Praying For Better Burma
Until last week, Burma was the type of place where you didn't mention the political crisis unless you were behind closed doors. You censored what you said on the phone and in tea shops. The waiter or your co-worker could be a spy. I lived there for a year and even censored my diary, changing the names and slightly altering the stories. I worried the junta might search my apartment, read my journals and then arrest my friends.
Now my Burmese husband and I, living in Los Angeles, watched in awe as thousands of monks and civilians shouted their anger at and distrust of the ruling junta.
At least 100,000 people marched through the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay, Sittwe, Bago and other cities throughout the country for the past two weeks. The junta has been opening fire into crowds since Wednesday, and have driven most of the monks back into their monasteries, but there still is resistance and burning hope for change.The protests represent the biggest demonstrations in Burma (renamed Myanmar by the junta) since 1988, when hundreds of thousands marched. It ended badly then: The government gunned down 3,000 protesters.
This time, we can only hope the protests lead to political dialogue and national reconciliation, not another bloodbath.
I lived in Burma for a year in 2003, working at the Myanmar Times and Business Review. The government, called the State Peace and Development Council, censored every article we wrote. We couldn't write about corruption or natural disasters, let alone the national hero, Aung San Suu Kyi. The censor once took out the word "dirt" before "dirt road" because he didn't want to make Burma, one of the world's least developed countries, look too poor to have paved roads.
During my year in Burma, I met and fell in love with the man who is now my husband. Aung Moe, nicknamed Morning, taught me about his religion and way of life. We visited Shwedagon Pagoda, the heart of some of the protests this past week, and monasteries throughout the country.
I learned how the junta's economic policies - the generals have been known to make economic decisions based on their astrological signs - hurt people on a daily basis. Morning worked at the paper, yet didn't make enough to rent his own apartment or save. The electricity went out multiple times a day, yet only the very wealthy - who usually had ties to the military - could afford generators. Rumors spread that the junta used the electricity as a means of exerting power. People saved their money in cash because no one trusted the banks and ATM cards were useless.
Morning and I would walk through the streets of Rangoon at night and see waiters sleeping on tables because they couldn't afford a bed.
My apartment was on Sule Pagoda Road, the very street the monks were marching down. It is in the middle of crowded, smelly downtown Rangoon, where every building looks in need of a paint job. Men, sitting on plastic stools 6 inches off the ground, gathered around mini plastic tables sipping on tea. Scrawny mutts picked at garbage strewn about. Women wore the traditional thanaka, made from ground bark, on their cheeks. Barefoot children in dirty shorts or an old oversized dress clutched their postcards as they wandered in search of a tourist to latch onto and follow until they made a sale.
Until the protests, the junta controlled the country so well that there was almost no political dissent. Anyone who spoke out against the government was quickly detained and usually tortured.
An activist was arrested while I was there for passing out copies of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. The media couldn't cover protests, so demonstrators had no chance of raising awareness and little incentive to risk imprisonment.
Morning eventually fled the country to work for the Irrawaddy, a magazine that covers Burma from Thailand. Anyone who works for it is put on the junta's blacklist. Morning can't return home until there are free and fair elections. We hope that this round of protests ushers in democratic reform. We wonder if the junta will release its hundreds of political prisoners and free the people's leader, Suu Kyi, from house arrest.
Yet we fear the junta will repeat the horrors of 1988 and open fire on the monks, students and civilians. The government started cracking down Wednesday, sending tear gas into crowds, beating up monks and killing several people.
We are watching from Los Angeles, glued to the Internet as we read the minute-by-minute reports coming out of Burma. We are hopeful that Burma will open up, hopeful that Morning can return home soon, but fearful that many will die in the process.
Hanna Ingber Win is a weekly columnist for Popandpolitics.com and a graduate journalism student at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication.
No comments:
Post a Comment