Letter from Burma (No. 52) By Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News, Monday, December 9, 1996

VOICE OF REASON LOOKS BACK ON EVENTFUL YEAR: "Year End"

Letter from Burma (No. 52) By Aung San Suu Kyi

This is the last of the weekly Letter from Burma series that began in November 1995 and I would like to start it on a note of gratitude. The intervening 12 months since my first letter have been most eventful. There were weeks when so much was happening I could not complete my letter by the agreed deadline. But the Mainichi Shimbun did not once reproach me for my failure to deliver on time; instead, Mr. Hiroshi Nagai and other members of the staff demonstrated a fine understanding of the difficulties with which I had to contend. For this understanding, and for the opportunity afforded me to bring the Burmese situation to the attention of the world outside Burma, I would like to express my sincere thanks to the newspaper.

As one deeply involved in the movement for democracy in Burma, it was always my intention to concentrate on the political aspect of life in the country. However, politics is about people and I have sought to bring out the human face of our political struggle. I have written of the effect on ordinary people of such official requirements as the compulsory reporting of overnight visitors to the authorities concerned. I have discussed what inflation means at the common, everyday level of an ordinary breakfast. I have written about friends and colleagues, about the activities of my party, the National League for Democracy, and about the trials, in more than one sense of the word, of political prisoners. I have described traditional festivals and Buddhist ceremonies which are an integral part of life in Burma. I have tried to present politics as multifaceted and indissolubly linked to social and economic issues.

In recent months, I have had to focus increasingly on the challenges the NLD had to face as persecution of its members and supporters reached new heights. The political climate has been very volatile since the end of May when the government took hundreds of NLD members of Parliament, elected in 1990 but never allowed to exercise their function as representatives of the people, into temporary detention. (There were some whose "temporary detention for questioning," as the authorities put it, were converted into long prison sentences.) One does not quite know what is going to happen from one day to the next but one can predict that every time the NLD plans a major party activity the government is bound to overreact.

It is not just the activities of our own party that bring down the heavy attention of the authorities upon us. The activities of others also provide them with an excuse for hampering our work. Toward the end of October, students of the Rangoon Institute of Technology staged demonstrations against the way in which some of their numbers had been handled by the municipal police during an incident in a restaurant. As a result, the road to my house was blocked off for the third time within a month (the first two blockades were related to NLD activities) and U Kyi Maung, one of our deputy chairmen, was taken in for questioning by the military intelligence. A number of young men who were known to be our staunch supporters were also taken into detention for some days and subjected to severe interrogation.

We have now come to expect that the road to my house would be blocked off late on Friday evening or early on Saturday morning to prevent our weekend public rallies from taking place. The blockade is lifted either on Sunday night or Monday morning or Tuesday, as the spirit moves the authorities. On the evening of Sunday, Dec. 1, the road was unblocked and it seemed as though the scene was set for a normal week. But as I observed in one of my letters, "normal" is not a very appropriate world for describing what goes on in Burma today. When Tuesday morning dawned all seemed as usual, but before 7 a.m. the road had been blocked off once again. And I was prevented from leaving my house. What was it all about? There had been another demonstration led by the students of the Rangoon Institute of Technology. We heard that they were later joined by students from the Rangoon Arts and Science University. Immediately the authorities seemed bent on finding some way of linking this development to the NLD.

The students of Rangoon University established a tradition of social awareness and political activism during the colonial days when they were prominent in the independence movement. The years of authoritarian rule blunted the political awareness of our young people but did not kill the instincts that lead them to seek justice and freedom. If there is student discontent, the authorities should seek to redress the ills that lie at the root of this discontent: the protests of the young often reflect the general malaise of their society.

The end of the year is a time for assessing past events and preparing for the future. It is a time for us to decide that we should resolve the problems of our country through political rather than military means.

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"Letter from Burma," which has been carried by the Mainichi Daily News in English and the Mainichi Shimbun in Japanese, will be compiled and published as books in the near future.

The original English-language version is scheduled to be published by Penguin Books next spring. The Japanese translation will be published by the Mainichi Shimbun on Dec. 24.

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As some Burmanet subscribers already know, Daw Suu's "Letter from Burma" series has been translated into Burmese by Kyaw Kyaw Soe, an activist in Tokyo, and published in Voice of Burma, a weekly digest of Burmese news in the Burmese language. Kyaw Kyaw Soe's translations will also be compiled in a book to be published by Voice of Burma Group later this month. Stay tuned for details.

Letter from Burma (No. 51) By Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News, Monday, December 2, 1996

MAINTAINING HUMAN DIGNITY IN THE DARKNESS: "A Normal Life"

Letter from Burma (No. 51) By Aung San Suu Kyi

Recently, when a friend asked me how things were with me since the authorities had taken to barricading off my house periodically, I replied that things were fine, I was simply carrying on with my normal life. At this she burst out laughing. "Yours in not a normal life, in fact it's the most abnormal life!" And I could not help but laugh too.

I suppose the kind of life I lead must seem very strange to some but it is a life to which I have become accustomed and it is really no stranger than a lot of things that go on in Burma today. Sometimes as we walk around the garden while the road outside lies quiet, shut off from the rest of the city, my colleagues and I agree that were we to write about our experiences in the form if a novel it would be criticized as too far-fetched a story, a botched Orwellian tale.

No doubt there are other countries in the world where you would find the equivalent of the huge billboards brazenly entitled "People's Desire," advertising the following sentiments:

* Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views

* Oppose those trying to jeopardize stability of the State and progress of the nation

* Oppose foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State

* Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy.

But I doubt that in other countries you would find just around the corner from such an unwelcoming, xenophobic proclamations, a gigantic, double-faced, particularly unattractive version of a traditional boy doll with puffy white face, staring eyes, a stiff smile and an attache case (that bit is not traditional) welcoming tourists to Visit Myanmar Year. Bizarre is the word that springs to mind. "Fascist Disneyland," one frequent visitor to Burma commented.

There is so much that is beautiful and so much that is wrong in my country. In the evenings when I look out to the lake from my garden, I can see the tattered beauty of the casuarinas, the tropical lushness of the coconut palms, the untidily exotic banana plants and the lushness of the barbed wire fence along the edge of the shore. And across the still waters festooned with dumps of water hyacinth is the mass of a new hotel built with profit rather than elegance in mind. As the sun begins to go down the sky lights up in orange hues. The Burmese refer to this hour as the time of blazing clouds and also the time when the ugly turn beautiful because the golden light casts a flattering glow on most complexions.

How simple it would be if a mere turn of light could make everything that was ugly beautiful. How wonderful it would be if twilight were a time when we could all lay down the cares of the day and look forward to a tranquil night of well earned rest. But in Fascist Disneyland the velvety night is too often night in the worst sense of the word, a time deprived of light in more ways than one. Even in the capital city Rangoon, electricity cuts are not infrequent and we are suddenly plunged into darkness. The inability of the government to supply adequate electric power makes it necessary for many households to contrive arrangements of their own, linking up a wire to a neighboring source that they might enjoy a bit of light at night. The local authorities turn a blind eye to such arrangements, accepting due compensation for their discretion. However, if you happen to be a member of the NLD, trying to bring light into your household can easily result in a two-year prison sentence. The other, and more real, darkness of night in Fascist Disneyland is that so many political arrests are made during the hours when all decent people should be resting and allowing others to rest.

Visitors to my country often speak of the friendliness, the hospitality and the acme of humor of the Burmese. Then they ask how it is possible that a brutal, humorless authoritarian regime could have emerged from such a people. A comprehensive answer to that question would involve a whole thesis but a short answer might be, as one writer has put it, that Burma is indeed one of those lands of charm and cruelty. I have found more warmth, more wholehearted love and more caring concern among my people, as we hope together, suffer together and struggle together, than anywhere else in the world. But those who exude hate and vindictiveness and rave about annihilating and crushing us are also Burmese, our own people.

How many can be said to be leading normal lives in a country where there are such deep divisions of heart and mind, where there is neither freedom nor security? When we ask for democracy, all we are asking is that our people should be allowed to live in tranquility under the rule of law, protected by institutions which will guarantee our rights, the rights that will enable us to maintain our human dignity, to heal long festering wounds and to allow love and courage to flourish. Is that such a very unreasonable demand?

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This article is one a yearlong series of letters. The Japanese translation appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 50) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News, Monday, November 25, 1996

SPIRITUAL REPRIEVE FROM AUTHORITARIAN RULE: "Respite"

Letter from Burma (No. 50) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Those who have to face persistent political persecution become highly politicized. Our lives take on a rhythm different from those who, on waking up in the morning do not need to wonder who might have been arrested during the night and what further acts of blatant injustice might be committed against our people later during the day. Our antennae become highly sensitive to vibrations barely noticed by those whose everyday existence is removed from political struggle. But still, our lives are not all politics, we have our personal concerns, our intellectual and cultural interests and our spiritual aspirations. The spiritual dimension becomes particularly important in a struggle in which deeply held convictions and strength of mind are the chief weapons against armed repression.

The majority of the people of Burma are Buddhists and it is traditional for us to gather together on religious occasions to renew our spiritual strength and our ties of friendship. The National League for Democracy, like many other organizations in the country, tries to observe major religious festivals. But it is not always easy. The authorities accuse us of using religion for political purposes, perhaps because this is what they themselves are doing, or perhaps because they cannot recognize the multidimensional nature of man as a social being. Our right to freedom of worship has become threatened by the desire of the authorities to curtail the activities of our party. This was made particularly obvious in a supplication addressed by the Minister for Religious Affairs to the abbot members of the State /sangha/ (community of Buddhist monks) organization on Sept. 29, 1996.

This supplication accused the NLD of infiltrating its party members into various levels of the sangha with a view to creating misunderstandings between the government and the sangha. It also accused the NLD of instructing its members to enter the religious order to promote the cause of their party and to commit subversive acts. (Somewhat baffling statement, that one. It is difficult to see how committing acts of subversion could promote the cause of the NLD.) Therefore sangha organizations had been "instructed to contact and cooperate with the relevant state/division, township and ward authorities and take protective measures against dangers to religion." In other words action should be taken to prevent members of the NLD from entering the ranks of the sangha.

It is customary for Burmese Buddhist boys to spend some time as novices in a monastery that they might learn the basic tenets of Buddhism and bring merit to their parents who are responsible for arranging their ordination. In addition, many Burmese men when they have passed the age of 20 enter the religious order again for varying periods of time as fully ordained monks. The supplication of the Minister of Religious Affairs to the state sangha organization seemed to be aimed at curtailing the right of members of the NLD to pursue the traditional religious practice. If the authorities truly believe in the accusations leveled against our party in the supplication, they must indeed be out of touch with reality.

But amidst the morass of political repression, intimidation, officially organized acts of anarchy and interference in our right of worship, we gained a brief respite from worldly concerns in the celebration of /kathina/. This ceremony takes place after the end of the rainy season retreat and lasts for one month, from the first day of the waning moon of /Thadingyut/ (this day fell on Oct. 28 this year) until the full moon day of /Tazaungdine/ (Nov. 25). Participation in the kathina ceremony, of which the major feature is the offering of new robes, relieves monks of the disciplinary rules to some extent and therefore those donors who arrange the ceremony gain merit.

The NLD made an offering of kathina robes at the Panditarama Monastery this year. It was good to gather to perform a common act of merit. It was good to listen to the discourse of Sayadaw U Pandita, to ponder over his words of wisdom and to reflect on the meaning of the ceremony. We Burmese believe that those who perform good deeds together will meet again through the cycle of existence, bonded by shared merit. It was good to think that if I am to continue to tread the cycle of existence I shall be doing so in the company of those who have proved to be the truest of friends and companions. Many of us attending the ceremony came together eight years ago to commit ourselves to the cause of democracy and human rights and we have remained together in the face of intense adversity. There were also many missing faces, the ones who had died, the ones who were in prison. It was sad to think of them. But still, it was good to be able to take time off from the political routine, to enjoy a small, precious spiritual respite.

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(This article is one of a yearlong series of letters. The Japanese translation appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.)

Letter from Burma (No. 49) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News, Monday, November 18, 1996

SUU KYI'S ATTACKERS GO FREE UNDER BURMA REGIME: "Operation Anarchy"

Letter from Burma (No. 49) by Aung San Suu Kyi

For some time I have been thinking that I should perhaps, for a change, write a letter about Burmese autumn festivals and flowers, turning my mind from political to cultural and aesthetic interests. But it would not feel right to be quoting verses about scented lotuses under pale strands of moonlight when the political scene is so very unpoetic. So I have to set aside thoughts of the beauty of the dying year and once again focus attention on the current situation in the country.

When I wrote some time ago that life was not dull for dissidents in Burma I did not realize just what an understatement I was making. Something always seems to be cropping up to keep the adrenaline flowing strongly in the NLD (National League for Democracy) system. When we completed our series of meetings at the end of last month, we thought we were in for a period of humdrum administrative work aimed at implementing the resolutions of the meetings. A bit of routine dullness, we thought .... Such a thought was, of course, tempting fate.

Saturday, Nov. 9. The date should have told us something. There are those who take numerology very seriously and the importance that the authorities in Burma put on the number 9 has become something of a joke, albeit a bad one. The previous weekend, our supporters who had, very peacefully, come as close to my blocked off road as possible to try to hear me speak had been subjected to harassment by thugs organized by the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) and by members of the security forces. U Kyi Maung, U Tin U and I therefore decided that on Saturday the ninth we would leave my barricaded road to meet those who had gathered some distance away to demonstrate their support for our cause.

It had been arranged that I would meet U Tin U and U Kyi Maung at the latter's house. I was in a closed car with dark windows to keep out strong sunlight and prying eyes. A blue car nearby, which held my military intelligence (MI) security personnel, led the way and we were followed by a blue open-back van carrying some NLD members and young men from our house and by a black police car. We stayed for about a quarter-of-an-hour at U Kyi Maung's house, then set off for the place where we knew our supporters would be gathered. This time, the blue open-back van was at the head of our motorcade, my car came next, then U Tin U's car which carried both him and U Kyi Maung, then followed the blue MI car and the police car.

U Kyi Maung's house is in a lane off the main road. When we had entered the lane 15 minutes previously, there had been just a few uniformed members of the security forces and a few people in civilian clothes lounging around the place. But as our cars swung out on the road, a crowd of people converged on us from both sides. The blue van slipped through unscathed but the mob started attacking our car with stones, iron bars and other lethal instruments under the instructions of a man who had looked in through the front windshield to check who was inside. In an instant the back windshield had shattered but fortunately the sunscreen film held the pieces together and prevented splinters from scattering over us. There were also two big gashes, probably the result of a flailing iron bar. We continued driving and the whole episode was behind us within a matter of seconds. Later we discovered that U Tin U's car had lost all the glass in both rear windows and the rear windshield. The MI escort car also had all its glass shattered and the back windshield of the police car was in a state comparable to the one in my car.

The most striking feature of the whole episode was that it had taken place within an area which had been cordoned off by members of the security forces, who stood by doing nothing to prevent the attacks. Neither did they make any attempt to arrest the perpetrators of the violence. On the contrary, after our cars had driven away, the mob settled down across the road and remained there for several hours under the - one imagines - benevolent eyes of the security personnel.

Where had this mob appeared from? They were members of the USDA, who had been brought in from the suburbs and satellite townships of Rangoon early in the morning. They were positioned in large groups within the area around my house, which was closed off from the general public to prevent our weekend rallies from taking place.

The attitude of the authorities with regard to the incident is telling. Although there has been an announcement to the effect that an inquiry would be made into the matter, we are not aware that there have been any moves to take action against the thugs who must be well known to the members of the security forces who had watched them commit their acts of vandalism with perfect equanimity. This is in glaring contrast to the zeal with which supporters of the NLD are arrested and condemned to substantial prison sentences for trivial matters. What price law and order in a country where injustice and anarchy are condoned by those who hold official responsibility for protecting the citizens from acts of violence?

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(This article is one of a yearlong series of letters. The Japanese translation appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the some day, or the previous day in some areas.)

Letter from Burma (No. 48) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News, Sunday, November 10, 1996

COURAGE OF ORDINARY PEOPLE GOES UNMATCHED: "Tribute"

Letter from Burma (No. 48) by Aung San Suu Kyi

There is nothing to compare with the courage of ordinary people whose names are unknown and whose sacrifices pass unnoticed. The courage that dares without recognition, without the protection of media attention, is a courage that humbles and inspires and reaffirms our faith in humanity. Such courage I have seen week after week since my release from house arrest 15 months ago.

Our brave supporters who come to our weekend rallies are a shining symbol of true commitment and strength. There are those who have not missed a single rally and who have become part of the family of our hearts. There is our lovely /Ahmay/ ("Mother"), who has her hair up in an old-fashioned top knot just as my own mother did during the later years of her life. Ahmay usually wears an insouciant smile on her face and a small flower in her hair. She is accompanied by /Ahba/ ("Father"), gentle of mien and quiet of manners, and by their bright-faced young grandson. Ahmay is the center of a group of democracy faithfuls who have looked the cameras of the military intelligence squarely in the lens and again and again braved the threats of the authorities to demonstrate their unwavering support for the cause of democracy in Burma.

These unshakable stalwarts arrive early in the morning on Saturdays and Sundays and stake out their places in front of my house. They sit against the fence on sheets of newspaper or plastic, seeking respite from the glaring sun under the speckled shade of a tree. During the height of the monsoons, they construct a plastic awning under which they sit out the heaviest deluges with unimpaired spirits and determination. When U Kyi Maung and U Tin U and I come out to speak at 4 o'clock, the are stationed right in front of the gate with beaming smiles of welcome and affection. They are the representative heart of the thousands who come to our rallies because they believe in the importance of the basic democratic freedoms of association, assembly and expression. They listen intently to what we have to say and respond with intelligence and humor. Time and time again, foreign visitors and correspondents have commented on the extraordinary courtesy and good will that is evident among our audience.

Our rallies are political rallies so the main thrust of our speeches is about politics. We respond to letters from the people about the current economic, social and political situation; we discuss the latest international developments; we talk about the struggles for justice and freedom and human rights that have taken place in different parts of the world; we criticize policies and programs which are detrimental to harmony and progress in the nation; we touch on historical matters.

One could say that each one of the three of us has a "specialty" of our own. U Tin U, as a one-time Chief of Defense Services and Minister of Defense, as one who has spent two years as a monk and as one who has a degree in law, talks most often about matters relating to the armed services, to religion and to the law. He is able to illustrate political truths with stories from the teachings of the Buddha and to analyze actions taken by the authorities against the NLD from the legal point of view. He has an arresting "voice of command" which at times makes the microphones almost redundant. There is a transparent honesty and sincerity about his words that endear him to the audience.

U Kyi Maung concentrates on economics, history and education and has a delightful sense of humor. Across the road from my house is a compound from which the security services survey my house. During our rallies a video camera team stations itself on the fence and records everything. Around this team there is usually a small group of members of the military intelligence and other security personnel: they listen carefully to our speeches and sometimes they laugh so heartily at U Kyi Maung's jokes (some of which are directed against them) that I can see their teeth flashing in their faces. His occasional stories about a "grandson" with a very MI-like personality are great favorites.

I am the one to respond to letters from the audience and discuss political struggles that have taken place in Burma in the past and also in other parts of the world. I also talk often about the necessity to cultivate the habit of questioning arbitrary orders and to stand firm and united in the face of adversity. One of my most frequent messages is the reminder that neither I alone, or the National League for Democracy by itself, can achieve democracy for Burma. The people have to be involved in the process; democracy involves as many responsibilities as rights.

The strength and will to maintain two rallies a week for more than a year came from our staunch audience. At those times when the authorities were at their most threatening the crowds become larger as a demonstration of solidarity. Even when the authorities blocked off access to my house to prevent the rallies from taking place, people still came as near as they could to let us and the rest of the world know that they were determined to continue the struggle for the right of free assembly.

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This article is one of a yearlong series of letters. The Japanese translation appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 47) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News, Monday, November 4, 1996

JUNTA PERSISTS IN TRYING TO BLOCKADE NLD: "Continuum"

Letter from Burma (No. 47) by Aung San Suu Kyi

This is getting absurd. The road to my house keeps getting blocked and unblocked and then blocked again with the agitated rhythm of a demented yo-yo. Let us recapitulate the events of the last month. The first time the barricades went up was at midnight on Oct. 7, the barricades were removed. Then at midnight on the 11th, the road was blocked off again.

This second blockade lasted until 4:30 p.m. on the 21st. Later at night, around 9:30 p.m., the road was blocked off again. "Possibly there is some method in their madness" was all I could think as I went to sleep. The next morning I discovered that the road had been unblocked at 3 o'clock in the early morning. That day, the 22nd, was a normal working day: well, more or less normal by NLD standards, with people coming over the exchange notes on how they had been chased and beaten by security personnel, how they had been taken into detention and how they had been released. At midnight that very day the road was blocked off yet again.

There are slight variations from one blockade to the other. The first time I was free to come and go, and key members of the NLD executive committee were allowed to come to my house. The second time, I was still free to come and go but others were not allowed in except on the 19th, when I made my usual monthly offering to monks in remembrance of my father. U Aung Shwe, our NLD chairman, and our two deputy chairmen, U Kyi Maung and U Tin U, and their wives were able to join in, for the ceremony.

The second blockade was a busy time for us as a number of party meetings had to be conducted at various venues. It was on the day we finished our fourth meeting that the road was opened again at the unexpected time of 4:30 p.m. (I have written about the fact that such events as the arrest of NLD members and the closing and opening of roads tend to take place in the dead of night.)

The third blockade which started at midnight on the 22nd found us quite blase. The next morning, a Wednesday, I got ready to go out to see where we should hold the meeting that had been scheduled to take place at my house. But just as I was about to leave, the military intelligence officer in charge of security in my house came to convey a "request" to the effect that I should not go out that day. A civil request deserves a civil response, so I said that would be all right provided those who had to attend the meeting were allowed to come to my house. This was arranged speedily enough but when U Aung Shwe and U Tin U arrived I discovered that U Kyi Maung was not with them. He had been taken away early that morning before dawn. I also discovered that the MI officer had asked them to request me not to leave the house for few days.

We were given to understand that U Kyi Maung had been taken away to be questioned in connection with the latest student unrest that had erupted in the Rangoon Institute of Technology a couple of days previously. Two students had come to my house on Tuesday and explained to U Kyi Maung what had happened. The authorities were quick to jump to the conclusion that there must be some link between the NLD and the student troubles. This is quite normal. The authorities tend to lay anything that goes away in the country at the door of the NLD. We are often amazed at the extent of the influence which the authorities imagine we have upon the course of events within Burma. Their obsession with our organization sometimes reminds us of the words of a song: "Asleep, my thoughts are of you; awake, my thoughts are of you. ...."

"Business as usual," we chanted and carried on with our work in the surreal atmosphere of a house arrest that was not a house arrest. We listened to BBC and VOA broadcasts to find out what was going on in the big wide world outside the fence of 54 University Avenue and heard to our surprise that the authorities had claimed I was free to come and go as I pleased. This claim was particularly ludicrous in view of the line of uniformed guards standing at attention in front of the gates of my house. We told our MI officer about this official statement and it was conceded on Friday afternoon that I was in fact free to come and go as I pleased but, of course, I would be "escorted," which was really nothing new. By that time, I had already missed a couple of appointments.

Saturday was for me the beginning of our annual light festival. Our young people made simple, candle-lit lanterns from bamboo and cellophane in yellow, green, red and blue and that evening and the nest, we hung them along the fence. We also let off fire balloons and set off sparklers. Our pyrotechnic activities were of an extremely modest order but there was a certain charm in keeping a traditional festival alive in the midst of restraint.

On Monday afternoon, U Kyi Maung was released and the road to my house was unblocked. For the time being.

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This article is one of a yearlong series of letters. The Japanese translation appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Regrets

Mainichi Daily News, Monday, October 28, 1996

Letter from Burma By Aung San Suu Kyi

We regret to inform our readers that because of Suu Kyi's house arrest by Burma's ruling junta, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, the democratic movement leader was unable to send her award-winning column, "Letter from Burma" this week.

-- Editor

Letter from Burma (No. 45) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News

Sunday, October 13, 1996

CORRUPTION WHITTLES AWAY AT STATE SERVICES

"Pay as You Go"

On my release from house arrest last year, people gathered outside the gates of my home to greet me and to demonstrate their support for the movement for democracy. It was the monsoon season and the crowds would stand and wait in the dripping rain until I went out to speak to them. This continued day after day for more than a month; then I negotiated with our supporters an arrangement which was more convenient for all concerned: We would meet regularly at four o'clock on Saturdays and Sundays. Thus were born the public rallies that have been taking place outside my house every weekend.

A few months after the weekend rallies had become established as a regular political feature, I invited the audience to write to me about matters they would like me to discuss. The response was immediate and enthusiastic. Letters on a wide range of subjects, political, economic, social and religious, were put into the mailbox we hung outside the gate for that purpose. A recurring theme in these letters, which continue to come in, is the widespread corruption among civil servants, in particular in the sectors of health and education.

In Burma, health care is ostensibly provided free of charge by the state. But in recent years, the contributions expected from the community have risen to such an extent that it is no longer possible to think of health care as "free." By "contributions" I do not mean just monetary donations made by the public toward health care projects, although such donations are not inconsiderable. I am referring to the fact that government health care facilities now provide merely services while patients have to provide almost everything else: medicines, cotton wool, surgical spirits, bandages and even equipment necessary for surgery.

Patients not only have to make their own arrangements for getting the necessary medical supplies, they also have to bribe the hospital staff in order to receive satisfactory service.

It is not just doctors and nurses who have to be sweetened with gifts; hospital orderlies also have to be paid if one's time as an invalid is to be passably comfortable. Apparently it is a common practice for orderlies to neglect their cleaning duties unless they are duly compensated. And they are also said to give patients who have to be wheeled from one part of the hospital to another a rough ride until a requisite sum of money has changed hands. Then there are the door keepers and other administrative staff whose hands have to be greased to smooth the path of family members who need to go in and out at all hours to delivery necessary supplies.

While nothing can excuse callousness in those who should be giving succor to the ill and dying, it cannot be ignored that the deterioration in state health care is largely the result of maladministration. High motivation cannot be expected of grossly underpaid staff working with poorly maintained equipment and dilapidated, unhygienic surroundings.

In recent years, the emergence of a private sector has made health care at expensive clinics and nursing homes available to those who are well off. There are indications that among those who cannot afford private health care, that is to say, the large majority of the population, there is an increasing tendency to rely on folk or traditional medicine rather than place themselves at the mercy of the state health care system.

Even more than letters about the unsavory conditions in our hospitals, I receive letters about the disgraceful state of our education system. Education, like health care, is ostensibly free in Burma but again, as with health care, the contribution exacted from the community is getting higher by the day.

Inadequate school funds are supplemented by "donations" collected for various purposes: sports day, new buildings, school furniture, teacher-parent association funds, religious festivals. Underpaid teachers supplement their incomes by giving tuition outside school hours. The fees range from 1,000 kyats to 10,000 kyats for each pupil, depending on the grade in which they are studying and the number of subjects in which they are coached. The poor quality of teaching in the school forces all parents who can afford the fees to send their children to such tuition classes.

Examinations provide teachers as well as employees of the education department with opportunities for lucrative business. Examination questions, advance information on grades achieved and the marking up of low grades can all be obtained for price.

There was a time when civil servants in our country were seen as an elite corps: well educated, well-trained and well-paid, capable of giving good service to the community. Now they are generally regarded with fear and revulsion, or with pity. State employees who have not become part of the syndrome of daily corruption, either from a matter of principle or from lack of opportunity, are unable to maintain a standard of living appropriate to their functions. They are the nouveau poor of Burma.

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 44) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News

Monday, October 7, 1996

MOMENTS OF CALM PROVIDE TIME FOR REFLECTION

"Strange siege"

As I have remarked often enough, life is certainly not dull for dissidents in Burma. But sometimes a little bit of dullness does not come amiss. In fact it provides a measure of welcome relief, time in which to stand and stare for at least a few minutes a day.

The National League for Democracy decided to hold an All Burma Party Congress on the eighth anniversary of the day when it was founded, the 27th of September. Now one might have thought that such an event, which is part of the normal routine of any political party, would not have caused the authorities to do more than perhaps cock an inquisitive eyebrow and set the military intelligence running around busily gathering information. One would not have imagined that they would be rocked to the very soles of their military boots. Well, one would have been wrong.

On the evening of the 26th, we received information that once again, as at the time of our proposed conference for NLD Members of Parliament in May, the authorities were rounding up those who were to attend the Congress. Around half past 9 at night, army trucks started going past my house and later, a police car or two went along the already cleared street with sirens blaring. It was all rather tedious and we went to sleep. Waking up at 5 o'clock in the morning, the unusual silence told me that our road had been blocked off. It was not altogether a surprise.

At 8 o'clock, U Tin U, one of our deputy chairmen, was let through and he told us what had been going on outside. Our helpers, who had been scheduled to arrive at 4 o'clock to start cooking the meal that we would be offering to monks as a prelude to our Congress, had been prevented from entering the street. After some negotiation, two of our NLD women members were allowed in to take charge of the huge pots of curry that had already been half prepared the night before. Soon after, our chairman U Aung Shwe and our other deputy chairman U Kyi Maung also arrived.

I learned that a number of NLD members who had come for the Congress were at the road junction not far from my house where barricades had been placed to prevent people from entering the street. At about 10 o'clock we decided to walk over to them and to tell them to go to the NLD headquarters. Walking along a street deserted except for security troops was not a new experience for me. It happened again and again during my campaign trips around Burma in 1989 and 1990. And last April, too, on Burmese New Year's Day, we had walked down our street when it was emptied of everybody except security personnel and members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association armed with surreptitious batons, with which they had been instructed to beat any members of the NLD who penetrated the barricades.

This time also the USDA were present, a couple of busloads of them milling around in the public garden at the top of the road for a purpose that we found hard to discern. When we reached the road junction, our party members who had been made to go to the other side of the street came over to ask us what we wanted them to do. We told them to go to our headquarters, and were just about to go back home ourselves when an army officer came to ask us to disperse. It was a typical over-reaction, unnecessary and quite senseless, as the crowd around us was made up largely of security personnel, uniformed as well as in plain clothes.

That afternoon, after the religious ceremony to commemorate the founding of the NLD had been completed, U Aung Shwe and I went out to see how things were at the party headquarters. We found that the road where the building was situated had also been closed off. That very evening, the landlord was illegally forced to annul the lease and to remove the NLD signboard from the building. The authorities had obviously decided to take all possible steps to prevent us from carrying out the legitimate work of a normal political party.

Now, nearly a week after the 27th, the road to my house continues to be blocked off. But U Aung Shwe, U Kyi Maung and U Tin U come over every day and we carry on with our work. "It is always still at the center of the storm," U Tin U remarked. And certainly there has been great calm in my house even as the authorities have been arresting hundreds of our supporters, making wild accusations against us and trying to force the landlords of our party offices to remove NLD signboards.

There is the proverbial silver lining to these storm clouds of increased official repression. The state of semisiege provides me with an opportunity to take a rest from the gruelling timetable that I normally follow. I do not have to rush through my meals, and I have even been able to spare an hour a day for walking round and round the garden: a wonderfully relaxing and invigorating form of exercise in which I have not been able to indulge for years. This strange interlude should serve to make me fighting fit for whatever challenges we may have to face in the future.

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 43) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News

Monday, September 30, 1996

CORRUPTION LURKS BENEATH SERENE SURFACE

"Uncivil Service (1)"

Visitors to Burma seldom have much notion of the complexities of everyday life in our country. On the surface, things appear smooth and serene, and it is only those who are familiar with states ruled by inefficient dictatorial regimes who are able to see what is really going on.

Take a taxi through the streets of Rangoon and observe the cars going by: Almost all of these vehicles are running on black market petrol. The price of petrol sold at government pumping stations is 25 kyats a gallon (15 U.S. cents for 3.8 liters). However, as no car is entitled to more than four gallons a week (some are entitled to less) of this official issue, people are forced to resort to additional sources of supply. This black market petrol has gone up in price within the last month from 180 kyats to 350 kyats a gallon and most of it is leaked out from government departments.

There is more to running a car than finding a good source for petrol. Car licenses have to be renewed annually. Owners have to ask the Department of Road Transport Administration for a date on which their vehicles can be inspected and passed as roadworthy. If you do not want to go through the rigmarole of making an appointment in advance, you pay a certain sum of money to have car checked immediately. Then you go on to bribe the person assigned to check your vehicle. Otherwise, you will be sent back to change the lights, or to repaint the chassis, or to replace some part of the engine. People have been sent away as many as four or five times to undertake repairs "necessary" to make the vehicle roadworthy until they saw the light and produced several hundred kyats. It is no use complaining or getting angry, the employees in the Department of Road Transport Administration have to make ends meet.

Making ends meet is the overriding preoccupation of civil servants in Burma. Their pay is ridiculously low. A director-general, the highest ranking civil servant, earns an official monthly salary of 2,500 kyats, the equivalent of about 15 U.S. dollars. This is not even enough to feed a family of four, modestly, for a week. Consequently civil servants have to find ways and means of earning extra income.

There are those who would say that Burmese people are resourceful by nature. It is more likely the case that all peoples who have to live under a system where following the straight and narrow path too often leads to impecuniosity learn to be resourceful. And in such situations, "resourceful" is often a euphemism for "dishonest" or "corrupt." If you happen to work in the electricity department in Burma you quickly learn that you can supplement your income by making deals with householders who do not wish to pay their electricity bills in full. And you soon find out that you can squeeze a regular, tidy sum from entrepreneurs of businesses, such as ice making, for whom an electricity cut would be catastrophic. A lineman can make a supplementary income amounting to thousands of kyats a month if he happens to be fortunate enough to be in charge of an area where a number of vulnerable enterprises are situated.

If you work in the telecommunications department too, you put your "resourcefulness" to quick use. When a telephone fails to work the owner has to appeal for repairs. And the most effective appeals are those a solid pecuniary nature. As in the electricity department, the pay-up-or-be-cut tactic can assure a regular source of supplementary income. The long waiting list for telephones also provides employees in the telecommunications department with opportunities for exercising their ingenuity. They can "cooperate" in the transfer of already connected telephones to different owners, or they can expedite the connection of a new telephone. All, of course, for a certain consideration, which could amount to a five-figure sum.

The Inland Revenue Department, as might be expected, is a section of the civil service where employees can earn "on the side" sums many times larger than their regular salaries. The best customers of this department are businessmen who have no inhibitions about evading taxes. But that does not mean honest businessmen who wish to declare their incomes correctly are safe from the resourcefulness (or capacity, if you wish) of the personnel of the department. Their taxable income is arbitrarily assessed at a rate far higher than the correct one until they decide that honesty is not, after all, the best policy in dealing with such matters and agree to cooperate with the officials concerned.

The corruption of the civil services is not just an urban phenomenon. Farmers have to sell a quota of their harvest to the government at stipulated prices well below the market rate. The state employees who weigh the grain at rice depots manage to put aside a substantial amount of rice for themselves. This rice they sell at the market price to those farmers who have had bad harvest, so they can produce the necessary government quota for which, of course, the poor farmers are only paid the state price. It is no wonder that civil servants are generally viewed as public predators rather than public benefactors.

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 42) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News

Monday, September 23, 1996

BURMA'S GOV'T LEAPS OVER LEGAL PROCESS

"Misrule of Law"

As I understand it, a kangaroo court is so called because it is a burlesque performance where the process of the law takes heart-stopping leaps and bounds. Out of curiosity, I looked up the entry on kangaroos in the Encyclopedia Britannica to see how far these marsupial mammals can clear in a leap. Apparently the record is 13.5 meters. This far superior to the Olympics long jump record. It is no surprise then that the erratic course of justice in a kangaroo court is outside the bounds of normal human conduct.

I have written about the challenges that political dissidents in Burma have to face. Everybody committed to taking an active part in the endeavor to return the country to democracy has to be prepared to go to prison at any time. It usually happens in the middle of the night, appropriately, as there can be fewer deeds more akin to darkness than that of depriving innocent people of a normal, healthy life. The ones most vulnerable to arrest are members of the NLD.

Many of them are already seasoned jail veterans who, at casual moments, exchange prison yarns and instruct the as yet uninitiated on such matters as the kind of treatment they can expect at the interrogation sessions and what they should take with them when the banging on the door comes: change of clothing, soap, toothpaste and toothbrush, medicines, a blanket or two, et cetera, all in a plastic bag. Nothing so respectable as a knapsack or suitcase is permitted. And do not be fooled if the people who turn up at the door, usually without a warrant, say that they will only be keeping you for a few days. That could well translate into a 20-year sentence.

When U Win Htein, a key member of my office staff, was arrested one night last May, he had a bag already packed. He had previously spent six years in Insein Jail: He was one of the people taken away from my house in 1989 on the day I was detained and he was released only in February 1995. When U Win Htein asked those who had come to take him away whether they had an arrest warrant, they replied that it was not necessary as charges had already been moved against him and his sentence had been decided. So much for the concept of the law that deems a person innocent until proven guilty.

Section 340 (1) of the Code of Criminal Procedure provides that "any person accused of an offense before a criminal court, or against who proceedings are instituted under this code, in any such court, may of right be defended by a pleader." This basic right to counsel is systematically denied to political prisoners in Burma. They are not even allowed to make contact with their families.

The authorities generally refuse to give any information on detainees who have not yet been tried. The NLD and the families of political prisoners have to make strenuous inquiries to find out where they are, with what "crime" they would be charged and when and where the trials would take place. Usually the trials of political prisoners are conducted in a special courthouse within the jail precincts.

Last month, a number of political prisoners were tried in Insein Jail. When the NLD heard that U Win Htein and some others were going to be produced at court on a certain day, a lawyer was sent to defend them. The Special Branch officer at the jail questioned by the lawyer said he did not know anything about a trial. But the trial took place while the lawyer was waiting at the gate and continued after he left in the afternoon. The next week, a number of lawyers again went to Insein Jail, accompanied by the families of the prisoners, on the day they had heard the trial was to continue. This time they managed to get into the prison courthouse. However, they were only allowed to cross-examine four of the 24 witnesses for the prosecution.

The next morning, the lawyers and the families of the prisoners arrived in Insein Jail at 9 o'clock, as they had heard sentence would be passed that day. The area around the jail entrance was full of security personnel and all the shops along the road were shut. The lawyers were refused entry. They were told sentence would only be passed at the end of the month and were asked to leave. However, as the magistrate concerned with the case had been seen at the Insein Township Magistrate's Court the lawyers were convinced the trial was scheduled to proceed within a matter of hours and continued to wait outside the jail.

The magistrate eventually arrived and entered the prison precincts at around 2 o'clock and came out again after about 40 minutes. The lawyers followed him to the Insein Township Court to ask what kind of sentence had been passed. The magistrate, very nervous and surrounded by security personnel, would only say that an application should be made to copy the records of the court proceedings. Some days later the government media announced that U Win Htein and others had been given seven-year prison sentences each.

The sight of kangaroos bounding away across an open prairie can sometimes be rather beautiful. The spectacle of the process of law bounding away from accepted norms of justice is very ugly at all times.

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 41) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News

Monday, September 16, 1996

DEFINING POLITICAL DEFIANCE, DEMOCRACY

"Some Problems of Definition"

There is an expression much bandied about these days which, in its Burmanized form, sounds very much like "jeans shirt." This has nothing to do with the denim mania that has come to Burma, together with foreign bars and cigarettes, walking shoes, expensive batiks, Pajeros and all the other paraphernalia so dear to the hearts of the small, privileged elite who have profited wonderfully from the selective open market economy. The expression actually refers to "Gene Sharp," the author of some works on "political defiance." These writings seem to be exercising the authorities in Burma considerably. Last month, 19 political prisoners were tried in Mandalay and they were all sentenced to seven years imprisonment, each on a charge of high treason. The possession of copies of books by Gene Sharp seemed to have been taken as part of the evidence against the defendants. (Not that "defendant" is an appropriate word to use in connection with political detainees in Burma as they have no real right of defense at all.)

At a government press conference this month, more references were made to political defiance. When a correspondent asked whether these political defiance courses initiated by Gene Sharp trained people to commit political assassinations and other accts of violence, a spokesman for SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council) said they did not know, as they had not attended any of those courses. It is very puzzling that courses about the contents of which the authorities are totally ignorant should be seen as in any way connected with treason. It was also alleged at the press conference that I had talked about political defiance with an American visitor. When a correspondent asked me whether this was so, I said that it was not so, as I could not at all recall any conversation about Gene Sharp or his books or the courses in political defiance he is said to have conducted. Later, it occurred to me that both my interviewer and I had merely been thinking of political defiance in terms of SLORC-speak. In fact, political defiance is no more synonymous with Gene Sharp than with denim shirts. It can be defined simply as the natural response of anybody who disagrees with the opinions of the government in power. In that sense, the great majority of people in Burma are perpetually engaged in political defiance in their hearts, if not in their actions.

Another interesting question posed by a correspondent at the SLORC press conference was why the authorities objected to the opposition carrying out its work. The answer was that it was dangerous. A government that has promised a transfer to "multiparty democracy" views the work of the opposition as DANGEROUS? A self-proclaimed conservationist might as well chop down trees indiscriminately and massacre rare, and not so rare, species with wild abandon.

There are two problems of definition in the above paragraph. This repeated reference to "multiparty democracy" since the SLORC took over power: Surely the expression is tautology? And "one-party democracy" would be oxymoronic. Democracy basically means choice, and political choice means the existence of more than one effective political party or force. "Democracy" by itself should be sufficient to indicate a pluralistic political approach.

Then there is the question of the word "opposition." The NLD (National League for Democracy) is often referred to as "the opposition." But it was the NLD that won the only democratic elections held in more than 30 years and won them with an overwhelming majority such as was not achieved by any other political party in those countries that made the transition from dictatorship to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s. The word "opposition," when applied to a party which won the unequivocal mandate of the people, takes on a peculiar ring. But leaving that aside, how does one define the work of an opposition in any country which claims to be heading toward (multiparty) democracy?

A group guided by the political legacy of a prominent communist leader who engaged in armed rebellion against the government for several decades after Burma regained her independence, and who later laid down arms and recanted, came to see me some months ago. They read out the political guidelines laid down by their late leader which, among other things, condemned the idea of any work aimed at removing a government in power. I explained to them that this was unacceptable to anybody who truly believed in democracy. In a genuine democracy, it is the legitimate function of opposition parties to work at removing the government through the democratic process. Any political ideology that disallows parties from carrying out opposition activities and presenting themselves to the country as viable alternatives to the existing government cannot be said to have anything to do with democracy. To view opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundations of democracy.

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 40) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News

Monday, September 9, 1996

FAITH EASES THE MIND IN TIMES OF POLITICAL TURMOIL

Vassa, the rainy season retreat, has begun. It is a time for offering robes to monks and for making special efforts toward gaining a better understanding of Buddhist values. In Burma, we look upon members of the /sangha/ (the Buddhist religious order) as teachers who will lead us along the noble eightfold path. Good teachers do not merely give scholarly sermons, they show us how we should conduct our daily lives in accordance with right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.

Not long before my house arrest in 1989, I was granted an audience with the venerable U Pandita, an exceptional teacher in the best tradition of great spiritual mentors whose words act constantly as an aid to a better existence. Hsayadaw (holy teacher) U Pandita spoke of the importance of sammavaca or right speech. Not only should one speak only the truth, one's speech should lead to harmony among beings, it should be kind and pleasant and it should be kind and pleasant and it should be beneficial. One should follow the example of the Lord Buddha who only spoke words that were trustful and beneficial, even if at times such speech was not always pleasing to the listener.

The Hsayadaw also urged me to cultivate sati, mindfulness. Of the five spiritual faculties, saddha (faith), viriya (energy), sati, samadhi (concentration) and panna (wisdom), it is only sati that can never be in excess. Excessive faith without sufficient wisdom leads to blind faith, while excessive wisdom without sufficient energy leads to undesirable cunning. Too much energy concentration leads to indolence. But as for sati, one can never have too much of it, it is "never in excess, but always in deficiency." The truth and value of this Buddhist concept that Hsayadaw U Pandita took such pains to impress on me became evident during my years of house arrest.

Like many of my Buddhist colleagues, I decided to put my time under detention to good use by practicing meditation. It was not an easy process. I did not have a teacher and my early attempts were more than a little frustrating. There were days when I found my failure to discipline my mind in accordance with prescribed meditation practices so infuriating I felt I was doing myself more harm than good. I think I would have given up but for the advice of a famous Buddhist teacher, that whether or not one wanted to practice meditation, one should do so for ones' own good. So I gritted my teeth and kept at it, often rather glumly. Then my husband gave me a copy if Gsatadaw Y Oabduta's book, "In this Very Life, The Liberation Teachings of the Buddha." By studying this book carefully, I learnt how to overcome difficulties of meditation and to realize its benefits. I learnt how practicing meditation led to increased mindfulness in everyday life and again and again. I recalled the Hsayadaw's words on the importance of sati with appreciation and gratitude.

In my political work, I have been helped and strengthened by the teachings of members of the sangha. During my very first campaign trip across Burma, I received invaluable advice from monks in different parts of the country. In Prome, a Hsayadaw told me to keep in mind the hermit Sumedha, who sacrificed the possibility of early liberation for himself along and underwent many lives of striving that he might save others from suffering. So must you be prepared to strive for as long as might be necessary to achieve good and justice, exhorted the venerable Hsayadaw.

In a monastery at Pakokku, the advice that an abbot gave to my father when he went to that town more than 40 years age was repeated to me: "Do not be frightened every time there is an attempt to frighten you, but do not be entirely without fear. Do not become elated every time you are praised, but do not be entirely lacking in elation." In other words, while maintaining courage and humility, one should not abandon caution and healthy self-respect.

When I visited Natmauk, my father's home town, I went to the monastery where he studied as a boy. There the abbot gave a sermon on the four causes of decline and decay: failure to recover that which had been lost, omission to repair that which had been damaged; disregard of the need for reasonable economy; and the elevation to leadership of those without morality or learning. The abbot went on to explain how these traditional Buddhist views should be interpreted to help us build a just and prosperous society in the modern age.

Of the words of wisdom I gathered during that journey across central Burma, those of a 91-year-old Hsayadaw of Sagaing are particularly memorable. He sketched out for me tersely how it would be to work for democracy in Burma. "You will be attacked and reviled for engaging in honest politics," pronounced the Hsayadaw, "But you must persevere. Lay down an investment in dukka (suffering) and you will gain sukha (bliss)."

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 39) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News

Monday, September 2, 1996

PRISON MAY BREAK THE BODY, BUT NOT THE SPIRIT

"Death in custody (3)"

Hsaya Maung Thaw Ka was arrested in 1989 and sentenced by a martial law court to 20 years' imprisonment in October of that year. The SLORC had accused him of seeking to cause an insurrection within the armed forces. At the time he entered Insein Jail, Hsaya Maung Thaw Ka was already suffering from a chronic disease that was laying his muscles to waste. His movements were stiff and jerky, and everyday matters, such as bathing, dressing or eating, involved for him a series of difficult maneuvers which could barely be completed without assistance. For a man with his health problems, life in solitary confinement was a continuous struggle to cope. And Hsaya Maung Thaw Ka struggled manfully. But his already much-eroded physical system was unable to withstand the inhuman conditions of Insein Jail for long. In June 1991, Hsaya Maung Thaw Ka, navy officer and humorist, poet and political activist, died in custody at the age of 65.

Even during his darkest days in prison, Hsaya Maung Thaw Ka's muse did not desert him. In secret he composed poems about the gross injustices committed under military dictatorship with a biting anger entirely removed from his delicate rendering of old English sonnets. "Twenty years, they say ... in accordance with that (legal) section of all things that is unclean and despicable," he wrote with contempt of the sentence which, for him, turned out to be one of death.

October and November of 1990 were months when the SLORC carried out a major crackdown against the movement for democracy. It was in these months that numbers of National League for Democracy members of Parliament were brought into Insein Jail. Among these men, elected by the people of Burma to form a democratic government but condemned by the military regime to imprisonment, was U Tin Maung Win of Khayan. He had been a prominent student leader in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1962, when students protested against the high-handed actions of the military government that had newly come into power, he was the chairman of the Committee for the Protection of Student's Rights. The next year, as the leader of the Rangoon University Students' Union, he was placed under arrest.

U Tin Maung was kept in prison for seven years. But neither that experience, nor the even more deadening one of life for a quarter of a century under the Burmese Way to Socialism, succeeded in killing his political convictions. In 1988, U Tin Maung Win took part in the movement for democracy in concert with other student leaders of the past. In the elections of 1990, he contested as the NLD's candidate in his native Khayan against his own brother who represented the NUP, the main adversary of the democratic parties. Five months after his victory in the elections he was arrested.

U Tin Maung Win spent a month at Ye-Kyi-ain, an infamous military intelligence interrogation center, before he was sent to Insein Jail. When he was charged with high treason in January 1991, he was not able to be present at his trial because he was too ill. By Jan. 18, U Tin Maung Win was dead. The authorities claimed that he had died of leukemia but before he was incarcerated just four months previously there had been no sign that he was suffering from such a grave disease. It is the contention of those who saw his body before burial that he died as a result of ill treatment in prison.

Last year, U Kyi Saung, secretary of the NLD branch in Myaungmya, a town the Irrawaddy division, was arrested. He had attended a Karen New Year ceremony in a Karen village and there, he had read out the message of goodwill that the NLD had brought out for the New Year. This peaceful, innocuous act of courtesy was reported by the Union Solidarity and Development Association, the "social welfare" organization formed under the aegis of the government, the Myaungmya Township Law and Order Restoration Council and to the local military intelligence unit. The TLORC thereby arrested U Kyi Saung under Section 5 of the 1950 Emergency Act, which has come to be known as the "Can't Stand Your Looks" section as it is used indiscriminately against those whom the authorities cannot abide. An elderly man, U Kyi Saung's health deteriorated rapidly and he died in May 1996 before his trial was completed.

I have written only about well-known members of the NLD who died in custody but they are not the only victims of authoritarian injustice. Prisoners of conscience who lost their lives during the 1990s represent a broad range of the Burmese political spectrum and even include a Buddhist monk. Of those sacrificed to the misrule of law, the oldest was 70-year-old Boh Set Yaung, a member of the Patriotic Old Comrades' League, and the youngest was a 19-year-old member of the NLD. The exact number of deaths in custody cannot be ascertained but it is not small and it is rising all the time. The price of liberty has never been cheap and in Burma it is particularly high.

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 38) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News

Monday, August 26, 1996

NLD ACTIVISTS FACE APPALLING PRISON CONDITIONS

"Death in Custody (2)"

The death certificate of U Hla Than, NLD member of Parliament for the Coco Islands who died on Aug. 2 as a political prisoner of the present military regime of Burma, stated that he had died of "extensive Koch's lung [tuberculosis] and HIV infection." Coincidentally on the day of his death, extracts from a report on conditions in Burmese prisons by a former student activist who had served time in the infamous Insein Jail where U Hla Than was incarcerated for nearly six years, appeared in The Nation newspaper of Bangkok. The report states that owing to drug abuse "there is ... a high prevalence of HIV/AIDS in prisons. When administering injections, the doctors give only half or less than half of the phial to one patient, giving the rest to another patient from the same needle and syringe, almost guaranteeing that any blood-carried infections will spread." There can be little doubt that U Hla Than's death was brought about by the abysmal prison conditions that do not bear scrutiny by independent observers. The ICRC left Burma in 1995 because of the refusal of the authorities to allow inspection of the prisons of the country.

U Hla Than is certainly not the first prisoner of conscience to have died in the custody of SLORC. Some leading members of the NLD can be counted among those who have given their lives for the right to adhere to their deeply held political principles. The first of those was U Maung Ko who, ironically, died during the visit of Mrs. Sadako Ogata, who had been sent by the United Nations Human Rights Commission to make enquiries into the human rights situation in Burma. U Maung Ko, 52 at the time of his death, was a civil servant who worked in the Rangoon Port Commissioner's Office before he entered the democracy movement in 1988 as the general secretary of the Dock Workers' Union. When the NLD was founded he became one of the pioneer members of the party.

U Maung Ko was arrested and taken to Insein Jail during the crackdown on democracy activists in October 1990. In less than three weeks, on Nov. 9, he was dead. His family learnt of his death from workers at the Rangoon General Hospital, where his body was sent from Insein Jail. The authorities claimed U Maung Ko had taken his own life after making a confession of his activities, but neither the content of the confession nor the circumstances under which it was extracted have been revealed. Many question the verdict of suicide. Friends and members of the family who saw U Maung Ko's body before burial assert that there were many marks on it to indicate that he had been badly tortured.

The next NLD victim among the political prisoners of SLORC was U Ba Thaw, better known as the writer Maung Thaw Ka. /Hsaya/ (the Burmese equivalent of /sensei/, or teacher) Maung Thaw Ka, as he was affectionately addressed by friends, colleagues and admirers, was an unforgettable character. He served in the Burmese Navy for many years and was involved in a shipwreck in 1956 while serving as the commanding officer on a coast guard cutter patrolling the southeastern coastline. When his vessel foundered, Lt. Ba Thaw and the 26 other navy personnel on board transferred to two inflated rubber life rafts. One life raft was lost with all nine passengers on board but the second life raft was rescued by a Japanese ship 12 days later. By then, seven of the 18 men on the life raft were dead and other man died on the rescue ship. Maung Thaw Ka wrote a gripping book about the harrowing time he and his mates spent under a searing sun on the small life raft, which carried only boiled sweets and water sufficient to keep 10 men alive for three days.

Hsaya Maung Thaw Ka's irrepressible sense of humor came across in many of his writings, which could perhaps be described as satire without malice. One of his witticisms became highly popular during the years of socialist rule in Burma. On being told that a fellow writer believed in ghosts, Hsaya Maung Thaw Ka riposted: "He believes in anything, he even believes in the Burmese Socialist Programme party!"

Hsaya Maung Thaw Ka was also a poet. He not only wrote his own poetry, he translated many poems from English to Burmese, some of which were surprisingly romantic: the love poetry of Shakespeare, Robert Herrick, John Donne and Shelley. There was also a translation of William Cowpers' "The Solitude of Alexander Selkirk," which he said was dedicated to himself. Perhaps it was the last verse that appealed to him.

"But the seafowl is gone to her nest,

The beast is laid down in his lair;

Even here is a season of rest,

And I to my cabin repair.

There is mercy in every place,

And mercy, encouraging thought!

Gives affliction a grace

And reconciles man to his lot."

But there was no mercy for Hsaya Maung Thaw Ka in Insein Jail.

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 37) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News

Monday, August 19, 1996

SLORC FIGHTS DEMOCRACY WITH CRUELTY, BARBARISM

Death in Custody (1)

On Aug. 2, U Hla Than, an NLD member of Parliament elected in 1990, died in the Rangoon General Hospital as a political prisoner of the SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council).

His constituency, the Coco Islands, is the smallest in the country but one of the best known. The chief of this small group of islands which lie in the Indian Ocean became notorious as a penal settlement for political prisoners after the first military coup of 1958. It was a place where every aspect pleased, vast stretches of ocean, sapphire skies, sandy beaches, graceful swaying palms, and only man seeking to crush and humiliate his fellow man was vile.

The penal settlement was dismantled in the late 1960s and there remained on the island a naval outpost, a skeleton administration and several families who were largely engaged in work connected with the coconut industry. The total population in 1990 was a little over 1,000.

U Hla Than and four other members of the NLD set out for Greater Coco Island on May 4, 1990, 23 days before the elections were scheduled to take place. There they established their headquarters in a small wood and bamboo bungalow and went to walk with the will to win support for their cause.

House to house canvassing was not permitted, there were strict regulations regarding the distribution of pamphlets and after U Hla Than had visited the home of a school teacher a couple of times, he was asked to sign an undertaking not to make any more visits to the house of any civil servant. He refused, explaining that he had merely been paying social calls, not engaging in any electioneering work.

Despite the restrictions, the intrepid five carried on with their mission to convey their message of democracy to the people of the islands long cut adrift from political developments on the mainland.

Although the monsoons had already begun, the morning of May 27 dawned sunny. Nearly 450 of the 613 people on the island above the age of 18 cast their votes in the two polling stations to choose between U Hla Than and the candidate of the National Union Party, the erstwhile Burma Socialist Program Party which had ruled the country for 26 years. Voting ended around 4 o'clock in the afternoon and the counting of votes was completed by 7:30 in the evening.

The NLD candidate won with 56.94 percent of the eligible votes. What took place on Coco Island might have been described as a mini-election but the achievement of U Hla Than and his team was a major one. When they got back to Rangoon they were given a well-deserved heroes' welcome by colleagues and supporters.

At the time he was elected as a member of Parliament, U Hla Than was 45 years old. He was born to a family of peasant farmers and completed his secondary school education in Moulmein. At the age of 20, he entered the navy. A young man of grit and industry who believed in the value of education, he continued with his studies during his years of service and passed the matriculation examination in 1975. He retired from the navy in 1977 and went on to study law. In 1980 he gained an LL.B. degree from the University of Rangoon.

U Hla Than took an active part in the democracy movement of 1988 as member of the Rangoon Lawyers Association. Later he joined the NLD and became the party committee chairman of one of the important townships of the Rangoon Division. When preparations for the elections began, he offered to stand as the party candidate in the Coco Islands, a constituency that aroused little enthusiasm. His offer was gratefully accepted.

The official announcements of the results of the elections were dragged out over weeks but it was widely known with in a matter of days that the NLD had won a spectacular victory. The country was in a jubilant mood, proud of the outcome of the first democratic elections in three decades, full of hope for the future, confident that at last there would be a government which would be transparent and accountable and which would gain trust and respect both at home and abroad.

Few in Burma suspected then that they were going to be the victims of one of the most blatant acts of deceit practiced on any people. Few realized then that the fair promises of a democratic transfer of power were worth less than the withered palm leaves drifting off the shores of the Coco Islands.

It was some two months after the elections when SLORC still showed no signs of relinquishing power, or of convening Parliament, that a climate of unease began to set in. And when U Kyi Maung and other key members of the NLD were taken into custody in September, the unease turned into dismay and disillusionment. The next month, a number of members of Parliament, including U Hla Than, were arrested. In April 1991 U Hla Than was tried by a martial law court, accused of complicity in attempts to set up a parallel government, and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for high treason. Now, five years later, he is dead, the victim of a warped process of law and a barbaric penal system.

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 36) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News
Monday, August 5, 1996

Photos and the Art of Relaxation

Apparently, there are people who actually enjoy the unblinking scrutiny of a camera lens and the relentless glare of flashlights. I am not one of them as I often find it quite exhausting to pose for photographers when there is an insistent piece of work waiting to be completed, or when I am longing for a few quiet minutes with a cup of tea.

But with seasoned professionals who have a clear idea of what kind of pictures they would like and how these could be best achieved in prevailing circumstances, a photographic session provides an opportunity for a welcome period of relaxation, time off in the middle of a frantic schedule.

It is good to sit for photographers who are able to explain precisely what they would like you to do but who, at the same time, remain fully aware that you are a human being with muscles that tire and ache when held in rigid positions, not a robot model with a fixed smile. I like best those occasions when I can read peacefully or prop myself up against a bit of furniture and take a little rest while the camera clicks away unobtrusively.

During a session with two pleasant photographers the other day, I was able to go through almost the whole of "From the Morning of the World," a slim volume of poems translated from the "Manyoshu." Sitting on a verandah in the cool stillness of the monsoon afternoon, I savoured again some of the fa rite lines. It was refreshing to take my mind off the rate of inflation, and instead, to dwell on images of winter mist hanging low over blue reed beds and wild ducks calling "chill, chill " to each other. The description of a flowering orange tree blanching a backyard is a soothing change from an analysis of the yo-yoing of the value of the Burmese currency. And compared with the latest reports on the harassment of NLD members, a man riding "haggard on the jet black horse under the scarlet shine of autumn leaves on Kamunabi," presented a relatively tranquil vision.

A poem by a priest provided enough food for thought to take me through a fair part of the photographic session:

With what should I compare this world ?

With the white wake left behind

A ship that dawn watched row away

Out of its own conceiving mind.

The whole world no more than mere spume and those busy cameras clicking away trying to capture and preserve on celluloid a transient fleck of existence.

From where does man's passion for recording people and events spring? Did cave dwellers paint hunting scenes to pass an idle hour or was it the fulfillment of an unconscious need to immortalize their deeds for posterity? Or was it an attempt to communicate to others their view of life around them, an embryonic form of media activity?

What are newspapers, radio, television, and other means of mass communication all about? Some who put more emphasis on the mass than on the communication might say cynically that these are simply about making money by catering to the public taste for sensationalism and scandal. But genuine communication constitutes a lot more than mere commerce in news, views and information.

During the year since my release from house arrest, I have met hundreds of journalists, both professional and amateur. There were days when I had to give so many interviews in quick succession, I felt a little dazed. There were times when I was so tired I was not able to do much more than repeat the same answers to the same questions, feeling very much like a schoolgirl repeating a lesson in class. There have been agonising sessions when language difficulties make it a struggle for the interviewer and myself to communicate with each other. Then there are those sessions when perception, rather than language, is the problem and questions puzzle while answers are misunderstood and are sometimes misrepresented to the extent that there is little in common between what was said and what appears in print. It all shows that communication between human beings is interesting, frustrating, exhilarating, infuriating intricate, exhausting- and essential.

Experienced professional journalists can make even the last interview of a gruelling day more of a relaxation than an ordeal. They know how to put their questions so that new facets appear to an old situation and talking to them becomes a learning process. They combine thorough, inquiring minds. with an integrity and a human warmth that make conversation with them stimulating and enjoyable. Good photographers and good journalists are masters in the art of communication, with a talent for presenting as accurately as possible what is happening in one part of the world to the rest of the globe. They are a boon to those of us who live in lands where there is not freedom of expression.

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.

Letter from Burma (No. 35) by Aung San Suu Kyi

Mainichi Daily News
Monday, July 22, 1996

BURMESE POLITICS FULL OF COMPLEXITIES AND INTRIGUE
"Mystery Weekend"

Once upon a time, I read a biography of Arthur James Balfour of Balfour Declaration fame. The book did not really make the man come alive for me, leaving the impression that he was either too private or too intellectual to come across as a vivid human being; or that the author could not do his subtle personality justice. Nevertheless, I liked what I learned about the "happy prime minister." I particularly liked him for the fact that in spite of the metaphysical dabbling which troubled some of his political colleagues, he possessed a healthy appreciation for the detective story. He was said to have advised a young man that the best way to get a really good rest was not to go away for the weekend but to shut himself up in the house with a detective story. (Or perhaps he said several detective stories). In any case it is a piece of advice I consider very sound indeed. Some of the most relaxing weekends I have ever enjoyed were those I spent quietly with a sense of all work to date completed, and an absorbing mystery.

My introduction to the detective story was, very conventionally, through Sherlock Holmes. I was about 9 years old when a cousin enthralled me with the story of The Blue Carbuncle. Soon after, I was either given or lent a book about Bugs Bunny's antics involving some Big Red Apples. On reading it I was struck by the inanity of the plot: How could Bugs Bunny's adventures compare with those of a man who could, from a careful examination of a battered old hat, gauge the physical and mental attributes, the financial situation and the matrimonial difficulties of its erstwhile owner? I decided that detectives were far more interesting and entertaining that anthropomorphized animals.

My childhood affection for Sherlock Holmes did not wane even after I learnt to think in terms of whodunits rather than detective stories. The lean, laconic individual of Baker Street can hold his own with private eyes of the Philip Marlowe genre as well as the intelligent, understated breed of Inspectors Grant and Dalgleish. And the dash of French artist blood in his veins ("Art in the blood is liable to take the strangest form") makes him more fascinating that the meant-to-be exotic investigators like Hercule Poirot. But of course it is not the detective, or the spy, alone who makes a weekend spent with a mystery or two so satisfactory. Apart form the complexity of the plot and the element of suspense, the style of writing, the little details that build up the atmosphere of the story and the fascination of secondary go a long way toward contributing to my enjoyment of a whodunit.

While Inspector Maigret is a great favorite, Madame Maigret is an even greater favorite. I like best the stories in which she features large and comfortable, the image of a good "memere," always at her cooking pots, always polishing, always mollycoddling her big baby of a husband. Even more than the domestic vignettes of the Maigrets, I enjoy descriptions of the sights and smells of Paris and the food the gourmand inspector eats with solid appreciation. The small restaurants he discovers in the midst of his investigations seem to specialize in robust, full flavored provincial dishes reminiscent of Elizabeth David's book on French country cooking.

It is probably because of my love of experimenting in the kitchen, a pastime in which I no longer have time to indulge, that the eating habits of fictional characters are of such interest to me. I seem to remember that in one of his adventures, which I read years ago and the title of which I have forgotten, Maigret expressed a dislike for calves' liver; in another, however, he claims that if there is anything he likes better than hot calves' liver a la bonne femme, it was the same dish served cold. An inconsistency as intriguing as any of his cases. I cannot recall with clarity a single plot of any of the stories about Nero Wolfe that I have read but the flavor of the confabulation he had about food with his Swiss chef lingers. And it was because this obese private investigator's fulsome praise of the chicken fricassee with dumplings he ate at a church fete that I learnt to cook that deliciously homely dish.

Of course one does not read whodunits for memorable descriptions of food. Does George Smiley ever eat? I cannot remember. And one does not recollect, as one follows the developments of espionage in Berlin, that Len Deighton has written a number of cook books. As for Dick Francis, horse feed it more germane than human diet to his plots but that does not make his fast-moving tales any less gripping.

Why is it that Englishwomen produce some of the best crime fictions? I am thinking of Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey, P.D. James and Ruth Rendall. Theses and probably books have been written on that subject. It is a mystery I would like to have the opportunity to mull over some time when a weekend of leisure becomes a possibility. In the meantime, there are enough complexities in Burmese politics to keep one's faculties for unraveling intrigue fully engaged.

This article is one of a yearlong series of letters, the Japanese translation of which appears in the Mainichi Shimbun the same day, or the previous day in some areas.