Living Silence in Burma (27 page)

Po Khin’s colleague, Tun Shein, added, ‘To refuse a government order, we need a gathering. If only I refuse, I will be punished, it is sure.’ With no independent workers’ unions or independent village administrative committees, individuals often feel overwhelmed by their helplessness in the face of the powerful military organization.

The authorities have also implemented divide-and-rule policies. Individuals may be criticized for trying to represent their communities or even their neighbours, making people feel separated and weak. Po Khin explained: ‘If I say to the soldiers, “Sir, Tun Shein is handicapped, so I think he cannot work, so just forget him,” they will say, “Who are you? Are you a politician? If you want to speak, speak for yourself. If Tun Shein cannot work, he will say it himself.”’

So many people in Burma talk of living in silence and talking in whispers. As one writer put it, ‘We have no mouths, only ears.’ This should be understood in the active sense. It is an effort to keep thoughts to yourself and to stop words from spilling out. Nevertheless, without meaning to, people serve as instruments of the regime when they decide not to talk.

Yet while the authorities may not let one citizen speak for another, the regime asserts the right of its members, and its mass organization, the USDA, to speak on behalf of all citizens. The division of Burmese society into the military who issue orders and the people who obey them is reflected in the distortion of an old military slogan. When General Aung San was still alive, he and the military leaders of the day promoted the slogan ‘The people are our mother, the people are our father’. Under the
SLORC and the SPDC, this has been changed to ‘The
tatmadaw
is our mother, the
tatmadaw
is our father’.
¹

Likewise, whenever senior generals visit agricultural development projects, industrial enterprises or schools, they always give the managers and workers ‘necessary instructions’, even if they have no expertise in that area. The regime has trivialized the country’s citizens by treating them as if they have no important ideas of their own. People are treated like children who must obey their elders.

This is reflected in the regime’s handling of the thousands of Cyclone Nargis survivors who sought shelter at temples and temporary relief camps. A few weeks after the storm, when dead bodies were still floating in the rivers, the authorities announced that the relief phase was over and that everyone would have to return to their villages to begin reconstruction.
²
They did not bother to consult with the villagers to see whether they were ready or able to return, but simply decided for them.

Since 1988 the military has encouraged people to greet them with a prayerful gesture of respect formerly reserved for kings and monks. A return of the gesture would signal mutual respect, but the gesture is not returned.

A climate of fear

Community life in central Burma has been warped by concerns about monitoring and surveillance. Under the household registration system, all households must possess an official form listing the residents of the house. When anyone comes to spend the night, even if the person is an aunt or grandson, the family must report this to the ward authorities. If the guest is not reported, both the guest and the house-owner can be punished. While registering guests may be little more than a nuisance for apolitical families, it reflects the regime’s desire to be able to monitor activities at the household level.

Travel, particularly to areas outside the central plains, is slow and sometimes nerve-racking because of the numerous checkpoints along the way. Soldiers at the checkpoints are looking not only for armed anti-government soldiers but also non-violent activists trying to network with people in other parts of the country. Young people who might be student activists are particularly singled out for close scrutiny, unless they can show USDA membership cards. After the 2007 monks’ demonstrations, travelling monks often faced lengthy questioning as well. But members of armed groups that have made ceasefire agreements with the regime, even if they are believed to be involved in drug trafficking, are given
special permits that allow them to sail through checkpoints without their passengers or vehicles being checked. This arrangement has made some Burmese citizens resentful of the ceasefire groups.

In urban areas, monitoring is undertaken by both trained officers and local informers. According to Thiha, an experienced former military intelligence officer who left Burma after Khin Nyunt’s arrest in 2004, surveillance worked as follows: in Rangoon and Mandalay, each township was overseen by a middle-ranking intelligence officer, with one lower-ranking intelligence agent assigned to each ward. These agents then recruited five informers from each ward, with the job of the fifth informer being to monitor the other four informers. The ward peace and development council also monitored citizens through local informers, with one informer per street. Military intelligence agents consulted with the head of the ward development council to see whether the information both sides were getting matched.

Informers come from various backgrounds. Some are nationalists who can be persuaded to see dissidents as people who are being used by foreigners to destroy the country, while others provide information because they are intimidated or they need money.

Thiha also explained how he and other intelligence agents cleverly worked their way into sensitive locations such as mosques and even generals’ houses. By spending weeks pretending to be a garbage collector or a street vendor in a particular area, an agent could become a routine part of the scene and could befriend members of households or gain access to religious centres without drawing attention to himself. He could then plant listening devices without anyone knowing.

Since the fall of Khin Nyunt, the Military Affairs Service, the Special Branch of the police and a unit within the USDA have all been assigned to monitor the country’s citizens. While the new intelligence units have been perceived as less effective than the former military intelligence service thus far, those who dare to engage in politics have to assume they are under watch.

Burmese love to go to tea shops and have long discussions with friends. These discussions often hit on political topics, but when the conversation becomes heated, the participants often catch themselves and change the subject, because they don’t know who might be listening in.

As the number of restaurants, nightclubs and shopping malls has expanded in Rangoon, there seems to be more freedom to meet and talk. But for activists who want to have long discussions with colleagues, there still seem to be very few places where they can meet undetected. Likewise,
everyone knows that government agents, who look and act just like everyone else, have been planted in communities with a history of political activism, such as university campuses and certain monasteries.

A number of activists have had the painful experience of finding out that people they once trusted or closely associated with were in fact reporting on them behind their backs. In some cases, the informers may not have wanted to do so but felt they had no choice. Htway Win, a student activist in 1988, told how one of his fellow student union members switched sides after the failed demonstrations. His family was poor, and he needed a job, so he joined the military and was assigned to intelligence work. Meanwhile, Htway Win continued to be involved in underground student organizing into the 1990s. At first his friend warned him and his colleagues that some intelligence agents were shadowing them; later, he identified Htway Win to other authorities who had Htway Win’s name but didn’t know what he looked like. Htway Win was taken to one of the military intelligence’s interrogation centres, where he suffered brutal torture. At one point, his former friend brought him fried noodles and apologized. Htway Win said he was very angry at the time but, after spending many months meditating in prison, he was able to forgive him.

Htway Win himself came under suspicion, however, when he was released much earlier than the three colleagues arrested with him. The parents of the other three assumed that Htway Win must have become an informer or an intelligence agent, otherwise he wouldn’t have been let out before the others. According to Htway Win and other former political prisoners, this was one of the regime’s tactics. The authorities tried to sow doubts among groups that were formerly cohesive, so that they would no longer want to work together. Distrust is also created by some activists and ordinary individuals who label their rivals as intelligence agents or informers in order to reduce their popularity.

For those who involve themselves in politics, suspicion has thus become one of the primary lenses through which others are viewed. Such a climate makes political organizing extremely difficult. Not knowing who can or cannot be trusted, activists find it hard to expand their networks beyond a small group of close friends. But even non-activists have to worry. With such a system in place, informers and agents can make trouble for people against whom they have personal grudges.

Viewing the world as a hostile place also relates to long-held spiritual beliefs. The continued worship of
nats
, capricious spirits demanding appeasement for often unintentional slights, still colours the worldview of many Burmese today. One person I talked to compared the military
intelligence to
nats
, always keeping you under their surveillance. He said that you have to respect, fear and appease them, because otherwise they may just show up and make life very uncomfortable for you.

Still, there are many instances of solidarity between local authorities and citizens. Some activists told of ward authorities who would warn them in advance about house searches, giving them time to hide any incriminating books or documents. Others believe they were able to escape arrest because local authorities, who were also their friends, did not search for them as thoroughly as they might have. One person even told of the local police secretly releasing a political prisoner for a few hours so that he could celebrate a holiday with his family. To some extent the regime must rely on these local authorities, who tend to be much more sympathetic to their neighbours’ activities. But as the regime continues to increase the size of its army, it can replace more of the local civilian authorities with military men assigned to districts far from their homes. Such soldiers can usually be counted on to enforce policies more strictly.

In many areas, particularly outside the bigger cities, communities also participate in sanctioning people who dare to rock the boat, because they are seen as possibly endangering the rest of the community. The authorities may interpret neighbours’ contact with activists and their families as indicating that they are also against the state. At the same time, activists’ actions threaten the rationalizations to which the rest of the community clings. To use a phrase of Czech playwright and politician Vaclav Havel, they force others to confront the fact that they are ‘living within a lie’. Most people tell themselves that resistance is impossible and useless, while certain individuals insist that resistance is a moral necessity. This challenges people’s sense of integrity, despite the fact that they may feel they are doing the best they can for their families by keeping their heads down. Thus, during times of greater repression, communities tend to push away those who are targeted by the state, although there are usually some people who will take risks to help them.

Khin Khin Yi told of her experience after her husband, a member of the group of NLD parliamentarians who wanted to set up a parallel government, fled in 1991. She was routinely interrogated by a group of men at odd times, and two military intelligence agents were posted near her house. The MI tried to isolate her family by going to her friends’ houses and telling them not to visit her.

A few months after her husband’s escape, she was arrested. Unable to come up with a charge against her, the intelligence agents accused her of stealing a bicycle and imprisoned her. After two months of late-night
interrogations she was released and returned home. Then some officials glued a poster with photographs of her husband and another NLD MP-elect on the house and in public places. The posters claimed the men were wanted criminals who had run away.

Shortly thereafter, the authorities informed her that she could no longer stay in her house, unless she could pay a large sum for it through a friend. She decided to move with her children to a larger town in the district, but she found it difficult to secure accommodation because people were nervous about associating with her. Finally, an old man who supported the democracy movement agreed to rent to her on the condition that she take sole responsibility if there were any trouble. Every week she had to sign in with the ward authorities confirming that she wouldn’t leave town. Although she said that the local authorities treated her decently, she had to sign in for three years.

Her children also faced difficulties at school. While most of the teachers and students rallied around her daughter and sons, some were afraid. All students had to sign a form stating that they would participate in USDA functions, but her children refused. Fortunately, some teachers tried to protect them by concealing this information. On Armed Forces Day and Independence Day, the authorities demanded that her daughter give garlands to army personnel, but she wouldn’t do it. At last, her children were overcome with frustration, and her daughter sank into a deep depression.

Many of her former friends avoided the family. Khin Khin Yi recalls, ‘They wouldn’t even meet my eyes in the street.’ But there were others who helped and encouraged her, even though the SLORC threatened them. Ironically, it was the strangers who were her cell-mates during the two months she was incarcerated who really reached out to her. When she was first thrown into the room of female prisoners, most of whom were sex workers, they suspected she was a brothel owner. She explained that actually she was a housewife, but her husband was an NLD parliamentarian who had had to flee. As they got to know her better, they sympathized with her, shared their food with her, and helped her in other ways. For one week, the guards forced her to sleep in the dankest corner of the cell, where ants and mosquitoes made their homes. She was given no mat or blanket. Her cell-mates eased her discomfort by crushing up tobacco leaves and spreading them on the ground to keep the insects away. Her children didn’t know where she was, so her fellow prisoners asked their relatives to send news to them.