BURMESE DAYS OF RECKONING

Karan Thapar on the woman Karan Thapar on the woman

who is in prison for leading the movement for change

ONCE again a military government in Asia IS scared of a young woman politician. This time the country is Burma and the popular leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Almost three weeks into a protest hunger-strike, her small frame has shrunk dangerously and she has been rushed to hospital for inten- sive care. But the Saw Maung dictatorship refuses to acknowledge her plight. It is an embarrassment they are ignoring in the futile hope that it will disappear.

Suu Kyi's hunger-strike began when she was put under house arrest last month. She was accused of inciting the army, although not formally charged, and it was announced that her detention could be for a year or more. Her British hushand, Michael Aris, and their two sons, Alexan- der (16) and Kim (13), are also subject to similar restriction. But the hunger-strike is not designed to force her release; it is, in fact, to secure a transfer to the sweltering conditions of Inseia jail where her suppor- ters are being held separately.

Her incarceration comes as the climax of a year of campaigning for democracy which has seen Suu Kyi emerge as Burma's most popular political leader. As the daughter of General Aung San, the 1940s national hero, she is heir to the mythology that surrounds his name. No political credential could be better; but it has placed her in firm opposition to the military junta, who claim legitimacy as successors to the Bur- ma Independence Army, the institution her father founded and once headed as commander-in-chief.

There is little about Suu Kyi which suggests the indomitable spirit behind her present struggle. She is 44, petite, femi- nine, somewhat shy and bookish. She lived abroad from the age of 15, graduated from Delhi and Oxford, working for the UN and the Bhutanese Foreign Ministry, resear- ching at the School of Oriental and African Studies and poring over archives in Japan. Her position is unique in South Asian politics, admittedly unsullied by the past but also lacking the organisational support which cushioned a Benazir Bhutto.

Of course, like them she is part of a compelling dynastic story. Her father, ofe of the famous '30 Comrades', fought the British and the Japanese for independence. Six months before it came he was assassin- ated; 40 years later many believe the mystery of his murder has still to be resolved. Suu Kyi has always been con- scious of this invaluable inheritance, but it took a chance visit to Burma before she learnt how to use it.

Opportunity knocked with the crisis that overwhelmed Burma last summer. Its ori- gins lay in the failure of General Ne Win's `Burmese Road to Socialism'. Under his Burma Socialist Programme Party a once fertile and mineral-rich country had been reduced to a poor, rundown backwater. Two events changed the frustrations of the 38 million population into anger. The first was the September 1987 demonetisation, which wiped out savings without com- pensation. The other was the United Na- tions decision that December to consider Burma a 'Least Developed Country'.

But it was Ne Win's unexpected resigna- tion in July 1988, after a quarter century at the helm, and his equally inexplicable suggestion of a multi-party system, which galvanised the country's politics. August was a heady month. Students and workers crammed the streets of Rangoon. Free news sheets proliferated. Political rallies became the norm. For its part the army shot over 3,000 unarmed civilians on just one day. But the mood of expectation and euphoria continued to grow. So too did the power vacuum.

It was out of this political background that Aung San Suu Kyi the politician emerged. Home to nurse her dying mother, she found herself drawn into the arena of politics. 'I could not, as my father's daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on,' she has explained. Her friends think it was fate.

On 26 August she stepped into the open. Her rally at the Schweidagon Pagoda drew over half a million. The army's answer was martial law. And within weeks it became clear that although elections had been promised for May 1990 and political parties permitted to exist, the reality was that the military boot had ground the democratic spirit of Burma into the dust. Thousands were arrested, students fled to Thailand and the workers returned to work.

Since then Suu Kyi has toured Burma carrying her message of democracy. unity and change. Videos of her rallies circulate widely though illegally. Peasants line her routes, throwing garlands and chanting `Long live Suu Kyi'. Badges with pictures of her father carrying his two-year-old daughter on his shoulders have become prized possessions.

The regime too has done its bit to add to her glamour. Obscene posters showing her locked in sexual intercourse with an En- glish devil have been plastered on Ran- goon walls. Up to 2,000 members of her party, the National League for Democra- cy, have been detained. and there have been countless threats to her life.

Nonetheless she does have loyal student supporters to protect her. A band of 50 braves accompanies her all the time. They are her praetorian guard even though she might resent the term. Today her battle is with the generals. They wish to use the promised elections to civilianise their pow- er. The National Unity Party, under the former general and ambassador to Lon- don, San Jaw, is their choice. Suu Kyi is the obstacle.

Last month when she announced she would mark the anniversary of her father's death on 19 July, officially commemorated in Burma as Martyrs' Day, with a march to his grave, the generals panicked. Fearing an uprising they hastily devised summary tribunals to enforce martial-law decrees banning gatherings of over five people. Five tribunals headed by colonels were set up in Rangoon to hand out sentences of execution, life imprisonment and hard labour. When she called off the march and decided instead to pay a private visit, the next day they put her under arrest.

In the back-to-front political order of Burma this has virtually guaranteed her ascendancy. Yet until her arrest she was reticent about her future, wishing to appear a reluctant politician. 'A life in politics holds no attractions for me,' she told me last year. 'I serve as a kind of unifying force because of my father's name and because I am not interested in settling for any kind of position.' In fact, that probably means that she wants to be the first democratic prime minister of Burma whenever the job becomes available.

Meanwhile she views her mission as 'a second struggle for Burma's independ- ence'. What that means is that without political freedom the country's independ- ence from Britain in 1948 remains incom- plete. Although details of her precise political and economic beliefs are, perhaps artfully, vague, what is clear is that she stands for change: 'People want change. They are prepared to sacrifice to get it.' But her position is that it is for them to decide, by the exercise of a free vote in a fair election, what sort of change it should be. Suu Kyi's present predicament suggests that is now unlikely.