THE VERDANT hill town of Maymyo, dotted with rose gardens and ivy-covered red-brick mansions, was once the retreat of choice for British soldiers and other colonial administrators escaping the heat and dust of Burma’s lowlands. Today it is not the British who take advantage of the cool, almost alpine, climate of the settlement, renamed Pyin Oo Lwin in 1989 when many local place names were changed. The Burmese military has built a sanctuary nearby for its officers that surpasses anything their former colonial masters could have imagined.

     Instead of the Victorian houses that gave Maymyo its charm, there stand garish luxury villas in the new zone, which is also home to the Defence Services Academy, Burma’s equivalent of the United States’ West Point or Britain’s Sandhurst. When construction began in late 2004, The Irawaddy, a magazine published by Burmese exiles in Thailand, reported that “no expense has been spared to allow the generals to live in what basically is a resort”. Less than an hour’s flight from Burma’s new capital, Naypyidaw, the theme-park sanctuary gives new meaning to excess and ostentation, containing replicas of the Shwedagon Pagoda in the old capital, Rangoon, and the ancient royal palace in Mandalay, plus an artificial beach with a man-made stretch of water that licks its sandy shores.

     Comprehension of the Burmese junta’s brazen display of wealth in old Maymyo is essential to understanding the longevity of military rule in Burma, whose US$1,500 per capita gross domestic product last year was roughly on a par with Rwanda’s, according to the International Monetary Fund. From 1962 to 1974, when the first post-colonial government of Niger fell to a military insurrection, there were 64 military takeovers worldwide, most entailing the overthrow of civilian governments. However, only two of the regimes responsible have held on to power continuously since those tumultuous years in Asia, Africa and Latin America: the cabals of Libya, where Colonel Muammar Gaddafi seized power in 1969, and Burma, where the military ousted the elected government of prime minister U Nu in 1962, and has remained empowered in various guises since. (At the time of writing, Libya was experiencing violent anti-regime unrest that was being met with a bloody response.)

     Grasping why successive military regimes in Burma have flourished requires, among other things, an examination of the ways in which power has been cemented. Repression by the military of the population at large and surveillance of it by the intelligence service are factors, as is the willingness of Burmese generals to use force, even at the cost of lives, as seen in the regular cycle of uprisings and crackdowns. The military has also retained an unyielding grip by controlling all vital economic activity; instituting policies to divide and rule, suppressing, often violently, opposition movements; and creating a state within a state, in which untold privileges are accorded army personnel, such as those for whom the highland haven is intended.


     Such dispensation contrasts starkly with the plight of the 2,200 documented political prisoners held, according to David Mathieson, a senior researcher for Human Rights Watch, in more than 40 prisons and labour camps in Burma. Victims of repression, they symbolise a broad cross section of Burmese society, including, he says, “activists, poets, hip-hop artists, doctors, politicians, Buddhist monks – people who are in any way perceived to have challenged the state or the interests of the military”.

     Among the most prominent political leaders behind bars are Min Ko Naing, a leader of the extensive uprising in 1988, and the popular comedian Zargana, whose double entendres poking fun at the regime failed to amuse the generals. Both are being kept in remote prisons in the ethnic hinterlands, away from their families and support networks.

     “Prisoners are routinely mistreated in these facilities, deprived of health resources, food and contact,” says Mathieson, who has reported on Burma for 15 years. “Torture [involving beatings, electric shocks to the genitals, and worse] is routinely employed against some prisoners depending on circumstances: for information, for punishment and, in some cases, in what appears to be the ‘system’ trying to crush resistance by destroying the human spirit.”

     One former political prisoner remembers having to kneel on sharp stones while being beaten – and being subjected to “the motorcycle”, a method of inflicting physical and mental torture. “I had to half-crouch and pretend I was riding a motorcycle, making engine noises and all that,” he says. “The officer would rap me with his bamboo staff and shout comments such as: ‘You didn’t stop at the red lights! What’s the matter with you! You don’t obey the laws!’ It went on like that until I thought I was going mad.”


     Sit Naing (a pseudonym), a former medical student, was also imprisoned for taking part in the 1988 uprising, when millions of people across Burma demanded an end to military-dominated rule. Enraged by a regime that had not only turned Burma into a political and social basket case but also foisted financial ruin on what had been one of Southeast Asia’s most prosperous countries before the coup, the protesters poured onto the streets to vent their anger. Demonstrations were met with unprecedented brutality when the army moved in to shore up a regime threatened by popular dissent. According to foreign witnesses and local staff at Rangoon General Hospital, several thousand unarmed demonstrators were gunned down in the capital and elsewhere.

     Twenty-six years after General Ne Win wrenched power from U Nu, having forcibly suppressed several other uprisings in the interim, the junta knew how to hobble protests. According to numerous witnesses I interviewed after the unrest, whose testimonies are chronicled in my book, Outrage; Burma’s Struggle for Democracy, the streets of Rangoon reeked of blood and the city looked like a slaughterhouse. Troops had fired machine guns and rockets at unarmed civilians.


     Arrests followed; Sit Naing was apprehended in July 1989 and spent 10 years in solitary confinement. After the killings he had fled temporarily to the Thai-Burma border – an area then controlled by ethnic insurgents from the Karen and Mon communities. Sit Naing was accused and convicted of having links with rebels from those minorities, a “crime” to which he “confessed”.



     “But I had no idea what the confession said,” declares Sit Naing, who now lives quietly in Rangoon. “After my arrest I was badly beaten but they did not ask me a single question. They just waved a piece of paper in front of me and wanted me to sign it. After a few days I couldn’t stand it any longer and just signed it.”



     The purpose of his arrest, torture and release is obvious to Mathieson and to Burmese dissidents who have served sentences in the country’s prisons: to show other political activists the consequences of opposing the regime. Sit Naing now leads a reasonably normal life, but other former political prisoners haven’t been as lucky. Mentally and physically impaired, these broken ex-convicts remind young people that it is safer to occupy themselves with football or music, anything but engage in political activity.



     The military government has been spreading that message since July 7, 1962, at the first demonstrations held against it, when soldiers surrounded Rangoon University’s campus and shot indiscriminately into a crowd, students always being at the forefront of protest movements in Burma.

     Ne Win had faced little resistance when he seized power four months earlier, primarily because few Burmese expected him to stay in control for long. The general had taken over government once before, in 1958, but two years later handed the leadership to an elected parliament. The military, many believed, simply wanted to clean up politics at a time of rampant corruption and a proliferation of political parties that seemed to do little but squabble. Their misjudgment played into the hands of the junta, which soon showed how serious it was about ruling the country.

     Sai Tzang, then a 23-year-old tutor at Rangoon University, remembers fleeing for his life when gunfire rang out that day in July. “Finally, I reached the safety of the hostel building,” he says. “But then the soldiers began firing into the buildings and we heard bullets thudding into the walls and the tinkling of glass as windowpanes shattered. It was clear the soldiers were firing not merely to disperse the crowds, but were under orders to shoot to kill.”

     Officially, 15 people were killed and 27 wounded. But Sai Tzang, neutral observers and students present during the shooting say hundreds of potential leaders of society in many fields lay sprawled in death.

     A day later, Rangoon residents were awakened by an explosion that reverberated through the city. The army had reduced the Students’ Union building to rubble. That it was part of history – where Burma’s independence movement against the British was born in the 1930s – mattered little to the generals, who wanted everyone to know who was in charge. (Before 1988 there was a handful of generals. Now there are dozens, although the exact number is almost certainly unknown outside Burma.)

     Their readiness to quash dissent with bullets was again demonstrated, in the mid-1970s, after about a decade of relative peace. What had started in May 1974 as a strike by oil workers demanding higher wages ended in a bloodbath after railway workers and labourers at a spinning mill laid down their tools. Ne Win acted as he had previously done: he sent in armed troops who took aim at the workers and students who had joined them. Officially, 28 people were killed and 80 wounded. Independent sources put the death toll at quadruple that figure. Hundreds of people were arrested and universities and colleges were closed because students had linked arms with the striking workers.

     Student opposition proved futile then and later the same year, when anti-military demonstrations were held following the death of one of Burma’s most respected citizens, U Thant, United Nations secretary general from 1961 to 1971 and an intellectual who opposed Ne Win. Scores of students and other activists fled to the Thai border after the predictable government response of gunfire. There, pre-coup leaders, among them former prime minister U Nu and independence hero Bo Let Ya, were organising armed resistance against the junta. But that too ended in failure. Among other reasons, they lacked foreign support and the funds to acquire enough weapons on the Thai black market.

     The military government’s competence in scuppering challenges to its rule, Mathieson says, is “a textbook example of the squalid efficiency of very basic authoritarianism”. But repression alone does not explain the durability of Burma’s junta. The 1962 coup differed from other rebellions in the region in that the armed forces not only took over the government, but also assumed control of Burma’s economic institutions, ushering in an entirely new political and economic system. Under “the Burmese Way to Socialism” almost all private property was confiscated and handed to military-run state corporations. Isolationist and xenophobic, the new policy also banned international aid organisations from operating in the country. In addition, it curbed freedom of expression, prohibited foreign-language publications and outlawed privately owned newspapers.

     Major industries, among them rice milling, banking, mining and teak were nationalised and oil companies forced to cease operations, with oil extraction and production monopolised by the government-owned People’s Oil Industry.

     The old mercantile elite, largely of Indian and Chinese origin, left the country in legions, as did many of the country’s intellectuals. Before 1962, Burma had one of Southeast Asia’s highest living standards and a fairly well-educated population. After the coup, the military became the country’s new and only elite.



     The military establishment developed into a discrete entity within the state, according employees of the junta, their families, dependants and cronies privileges ranging from special schools and hospitals to subsidised housing, often in secluded areas. An army pass guaranteed its owner a seat on a train or aircraft – and an untarnished record should he drive. As everyone in Burma knows, no policeman would dare to book anyone with such credentials for violating traffic rules.



     After 1962 the military also wielded absolute power through its own political institution, the Burmese Socialist Programme Party (BSPP). Two years later, all other political parties were banned.



The generals of Burma’s military regime on Armed Forces Day, in Naypyidaw, the Burmese capital.

In the centre is Lieutenant General Aung Htwe, commander of the Bureau of Special Operations in Karen and Shan states. 

The Burmese Way to Socialism – and even the one-party system – was abolished, however, after the 1988 uprising, following which the junta renamed itself the Orwellian-sounding State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC. Perhaps in an attempt to appease the international community, which had condemned the carnage in Rangoon, new economic policies permitting private enterprise and foreign investment were also announced. A possible reason is that, having been affected by the economic decline brought on by its own rash programmes – including acute shortages of daily necessities and various consumer goods, although there was a flourishing black market – the military realised it could make more money in a free-market economy. So austere socialism gave way to capitalism, although Burma’s economy remains a military-dominated one. Its own company, the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings (UMEH), controls or supervises vital economic activity (ranging from banking to tourism to gem mining to property) and the money goes directly into the generals’ pockets. According to a leaked 1995-96 UMEH annual report, this conglomerate was formed in 1990 as “a special public company, with shareholders limited to the Directorate of Defence Procurement, Ministry of Defence, Defence Regimental Institutes and other bodies of the Defence Services and War Veterans”.

     Philip Robertson, an American labour activist, wrote in The Irrawaddy in August 2003, “Between the UMEH and MEC [the Myanmar Economic Corporation, another military-controlled enterprise under the Ministry of Defence], the military has extended its reach into virtually all aspects of the formal economy of Burma. When combined with the economic enterprises operated directly by the Ministry of Industry 1 and Ministry of Industry 2, the regime’s domination of the economy is clear.”

     The government’s dogged pursuit of complete control has also been aided by its policy of divide and rule. After the 1988 uprising and abandonment of the one-party system, several opposition figures were allowed to establish their own political parties. The most powerful was the National League for Democracy (NLD), headed by Tin U, an army chief turned democrat, and Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of General Aung San, who had led the struggle for independence in the 1940s. However, when the opposition proved wildly popular both were placed under house arrest in July 1989, and scores of others detained in Rangoon’s Insein and other prisons.

     That some activists were imprisoned for years and others released before the completion of their sentences, or not incarcerated at all, sowed suspicion among the pro-democracy forces, whose loyalty to their cause was also challenged by the military’s willingness to bribe opposition figures with money or privileges and force compliance by spreading rumours about them or issuing threats against family members.

A former political prisoner demonstrates interrogation and torture positions

imposed on Burmese prison inmates. Mae Sot, Thai-Burma border. 

Nevertheless, with almost all prominent pro-democracy leaders detained, the military probably thought it was safe to hold the elections it had promised after crushing the demonstrations the year before. The NLD won an overwhelming victory in 1990, capturing 392 of 485 seats in the National Assembly. Parliament was never convened, however. Instead, a so-called Constituent Assembly was set up, consisting of 700 hand-picked delegates, of whom only 100 were elected representatives.

     Nearly two decades passed before the constitution was drafted and finally “approved” in a referendum in May 2008, just after cyclone Nargis devastated the Irrawaddy delta, Burma’s rice bowl and home to millions of farmers. At least 130,000 people were killed and 2.4 million made homeless or affected in other ways. But, if official figures are to be believed, 92.4 per cent of voters approved the charter, with a 99 per cent turnout.

     If Burma’s population of about 50 million people seemed cowed by the statistics, it was probably because only nine months before the vote the people had witnessed yet another unsuccessful uprising. This time, the protests were sparked by a government decision on August 15 to increase the price of fuel. Petrol and diesel quickly doubled in price and the cost of compressed gas, on which buses run, increased five fold. Four days later hundreds of people, many of them housewives, marched through the old capital Rangoon. Although the women were left alone, the authorities embarked on a witch-hunt for activists and arrested more than 1,000 people, including some who had not taken to the streets.


     But still the protests would not die down and on September 5, 2007, monks in the central town of Pakokku staged a protest against poor living conditions. When soldiers and police broke up their peaceful rally, beating several monks, the holy men abducted about 20 government officials who had been patrolling the streets. The monks released their captives a few days later but demanded an apology for the violence.

     With no words of contrition forthcoming, the demonstration grew until participation by laypeople raised the number of protesters to at least 100,000. Events took a political turn when, on September 22, marchers defied barricades blocking the road leading to Aung San Suu Kyi’s home, where she had been held under house arrest from 1989 to 1995, 2000 to 2002, and from 2003. In tears at the sight of the monks, she emerged briefly to receive their blessings.

     Then the crackdown began. Troops were brought in from ethnic conflict zones in the border areas and, according to Human Rights Watch, monasteries were raided, monks assaulted and valuables, gold among them, stolen from private quarters. In the streets of Rangoon, troops supported by riot police charged the demonstrations, shooting into the air, then into the crowds. Scores of people were killed and hundreds arrested.



     State leaders and advocacy groups worldwide again condemned Burma’s hard-line generals, but nothing seemed to move them. Burma’s religious affairs minister, Brigadier General Thura Myint Maung, asserted that “political extremists” and “foreign broadcasting stations” had incited the monks and others to demonstrate. The situation, he said risibly, was being handled “softly” and “with care”.

     In the lead-up to the 2008 referendum, the government-controlled media offered only crude propaganda in favour of a “yes” vote, Human Rights Watch reported, and publicised criminal penalties for those who opposed the poll, creating a climate of fear. “There has been no critical public discussion of the constitution’s contents,” the organisation stated. “Most people have not even seen the document. The generals are sending a clear message that their hand-crafted constitution will continue the military rule that has persisted for more than four decades.”

     To ensure as much, the junta eventually held on November 7, 2010, an election that it had promised after the 2008 referendum. The poll, however, aroused more interest internationally than within Burma, where there was little enthusiasm among a people who time and again had been disappointed by their military masters.

     The NLD boycotted the election, although some of its members broke away to form the National Democratic Force (NDF), which tried to take advantage of any opening the voting might provide. But the outcome remained as predictable as that of all other military-orchestrated events in Burma. In constituencies where it seemed that the NDF was heading for victory, boxes of advanced votes were dumped, overturning the result in favour of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the military’s new political body. According to witnesses in Rangoon, in some constituencies in which the USDP looked set for a thrashing, the doors to voting rooms were closed before counting began. In the final tally, the NDF clinched only 16 of 608 seats in the upper and lower houses of the new National Assembly. The vote was a resounding success for the military not only because of the USDP’s victory: it had also diluted the power of the once-mighty NLD and its breakaway faction, the NDF, was rendered toothless.



     On November 13, the military released Suu Kyi from house arrest. But it was clear that the generals were not interested in dialogue with her, Tin U, who had been freed nine months earlier, or anybody else from the opposition. When Suu Kyi’s son Kim paid an emotional visit to Rangoon shortly after her release – his first in 10 years – local media were warned by the authorities not to cover the event, or report anything about her and her activities.



     Internationally, however, the release of Suu Kyi conveniently diverted attention from the fraudulent election and evinced the military’s skill at manipulating outside opinion. Many Western diplomats overseas, and even those based in Rangoon, had dismissed the Oxford University-educated widow as irrelevant, arguing that she had been away from Burma’s political scene for too long and pointing out that she was a stranger to young people. They believed that a viable “third force”, represented by the NDF and others, had emerged to bridge the gap between the military and pro-democracy movement. But foreigners in Rangoon were astounded by the size of the crowds that gathered to see her – and that many of them were young Burmese born after the 1988 uprising. The recent election and the jubilant scenes in Rangoon after Suu Kyi’s release showed that the so-called third force was just a figment of the imagination of outsiders eager to see an end to the political impasse in Burma.



     In a similar miscalculation by the international community, a group of intellectuals and social workers calling themselves Myanmar Egress had attracted the attention of diplomats and foreign donors with their optimistic forecast of democratic reform in Burma. Led by Nay Win Maung, a local media mogul who, among other things, is the editor of several magazines, and Khin Zaw Win, an erstwhile UN employee and former political prisoner, the group became a partner of organisations such as Germany’s Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, which is close to Germany’s Social Democrats. Last September, Khin Zaw Win toured Germany and Scandinavia in an attempt to convince people that the forthcoming election would provide “an opening for democracy”.

     Myanmar Egress regretted the promise. Mathieson of Human Rights Watch wrote on the Open Democracy website: “Nay Win Maung, a prominent ‘third force’ intellectual, magazine editor and leader of an influential NGO [Myanmar Egress], was a notable proponent of the elections. He campaigned openly for people to participate; lobbied scores of Western diplomats on how the elections promised change; and predicted a strong showing for the opposition.”



     According to Mathieson, three days after the election, under his pseudonym Aung Htut, Nay Win Maung wrote a contrite piece in his Burmese-language magazine The Voice: “We climbed a slippery pole, knowing it’s slippery. I don’t think we were wrong. I thought just by climbing it the first time, we would go rather far. That opinion was wrong.”

     It was clear there was no viable “third force” and no real middle ground between the ruling military and the people. The truth that many outsiders are unwilling to accept is that Burma remains bitterly divided and change is as elusive as ever.



     Burma’s generals are often described as inept and misguided leaders propelled by superstition rather than rational thinking. When the capital was shifted to Naypyidaw, 320 kilometres north of Rangoon, the official move apparently took place at 6.36am on November 6, 2005, a time that had been selected by stargazers. Five days later, at 11am on November 11, a second convoy of 1,100 military trucks carrying 11 military battalions and 11 government ministries left Rangoon for the new capital. The significance of those numbers is not entirely clear, but many ordinary people in Burma will tell you that the generals are not only kings isolated from their subjects, but also deeply delusional when it comes to the paranormal. To guarantee their continuing rule they are said to believe that the intervention of spirits is necessary – in case their strong-arm tactics fail – and to rely on astrologers, mediums and soothsayers to help make important decisions about the country’s future.



     But as Ko Lin, a young Burmese now living in exile in the West, explains: “Ordinary people joke about [the generals’] belief in astrology and numerology, and it upsets many too, because ordinary people become victims of such nonsense. Look at the demonetisation of the Burmese currency, creating banknotes whose denominations are divisible by nine. It makes people suffer.”



     On September 22, 1987, all old banknotes were rendered worthless and replaced by 45 and 90 kyat bills. The new currency proved a nightmare for consumers and vendors as well as Burma’s few foreign investors, who, after 1988 began to discover the country’s vast resources of gems and minerals. The government then issued 20, 50, 100 and 500 kyat banknotes, along with a 50 pya note (100 pyas equals one kyat), the equivalent of less than a 20th of a US cent. There was a reason for its introduction: 20+50+100+500+50=720 and 7+2+0=9, a number considered lucky in Burma. The 50 pya denomination may have all but disappeared but now there exists a 5,000 kyat banknote (50+0+0=50), which does the same trick.

     The Burmese are not the only people to label the junta incompetent. In a US government cable released by WikiLeaks in 2010, Lee Kuan Yew, Minister Mentor of Singapore, one of Burma’s biggest foreign investors along with China and France, reportedly told a US State Department official that ASEAN should not have admitted Burma to the organisation in 1997. Lee also “expressed his scorn for the regime’s leadership”, the cable noted. “He said he had given up on them a decade ago, called them ‘dense’ and ‘stupid’ and said they had ‘mismanaged’ the country’s great natural resources.”


     Although Burma would probably have been economically and politically better off had the military not taken control, it is far from the case that it has lacked acumen in ruling the country. The brutality of the generals is well known, but their guile and shrewdness in exercising power over the populace have often been underestimated. Almost half a century of resilience cannot simply be attributed to star alignments or providence of the number nine.