‘The Snake in Burma’s Grass’
Your editorial “The Snake in Burma’s Grass”(Aug. 24) was right on target. Military overlord Ne Win, who has ruled Burma for the past 26 years with an iron fist, has “resigned” for the second time.
When he resigned from the presidency of Burma several years ago, he retained the chairmanship of his party--the Burma Socialist Program Party--the only legal political organization under the 1974 Constitution. As chairman, he maintained total control of his party and its government.
On July 23, he resigned the chairmanship of the party. In his parting speech he warned protesters crying for freedom and more rice that “the army would shoot to kill and not in the air to scare.” The pledge was indeed kept. In early August Burmese troops fired into peaceful student-led protesters and an estimated 3,000 were massacred.
He is now holed up in his lakeside village in the suburbs of Rangoon protected by over 700 troops of the elite guard while U Maung Maung, the third President in a month, is taking orders from him. He is supposedly a private citizen to boot.
Democratic reforms in Burma will be very hard and extremely dangerous to come by until and unless this snake in the grass is divested of its venom. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), in introducing Senate Resolution 464 on Aug. 10 condemning the Burmese Government for mass killings, mass arrests, and gross violations of human rights, appropriately suggested that Ne Win may well be an “Asian Noriega.” The Moynihan resolution passed the Senate unanimously.
U KYAW WIN
Laguna Hills
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