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RANGOON, Burma -- Aung San Suu Kyi, weakened by her failed 13-day protest inside her van, is now emboldened by a new generation of pro-democracy student demonstrators and widespread public anger over an economy wrecked by international sanctions.
Burma's powerful military regime, however, has responded to her latest challenges by stepping up its Orwellian security network which forces people to inform on each other, taps telephones, searches international airport passengers and detains any anti-government suspects.
A senior Western diplomat, who recently met Suu Kyi, said in an interview, "We are entering a new phase, increasing internal pressure on the military."
Suu Kyi's new strategy is to stage bold acts of defiance to "get the government's attention and shake it out of its inertia."
Suu Kyi "is telling the government, 'The confrontation can stop if you come talk with me'," the envoy added.
Another Western diplomat agreed and said of the stalemate, "It's a game of who breaks. They hate and fear her."
The two sides can't even agree on the nation's name. The military renamed the country "Myanmar" several years ago, but Suu Kyi and her supporters insist that anyone who uses that name implicitly recognizes the military's reign.
She also demands international boycotts be tightened, and foreign tourists not visit the country, until it achieves democracy.
Virtually every day, meanwhile, the Interior Ministry's New Light of Myanmar newspaper harshly curses her in stilted language, and tries to bend peoples' minds against her.
"She is scheming to terrorize the public" and is backed by "the creatures' countries" who are manipulating Suu Kyi and other "traitorous axe-handles" to chop up Burma, recent denunciations said.
"It can be said that anyone going counter to the public, will not live long," the paper warned.
"The people can regard (her) National League for Democracy as Number One Enemy."
Racist attacks against her British husband pepper the government's daily paper.
The "democracy princess" is "the wife of a White" who "betrays her race" because "she married a Briton and has already got two children. So, the people are displeased with her."
Suu Kyi's newest cat-and-mouse confrontations are currently within the regime's control.
But if protests erupt into mass street demonstrations, or if the fiftysomething Suu Kyi is endangered in any way, Burma's grim political situation would probably take a severe turn for the worst.
Many Burmese have an almost Pavlov-type response to Suu Kyi's visage. For example, if news from a foreign television broadcast appears on a satellite-linked TV, everyone within eyesight will immediately rush to the tube and watch in awe -- even if they can't understand the English language narration.
Widespread admiration for Suu Kyi is often in response to the military regime's domination over the country's horrendous economy.
Most Burmese live in squalor, their dilapidated homes and workplaces pocked by mildew, decay and creaky construction alongside open sewers rife with disease and human excrement.
Even in the capital, Rangoon, many people work with antique machinery. They spend evenings by candlelight, harkening back to a turn-of-the-century lifestyle, due to frequent electricity cuts.
The prime minister's office and ministries' complex is also ravaged by poverty, giving the huge British-built, four-story brick building a decrepit aura akin to an Edgar Allen Poe setting, ringed by shabby, stalag-style security.
The impressive yet down-at-heels structure, graced by four cupolated towers, displays corrugated metal sheets covering some windows without glass. Double fencing allows guards to patrol its perimeter between an inner fence made of spiked wrought iron, and an outer chain-link fence topped by rusty barbed wire coils.
The military has ruled Burma mostly non-stop since this Southeast Asian nation achieved independence from Britain in 1948.
The junta allegedly commits some of the world's worst human rights violations -- extrajudicial executions, torture and forced labor -- according to the US State Department, London-based Amnesty International and other monitors.
The unelected military government is especially vulnerable now, however, because Burma's traditionally impoverished economy is rapidly worsening due to Asia's overall economic meltdown.
"The situation here has reached such a crisis level because of economic reasons," an envoy said.
After decades of xenophobic and quasi-socialist economic policies, Burma recently sank further due to international sanctions on new foreign investment, led by the United States.
As a result, Burma remains one of the ten poorest countries in the world, though it is potentially wealthy thanks to its resource-rich territory which is the size of France and England combined.
The regime insists this is why Washington, London and other foreign governments are allegedly using Suu Kyi to infiltrate and dominate the nation.
In Rangoon, Mandalay and other cities, some glistening buildings have appeared, funded by local businessmen and investors from the United States, Europe and Asia.
The regime welcomed them in hopes that together they could avoid Suu Kyi's boycott demands and instead profit from cheap labor, international tourism and joint ventures.
The government, hoping to move the country forward, meanwhile recently lifted a ban on university examinations which were halted after students staged anti-government protests in 1996.
As a result, students were finally able to complete their overdue tests during the third week of August.
Near some of their exam rooms, however, finger-sized paper cram sheets littered the ground, displaying minuscule, computer-printed explanations of complex biological, mathematical and other advanced subjects.
Some students said indulgent teachers allowed blatant cheating in an effort to ensure students passed and graduated, so they would no longer be causing trouble on campuses.
But students said they feared their degrees would be perceived as worthless by employers because of the cheating and the two years of disrupted classes.
Immediately after putting down their examination pens, however, more than 400 students took to the streets of Rangoon in two surprise pro-democracy demonstrations on August 24.
Some wore red headbands adorned with Suu Kyi's trademark yellow "fighting peacock," proving this new generation of students were inspired by an election held nearly a decade ago.
They chanted slogans demanding democracy, and a convening of parliament, to allow Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) politicians to take their seats after winning a landslide victory in a 1990 election -- polls which the military ignored.
The regime has now condemned as "illegal" Suu Kyi's newest demand to soon convene a "people's parliament."
Burma's Ambassador to Thailand, Hla Maung, was quoted by The Bangkok Post on August 28 warning: "No matter whoever they are, they are not entitled to convene the parliament.
"And no matter if it is the NLD or whatever group, it may be warned -- or dissolved -- it if goes beyond the law."
Convening her parliament may prove impossible. Suu Kyi's elected NLD parliament members are either in prison, or abroad as refugees, or languishing under the Habitual Offenders Restriction Act, which means they could be arrested if they travel to Rangoon to heed her call.
The student demonstrators' fresh defiance, however, relieved much of the anguish within the democracy movement over Suu Kyi's luckless return to Rangoon the same day.
She had sat in her food-packed gray van on a nearby bridge for 13 days, demanding the government lift its roadblock and allow her to visit supporters in another town.
The government refused to let her proceed, but shrewdly catered to her van with food, an umbrella and other niceties in an apparent effort to deflect local and international condemnation.
But when the government stopped Suu Kyi's doctor from repeatedly visiting her, because he allegedly used the medical check-ups to transmit messages, Suu Kyi decided to return home.
Suu Kyi's doctor said she came back to Rangoon because she suffered mild kidney and urinary ailments -- a report which diplomats believed, but was impossible to independently confirm.
The regime meanwhile refuses to talk with Suu Kyi and instead appears to be trying to split her supporters by arranging several meetings with her NLD party's "responsible" chairman, Aung Shwe.
Richard S. Ehrlich has a Master's Degree in Journalism from Columbia University, and is the co-author of the classic book of epistolary history, "HELLO MY BIG BIG HONEY!" -- Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews.
His web page is located at http://www.oocities.org/asia_correspondent and he may be reached by email: animists *at* yahoo dot com
from The Laissez Faire City Times
Vol 2, No 28, August 1998
Copyright by Richard S. Ehrlich
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