THREE
I
was at the office of a Burmese weekly journal when the big breakthrough was announced. The offices had access to CNN via a satellite dish, and as soon as Burma was mentioned with a “Breaking News” tagline flashing across the bottom of the screen, the journalists gathered around the small television. The news item concerned a landmark meeting between United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon and Burma’s senior general Than Shwe. Having repeatedly ignored the secretary-general’s overtures since Cyclone Nargis, Than Shwe had unexpectedly acquiesced to granting him an audience.
When Ban Ki-moon arrived in Burma on May 22, it was a historic moment: He was the first UN secretary-general to visit the country in forty-four years (the last one being U Thant, who was Burmese). But few people in Burma had high hopes for the visit. All previous attempts by the UN to mediate with the generals of Burma on various issues had failed miserably.
The first UN special rapporteur on human rights, Yozo Yokota, re signed in 1996, stating that he did not have the resources to fulfill his mandate of conducting fact-finding missions and making recommendations on the situation in Burma. Three years later, Alvaro de Soto, a UN special envoy to Burma charged with facilitating dialogue between the regime and other political organizations, also resigned having been unable to bring about any positive development. The second special rapporteur, Rajsoomer Lallah, quit in 2000—he was never even allowed into the country. And, in 2006, Razali Ismail, a special envoy of the secretary-general, also resigned after being refused entry to Burma for nearly two years.
The next appointed special rapporteur, Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, cut short a visit to Burma when he found a listening device taped under the table while he was conducting a government-arranged interview with a political prisoner. Most recently, the Nigerian UN undersecretary-general, Ibrahim Gambari, who made numerous trips to Burma, consistently failed in his attempts to convince the generals to start a dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi—she remained under house arrest, forcibly isolated from politics and prohibited from communicating with her party members and the general public.
In light of Burma’s flagrant disregard for the values of the United Nations as well as its envoys, it was doubtful that the meeting would result in any significant achievement.
Ban Ki-moon had flown to the new capital of Naypyidaw to meet Than Shwe on the morning of May 23. Burmese state media showed the two men seated stiffly at the head of a spacious reception hall, both dwarfed by the splendidly carved oversized chairs they sat in. A Burmese interpreter was hunched over on a low stool between them. The UN representatives sat in a row on one side of the hall, with thick files and notebooks perched on their laps and leather satchels at their feet. Opposite them, across a wide expanse of highly polished parquet flooring, sat Burma’s top-ranking generals dressed in full uniform and bedecked in medals. It hardly seemed like a setting conducive to honest negotiation and compromise.
So I was amazed to watch the CNN news anchor announce that the meeting had resulted in a concession from the junta to allow “all aid workers” into the country, regardless of nationality. The announcement was billed as a “major breakthrough,” but no one standing around the television with me seemed at all excited. The assembled journalists shuffled back to their desks without comment when the next news segment came on. Min Lwin, the editor of the weekly, with whom I had been discussing events, was skeptical of the announcement but grateful to the UN and foreign governments for trying. He saw the continued presence of the U.S., French, and British navy ships, and the arrival of Ban Ki-moon, as part of a connected strategy. “It seems like they may be using a stick and carrot approach,” he said. “The ships offshore are the stick and Ban Ki-moon, well, I guess he’s the carrot.”
The announcement was ambiguous to say the least. What exactly did it mean to “allow all aid workers” in? Allow them to go where? And to do what? There were optimists who interpreted it as the beginning of something much bigger; the hermetic regime’s first tentative steps to open up to the outside world. But most people treated it with suspicion, or even downright contempt. “The announcement was a lie,” said a Burmese businessman who had frequent transactions with the regime. “Our senior general, he is lying all the time, every day, so it is not a big thing for him to lie to the secretary-general of the United Nations.”
After the announcement I visited a Christian preacher who was rallying his Rangoon congregation for cyclone relief activities in the delta. He gave me his judgment in a slow, sermonizing manner, his voice growing louder with each sentence. “Before the Second World War, the British prime minister went to see Hitler and came back saying he was a man that spoke of peace,” he began. “This is the same situation we see before us now. At worst this is a program of extermination. At best, it is absolute incompetence conducted under the banner of evil.” His voice was operatic in volume when he spoke of the promises being made by the generals: “Their words are sweet as butter, but war is in their hearts.”
Included in Ban Ki-moon’s trip to Burma was a whistle-stop tour of the delta during which he and his entourage were flown across the affected areas in two Mi-17 helicopters. He visited a camp of cyclone survivors who lived in the same blue tents featured on Than Shwe’s Disaster Tour. Some said the tents were actually empty before the secretary-general arrived; people could not stay in the camp all the time, as it had to be kept clean and tidy for VIP viewings. Whenever a high-ranking general or foreign diplomat was scheduled to visit, survivors were brought in to sit in the tents and put under strict instructions to say they had received more than enough aid and assistance, thank you very much.
While there was no way to prove exactly how these show camps functioned, there was plenty of evidence to suggest that this was not far from the truth. Ko Ye, the Rangoon publisher, had been talking to an abbot who had five hundred people sheltering at his monastery on the outskirts of Rangoon. Soldiers came to the monastery one day, herded them onto trucks, and drove off to an unknown destination. “And you know where they turned up?” asked Ko Ye, unable to conceal his dismayed delight with the answer: “Standing in front of a row of little blue tents just in time for a visit from a VIP!” According to Ko Ye, the camp was later emptied, but the survivors were not allowed to return to the monastery where they had been sheltering.
Also tagged onto Ban Ki-moon’s itinerary was a visit to the Shwedagon Pagoda and the nearby tomb of the late UN secretary-general U Thant. The latter is a forlorn and neglected memorial that is usually padlocked shut. A few days earlier I had seen a team of municipal cleaners hurriedly raking the cyclone debris of rubbish, leaves, and broken branches from around the tomb to spruce it up in time for the secretary-general to pay respects to his predecessor.
Events over the next few days indicated that the agreement Ban Ki-moon had elicited from Than Shwe wasn’t much of a breakthrough after all. On May 24, the final segment of the referendum was held in the cyclone-affected regions of Rangoon and the delta. When Ban Ki-moon and the UN had called on the regime to concentrate on the relief effort rather than the referendum back in early May, the plea had gone unheeded. It was yet another diplomatic snub that the regime chose to conduct the final stages of the much criticized referendum while Ban Ki-moon was visiting the country.
Few people I knew in Burma took the referendum seriously. It was ostensibly being held so that citizens could accept or reject the recently completed constitution—a process that had begun in 1993 and taken fourteen long years to finish. During that time, the constitution had earned little credibility. The 702 delegates responsible for its drafting were mostly handpicked by the regime, and Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy, which had won the 1990 elections, walked out of the proceedings early on. Written into the final draft were a number of foolproof mechanisms for the military to maintain power: 25 percent of the seats in Parliament, for instance, are guaranteed to military officers, and any amendments will require a parliamentary vote higher than 75 percent, thereby ensuring that the military contingent can veto any proposed changes.
The majority of people voting in the referendum had not even seen the draft constitution (published as a 194-page book available for purchase) and probably had very little interest in, or understanding of, its contents. Everyone knew they were supposed to vote yes. The authorities issued an edict forbidding criticism of the new constitution and government media ran encouraging slogans: “To approve the State Constitution is a national duty of the entire people today. Let us all cast ‘Yes’ vote[s] in the national interest.”
Though all my Burmese friends recognized the futility of the process, they were divided on whether to vote. “My wife and I will vote no,” said the editor of the news weekly, Min Lwin. “We understand that it won’t make any difference, of course, but it is our right, and we feel we must exercise that right.” Others did not want to attract attention to themselves with a negative vote. A young teacher who taught private tutorial classes from his cramped downtown apartment told me he didn’t see the point in voting against the constitution: “They’ve already won. If I vote no they can find out who I am—I’m not going to risk that for no purpose.”
By the time the second part of the referendum was held, the rest of the vote had already been counted, resulting in a landslide affirmation; according to state media, 92.4 percent had voted in favor of the new constitution. Even so, the authorities were determined to garner the same positive results from the remainder of the population.
People in the delta were afraid to vote no as they were worried that further aid would be withheld. Survivors staying at one monastery were told by local authorities that if they voted yes they would be allowed to stay on, but if their vote was negative they would be sent back to their villages.
In Rangoon, various tactics were applied to ensure the referendum turned out in the regime’s favor. In some neighborhoods, votes were collected in advance. I was introduced to a young musician in his early twenties who was keen to cast his no ballot, as it would have been his first ever vote. He told me that local authorities visited his house while he was out and collected yes votes from his mother and sister. And while they were there they bullied his mother into ticking yes on his ballot as well. The authorities also found creative ways to coax positive votes out of those who managed to get to the ballot stations. A young woman I met who worked as a cleaner for a friend was warned that she would have to pay K160,000 (around US$160—an unaffordable amount for most ordinary Burmese) if she chose to vote against the constitution. You’re free to tick the no box if you want to, they told her. We’ll just come to your house later to collect the money. But if you decide to vote yes, you won’t have to pay anything—it’s up to you.
Meanwhile, aid workers waiting in Bangkok for entry visas to Burma planned to test Ban Ki-moon’s big breakthrough at the Burmese embassy the following Monday morning. But the Burmese embassy turned out to be closed on Monday due to a fire having broken out in the compound. That a fire should disable the embassy right after the announcement was made seemed an extraordinary coincidence, and many people thought it had been started on purpose. Though there was no proof of these accusations, the mystery of the fire was never solved. When Thai police offered their assistance in finding out what caused the fire and who was responsible, they were apparently told that it was an internal matter that could be handled by embassy staff.
As if to confirm its belligerent stance, the regime announced that the second part of the referendum had resulted in an even higher yes vote than the first, with 92.93 percent of votes counted in favor of the new constitution. A few days later, the constitution was duly ratified and promulgated—an act that the regime claims rendered the 1990 election victory of the National League for Democracy null and void, thus confirming the generals to be the country’s legitimate rulers.
Around that time, Aung San Suu Kyi received a visit from a government official informing her that her detention would be extended for another year. Her latest period under continued house arrest had begun in 2003 under the State Protection Act, a law to “safeguard the State against the dangers of those desiring to cause subversive acts.” As the law allows for a maximum detention period of five years, keeping her under house arrest was patently illegal. No reason was given for the extension, and it was viewed as yet another sign that there was no softening behind the scenes in Naypyidaw.
The endgame was playing out just as the preacher had suggested; the words uttered by the generals implied one thing, but their intentions were turning out to be something else entirely.
SHORTLY AFTER THE CYCLONE
, the United Nations and international NGOs working in Burma had instigated a “cluster” approach of pooling information to oversee the emergency operation. The cluster system is a relatively new tool in the humanitarian-response kit box through which organizations working in similar fields have regular meetings to discuss and coordinate their approaches. There are clusters for each of the various sectors involved, covering such areas as food, shelter, logistics, and water and sanitation. In Rangoon, cluster meetings were held at the Chatrium, a hotel located just a short walk from the main UN compound. Every so often, when I tired of traipsing dizzying circles around the city, I would pick a random cluster meeting and slip in as unobtrusively as possible to soak up the air-conditioning and glean an inside perspective on how the relief effort was progressing.
The first cluster I attended was an agricultural one held toward the end of May that, unexpectedly, turned out to be rather a lively and heated affair. The cluster was led by the United Nations’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and the meeting I went to was chaired by two men from FAO; a burly South African and a German wearing aviator glasses and a neatly pressed slate-gray safari suit. The aim of the meeting was to bring all the groups involved in agriculture onto the same page, operationally speaking. The FAO began by introducing its team of imported experts, who were qualified in the various fields of farming, fisheries, livestock rearing, and veterinary science. The rest of the participants, seated around a satin-skirted meeting table, were representatives of other UN agencies and international NGOs, who were either already working in Burma or were among the limited number of aid workers able to obtain visas after Cyclone Nargis.