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Hell and heroism: Tyranny that rules by terror is threatened by brave few
In a rare report from Burma, Andrew Buncombe, Asia correspondent, talks to some of the dissenters who live in fear of the ruling junta
Published: 19 September 2007
The junta has a list – a list that has reverberated through this rain-soaked, fear-ridden city. Arranged in order of their "wanted" priority, the list contains 22 names and faces, addresses and personal details, anything that could help the military find these pro-democracy activists and throw them behind bars.
Scores have already been locked up, dragged off to jails from which emerge reports of abuse and torture. But the junta is desperate to find those still at large.
Burma's military government, which has ruled the former British colony with a rare brutality for more than half a century, is facing its most serious challenge for at least a decade.
Every day there are flashes of resistance, flickering protests against the regime's unbending rule. And yesterday, in what may be a critical development, more than 1,000 saffron-robed Buddhist monks marched in defiant protest in two separate cities, only to have tear-gas grenades fired at them by the authorities.
This wave of protests was started by a group of charismatic activists that came of age during widespread demonstrations two decades ago and severely threatened the regime. They seized on an unexplained government decision to increase fuel prices and anger over the soaring prices fed into general despair among the downtrodden population about the regime's cruelty and ruinous governance.
Indeed, it may be the sinister normality of Burma that is the country's most disturbing signature. In the decaying colonial city of Rangoon there is barely a policeman or a soldier in sight, people with money are busy buying air conditioners and stereo systems driven in from China while traders set up their stalls on the street and hawk their wares to passers-by.
"In the past the regime has arrested people and then released them after a few months," said one Western diplomat in Rangoon, Burma's largest city. "I don't think that is the case here. I think the regime is preparing to throw the book at [the activists it has arrested]. I think they are very sophisticated at spotting leaders who people will rally around."
The diplomat added: "I was not here in 1988 but people say that then there were [initially] sporadic demonstrations and that eventually everybody joined in. If the monks join in, that could make a huge difference. They could get people out. That is what happened in '88."
The ability to rally ordinary people, to persuade them to confront the police and militias and to march against the regime is precisely why the authorities are so keen to trace those activists still free. The list of names, which includes seven women, has been circulated to government officials and hotel owners in Rangoon, who have been told to report anything suspicious. Police have even been showing up at foreign embassies with photographs and asking whether activists have taken refuge inside.
"We have been instructed to inform higher authorities immediately if we sight any of these people in our area," one official said.
The Burmese regime, known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), has a strong and clear advantage as it confronts its opponents. Two decades after the demonstrations of 1988, which it put down with the death of thousands of civilians, it is wealthier, more secure and more experienced at dealing with protesters. It also knows that the overwhelming majority of its citizens are too terrified to act. And having banned the international media and silenced its own press, it has controlled almost all the information that reaches the eyes and ears of the public.
Yet over the course of four storm-lashed days during which Rangoon's broken streets flooded and people huddled under makeshift shelters, I was able to speak to half-a-dozen pro-democracy campaigners desperate for change. The names of these individuals – members of the National League for Democracy, the political group headed by the imprisoned Nobel laureate Aung Sang Suu Kyi – are not on the junta's list, but they, like so many others, live in constant fear and spoke only on condition of anonymity.
"The big difference is not with us but with the government. We are the same but they have money and experience," said a senior NLD member who acts as the group's spokesman.
The first of the protests that triggered this clampdown by the SPDC was launched last month by members of the '88 Generation Students group, an organisation that was heavily involved in the protests 19 years ago. Among those arrested was a high-profile activist and poet who goes by the nickname Min Ko Naing or "Conqueror of Kings", and who was only released from jail in 2006 after 15 years imprisonment.
There has been no word on Min Ko Naing's fate since he was dragged away on 22 August. NLD sources said about 65 people had been arrested with a dozen or so leaders being held in the country's notorious Insein Jail and the remainder detained at the Kyaik Ka San park, a former race course in Rangoon.
Campaigners based in neighbouring Thailand say the number of people arrested is about 120. Diplomats say they have heard reports the prisoners have been tortured but they have no confirmation.
Given the regime's iron grip on the media, it is difficult for campaigners to organise. A 70-year-old journalist who was released from jail two years ago having served 13 years, said: "There is no free press. We have no chance to speak to one another. We cannot tell other people about our experiences. Even the NLD cannot open its office. There is no freedom. No democracy. No rule of law."
Another journalist, who like the 70-year-old, can now only write using a pen name and then only about topics that the newspapers deem "safe", spent 17 years in jail. He was also released in 2005. "It was very hard to survive [in jail] but we have to struggle for our cause," he said.
After nearly two decades in prison, he emerged to see that, while the cause for which he had given so much had barely progressed, the underlying desire of the people remained as strong as ever. "After 17 years, nothing had changed, just the roads. People had not changed. People still encourage me to try to get democracy."
That determination is revealed by the flurry of scattered protests that have broken out across the country, coinciding with a massive hike in fuel prices by the government that saw the cost of petrol and compressed natural gas increase by 500 per cent.
While I was with the NLD spokesman, his mobile phone constantly rang, often with news of another demonstration. One morning, his phone trilling like a wind chime, he reported there had been a demonstration in the town of Lappottar, 200 miles to the north of Rangoon, when three activists had tried to set off on a march to the former capital.
The following day he reported there had been a demonstration in Taung Goke township, where two people had been arrested. He said a local NLD official claimed 10,000 people had come out in support of the protesters, a number he said he could not personally believe but the local official was adamant was correct.
The Burmese military regime, in control of the country since 1962, has been widely condemned by the international community and some of its neighbours.
When the authorities recently concluded a 15-year effort to draw up a new constitution, the resulting document was condemned by the United States State Department as a "sham".
It said the national conventions that agreed the constitution "clearly do not represent the will of the Burmese people, nor are they a step toward democracy". Even Laura Bush, the first lady, spoke out against the regime.
One Western diplomat, also based in Rangoon, said of the convention: "The regime has no understanding of what democracy means, of the value of dialogue, or of the abhorrent way in which it suppresses the voice of the people. The way it has ignored the demands of the ethnic groups in the National Convention and the unnecessary detention of people peacefully making their point indicates the regime's true intention: to keep tight control and to ensure power and wealth remains in the hands of the few."
But despite complete sanctions enacted by the US and partial sanctions imposed by the EU and Britain, the regime is still courted by regional powers such as India and China which are desperate to secure deals for Burma's vast natural gas resources – much of which is located in the offshore Shwe gasfields. Anything other than the most muted criticism of the regime's human rights record has been shoved aside as the two countries battle over their shared neighbour's resources. Both have signed arms deals with the regime.
Matthew Smith, a campaigner with the group EarthRights International, said: "The regime's brutality and readiness for violence in part secures its daily survival, but the gas deals are integral on a longer-term economic level, providing billions of dollars to private and state bank accounts that would otherwise be relatively empty.
"From this we can infer at least two things: one, the regime will stop at nothing to secure the export of its most lucrative asset, natural gas, and two, foreign oil and gas corporations are in a unique position of power because they provide the capital and expertise the regime presently lacks."
Campaigners insist progress can be made with Burma. They say the international community is finally starting to pay more attention to those making a stand in the country.
On the ground in Burma it is hard to find hope. People are not only terrified but they see little prospect for their country. One afternoon a tour guide nervously led the way to a tea shop, away from watchful eyes. Sitting on a low plastic seat he casually revealed that he, too, had been a political prisoner in the early 1990s and that he had spent two years in jail. For the first six months, his family had no idea where he was.
The 42-year-old said he had four children. "I tell my children that they must study hard. I tell them to do well at English," he said, leaning his body forward and speaking almost in a whisper. "I want them to move abroad – there is no future for them in Burma."
And yet for all the despair, there are perhaps flashes of hope. Despite the regime's efforts to ban a free media and limit what information the public receives, in the past couple of years Rangoon has seen the opening of numerous internet cafes where those who can afford to, log on and sit for hours. These cafes are usually packed with young people, bashing away at their keyboards. Perhaps they are sharing information with others that the regime does not want the world to know.