Myanmar or Burma?

It is confusing to visit a country with two names. In 1989 the military government changed the official name of the country from the Union of Burma to the Union of Myanmar. The meaning is identical in that both names refer to the largest ethnic group in the country, the Bamar. Most of the people we met used the name Myanmar, but many dissident groups, including the National League for Democracy and its leader Aung San Suu Kyi use the name Burma because they believe the name change was not the will of the people but an attempt by the dictatorship to legitimize its rule. We found ourselves using both names, but often preferring to use the word Burmese rather than the more awkward "people of Myanmar" or "language of Myanmar."

Many people have asked us, "Why go to Burma?" The number one reason was that our friend Mike Grafton was in Singapore and we wanted to see him. Once we were in Asia we wanted to see something special. From my experience in Prague in the early 1990's and our more recent travels in Colombia, there is something very special about a country that is just coming out of a long period of great fear or oppression and is becoming a popular place to visit. Furthermore, I remember watching with fascination the marches in 2007 led by the brave monks with their shaved heads and simple robes, and the sadness I felt to see them crushed. Finally, the opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is one of the only political leaders today who has the moral legitimacy of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or Nelson Mandela. We wanted to see the country that produced these amazing people and witness the beginning of its rise from despair.

Myanmar has a fascinating history, much of which we learned about in The River of Lost Footsteps written by Thant Myint-U, grandson of U Thant, the third secretary-general of the United Nations. For those of you who are interested I'll give a brief overview.

Myanmar or Burma was a kingdom for much of its history. Its monarchs ruled from various cities in the Irrawaddy valley, the huge fertile bowl created by the Irrawaddy river that runs from the Himalayas to the Andaman Sea. At times the kingdom stretched into areas that are now part of India, Bangladesh, China, Laos, and Thailand. It has always been a country with many ethnic groups. In addition to the Bamar, there are the Mon, the Shan, the Chin, the Kachin, the Kayah, the Karen, the Rakhaing, and others. Successful kings managed all these groups through a combination of conquest and marriage. Others weren't so successful.

                                                                                                                   (Map from ezilon.com)

In the 1800's Burma fought a series of wars against the British who by 1885 had conquered the entire country, exiling the last king, Thibaw Min, and incorporating the country into British India. The exile of the king, the dragging of the king's sacred white elephant's carcass through the streets, and the refusal of the British to follow local customs (such as removing shoes before entering a shrine) deeply offended the locals. Monks and students rebelled against British rule. Aung San (father of Aung San Suu Kyi) was a university student in the years before World War II. He led a group of students who called themselves thankins or masters, organizing protests and resistance against the British.

During the war, Aung San and other former students calling themselves the "Thirty Comrades" went to China to look for help in overthrowing the British. Instead they were brought to Japan and received military training there. Thus the Burmese army was created with Aung San as bogyoke or general. The Thirty Comrades marched back into Burma with the Japanese Army only to find the Japanese to be even more unpleasant overlords than the British. Aung San became head of the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League and received arms from Admiral Mountbatten to help drive out the Japanese. After the war, the British tried to reestablish colonial rule without success. Finally, in 1947 Aung San flew to London and met with Prime Minister Clement Attlee who agreed to Burmese independence within a year. 

                                                                      Bogyoke Aung San in London
                                                                                                               ( Picture from http://www.pbs.org)

Aung San's Anti-Fascist League won a vast majority of the seats in the first election for the National Assembly. But before he took office, Aung San and six of his aides were assassinated by political opponents. In 1948, when the country became independent, the wonderfully named but overmatched U Nu became prime minister. He ruled for ten turbulent years in which his government had to deal with communist and ethnic uprisings, a take over of part of the country by Chinese forces loyal to Chiang Kai-Shek, and rampant crime.

Finally the government was taken over by the military and its leading general Ne Win (a nom de guerre meaning "Bright Sun"), one of the Thirty Comrades, became dictator. Thant Myint-U describes him as "(a) playboy, tyrant, numerologist, and onetime post office clerk, a man who understood his countrymen's psyche well enough to wield nearly total power for the better part of thirty years." His erratic but ironfisted rule, which he referred to as the "Burmese Road to Socialism," led Burma to become one of the most isolated and destitute countries in the world. At one point his belief in numerology led him to change the currency to bills with numbers divisible by nine instead of ten. 

                                                                                       Ne Win
                                                                                                               (Picture from opednews.com)

In 1988 the frustration of the people boiled over, and once again monks and students were in the streets marching and protesting. Ne Win retired as president and multiparty elections were announced but the military still crushed the protests killing thousands. Aung San Suu Kyi, who at the time lived in Oxford with her English husband, Michael Aris, and their two sons, was in Yangon tending to her dying mother. Because she was the daughter of a national hero, she became swept up in the protests and gave a powerful speech in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda and other speeches across the country that made the her the face of the National League for Democracy (NLD). 

                                                                          Daw Aung San Suu Kyi 
                                                                                                              (Picture from oxford-royale.co.uk)

The military allowed the elections to go forward in 1990 but when the NLD won overwhelmingly they voided the results and threw many of its leaders in jail. It has been said that some of the opposition leaders were sent to the north to be used as human minesweepers in long running ethnic conflicts there. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest in her mother's house in Yangon where she remained for most of the next twenty years. Her husband and children were often denied visas and she was unable to see Michael as he was dying of cancer in 1999. The military would have let her leave the country at any time, but she would not have been allowed to return. She felt it was her patriotic duty to stay and remain a prisoner of conscience.

Monks, including our friend Varasami, again took to the streets in 2007. The protests were started by a huge spike in gas prices that made public transportation unaffordable for many, but became a protest of general discontent with the government. The All Burma Monks Alliance declared the government an "evil military dictatorship." The protests were again crushed with many monks arrested, beaten, and even killed. The following year the hollowness of the government was exposed by their incompetent response to Cyclone Nargis which swamped the Irrawaddy Delta region and left well over a hundred thousand people dead or missing. The government turned away help from the international community, leaving millions without relief for days.

                                                                                                                      (Picture from tallrite.com)     

                                                                                                                     (Picture from rfa15.org)

In 2010 new elections were held with the NLD excluded. Thein Sein became the new president and has pushed through many liberalizing reforms. Opposition figures have been let out of jail, media censorship has been liberalized, and Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest. This year she won a seat in parliament in a limited election and it looks as if the NLD will be able to fully contest the next general election in 2015. She recently left the country to speak in Thailand, collect her Nobel Peace Price in Norway (awarded in 1991), and to address the British parliament in Westminster Hall.

Myanmar is still a very poor country with badly run and corrupt institutions. There are still serious ethnic problems and the longest-running civil war in the world occurring in the north. Both Thein Sein and Aung San Suu Kyi are getting old and he is reported to have heart problems. But the people we met seemed full of optimism. They are no longer afraid to speak their minds. They are literate and interested in the outside world. They have a strong sense of their own culture and a tolerance of others. They have enormous natural resources and and incredibly fertile land. If I were a betting man, I would bet on Burma.