Living Silence in Burma (17 page)

Student activism spread after a brawl in October 1996 similar to the March 1988 incident. Some students from Rangoon Institute of Technology got into an altercation at a restaurant with a few auxiliary police, who beat them up. The students were detained, and the news quickly spread around campus. Students organized an on-campus demonstration protesting against police brutality and calling for the punishment of the auxiliary policemen and an accurate news report of the event in the official media. The beaten students were quickly released, but students involved in organizing the demonstration were later detained, prompting more demonstrations in early December. This time, the students took the demonstrations into the city centre. On the night of 2 December, students marched from the busy Hledan junction past the Shwedagon Pagoda and on to the American embassy. Then on the night of 6 December, they held another demonstration at Hledan junction, which I happened to witness.

When a friend and I arrived at around 7 p.m., the junction was blocked off by military barricades in all five directions. We could hear people making speeches and the audience shouting its approval as we made our way through the wide circle of perhaps two thousand standing people. In the centre about a thousand students were seated on the ground surrounding a student holding a fighting-peacock flag on a makeshift bamboo pole. Other students held framed photographs of General Aung San, and some had handmade posters with slogans in Burmese and English. Students took turns coming to the flagpole to give short speeches. One shouted: ‘University courses are supposed to last a year, but we get only a few months. How can we learn anything like this?’ Another countered: ‘It will be OK if all of us are uneducated. The degree is not useful. So we have to sacrifice here to form the student union.’

Soon the speeches became more heated, with speakers calling on the audience to remember the country’s long history of student activism. Whenever there was a lull in the speech-making, the students sang revolutionary songs and shouted in a call-and-response form: ‘Do we have unity? Yes, we do!’ and ‘To set up student unions: our cause!’

I and the other dozen Westerners present were approached by students eager to tell us why they were protesting. Many also wanted to inform us about the situation in their home towns. One student told me that he was from an island where his family and others’ boats were routinely requisitioned by the military authorities, and they had recently been pressed into forced labour to build a bridge to another island. Another complained that all the houses in his village, including his own, had
been torn down without compensation to make way for a new jail. A third announced how fed up he was with the FOC system. When I asked what FOC meant, he said, ‘“Free of charge”, the military just takes everything it wants without paying.’

A group of students circulated around the area distributing water and sweets donated by local shopkeepers, while others picked up rubbish. As students from different universities arrived and announced their presence, cheers broke out. But as the night wore on, and armed soldiers and riot police began moving closer, the atmosphere changed. Many students and onlookers became afraid and silently slipped away. Professors sent by the military came several times to ask the students to disperse, but they refused to leave until Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt, Secretary-1 of the SLORC and also the chairman of the Myanmar Education Committee, came to meet with them. He did not. Instead, the troops and riot police began inching towards the students, clearly hoping to intimidate them into leaving without having to use force.

By 2 a.m., there were only 100 students left, sitting in a tight triangle, praying as they faced the Shwedagon Pagoda. On the pavement, there were about 150 students and locals armed with chair legs, determined to fight back even while the students in the centre had called for non-violent resistance. The remaining onlookers, including myself and the other Westerners, had moved up to balconies overlooking the junction. After giving a final warning, the troops trained water-cannons on the silent students and stormed the area. Everywhere shattering glass, screams and wails could be heard as people were injured and arrested. We made our way into people’s apartments, where we sat out the rest of the night in utter silence and darkness, though some of the Burmese girls in the room could barely stifle their sobs. In the early morning hours, we were able to slip out, although the apartment owners were later interrogated and the leaders of the demonstration imprisoned.

Over the next week, several smaller ‘lightning’ demonstrations occurred in front of various universities in Rangoon and other towns, but the universities were soon closed down and barricades erected on all the main thoroughfares, making it impossible for the students to network. The demonstrations ceased, but the military was clearly troubled to see that many Rangoon residents had been quick to provide food and money for the students, even if they had not joined in themselves. Moreover, the demonstrators had included a number of ethnic minority students from the different ethnic states.

From December 1996 until mid-1998, the main universities in Rangoon
and Mandalay were closed. Universities in Rangoon were briefly reopened in August 1998 so that registered students could take exams. Protests broke out, however, and the universities were shut again. One of the students involved in organizing the protests, Thet Win Aung, was sentenced to fifty-three years in prison, with the sentence later increased to fifty-nine years. Other student activists were also given long sentences in what was clearly an attempt by the regime to deter students from participating in political activities.

The regime eventually reopened some of the smaller institutes and colleges, but they moved most of the student body out of the central campuses in Rangoon and Mandalay. Rangoon Institute of Technology and Mandalay Institute of Technology were folded into a new government technical college system with thirty small campuses around the country. The level of education offered at these colleges was lower than at the former institutes of technology, with six-year programmes being reduced to four years. When some of the new government technical college campuses opened in mid-December 1999, students protested because of the poor facilities and the downgrading of the educational level. Many students gave up on obtaining a university degree and enrolled in short-term diploma courses or went abroad as migrant workers.

Regular university courses reopened in 2000, but most were no longer held on their former campuses in Rangoon. Instead, new campuses had been built in satellite towns outside the city. Most importantly, from a political point of view, students could not easily organize demonstrations any more, because the campuses were scattered and the access roads into Rangoon could be easily blocked. At the same time, students were frustrated by the long commute time, the poor quality of the facilities and the general uselessness of a university education.

The regime changes its name

The regime faced challenges in the mid- and late 1990s, as it struggled with a weakening economy and pressure from domestic political groups and foreign organizations and governments. Foreign investment began declining in the mid-1990s owing to poor economic management and constantly changing regulations. The Asian economic crisis in 1997 and Aung San Suu Kyi’s repeated calls for foreign businesses to stay out also resulted in reduced investment. Throughout the late 1990s, inflation was running in double-digit numbers, eroding the value of fixed salaries and leading hundreds of thousands of Burmese to seek work outside the country.

In November 1997, the SLORC renamed itself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The switch was meant to project a softer image, because the regime had been ridiculed for years for calling itself by such a monstrous-sounding name. At the same time, some of the most blatantly corrupt SLORC members, such as Lieutenant Generals Tun Kyi, the minister of trade, Myint Aung, the minister of agriculture, and Kyaw Ba, the minister of tourism, were removed. All three had been prominent regional commanders in the past and were viewed as potential rivals to other senior SLORC members. Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt and General Maung Aye used the occasion to strengthen their own positions by promoting younger, more loyal men to second-line leadership positions.

At the time of the name change, rumours were rife about possible splits in the military and whether these might not possibly lead to one side negotiating with the NLD. The differences appear to have been over tactics rather than goals, however. Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt was trying to destroy the NLD by having local authorities intimidate party members, harass their families and incarcerate those who refused to resign. The intention was to isolate Aung San Suu Kyi and reduce her party’s legitimacy. Some of the field commanders, on the other hand, apparently favoured more heavy-handed tactics such as mob attacks against her.

There was a similar divergence in tactics used to weaken the ethnic resistance movements. While Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt tried to break up and buy off armed ethnic nationalist groups with promises of lucrative economic concessions, troops under General Maung Aye’s command undertook military offensives and massive depopulations of the areas where the ethnic nationalist armies operated. In fact, the mixed tactics succeeded in making many of the ethnic armies decide they were better off negotiating.

Nevertheless, as an intelligence officer with no support base among the infantry, Lieutenant General Khin Nyunt’s position within the regime was contingent on General Ne Win’s support. In an effort to make himself indispensable, Khin Nyunt asserted his personal authority over many aspects of national policy. In the late 1990s, he led the Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence, and was also the chairman of over a dozen policy-making committees, including the Office of Strategic Studies, the Information Policy Committee, the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) steering committee, the National Health Committee, the Myanmar Education Committee, the Work Committee for the Development
of Border Areas and National Races, and the Leading Committee for Perpetual All-round Renovation of Shwedagon Pagoda.

Meanwhile, the regime’s chairman, Senior General Than Shwe, tried to woo the masses and secure his own base of support through the establishment of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA). Although purportedly a social organization, the USDA was often used to defend the interests of the regime.
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Membership in the USDA, founded in 1993, quickly rose to several million people. In rural areas, many farmers joined because they were informed that USDA members would be exempted from forced labour projects. Others became members so that they could travel without police harassment and receive other perks. The USDA also held occasional courses in computing, English and other subjects for its members.

Less-educated people in particular were drawn to the USDA, believing it was really working for the country. In several districts, however, people’s names were simply added to membership lists without their ever being consulted. In some schools, teachers of eighth-standard students (age fourteen) and up were ordered to give the names of their students to the USDA for automatic membership. And it was virtually impossible to become a civil servant without first joining the USDA.

Beginning in 1996, the regime sought to turn the USDA into a counter-force against the NLD and student activists. This was reflected in many of the USDA leaders’ speeches. As reported in the state-controlled press, Than Shwe himself told senior USDA leaders in November 1996:

    It is the duty of the entire people including USDA members to resolutely crush destructive elements inside and outside the country as the common enemy who are disrupting all the development endeavours with the sole aim of gaining power.
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The authorities also gave military training to some USDA youth and used them to intimidate and attack Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters. The aim was to make it appear that the people, and not just the regime, were opposed to her and the NLD. Periodically, the USDA organized mass rallies throughout the country to demonstrate support for military rule and to denounce the NLD. As in the pre-1988 period, respected individuals were handed speeches which they were ordered to read with sufficient passion. While few people enjoyed attending these rallies, except in cases when they were happy for a break from work, almost nobody refused to go. Names were checked at the gate and those who did not turn up were threatened with fines and other unpleasant consequences.

Frustrated that the regime was refusing to engage in a political dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, the NLD began taking more aggressive steps. After the party congress held on 27 May 1998, the NLD urged the regime to recognize the 1990 election results and convene the parliament within sixty days. In August, the NLD announced that if the regime refused to convene the parliament, the NLD would do so itself. The regime responded by arresting hundreds of NLD members to prevent them from meeting. In September 1998, the NLD formed a Committee Representing the People’s Parliament (CRPP), consisting of NLD and other ethnic political party members.

Determined to crush the NLD, the regime stepped up its efforts to shut down remaining party offices and force not only elected MPs but also party members to resign. In late 1998 and 1999, almost every day the state-controlled newspapers featured articles about the latest mass resignations from the NLD in various townships. Not reported in the newspapers was the fact that USDA members in some districts were going house to house threatening NLD members that, if they did not resign, they would suffer serious consequences. Afraid of losing their jobs or having their businesses closed down, many members did resign. In some cases, USDA members came by a few days later telling them they should now join the USDA.

One statement issued by the CRPP in February 1999 indicates the range of techniques the regime used to intimidate NLD members into resigning. According to the statement, the wife of an NLD MP-elect from Mandalay Division was called to the township chairman’s office where she was told: