Sunday, November 10, 2013

Democratic Voice of Burma

Democratic Voice of Burma

Royal descent – the humble remains of the Thibaw dynasty

Posted: 09 Nov 2013 11:02 PM PST

In a modest Rangoon apartment, the granddaughter of Burma’s last king lives poor and unrecognised by her neighbours – a far cry from the power and riches of her ancestor.

Princess Hteik Su PhayaGyi said the childhood days when her family had a bevy of servants and retained some of its royal status were now a distant memory.

The British colonial regime dethroned her grandfather King Thibaw in 1885 and later the military junta, which ruled the country for decades, kept the family out of the public eye.

“They didn’t want us to be somebody,” said the silver-haired princess, swathed in a shimmering purple shawl worn especially for the rare interview.

“I have lived as an ordinary person for 60 years,” she told AFP.

“Of course I repent a little over the glorious times that we had when we were young,” she said, displaying a lively wit undimmed by her 90 years.

The demolition of the monarchy, at the end of the third and final war that brought the nation firmly under the colonial yoke, smashed centuries of royal rule in the country.

Thibaw and his wife, Queen Supayalat, were swiftly and unceremoniously removed from Burma and deposited in the small Indian seaside town of Ratnagiri.

Thibaw died in India aged 56 in 1916, shortly after suffering a heart attack, and the family eventually fractured.

Some settled in India while others made their lives in Burma, which remained part of the British empire until 1948 and came under junta rule in 1962.

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A cloak of silence was thrown over the monarchy by successive Burmese regimes that viewed it as a potential rival, while army leaders sought to evoke much earlier warrior royals.

“Most of Myanmar [Burma] has forgotten about the king,” said deputy culture minister and royal historian Than Swe, who has spearheaded a campaign to return Thibaw’s body to Burma.

A visit by President Thein Sein to Thibaw’s tomb in Ratnagiri during an official trip to India last December reignited interest in Burma’s monarchy.

But Than Swe said Burma’s government had more immediate priorities, such as the sweeping reforms implemented since junta rule ended in 2011.

Queen Suphayalat’s tomb in Rangoon is barely marked. When the family tried to place a simple sign there to inform visitors of the pedigree of the occupant, the former junta immediately removed it.

Thibaw was born into a courtly lifestyle steeped in incredible luxury and his fall was bewilderingly sudden.

The royals lived a lavish and isolated existence within the walls of their gilded teak palace in Mandalay. They could only be approached by people crawling on their knees.

“This man was a demi-god in Burma. He was worshipped by his people,” said Sudha Shah, author of “The King in Exile: The Fall of the Royal Family of Burma“.

“Suddenly he was controlled like a puppet on a string by the British.”

The British wanted Thibaw off the throne to appease business and Christian missionary interests in the country, Shah said.

They opted for complete destruction of the monarchy, partly due to fierce resistance to their incursion which saw the country flooded with British forces.

There were also doubts over finding a pliant royal heir that the British could rule through – Thibaw and his queen notoriously executed dozens of potential rivals for the throne.

Restitution of the royal line was vaguely considered as Burma entered independence.

But one episode when the military tried to enlist the royal family to help it counter communist insurgents ended the generals’ enthusiasm for the monarchy, Shah said.

Local people thronged to catch a glimpse of the family and women knelt and spread their hair on the ground for the family to walk on.

“So taken aback were the generals by the depth of public sentiment demonstrated for the royal family, that they no longer involved the family in any further campaigns,” Shah said.

The family had a brief period of public activity when the princess and her siblings set up the “Miss Burma” beauty contest – she was in charge of catwalk training.

The eldest brother, Prince Taw PhayaGyi, also became involved in the Olympics before he was assassinated by insurgents in 1948.

Princess Hteik Su PhayaGyi and her younger brother Prince Taw Phaya, the 89-year-old potential heir of the Konbaung dynasty, are the only surviving grandchildren.

The royals, refusing the small allowance offered after the British left, were forced to make their own way in the world.

The princess used the impeccable English she learned as a child studying in a Catholic school in the southern city of Moulmein [Mawlamyine] to land positions at both the Australian and US embassies before settling as a teacher – a job she still does today.

But a family quarrel in the late 1990s saw her lose her inherited home and end up living “in a hut”.

“During the rain the water was up to here,” she said indicating knee-deep flooding. “The snakes come into the house. And leeches.”

She now lives with her daughter, who works at a burial association, and said none of her six children, 20 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren showed an interest in reviving the royal line.

She is “grateful” that Thein Sein took the time to visit Ratnagiri but believes her grandfather should not be moved.

Several members of the family scraped together the money to travel to India in the early 1990s – her only visit to her grandparents’ home in exile.

She recounted her own mother’s stories of the queen standing on a balcony overlooking the Arabian Sea and weeping for her homeland.

“When I went there I looked up at that little veranda and the sun was setting. So I said ‘Oh my grandmother must have felt the same’, and I had tears in my eyes.”

The Lady doth protest too seldom

Posted: 09 Nov 2013 10:45 PM PST

In July last year, shortly after the first wave of violence which engulfed Arakan state had taken place, U Win Tin, the co-founder of the National League for democracy (NLD) and perhaps its most influential figure after Aung San Suu Kyi, told me during an interview at his house in Rangoon that "the problem is these Rohingya foreigners. We have to contain them one way or another, something like what happened in the United States during World War II with the Japanese. The US government contained them in camps and after the war they were sent to Japan or they could apply for citizenship. We can solve this problem that way."

The venerated 84-year-old former journalist – considered by many a voice of conscience among the pro-democratic opposition in Burma – said at another point in the conversation: "They [the Rohingyas] want to claim the land; they want to claim to be native. This is not right, that is the problem. But, of course, they have a lot of contact with foreign countries like those in the Middle East, Muslim communities, Indonesia, Malaysia; and this Muslim problem is really great, even all over the world – the problem is too big."

The iconic Aung San Suu Kyi has always been less outspoken than Win Tin. But in a recent interview with the BBC she expressed ideas very similar to his, albeit in a characteristically indirect manner. After denying that what is going in Arakan state is an ethnic cleansing, she said that "the reaction of Buddhists is also based on fear," before adding: "I think you will accept that there's a perception that global Muslim power is very great, certainly that is a perception in many parts of the world and in our country too."

She did not make the slightest attempt to deny the validity of such a "perception". So, if silence is often as eloquent as words, it would not be unfair to infer that she shares it, as Win Tin unmistakably does.

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Many people from abroad who have supported the NLD and the pro-democracy camp at large for many years, even among those who are advocating for the downtrodden Rohingya, seem to be reluctant to admit something that by now should be clear to any clear-eyed observer: when it comes to the crisis in Arakan state, the government and most of the opposition, including the NLD and the 88 Generation, are on the same page. Maybe Myo Yan Neung Thein, a known activist since the student protests in 1996 and founder of the Bayda Institute in Rangoon, was not off the point when he told me last year: "The military, Aung San Suu Kyi, the 88 generation students and the politicians, we all share the same opinion about national identity."

The opening process initiated two years ago in Burma is offering some hope that the country might change for the first time in five decades. But the transition is also putting into full view some ugly truths about the political realities of the country that the narrative of "good" (the democratic opposition and its supporters abroad) versus "bad" (the Burmese regime and its backers abroad, particularly China) had obscured before.

The first, and admittedly the less surprising of all, is that the human rights approach of the so-called international community – with the United States and the European Union at its head – was as easy to discard as the Burmese generals' uniforms who adopted civilian garb to establish a not-so-civilian government two years ago.

For years, these countries put pressure with sanctions on the Burmese dictatorship due to its appalling human rights record. Admittedly, it was not a risky strategy, as Burma was considered of only secondary strategic importance. The geopolitical great game was played elsewhere and it was easy to adopt a "principled approach". Now that China is getting too powerful, the US and the EU need to find allies in the region and the ex-generals in Naypyidaw are as good as any other.

It doesn't matter that the Burmese government did not reach any of the benchmarks that the EU set to remove sanctions. Last year the EU did exactly that. Apart from the always open debate on the effectiveness of sanctions, this move could only encourage the Burmese regime's sense of impunity. Meanwhile, every world leader, Obama included, seems to be eager to exonerate the Burmese government of any responsibility on the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Arakan state and the wave of anti-Muslim violence elsewhere in the country, labeling it as only "sectarian violence".

There are two other two ugly truths that are closely linked and are more of a blow to Burma watchers. The first one is that many in the pro-democracy movement have proved easier to co-opt by the government than would be expected after many years of struggle, starting with Aung San Suu Kyi herself. She has defended the corrupt cronies who have made millions out of a rotten system and even accepted presents from them. The second is that the most prominent leaders in the democracy camp and the generals have many more points in common than was immediately recognisable in former times.

Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD never had a coherent set of policies, a program or even a clear ideology. She has never spelt out a comprehensive political philosophy or strategy beyond some vagaries about the need for a "revolution of the spirit", the goals of democracy, human rights or, more recently, the need for "rule of law" in the country, without putting much flesh and bones into these concepts. Paradoxically, this very same vagueness played in Suu Kyi's favour during her years of house arrest, as it leaves room for her listeners to read in her words whatever they want to read, regardless of their political leanings. Nonetheless, and although the politics of Aung San Suu Kyi are somewhat of a mystery in details, it is possible to see some of her attitudes and her party's in general terms.

Broadly speaking, the most crucial issues that Burma faces today and in the future are fourfold: national identity; the organization of the state; a model for economic development; and its government.

Regarding the first, as we have seen, during the last two years it has become clear that the NLD, the 88 Generation, and most of the opposition share the same ideas of nationhood as the generals in Naypyidaw. It is not a looking-forward, all-inclusive and purely civic concept of nationalism able to transcend religion, race or ethnicity, where national allegiance is based on participation in public life. On the contrary, national identity in Burma, as legally enshrined in the infamous 1982 Citizenship Law, is based on an ethno-nationalism rooted in soil and blood which looks to a largely invented past for its foundations and where only the members of a limited set of ethnic groups are considered truly Burmese.

This ethno-nationalism is more likely to lead to a sort of "ethnocracy" than to a real democracy. And it is important to remember that it has led to catastrophic outcomes in many other places (the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Nazi Germany …), and it is particularly dangerous in a country with as much diversity as Burma.

The issue of the organisation of the state pertains mainly to the autonomy of the ethnic minorities that comprise roughly 40 percent of the population and who inhabit most of the outlying areas of the country, some of whom have been fighting for some sort of autonomy since Burma's independence in 1948. To be fair, when Aung San Suu Kyi was released she called for a second Panglong Conference to try to sort out the issue, but later she has mostly maintained a deafening silence on the issue.

As I have argued previously, Suu Kyi has shown little empathy with the ethnic minorities and little understanding of the problems. As in other issues, she and her party have not explained a policy for accommodating the ethnic minorities' demands for greater autonomy and have always given more precedence to the struggle for democracy than to this thorny issue, as if both questions could be separated. Moreover, there is an all-too-common perception among the ethnic minorities that "The Lady" only cares about the plight of the Bamar majority, a perception which has been reinforced by her refusal to defend the tens of thousands of civilians displaced in Kachin state.

When it comes to economic policies, Aung San Suu Kyi has not gone beyond advocating transparency, the need to introduce measures to reduce poverty, again without much further explanation, and repeating her mantra about the need for rule of law.

The fact that Burma is opening its economy and has the possibility of growing economically does not mean that the huge economic inequalities which affect the country will be solved automatically – on the contrary, if the experiences of other countries are to serve as example. But the democratic opposition and the government have not come out with any plan to avoid a widening of the gap between rich and poor.

The ethnic divisions that afflict the country have somewhat obscured its class differences, very conveniently for those at the top, but these divisions are not less real for being overlooked. In any case, the NLD can hardly be regarded as a party devoted to defend the masses of working poor Burmese citizens, and Aung San Suu Kyi left this quite clear when she advocated the continuing of the huge copper mine project in Latpadaung, even against the interests of the farmers evicted from lands they had been cultivating for generations.

The biggest divergences between the NLD and the government are to be found in the form of government. Suu Kyi has said many times that is necessary to change the constitution and that is necessary to reduce the power of the military to have a real democracy in Burma. But she also said recently in the United Kingdom that "the army must be the foundation of the country", a statement that, to be entirely fair, might be due more to political strategy than to any inner conviction, given her commitment to ingrain herself with the military generals.

Since she was released from house arrest, Suu Kyi has been far more engaged in playing politics in the opaque corridors of power in Naypyidaw and making tours abroad than trying to listen to the Burmese public at large, whose support she and the NLD seem to take for granted. Even Win Tin has criticized this aloofness from the public and it is increasingly easier to find Burmese saying that she is not close enough to the people.

It is possible that Suu Kyi is playing a dangerous game and that it could be risky to be too confrontational with the generals, as some argue. And it goes without saying that she is right when she demands a change in the institutions of government. However, her obsession to work at the top means neglecting another crucial part of a healthy democracy: the participation of citizens in the political process. She and the pro-democracy opposition at large are basically playing by the rules of the government, seemingly too scared to infuriate the beast, and are missing the opportunity to build a strong grassroots movement that could serve as a counterweight of the powerful military. The result is that they are leaving the former dictators to build the new "democracy" almost completely on their own.

Even though she has admitted openly her ambition to hold presidential power in the future, Suu Kyi's political vision for the country remains as hazy as ever. She won her seat in parliament by a landslide without a clear political platform, and her party has yet to publish any program. To date, no NLD MP has made a single proposal in parliament.

It is legitimate to ask whether The Lady and her party consider that their merits lie with her huge charisma and in past sacrifices, having won a general election 23 years ago, instead of aimed at a specific project for the country.

Burma is only at the early stages of an uncertain political process of change. It remains to be seen whether the opening of the country started two years ago will lead to a real democracy. For that to materialise, it is not only necessary to introduce changes to the constitution, the laws and the institutions of the state in order to create a framework where different ideas and political positions can compete peacefully, but there must also emerge a strong political movement capable of challenging both the power and the ideological hegemony of the military, and which can articulate an all-inclusive and progressive vision for the country by listening and responding to the legitimate demands of all Burmese citizens. Given the performance of Suu Kyi, the NLD and the main figures in the pro-democracy camp, all indications are that such a movement has not yet arrived.

Carlos Sardiña Galache is a freelance journalist based in Bangkok.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not reflect DVB editorial policy.
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