Outrage. Burma's Struggle for Democracy 9627010359

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OUTRAGE BURMA'S STRUGGLE FOR DEMOCRACY

1

By BERTIL LINTNER

Review Publishing Company Limited 1989 copyright reserved

Published in Hongkong by Review Publishing Company Limited G.P. O. Box 160, Hongkong First published Jl11'l6 1989

© Review Publishing Company

Limited 1989

ISBN 962-7010-35-9

Printed by Yee Tin Tong Printing Press, Ltd, Morning Post Building, Tong Chong Street, G.P.O. Box 47, Hongkong

r

CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE Seven days that shook Rangoon CHAPTER TWO The golden land CHAPTER THREE The wrath of the children

4 5

9 24 98

CHAPTER FOUR

The butcher CHAPTER FIVE The puppet CHAPTER SIX SLORCI CHAPTER SEVEN The border

122

147 176 196

CHAPTER EIGHT

Whither Burma? CHRONOLOGY OF EVENTS DRAMATIS PERSONAE Photographs

Map of Burma

216 240

267 147 8

Map of/Rangoon

147

Index

268

3

ACKNOWLED GEMENTS Although my name appears on the cover of this book, it should be regarded as a collective product, compiled by me, but based on the experiences of numerous young and old Burmese people. After the military takeover in Rangoon on 18 September 1988, thousands of students and others fled to the Thai-

Burmese border areas. During several trips to the border camps, I interviewed more than 100 refugees from Rangoon, Mandalay, Meiktila, Chauk, Bassein, Prome, Tour goo, Pyinmana and other towns in central Burma as well as Moulmein, Mud or and Kamawek in Mon State, Myitkyina in Kachjn State and Taunggyi in Shan State. In order to cross-check and supplement their accounts of the

turbulent year of 1988 in Burma, I sent in questionnaires and cassette tapes to Rangoon and other towns and asked people there to relate what they had seen with their own eyes. My intention has been to base this book only on first hand sources and eye-witness accounts. At great risk to themselves, many people readily answered my questions. In this way, I was able to collect more than 20 hours of taped interviews. Other sources wrote long letters telling me of their experiences- To protect my

sources

arrests and summary executions are still continuing in

Rangoon and elsewhere most of them have been given aliases. When I was researching this hook I was frequently told by Burmese people that I should "tell it as we saw it." Since the present military government in Rangoon is in die process of re-writing history, I have followed this advice as much as possible. Any inaccuracies in this book are entirely my own tor which these sources should not be blamed. Last but not least, I would like to thank my patient wife Hseng Noting for helping me translate numerous tapes, letters, newspapers, documents and statements from the original Bur-

mese into English. Without her assistance, this book would not have been possible. 4

.

IB RODUCHON I

The political events in Burma during 1988 caught the world iuu»ll=sn=nun=l»li_sennniin:sa

Einiiiix trim

_

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generally uninformed. _.__ ..._ ... There were one or two serious journalists who defied the restrictions and travelled both at risk and without much discomfort to penetrate the wall of silence and let the world know exactly what was happening, at least in the areas of their visits. One such journalist was the author of this book. Largely on his own, Blind reports both in the Far Eastern Economic Review and European publications, he let the world know what was happening in the hill areas surrounding the Irrawaddy valley

with detailed responsible accounts of the minorities, and the wars between the Burma anny, and their various ethnic rivals. Thanks to his flow of essays we gradually learned about the Na-

tional Democratic Front, the several groups it included, the Communist Party of Burma and life in the area between Burma

In 198i we, who read the Review regularly, were treated to Q

5

OUTRAGE

leader of the Communist Party of Burma. Any who doubted his commitment to his profession or his intimate knowledge of Burma were satisfied that here at last, was an informed journalist who was determined to tell the world about Burma, despite its government's effort to keep prying eyes from seeing what was happening in that once open and happy land. As his name became known and his reports prove true and accurate, Burn ans as well as the minorities iNformed him of event and people beyond the range of his immediate travel and he began to widen and deepen his knowledge of the whole of Burma. Residing in Bangkok, reading the Rangoon press travelling /requently to the border and listening to Burma radio broadcasts, he was in position and well prepared to cover the most important story in Burma since the military seized power in 1962. When the revolution in Rangoon erupted in March 1988, he reported it as complete and intelligently as possible, even the limitations of distance and the restrictions imposed by the BurHe gave his readers both details Ami

any other publication

that the-rebellion has~been suppressed and the new dictator of

until the Burmese who lived d o u g h and experienced the re

New Brunswick, New Jersey Febrz¢aQ/1989 6

]osefSz]versrein

"People are choosing to live among the Wild Beasts, than be

and intirely ruled by Ministers if he can but satisfy

Kingdom.

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1
IX
I< The demonstrations continued the following morning. But no one in the large column that marched down past the old meeting-spot near the City Hall and Maha Bandoola Park saw the machine-gun nests on the surrounding rooftops: the City Hall itself, the Union Bank in Merchant Street next to the US Embassy, and a six-storey office block further down the same street. As the marchers turned left at the Tourist Burma office

opposite the Sule Pagoda

-and were entrapped between the

the troops at the three roof-top positions three firepoints opened tire simultaneously. No warning was given. Several demonstrators fell bleeding to the street Files of soldiers goose-stepped in perfect formation out from different sidestreets, followed by Bren-carriers. At a barked word of command, the troops assumed the prone firing position, as if they were facing a heavily armed enemy, not young, unarmed demonstrators. They fired into a crowd just outside - . -

_

the US Embassy. Two Burmese freelance cameramen were iilrning the shooting with a video camera, one concealing it with his body when the soldiers looked in their direction. On the tape that later was smuggled out, a voice could be heard saying in Burmese: "What shall we do" What shall we do'?" The other voice replied calmly: "Keep on filming until they shoot at us." Orders that day were to shoot anyone with a camera to avoid embarrassing international coverage of the "coup." A Burmese freelance cameraman, who was stringing for a Japanese TV company was killed by a sniper; a bullet hit him right through his left eye, which was closed as he held his camera to the other. Kyaw Thu joined the protesters who were marching towards the Ministers' Office or the old Secretariat in the block between Anawratha Street and Maha Bandoola Street. He belonged to a small group of high school pupils who had set up an

organisation which in many ways reflected the romantic idealism of the August-September movement: the Jonathan 179

OUTRAGE

Liberation Centre. It was named after Jonathan Livingstone Seagull. "We turned back when we heard that the troops had opened fire into crowds, especially targetting the ones who were carrying peacock flags and portraits of Aunt San, or had red headbands on. The demonstrators tried to flee - and the soldiers ran after them, bayonetting them in the back. The soldiers were very young, in their late teens I guess, and looked rough, as if they just had come out of the woodwork." Sein Win, the veteran AP correspondent in Rangoon, filed to his head oltice in Bangkok on that fateful Monday: "Amiy troops under orders to halt all public gatherings today fired into crowds of defiant students. Buddhist monks and largely unarmed demonstrators in downtown Rangoon. Eyewitnesses descirbed casualties as heavy. "Many students are are being moved down. Can't anything be done?' sobbed a reporter telephoning this correspondent from the scene before breaking down in tears." Aung Kyaw, a university student, says that the older youths realised the danger and stayed indoors: "But it was impossible to control the high school kids. They were angry and militant and just wanted to confront the army. We couldn"t stop them.

Many, many were mowed down by automatic riflefire and bayonets."

AI 10:00 am that morning, Kyaw Thu heard that his 18-yearold sister Win Moe Oo had been shot and wounded. Two of her friends, high school boys also in heir teens. had been killed during the same army fusillade. As she was being carried to a caT which was going to take her to hospital, a foreigner took a picture. lt later appeared in 3 October issue of Newsweek's Asian edition. That photograph, however, did not tell what happened a few hours later: "My father and I anivcd at Rangoon General Hospital at l l :00 am. My sister was bleeding heavily. She asked for a portrait of Aung San, which we placed on her bed. At 1:00 pm, she died, clasping the portrait. " On the following day, the family took the corpse of the

young girl to Kyandaw crematorium. Other corpses had been dumped outside the ovens and people were there looking for 180

SLORC'

their relatives. Kyaw Thu says that several of the corpses he saw had had their faces smashed in to make identification impossible. Some of them, however, were still wearing their green high school longyis. Two days after Kyaw Thu and his family had cremated Win Moe Oo's corpse, the area around Kyandaw was cordoned of' by troops and a Bren-canicr was positioned outside. No "outwere permitted to enter the siders" - relatives and others compound. Melinda Liu wrote in her cover story for Newsweek on 3 October: "Witnesses at the cemetery said they heard the cries of shooting victims who had been brought to Kyandaw while they were still alive - and were cremated along with the

corpses." At Rangoon General Hospital she saw "victims with mangled limbs, chest wounds and legs in blood-stained casts. in the emergency ward, gunshot victims writhed on rusting gurneys, dripping blood onto the grimy floor. Undersupplied in the best of times, the hospital was running desperately low on blood and plasma. It was also running short of morgue space. I saw 30 bodies piled helter-skelter in the refrigerated vault . . one man was missing the top of his head, a 10-year-old boy had a bullet

_

hole in the middle of his forehead."

A Western ambassador reported that a group of schoolgirl demonstrators, aged around 13 and 14, were attacked and killed by government troops on Monday in Kemmendine. "It's so

shameful what's happening, I have no words for it," he said. '"It's just a small group of people who want to consolidate their power and are willing to shoot down schoolchildren and unarmed demonstrators to do so." The same diplomat added: °°It's not a coup

how can you stage a coup if you're running the

damn place already'*" The repression followed the same pattern all over the country. In the early hours of the 19th. the army units which had been put on full alert doing the week before the "coup" simultaneously raided strike centres in practically every state and division in Burma. In Mandalay, confrontation was reported be~ tween the army and protesters who drove water buffaloes in

front of them as a shield against bullets. But that hardly provided much protection against machine-guns and automatic

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OUTRAGE

rifles. The BBS reported on 22 September: "The destructive elements, following the animals, attacked the security personnel with slingshots and jinglees. Five buffaloes were lolled in the re~

tum tire." The unofficial version, related by Mandalay residents, had it that about 150 people were shot when the army broke up the st:nlke centre in their hometown, which had been one of the most efficiently run in the country. In the oil town of Chauk further down the Irrawaddy, at least 20 people were killed as local army

units fired on people who protested against the military takeover. In Taunggyi, Shan State, a young girl had been killed in the firing on the 18th. The following day, a large crowd gathered outside the Chinese temple on the town's main streets to prepare for the funeral. An army vehicle pulled up - and the troops sprayed automatic riflefire into the crowd. Local residents estimate that about 40 people were killed and that the firing was unprovoked. The official version, however, had it that "about 100 destructive elements made an attack, using slingshots and jinglees- When the security units returned fire, one destructive element was killed and one wounded. On the mouing of the 19th the people in the southwestern port town of Tavoy gathered outside their strike centre. Flags and banners fluttered in the wind and the local strike leaders,

Chan Hia, a 5l~year-old high school teacher, and Pan liyaw, a school headmaster gave speeches. An army unit arrived at the

scene and told the people to disperse. When they did not heed the order, the commanding ofliccr, Lieut-Col Myint Their, pulled out his army pistol and killed the old headmaster. Chan His and several others were gunned down immediately afterwards. In the small border town of Tachilek opposite Mae Sai in Thailand, a dozen students were apprehended before dawn on the 19th. An eye-witness said that four nights later, he observed

army lorries loaded with both civilians and soldiers drive up in the dark to an army camp on a hill overlooking Taehilek. Shortly afterwards, bursts of machine-gun fire were heard from

the camp. The lorries soon returned - empty, save for the

troops-

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SLORC1

Similar acts of brutality were reported from most townships in Rangoon during the days after SLORC's takeover. In South Okkalapa, local residents claim that two young boys were shot in front of their parents. Elsewhere, private homes were raided by troops looking for student activists, opposition newsletters and pro-democracy leaflets. The United Press International on 24 September quoted a Rangoon resident as saying: "In searching for weapons house-to-house they [the soldiers] are [also] picking up any valuables they want and taking them, and the people have no recourse." In a statement issued on 20 September, Min Ko Naing, who had gone into hiding, had declared that he was prepared "for the last ditch fight . . . throughout the country. There is no honour greater than the willingness to saeriiice for the freedom of the motherland. We have stopped using our mouths to protest and . . . warn the group that calls itself the government to seek their last meal." Small bands of hardline activists tried to [ight back, but in vain. The National Liberation Democratic Front, led by Tun Tun Oo, fired rockets- obtained on the black market on the City Hall on 19 September, without causing much damage. Tun Tun Oo soon left for the Thai border and his replacement as chief of this obscure underground group, Kyaw Than, turned out to be a DDSI plant. Most of the ones who had stayed behind

were soon rounded uP by the secret police. A number of police stations were burned down in revenge attacks on Monday and Tuesday and weapons seized. Someone tired a rocket on a microwave antenna in Rangoon, temporarily disrupting the country's telecommunications system. The impact of these counter-attacks was, however, minimal. But in the midst of all the tragedy, a sardonic sense of h u m o r was displayed by an unknown Burmese who intemipted the official broadcasts over the BBS. Whenever Gen. Saw Mauna's recorded speeches were being broadcast, he was on the air alsoWhen the coup-rnaker spoke of "unscrupulous elements," the gremlin interjected: "You are the unscrupulous ones!" Saw

Mauna's calm voice continued: "The fact that we formed a government with very [ew people is evidence that we have abso~

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OUTRAGE

lutely no desire to hold on to state power for a prolonged period." The one-man resistance movement retorted: "Why did you seize it if you had no desire" !')'" When Saw Mauna paused and said: 'Td like to say a few words," the gremlin fired back: "Don't say anything" The low signal level of the interference indicated that he was using his own radio transmitter, it could not have come from a broadcasting studio. Nobody was ever able to identify the mysterious heckler, and after a fGw days, he also fell silent. >I< 2% >l
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