Burma: I was almost there…
Just a couple of months ago, I got offered a trip to Myanmar to cover a company’s operations which had to do with my beat. I was really excited at the prospect of visiting a country that’s been so much in the news recently, and yet is still shrouded with so much mystery.
So the trip was scheduled for the first week of May, but unfortunately visa woes held up my trip and then Asia’s worst cyclone in recent memory happened.
I guess I could count myself lucky that I wasn’t there when it happened, because it was very likely that I would have been. But imagine the things I would have seen, the help I could have rendered, and the amazing stories I could have come back with. It is with slight regret that I didn’t make it there “in time” - although what’s comforting is at least my trip is not cancelled, just postponed for now - till we have a clearer picture of what’s going on.
Interestingly, I met a contact today who was involved in this trip I was going to make to Burma/Myanmar and he remarked that the world’s perception of what’s going in Myanmar is vastly different from what it’s like on the ground, in the country.
He said, when he visited about two years ago, it was the safest place he’d seen, with no obvious military presence, and he observed the life of the simple folk - not touched by materialism and luxuries, but contented and happy.
People would go into the bank and draw out slabs of cash, which look like stacks of huge bricks, (due to country’s inflation, the currency is almost worthless) and put it in a flimsy plastic bag, which they will carry like they’re carrying a loaf of bread, and take it on the bus, with the plastic bag swinging around beside them - with no apparent concern that it might be snatched off their hands.
To my criticism of Burma’s 46-year-rule by the military regime, he said it was a “matter of who is in power at which period in time”. He proceeded to explain, having gained insight from an influential Burmese businessman, that during the 1990 general election, the generals were happy to hand over the power to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi - Myanmar’s famous democracy advocate who won the 1990 elections to claim the Prime Minister position - to let her and democracy run the country - but they had one condition: the generals wanted immunity from future persecution, presumably for all their past crimes and whatever skeletons they had in their closet.
She said no. They placed her under house arrest. And the rest is history.
My contact said to me, “if you think from the generals’ point of view: I’m happy to hand over the power to you, just don’t come after me. You say no? Okay then, we won’t give up our position. You can continue life as it is, just like the rest of the Burmese for the last two decades.”
He also claimed the Myanmese generals hadn’t been that stupid to run a general election, and provoke the world’s fury and scorn by declaring the results null and void - as a futile bad PR exercise. He believed they genuinely wanted to hand over power, but weren’t willing to do it with any doubt that their future would be safe.
It was good food for thought. How true, that this is the correct version of what went on behind the scenes, is of course for me and you to decide. But considering I don’t have much contact with Burmese businessmen - who know their country far more intimately than me, I am tempted to give my contact the benefit of the doubt.
Just think, if she had taken their offer, and given up the right to persecute them (a completely separate issue that has its own set of considerations), for the sake of a hypothetical argument let’s say she did, what would Myanmar be like now? Would it still be Burma? Will their people be happier? Will they have enjoyed a similar success to Vietnam - or even surpass their neighbour’s economic achievement, under the democratic capitalism that would have come with Aung’s rule? Will that possible future and achievements - be worth giving up the right to persecute the generals for past crime?
As a person who looks forward, not back, I know which choice I would have made if I were in her shoes. Then again, perhaps I haven’t known the suffering of the people, or understood how important justice is to them. And perhaps if she was given that same choice - the red or blue pill - she would have not changed anything. Can freedom and success in the future ever replace the wrong and injustice of the past?
I guess there isn’t an easy answer.
