ow HOME MLRA

Myanmar in Transition
A 2013 Great Decisions Program at Medford Leas

Mother preparing meal for child, Cradle swing at the left

BURMA IN EARLY INDEPENDENCE
by Helen Vukasin - February 28, 2013

Burrna has been very important in American Foreign Policy since 1948 when India and Burma got their independence from the British Empire. I was fortunate enough to spend two years in Burma (1951-53). My husband was part of a team of economists under Robert Nathan working with the Ministry of Planning to create a 5- year economic plan. I spent my time working on a Master’s thesis about the development of the Irrawaddy delta as the rice bowl of SE Asia, studying Burmese dance and teaching English in a Burmese school.

We were in Burma on a project which was primarily funded by US foreign AID and connected to a large scale engineering program for an airport and other infrastructure projects. In addition, there was a major AID Mission, of the post war Economic Cooperation Administration, supporting dozens of development projects all around the country.

Just to place Burma and India in the important role they played at this time in history. Before WW II there were no so-called developing countries. All such countries were still in a colonial status. Burma and India were the first to achieve independence and remained the only ones until the Gold Coast, in Africa, won independence as Ghana in 1957, 9 years later.

It was a new and unique situation in world politics.
U Nu, a Buddhist, was the first President of Burma. He followed a path of democratic socialism. However, the conflicts and the power of the dissension of the ethnic groups kept the country off balance. Just for example, during the first 12 months of our stay in Burma, the main water pipe to Rangoon was blown up 13 times by dissident groups and we were without water, sometimes for days. I can remember standing in the shower washing my hair one day when suddenly – dead silence - and no more water. It was mostly an attempt to discommode the government. It had no real military impact. It was a hit and run tactic.

Making hand-roled cigars, called cheroots, Inle Lake

..
Liquid gold for making gold leaf in family workshop
Weaver at loom makes beautiful fabrics for sale
at shop across the street

Still this was 1952, a period of hope. India and Burma while professing independent socialist leanings were not willing to be drawn into the Cold War. India and Burma formed a liaison with Yugoslavia at the time when that country was separating itself from the USSR. These three major developing countries met in India at a Conference and affirmed their democratic socialist beliefs and their determination for neutrality in the Cold War. They declared themselves countries of the Third World.

In the meantime, the US was negotiating to return to their aid projects in Burma. Burma stood firm against the issue of US support of Chian Kai-shek and ultimately, several years later, they won the case. They also stood firm on their declaration that they did not want out-right aid that might have strings. They preferred cooperation or loans from the benefactors. And over the years there were many vying for favor from resource-rich Burma, including the USSR, China, Israel, Yugoslavia and others.

We left Burma in 1953 at the end of our two year contract. At that time PYIDAWTHA (the eight year Economic Plan which means Towards a Welfare State , a concept conceived of by Thakin Aung San in the 1940s) was on the edge of a cliff. With the end of the Korean war which supported an elevated world price of rice, the price nose-dived. It was the high price of rice on which the whole plan was predicated. Over the next few years the plan retreated to a four year plan and more modest goals.

So I have given you a snatch of what Burma was like in the post colonial days. What happened to American Burmese relations in the years between1953 and what we all hope is a move toward parliamentary democracy is complicated and with enough information for a whole session of Great Decisions. We hope the handout you received provides enough highlights along with the book and the DVD to bring you up to date.

Great Decisions Talk on Burma
by Beth Bogie, February 28, 2013

Good morning.

I’m going to augment the DVD with some reasons for optimism about the future of Burma and the reform movement. But first, how were the planets so aligned as to produce the amazing shift from hard-line dictatorship to a democratic reform movement. Diplomatic efforts were mostly ignored. Here’s what weighed more heavily:

• Number one, the military in 2008, to international dismay, refused to accept aid in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, whose winds and tsunami swept 140,000 people in the delta out to sea and left utter devastation. The only general to visit the area was the present President Thein Sein.
• Second, a few of the generals for the first time traveled to neighboring countries and were shocked at the giant gap between their economies and Burma’s;
• Third, Senior General Than Shwe, the hard-line head of the junta, watched the Arab Spring unfold, and became concerned about his own future;
• Also, China had become a suffocating presence in Burma. China had propped up Burma with loans in the face of European and U.S. sanctions and was gobbling up resources of Burma in 50-50 deals with corrupt generals. A Chinese proposal to build a giant hydroelectric plant that would inundate villages in northern Burma and keep 90 percent of the electricity for the Chinese was a last straw. The Burmese people uncharactistically rose up as one and said no. President Thein Sein agreed and ended the project.
• Suddenly U.S. sanctions, which prohibited U.S. companies from doing business with Burma, provided powerful leverage. While turning its back on China, Burma needed earth-moving equipment from Caterpillar, for example, but to get it, sanctions would have to be lifted. Aung San Suu Kyi alone determined whether and when sanctions would be lifted. The U.S. and Europe would not lift their sanctions until she said so. Suu Kyi called for their lifting last September.
• Finally, the rank-and-file soldiers and younger officers were poorly paid and increasingly unhappy. General Thein Sein, now President, who was expected to be no more than a puppet of General Than Shwe, silently sided with the younger officers and soldiers. There are 500,000 soldiers in the military, used entirely against ethnic and political insurgency within Burma.

Market: Taunggyi, Shan State

Bagan Market, Urns to collect rain water

Chilies, Taunggyi market

Morning Shopping, Taunggyi market

Is the reform movement sustainable and do the Burmese people have enough experience with democracy to make it work into the future? The military hard-liners can constitutionally take back the reforms at any time. The election in 2010 was a sham, with 25% of seats reserved for the military and 80% of the remainder for military supporters. As the New York Times put it: the generals just put on civilian clothes. Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy refused to participate.

Despite uncertainties about the military, the reforms have been dramatic and positive, such as: releasing Aung San Suu Kyi and recognizing her opposition party, releasing many political prisoners, ending censorship and lifting restrictions on the Internet, reducing taxes and rewriting laws on taxation and property ownership, and much, much more. The genie is out of the bottle and will be difficult to put back in, especially since the walls of isolation have fallen. Governments and the media are finally watching developments with an eye to future investment, which Burma sorely needs.

And what of the Burmese people? They have struggled mightily against their oppressors, both British and Burmese military. In 1947, General Aung San, father of Aung San Suu Kyi, won independence for Burma from the British. Under the British, Burma was treated as a province of India. The Burmese would have become acquainted with the Constitution of the British Indian Empire, as the DVD indicated. Democratic principles and processes would have been embedded in that document.

Between 1948 and l962 Burma was independent and a democracy. The assassination in 1947 of soon-to-be-President Aung San and his cabinet was a severe setback, but the democracy moved forward under President U Nu. Self-governing organizations of a civil society were growing and a reflection of a free country, however much it was in a state of turbulence, as described by Helen.

By way of background, in the first half of the 1900’s before World War II and in the decade after that, Burma was a relatively prosperous country. Burma was the rice bowl of Southeast Asia. It was considered one of the Asian Tigers, like Taiwan and South Korea. Education in this period was one of the highest values, and medical education was at the top. Burmese doctors were considered the best in Asia. Not only were there the British vernacular schools; there were also 550 American-style high schools established by American missionaries, with teachers from all backgrounds. A Burmese woman in her 80s living on Long Island near my former home told me proudly, “We had everything you had.” She added quietly, “We forgot out roots.”

I believe that the British ill-treatment of the Burmese, favoring Indians over Burmese for the Burmese civil service, for example, was probably mitigated to a degree by the democratic attitudes of the teaching and medical missionaries from the U.S. One American professor of botany at the University of Rangoon (Yangon), when he returned in the late l980s to Burma, in a small opening for visitors, he was greeted by one thousand of his students. He had taught them from l930 to 1966, when he was the last missionary to leave Burma.

In l962, General Ne Win took over the government in a coup, beginning the 50 years of isolation under military dictatorship, when borders were shut down and all foreigners and foreign investment were kicked out. The economy did a nosedive. Soviet-style socialism, nationalism, superstition and paranoia ruled General Ne Win and the military.

Did the Burmese sit on their hands? Certainly their tenacity, their quiet resistance, their resilience, and their sense of humor were sources of their survival. I observed firsthand from l999 to 2010 their struggle under the military junta, and their unfailing warmth and hospitality.

In l988, however, explosive tensions erupted. Students led a national uprising in the name of democracy. That, in my opinion, was the Burmese Spring, no different than today’s Arab Spring. Some 3,000 students were killed by the military, hundreds fled through the jungle to refugee camps in Thailand, and hundreds more were imprisoned. Many were released from prison only recently.

That same year Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma from England to care for her dying mother. People asked her to lead a democracy movement, and she formed a party called the National League for Democracy. In a national election called by the military, her party won 59 percent of the vote and 81 percent of the seats in Parliament. The election was promptly annulled by the military. She was already under house arrest, which continued off and mostly on for the next 15 of 21 years, and many members of her party were imprisoned. Her belief in non-violent resistance in the name of democracy carried her through to her release in November 2011. In by-elections in 2012, she and her party members won 43 of 45 available seats in the lower house of Parliament. She has written two books on democracy and has often spoken to the Burmese public on the subject, such as when attempting to rebuild her party in 2002.

She has famously said, “It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it, and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.”

After the1988 riots were put down, fear did grip the people. But in 2007, Buddhist monks took to the streets in protest of higher fuel prices. Soon they were marching in support of human rights. We looked on at our televisions with our hearts in our mouths. Within a few days of protest, many of the monks were dragged out of their homes at night and murdered by the military. This “Saffron Revolution,” so named for the color of the monks’ robes, was the first protest in Burma witnessed by the outside world. It was possible because of technology heretofore largely unavailable to the average Burmese –the Internet, digital cameras. Now pictures could get out.

Vegetables for market are carried on shoulder baskets

During the years leading up to the protest, “The Democratic Voice of Burma” was beaming broadcasts about democracy from the U.S., in the Burmese language, through a server in Norway to the people of Burma, who would listen on their radios. This avoided the government-operated server in Burma, whose use was heavily restricted and monitored by the military. At the time of the monks’ protest, the “Democratic Voice of Burma” was said to have had a major impact on the broad public.

Horse-drawn buggies in Bagan, from 1800s

Public support for democracy is alive and well in Burma. I don’t see the reform movement simply as a top-down phenomenon, without any role having been played by the people, and only to be taken away when the military chooses. Democratic reforms are growing roots. And the gentle Burmese people are finding their voice, as in the case of the hydroelectric project and in voting for 43 of the seats for the democracy candidates. It will be interesting to see what general elections will bring in 2015 .

It’s important to remember that for 50 years you did not read about the brutal repression going on in Burma. You didn’t read about Burma at all. Now that the international media has access to Burma, you are hearing not only about the reforms, but also, for the first time, instances of strife. It’s important to keep this in perspective.

Commuters on pick-up truck

The strife with the ethnic states surrounding Burma is in part the legacy of colonialism. When the British finally took over the entire country in l885, they controlled the Burmese, the largest ethnic group in the central, flat part of the country, while leaving alone the 135 ethnic peoples residing in surrounding mountainous areas who were too hard to subdue. This bred resentment between the Burmese and the ethnic states and resulted in the formation of an army in each ethnic area with an intent to secede or at least to protect themselves. Frequently the military burned down villages in the ethnic areas, took people into forced labor and raped the women. Today, under President Thein Sein ceasefire agreements have been reached with all but one ethnic group and the latter is being negotiated. I believe that the reforms and a more democratic environment will ultimately quench the desire for separation from the Union of Burma.

Double-decker river boat

People meeting boat at stop on Irrawaddy River

Passengers leave, boat arrives

Timeless scene: boat and pagoda

Suset on the Irrawaddy