One Day the Soldiers Came - Charles London [37]
Siha’s aunt sat nearest the door to the sparsely furnished room and glanced out the window over my shoulder. The shades were drawn, and she had to brush them aside with her hand to look outside. Her own son, a boy in his mid teens, paced in and out of the room, looking to the door every time a dog barked. Siha was right. Everyone was afraid.
Since 1962 Burma has been under military rule. A coup staged by commander-in-chief General Ne Win in March 1962 created a military junta, which has since controlled the nation of Burma. Their tactics are propaganda, fear, violence, and oppression.
In 1988 pro-democracy demonstrations turned into bloodbaths all over the country, when troops were sent to crush the student-activists who agitated for democratic reforms. In the following days, hundreds of unarmed youths died in clashes with the military police, either as a direct result of violence or through drowning or trampling in the chaos. Many dissenters and suspected dissenters fled the country to Thailand, where they called on the international community to recognize their struggle for democracy.
In 1990, under intense pressure from the population, “free” elections were held. Those in exile hoped the results would allow them to return home. The National League for Democracy (NLD) won in a landslide and their leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was promptly arrested, as were her supporters. Rather than cede power to the elected NLD, the military junta renamed the country Myanmar, renamed their party the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), and upheld the authority of military rule. Freedom of opinion and freedom of expression are stifled. Dissidents are jailed, tortured, and murdered.
Though Aung San Suu Kyi had not been involved in politics for most of her life, when the opportunity came to restore her father’s legacy, to unite the country, which had been under threat of breaking apart along ethnic lines since its founding, she could not refuse. Not only did she become Burma’s elected prime minister, a champion of nonviolent resistance, and a Nobel Peace Prize winner, she became Burma’s most prominent political prisoner. She has remained under house arrest or in prison for most of the years since she was elected leader of her country in 1990.
Since she has been incarcerated, the military has jailed, tortured, and murdered many members of the NLD, using them as examples to discourage others from joining. The director of information for the NLD, Myint Aung, was arrested in December 2000, along with his assistant. They remain in the notorious Insein prison, where reports of torture during interrogations have leaked out over the years. Aung Tun, an historian of the student resistance movement in Burma, was arrested in 1998 and charged with aiding terrorists. The courts sentenced him to over a decade in prison. In Burma alias Myanmar, peaceful student protests are considered terrorist acts. For this reason, the University of Rangoon is closed more often than it is open.
In May 2003, after one year out of detention, Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested again, and the military junta resumed a harsh crackdown on democracy activists. As of August 2006, they continue to ignore international pressure demanding Suu Kyi’s release. She was forty-five years old when she was elected prime minister. She celebrated her fiftieth and sixtieth birthdays in prison, never having taken office.
In the wild jungles along the Thai-Burma border, a guerilla war is ongoing. The military government blames the violence in remote areas alternately on rebel ethnic minority groups who want the right of self-determination and on supporters of democracy who want to destroy Myanmar’s “stability” and “prosperity.” But for those who do not recognize the authority of the junta, these rebels and dissidents are freedom fighters.