Burma's Regime Selects New Targets While Suu Kyi Under House Arrest

by Richard S. Ehrlich

RANGOON, Burma -- While the world's most famous political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi, now completes her fifth year under house arrest, it is easy to see who Burma's military regime targets as its enemy.

A sprawling military camp, in the center of this tropical capital, is protected by an outer defensive wall -- punched by carefully spaced, rectangular slots.

These head-high slots allow soldiers inside the camp to shoot through the long, high wall at anyone who approaches.

Tellingly, the wall curves along one of Rangoon's main commuter avenues.

The only passersby are cars, taxis, buses, bicycle-drawn rickshaws, and pedestrians on foot.

Next to a bend in the wall, is a small church and school for children.

Western diplomats say the unelected junta has this Southeast Asian nation "stitched up," and the struggle for democracy is now hopeless, with no end in sight to the government's repressive, fearful reign.

Desperate opposition groups -- mostly in exile -- churn out impressive newsletters, speeches, testimonies and calls for boycotts, all citing extrajudicial executions, torture, forced labor and other woes.

They document this nation's bloodstained human rights record, which has been confirmed by Amnesty International as one of the worst on earth.

Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Suu Kyi (pronounced: "Soo Chee"), meanwhile, appears determined to live entombed in her house on University Avenue, refusing the government's offer that she walk free into foreign exile.

She has never been officially charged, and has no access to legal proceedings.

Oxford-educated Suu Kyi, 49, is the daughter of independence leader General Aung San, who was assassinated along with his cabinet ministers in 1947, six months before the end of British colonialism in Burma.

In Suu Kyi's first public speech in 1988, she said, "Some people have been saying that I know nothing of Burmese politics, but the trouble is that I know too much.

"My family knows best how complicated, and tricky, Burmese politics can be, and how much my father had to suffer on this account."

Burmese analyst Aung Zaw said, "Some believe that she had to shoulder her father's unfinished obligation to Burma."

He added, "Today, she reads books on politics, biography and religion.

"She wakes up at 4.30 am, meditates, listens to the radio and exercises."

Suu Kyi is married to British Tibetologist Michael Aris. They have two teenage sons, who live with their father in England, though they are allowed to visit her.

Suu Kyi insists her National League for Democracy party's 1990 landslide election victory allows them to bring democracy to Burma, and all political prisoners must be freed.

But the military annulled the poll and ruthlessly cracked down on democracy supporters.

Burma's handful of minority ethnic guerrilla wars -- for regional independence, or autonomy -- also refuse to give up their scattered struggles, despite fighting in seemingly lost causes and jungle-covered obscurity for the past 45 years.

Amid the grinding political stalemates, Burma's largely impoverished population clings to whatever shreds of existence they can, beneath the smothering oppression of a devastated economy, arbitrary rulings by the regime, and a society riddled with secret police and informers.

"Everybody is so cowed by the government," one dismayed Western diplomat said in an interview.

"The picture is not a cheerful one. The place is fairly well sewn up."

While the military remains strong, the opposition remains weak from government executions, imprisonment and internal squabbles.

"The opposition is so divided," the envoy added.

"Inside the country, and externally, the opposition is in such a mess that they can't move events here unless they stop fighting among each other."

An unhappy Rangoon shopkeeper said in an interview, "This government has a pocket policy."

He then touched his shirt pocket, while explaining corrupt officials often take government money and bribes.

"And they have a pistol policy," the shopkeeper added, shaping his index finger and thumb into a gun.

"Suu Kyi? She is locked. Anyone who speaks about Suu Kyi is also locked. Everyone likes her. We had an election."

In the northern city of Mandalay, an angry trader was more despairing.

"Now there is no hope. We all obey. And we are afraid maybe the police, or some informer, will hear us when we talk," the trader in Mandalay said in an interview.

"Please, if someone asks you about our conversation, tell them I only asked you about selling whiskey and cigarettes."

A nervous student also summed up the mood by saying in an interview, "We want democracy. But it is dangerous to talk politics in Burma. So Burmese people shut up."

Throughout Burma, the military -- known as the "tatmadaw" -- has erected big red signs, with Orwellian slogans designed to brainwash and warn.

The most common military sign declares in huge letters:

"Only When The Tatmadaw Is Strong Can The Nation Be Strong."

Government-controlled newspapers echo a similar slogan by repeatedly running the same big headline in every edition, day after day:

"The Tatmadaw Has Been Sacrificing Much of Its Blood and Sweat to Prevent Disintegration of the Union."

The opposition All Burma Students Democratic Front is meanwhile denounced as "terrorists," because of their guerrilla-supported campaign to fight for Suu Kyi's release from house arrest -- which began July 20, 1989 -- and overthrow of the military.

The opposition holds the regime responsible for killing more than 1,000 democracy activists in 1988, just before the military declared martial law and created a new government, which it named as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).

The SLORC regime also demands Burma now be called Myanmar.

But the name change is fervently resisted by pro-democracy supporters, and others, who say it would symbolize international acceptance the regime's wishes.

SLORC is now busy trying to invent a new constitution.

Their ubiquitous slogan for that is:

"Emergence of the State Constitution is the Duty of All Citizens of the Union of Myanmar."

Copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich

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