How Junta stemmed a saffron tide

The military crackdown on Burma's monk-led opposition has emptied the streets and removed hope of regime change... for now. But dissent continues to seep out via the internet and from the army rank and file

Special correspondents in Rangoon and Bangkok, Justin McCurry in Tokyo, Jonathan Watts in Beijing, Alex Duval Smith in Oslo

Sunday September 30, 2007
The Observer

After early optimism, a sense of hopelessness now exists in Rangoon. Communication to the outside world has been largely cut and, according to diplomats in the region, up to 200 protesters are dead. The official death count from the government is nine. But no one believes the government.

The maroon-clad Buddhist monks from the monasteries at Moe Gaung, Ngwe Kyar Yan and elsewhere, who marched in their thousands to give impetus to a new generation of Burmese protesters challenging decades of military rule, are locked up in prison or behind their monastery gates. Their monks' cells have been smashed, stained with their blood and looted. Those who escaped have taken off their robes and sought refuge disguised as laymen.

Parks, grocery stores and internet cafes are closed. Troops stand on every corner. By late yesterday a few hundred protesters - in contrast to the hundreds of thousands who flocked to the streets mid-week - were playing a game of cat- and-mouse with the military and pro-military thugs.

For now it has been left to a United Nations envoy, Ibrahim Gambari, to persuade the generals to use negotiations instead of guns to end mass protests against 45 years of military rule. 'He's the best hope we have. He is trusted on both sides,' Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said. 'If he fails, then the situation can become quite dreadful.'

It was a sense of despair that was reflected yesterday in Rangoon, the country's largest city and centre of gravity of the protests, which have faltered and failed under a hail of rubber bullets, tear gas and live rounds. 'I don't think that we have any more hope to win,' said a young woman who took part in a massive demonstration on Thursday that was broken up when troops opened fire into a crowd. She was separated from her boyfriend and has not seen him since. 'The monks are the ones who give us courage.'

'People are living in a state of fear and hate,' said another onlooker. 'A few days ago, everyone was friendly. Now no one wants to talk to strangers.'

But, perhaps, it is not the whole picture. For in Burma in these past two weeks of protests, two stories have emerged.

The first has been sharply visible in the images of the vast demonstrations against the military junta that have coalesced around Rangoon's symbolic centres of the Sule and Shwedagon pagodas, and the violent response of the regime.

It has been told in pictures of bloodshed and confrontation that have brought back bleak memories of the last time the Burmese people rose up to confront the military who have exercised a brutal monopoly on power for 45 long years. That was in 1988, when 3,000 people were murdered by the army in the violence that followed.

Most of all it has been a story of resistance that yesterday appeared to have concluded in defeat.

But there has been a second, more discreet story that has emerged. The most powerful weapons in the revolution, albeit one that has been crushed for now, were the worldwide web, Facebook and the blogs - in particular, those that fed the Burmese media network in Oslo that fed the world.

With the internet in Burma largely closed down, as activists in Norway concede, the powerful images that commanded the world's attention have become scraps of just a few seconds.

Still, the story has seeped out via hurried conversations in Rangoon and Mandalay, passed down the line to opposition groups in exile in Bangkok and on the Thai border. And what it has described is a sclerotic military regime that, while still brutal and controlling, has been struggling to impose the power it has for so long enjoyed.

It tells for the first time of cracks in the military command, of officers questioning the 'morality' of their orders and the self-interest of the generals in charge. 'There are differences in the rank and file of the army for the first time,' said one exiled trade union activist last week. They are focused, too, on tensions within an army and bureaucracy that has long shared the financial fruits of power with the junta's generals and who, after four decades, have begun to feel as excluded as the vast majority of Burma's people.

When Senior General Than Shwe began the relocation of Burma's administrative capital to Naypyidaw - the 'Abode of the Gods' - in November 2005 the move was put down by some to folly and superstition. The reality, however, of the relocation of Burma's ministries and military headquarters to this area of tropical scrub, 200 miles distant from Rangoon, was more prosaic.

A military dictatorship once confident of its ability to frighten the population had, in fact, become something close to being afraid itself, of its own people. It was a time of transformation in Burma - of changes that in large measure would lead directly to the showdown between the military and the Burmese people that began in the middle of August.

For there were consequences to the move that the generals could have anticipated. Transferring the entire government machinery to Naypyidaw has been a huge drain on public finances already stretched to breaking point in one of the world's poorest countries. So, too, has been the cost of maintaining the 375,000-strong army, which has nearly doubled in size over the past decade.

The folly of the move to Naypyidaw has impoverished an already poor population in a land where government pensions are virtually worthless. One of the critical engines of the protests has been the cost of living.

The move had other critical consequences. For as well as seeing the centre of power being shifted away, the centre of gravity within the regime was also being shunted. 'The junta used to be a dictatorship by committee,' says Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK. 'But around the same time as the move it began to become more of a traditional dictatorship centred around General Than Shwe. The military intelligence chief, General Khin Nyunt, was put under house arrest, and the balance of power with Vice Senior General Maung Aye that existed between the three generals began evolving around 2004 into the accumulation by Than Shwe of more power for himself and a few cronies.'

The shift in power within Burma's junta was reflected in another important aspect, according to opposition figures in the Burmese government in exile. Where once the generals had been careful to command the loyalty of the military by distributing the benefits of dictatorship among them, Than Shwe began concentrating the benefits of power in the same tight circle.

And if a symbol for the physical remoteness and greed of the evolving new regime under Than Shwe was required, it was supplied in a desperately miscalculated act: the wedding in Rangoon last year of his daughter, a 10-minute video of which was leaked to the outside world. Viewers were offended not only by the extravagance of the event, in which Thandar Shwe and her bridegroom, Major Zaw Phyo Win, a deputy director at the Ministry of Commerce, were showered with expensive gifts, including luxury cars, houses and jewellery, but also by its utter lack of taste.

It was not simply the widely claimed $50m in gifts lavished on the bride that was symbolic. The diabetic Than Shwe, then 75, looked frail. Less visible things were happening to the regime as it settled into its new headquarters. Reports of desertions from a military no longer an elite apart began to emerge; a report leaked to Jane's suggested that many of its battalions were suffering manpower problems. Persistent reports began to emerge of criticism of the leadership even among the officer classes. 'There was a lieutenant-colonel out of the country who said the Americans should bomb Naypyidaw,' recalls Zaw Tung, an official with the Federation of Trade Unions of Burma, which was among the organisers of the recent protests and a victim of the crackdown.

Signs of dissent within the military have also been reported by Zin Lin, an official with the Burmese government in exile. 'We have heard reports from inside the country of places where soldiers are not following orders to fire on demonstrators, including in Mandalay where they refused an order to fire on monks.'

But there are more intriguing claims emerging that appear to contradict the narrative of the democracy movement being snuffed out without any gain in the last few days. Among them is the claim in Irrawaddy news magazine that the bubbling dissent within the armed forces has led to a serious falling out between the head of the army, Vice Senior General Maung Aye, and Than Shwe over the response to the demonstrations.

Farmaner's organisation has heard the same accounts. And if he is certain of one thing, it is that Than Shwe, secluded in his new capital, made a series of potentially disastrous miscalculations, beginning with the decision to increase the price of fuel by 500 per cent, leading to the first demonstration on 19 August. By the junta's own standards, it seemed slow and confused about how to respond to the fuel protests and then to the mass revulsion that followed the beating of two monks by the security forces.

When it did use violence last week, to close the huge monasteries in Rangoon that had become the focus of the protests, arresting and beating hundreds of monks and looting property, it was in a way certain to alienate many who had not marched but stood on the sidelines in this devoutly Buddhist country. 'There seems to have been a massive series of miscalculations,' says Farmaner. 'They did not anticipate how unpopular the increase in the fuel price would be.'

He added: 'The junta relies on its psychological grip on the population. It requires people to be afraid. But people kept coming out day after day. You can say that its grip is lessening.'

The junta has miscalculated in other ways as well. Although China last week blocked a strong resolution at the UN, it has made unusually strong remarks - strong by its diplomatic standards, that is, that have criticised its ally, perhaps mindful that in the year ahead of the Beijing Olympics it does not want to be seen as party to widespread bloodshed.

The Asean nations, not prone to condemning their own over human rights abuses, have spoken of their 'revulsion', while Japan, the biggest donor of humanitarian aid to Burma, has also apparently been galvanised against the regime after the death of a Japanese photographer. And while the junta has long ignored the condemnation of Washington and European capitals, and has survived under sanctions similar to President George Bush's new travel ban on 30 senior Burmese figures, it seems certain that local considerations will weigh more heavily.

What will be most critical will be the attitude of China. For what seems important is not that China has moved slowly but that China has moved at all. On Friday, Gordon Brown telephoned his Chinese counterpart, Wen Jiabao, to ask Beijing to use its influence to prevent further bloodshed. The previous day, Mr Bush conveyed a similar message in a meeting with the Chinese Foreign Minister, Yang Jiechi. US State Department officials, it has been claimed, have privately asked China to provide a safe haven for the junta to allow progress towards a peaceful political transition.

China supplies arms to Burma, part of the $1.3bn in goods it exported to its neighbour last year. China is also the main supplier of foreign goods, accounting for 34 per cent of Burma's imports. Hopes for a positive response are based on Beijing's increasingly pro-active diplomatic policy, despite usually preferring not to interfere in the affairs of other nations.

There are other internal risks for the Burmese regime. Armed ethnic groups that had been on ceasefire have been outraged by the violence last week and are angry at the junta's continued intransigence in pushing forward a new constitution that has ignored their demands.

So while the junta may have won for now, quite what the terms and scope of its victory are remain unclear.

'A Burmese said to me once that his country was hard on the outside and soft in the middle,' says Farmaner. 'I always thought if the junta was going to go it would be like one of the Eastern European ones, imploding rather than reforming itself away.'

This weekend the Burmese junta does not seem necessarily stronger, only more desperate.

How it started

5 August: Fuel prices rise

19 August: First protest marches in Rangoon - several dissidents arrested

21 September: Alliance of All Burmese Buddhist Monks emerges to co-ordinate the protests

22 September: Monks let through the barricades around the home of Aung San Suu Kyi

24 September: Tens of thousands march on Rangoon. Violent clashes as protesters are set upon by police. At least three deaths

25 September: Dusk-to-dawn curfew introduced

26 September: UN urges restraint by the junta after an emergency session, in which China vetoed sanctions

27 September: At least nine are shot dead in Rangoon

28 September: Special UN envoy arrives in Rangoon

Key questions

Q: Why do some people call it Burma and others Myanmar?

A: The ruling military junta changed the name from Burma to Myanmar in 1989, a year after up to 5,000 were killed in the suppression of a popular uprising (triggered by the government's decision to devalue the currency). Many countries and the UN accepted the name change but the UK, and opposition groups inside and outside Burma, don't recognise the legitimacy of the regime that changed the name.

Q: What sparked the protests?

A: On 15 August the government doubled the price of petrol and diesel, while the cost of compressed gas - used in buses - increased fivefold. It hit people hard, pushing up the cost of public transport, rice and cooking oil. Angry pro-democracy activists led the first demonstrations in Rangoon on 19 August and soon marches were being organised in several towns around the country.

Q: How did Buddhist monks get involved?

A: The clergy has traditionally been involved in protest movements - one of Burma's most revered historical leaders was a monk. Soldiers broke up a peaceful demo in Pakokku on 5 September, injuring three monks. The monks gave the government until 17 September to apologise and then began to protest in much greater numbers.

Q: Who is Aung San Suu Kyi?

A: The 62-year-old leader of the opposition National League for Democracy, which won the 1990 election by a landslide; she has spent more than 11 of the past 18 years in some form of detention. Presently under house arrest, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Daughter of independence hero General Aung San.