As we lifted off YVR and headed west across the Pacific I tried
to ignore my feelings of apprehension. Our decision to go to Myanmar (a.k.a.
Burma) was not made lightly or without considerable soul searching.
Pro-democracy protests triggered by a sharp increase in the cost of fuel began
sweeping across the country on Aug. 19 and by Sept. 23, the day we left for
Yangon, there were reports of massive civil unrest throughout the country. And
the brutal military junta that has ruled the country by force for nearly 50
years has little patience with protestors. More than 3,000 people were killed
when the same government put down a peaceful student protest in 1988.
I also felt a twinge of guilt. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung
San Suu Kyi, fearing that tourist dollars will be used to support the junta,
has urged visitors to boycott her country. Suu Kyi, whose National League for
Democracy was elected in 1990, has spent most of the last 18 years under house
arrest. It’s hard to disagree with someone of her stature and dedication but
there are strong arguments against a tourist boycott. “If the tourists stop
coming,” one shop owner told us, “half a million people will have no jobs.” In
the end we rationalized that by avoiding government-owned enterprises we could
channel most of our dollars to the people. And in a country where the average
per-capita income is less than one dollar a day a few tourist dollars can mean
the difference between eating and going hungry.
We ran into the paranoia of Burmese officialdom almost as soon
as we arrived at Yangon’s brand new International Airport. One of our packs was
missing and I wanted to report it to Thai Air. An airport official told me I
couldn’t go to the Thai Air office. “It’s upstairs,” he explained, “just wait
here.” He disappeared, along with everyone else in the building.
That’s when Maung (not his real name) asked if we needed help.
Dressed in the traditional skirt-like longyi, Maung had no official connection
with the airport but he knew the ropes. “You need security clearance to go
upstairs he explained.” He led us down a corridor and spoke to a uniformed
officer behind a tiny barred window. “Passports!” The guy demanded. And in
exchange for our passports we were given security tags that got us past an armed
checkpoint and up to the second floor where we reported our lost baggage to a
disinterested official. Not a great start.
We accepted Maung’s offer to get us a cab to the Panorama Hotel
in downtown Yangon, and to our surprise he came with us. Explaining that he
could not speak freely except in the car he told us about the demonstrations
and pointed out the road leading to Suu Kyi’s residence. Blocked by a barricade
of wood and razor wire, it was guarded by several soldiers with assault rifles.
A short distance farther our road was also blocked, not by soldiers but by a
crowd of demonstrators including hundreds of saffron-robed monks. The driver
detoured around them, through axel-deep puddles from the previous day’s monsoon
rain.
Maung, we discovered, was a money trader with his own agenda.
Since Myanmar has no connection to the international monetary system everything
is done in cash — no credit cards or ATMs. He offered us a fair rate so
we dropped by his house and changed some of our dollars into kyat. I expressed
surprise at how little traffic there was compared to other cities in Southeast
Asia where the roads are usually choked with motorbikes. “The generals feared
that a gunman on a motorbike might attack one of their cars,” explained Maung,
“so they banned motorbikes in the Yangon District.” Another example of
iron-fisted government control and paranoia.
For the next two days the demonstrators, led by thousands of
monks, marched through the streets of Yangon and Mandalay without much official
interference. There was a feeling of confidence, even euphoria. “This time,” we
heard over and over, “this time the world in watching, the people are united,
there will be a change.” And then the axe fell.
In the early morning of Sept. 26 we boarded the train from Yangon
to Mandalay, and shortly after we left our hotel was locked down and the
shooting started. One of our travel companions, who remained in Yangon,
actually witnessed the brutal use of tear gas and automatic weapons against the
monks and their followers. Many were beaten, loaded into trucks, and hauled
away for interrogation. By the time we got to Mandalay late that evening the
government had imposed a dawn to dusk curfew. The streets, normally teeming
with life, were deserted and an eerie silence hung over the city. The hotel
arranged to bring some chapattis up to our room and we watched the Yangon
violence on Aljazeera. Those images were the last real news we saw before the
government cracked down on the media and cut off Internet access to the country.
For the next 10 days, except for rumors and the occasional
detour around military roadblocks, we traveled through the country as though
nothing was happening. But the soldiers, lounging around outside monasteries
and never far from their AK 47s, were a reminder of the deep-seated unrest that
is bottled up in Burmese society. We never felt in any personal danger but I
was warned to keep my camera out of sight. According to the rumour mill both
cameras and laptops were being confiscated to keep embarrassing images out of
the media.
The ruling junta controls and pockets the revenue from almost
all of the country’s rich natural resources and major businesses while the
people subsist on the edge of poverty and the country’s infrastructure crumbles
into disrepair. “My village used to have electricity,” a manager of one of the
hotels told us, “but it failed many years ago and now it is dark. The
government doesn’t care.” He commutes to work in the back of a pickup truck,
which serves as the village bus and takes two hours to negotiate the rough
roads. He earns $50 a month, has two children, and is saving his money to buy a
flashlight.
We spent a bone-jarring day driving a portion of Highway 4, one
of the main trade routes to China. Years of neglect have reduced the pavement
to a narrow strip flanked by crumbling shoulders. A rusted out backhoe sat
overgrown with vines near a group of men using crowbars to break up boulders.
They dropped the pieces into a tiny rock crusher, and women, using bamboo
baskets on their heads, carried the crushed rock to potholes in the road
— futile, backbreaking, government-funded labour.
When we returned to Yangon at the end of our tour the city was
ominously quiet. Anticipating further protests we had cancelled our downtown
reservations and booked into the airport hotel. It was virtually empty. In
downtown Yangon the Shwedagon Pagoda, Myanmar’s most sacred shrine, was
cordoned off with barbed wire and soldiers. We made our way through the market
and up to the Sky Lounge on the 20
th
floor of the Sakura Tower for
an overview of the city. Every window was posted: “WARNING – photos not
allowed.”
There were 35 people on our Thai Air 737 (it seats 180) when we
left Yangon for Hanoi, and the departure lounge was empty. Those who were able
had already left the country. We didn’t know the full extent of the Myanmar
protest and its subsequent crushing until we got to Vietnam and had access to
the uncensored media. By then the generals were fully back in control. Hundreds
of monks, their alms bowls no match for the army’s assault rifles, were
detained and gatherings of more than five people were banned. Once again the
ruling generals proved they would stop at nothing to retain their grip on
power. And in a society where poverty and despair are trumped by fear the will
to resist is lost.
A month later, when we arrived back in Canada, the “saffron revolution” and its violent overthrow were old news — not even a mention on the back pages. Once the violence stopped so did the media coverage, and as it did in 1988 the world turned the other way.