Book of Mormon
.

Yet, for all the minutiae, there was no satisfactory explanation as to what had actually taken place and why. All the discussions I had about the case were punctured by unanswerable questions:

The one point that nobody questioned was that the trial would result in a guilty verdict for all parties concerned—the ending was preordained. In August that year, Aung San Suu Kyi and her helpers were each sentenced to three years imprisonment with hard labor. Yettaw was sentenced to a total of seven years, receiving an additional three for breaking immigration law and an extra year from the Rangoon municipality for breeching the water sanitation restrictions on swimming in the lake.

Immediately after the sentencing, the minister of home affairs strode into the courtroom and read a last-minute order of clemency granted by Senior General Than Shwe. The women’s three-year prison sentences were reduced to eighteen months under house arrest on account of Aung San Suu Kyi being the daughter of Burma’s national hero Aung San.

It was just long enough, people noted, to keep Aung San Suu Kyi under lock and key until after the general elections that were scheduled for 2010.

During the last general election, held in 1990 and considered to have been relatively free and fair, the generals suffered a humiliating defeat. Though Aung San Suu Kyi and other key members of her party were under house arrest or in prison at the time, the National League for Democracy fielded 447 candidates and won 392 seats. The National Unity Party, a proxy of the regime, fielded 413 candidates and won 10 seats. The figures allowed no room for ambiguity; the people wanted the military out and the NLD in.

Having utterly misjudged the will of the people, the regime disregarded the results and continued to rule. With the hindsight of twenty years it is unlikely they will make the same mistake again. The determination with which the referendum was pushed through in the wake of Cyclone Nargis and the dubious methods used to garner the 92.48 percent positive result was evidence enough that there was little sincerity behind the government’s so-called Road Map to Democracy.

Besides, Than Shwe had made it clear that no one should expect democracy in Burma anytime soon. “[G]iven that the kind of well-established mature democracy that is the end result of two or three centuries of development cannot reasonably be made to appear overnight, all-round consideration and thoughtful action will be advisable,” he said during his address for Armed Forces Day in 2009. “Democracy in Myanmar today is at a fledgling stage and still requires patient care and attention.”

Than Shwe further cautioned more than 13,600 troops standing to attention at the Naypyidaw parade ground not to let down their guard: “We must be combat-ready forever to defend the nation and protect the life and property of the people.”

Come 2010, all main contenders and rivals to the throne will be safely behind bars or, in the case of Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest.

Most of the 88 Generation Students group who organized the protests against the rise in fuel costs in August 2007 will still be in prison, as they are serving sentences that are sixty-five years long. Among those condemned to a lifetime in prison, are Mie Mie, a thirty-five-year-old zoology graduate and mother of two who was transferred to a prison in the far north, and Nilar Thein, a former political prisoner who gave birth to her first child just before the 2007 protests. Min Ko Naing, a prominent leader during the 1988 uprising who had already spent seventeen years in prison, mostly in solitary confinement, was also sentenced to sixty-five years, with an additional six months for contempt of court.

It is estimated that 220 monks are incarcerated in Burmese prisons and will undoubtedly still be in prison during the elections. For his role in the September 2007 marches, U Gambira, a twenty-eight-year-old leader of the All Burma Monks’ Alliance, was sentenced to sixty-eight years, twelve of which will be served with hard labor.

Harsh punishment was also meted out to bloggers and journalists who sent information about the marches out of the country. Nay Phone Latt, a man in his twenties whose blog was widely read around the world during September 2007, was sentenced to twenty years for using electronic transactions to harm national security, among other charges.

Zargana, the outspoken comedian arrested for his high-profile involvement in relief efforts after Cyclone Nargis, was sentenced on various charges to fifty-nine years (though his sentence was later reduced to thirty-five years).

Most people I spoke to in Burma viewed the upcoming elections as just another tactic for the military to hold on to power with less international condemnation and the cultivated appearance of legitimacy. There was a joke doing the rounds that the generals would discard their military uniforms and don
longyi
so that they could reemerge after the elections dressed as civilian politicians and continue to rule the country. As the joke goes, the new constitution and elections
will
bring change to Burma—a change of uniform.

John Yettaw left Burma shortly after his verdict was read. He had suffered numerous health issues related to his diabetes and epilepsy. U.S. senator Jim Webb arrived in mid-August and was granted meetings with both Senior General Than Shwe and Aung San Suu Kyi. After the senator’s visit, Yettaw was released and taken back to the United States. Since his return, Yettaw has denied any accusations that the regime sponsored or aided his swim to Aung San Suu Kyi’s house. When asked by
News-week
magazine whether the junta had put him up to it, he said, “I’ve been accused of being CIA, of being on the books of the junta. The idea is just ridiculous.”

Senator Webb’s visit to Burma, the first by a high-level U.S. diplomat in many years, marked a turning point in U.S. policy toward Burma. A few months later, Kurt M. Campbell, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, used the phrase “pragmatic engagement” to describe his government’s revised approach. While economic sanctions would remain in place until the regime displayed the necessary commitment to change (such as releasing Aung San Suu Kyi and all other political prisoners), the United States intended to pursue active dialogue with the generals. Campbell later visited Burma together with his deputy, Scot Marciel. During an open meeting held in Bangkok, Thailand, after their visit, Marciel repeatedly stressed that the dialogue was in its infancy and offered few details of their meetings in Burma or their expectations for future engagement. As Campbell had stated earlier, “We expect engagement with Burma to be a long, slow, and step-by-step process.”

 

 

 

A FEW DAYS AFTER
The Swimmer was arrested in May 2009, Kyaing Kyaing, the wife of Senior General Than Shwe, held a ceremony at the Danok Pagoda, not far from Rangoon. For the previous couple of years, members of the regime had been donating funds to refurbish the ancient pagoda, and the work was nearly completed. As one of the primary patrons, Kyaing Kyaing made the customary offerings to the religious order, and monks recited the
Paritta
, or Buddhist scripture of protection. Holy objects were enshrined inside the reliquary of the
hti
, and it was hoisted to the top of the pagoda in a sacred carriage. Before Kyaing Kyaing left, she performed a few acts to accrue additional merit. She planted and watered a Bodhi tree, the sacred fig tree under which the Buddha gained enlightenment, and she released a flock of birds into the air.