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Destination Burma

'Myanmar is not a country with a military, it is a military with a country'

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.