Burma’s Junta Puts Off Vote, Stalls Reform

Finishing touches are being laid on a red-brick wall around the Defense Ministry here, protecting Burma’s military leaders from the people they govern.

For a dollar a day, laborers in the hard-pressed capital began the work on Sept. 19, 24 hours after the generals took charge in a ruthless crackdown that ended a violent summer of anti-government protests.

The workers needed the money, and the generals wanted the wall. The project was an accommodation, and it stands as a symbol of the continued strains in this beleaguered country, a barrier that blocks the cry for reform heard six months ago.

Gen. Saw Maung, chairman of the State Law and Order Restoration Council, Burma’s military junta, declared in September that the army took over in the “benevolent intent to achieve multi-party democracy as soon as possible.” At one point, there was talk of elections this spring.

Vote May Not Be This Year

But on Friday, speaking to foreign journalists here, Brig. Gen. Khin Nyunt, the No. 2 man in the junta, said the promise of free elections, the first in more than a quarter of a century, may not be fulfilled this year.

“A foundation has to be laid,” insisted the general, who commands the military’s intelligence operations. “We will take the time necessary for us.”

The counterpoint of promises, secrecy and hesitancy has saddled the junta with a credibility gap. Denial compounds the problem.

Despite eyewitness accounts of soldiers firing into crowds of unarmed demonstrators in August and September, Ohm Gyaw, director general of the Foreign Ministry, told the reporters Friday: “There was no indiscriminate shooting. This is a situation where there was anarchy. During a time of martial law, the military has to protect law and order.”

Righteous Tones

The junta’s pronouncements and propaganda, aired in the government media, are dressed in tones of righteousness. Most ordinary Burmese are not buying it, Rangoon residents say.

“They (the military) just don’t seem to realize what has happened in Burma,” exclaimed a Rangoon-based Western diplomat. “They’re convinced the demonstrations were staged by misguided students, Communists and criminals. . . .

“The military people are devoid of political instinct. They have no technological knowledge. They don’t appreciate that last summer was an explosion of frustration, and now they think they can go on like before. If they don’t know what the disease was, how the hell can they cure it?”

Foreign Aid Suspended

The future is obscure and the present is bleak:

-- Japan, West Germany and the United States, Burma’s primary foreign donors, have suspended their aid projects on political grounds, eliminating Rangoon’s major source of foreign exchange, more than $400 million a year.

There is no money for imports, including the parts needed to repair the damage done to state-owned industries by looters and vandals at the height of last summer’s violence.

-- Prices have leveled off since the shortages of summer, but they remain high. The price of rice in Rangoon is twice what it was a year ago. The price of gasoline has quadrupled, and the quality has fallen.

-- Schools remain shuttered. The universities have been closed for more than a year, and shutdowns of high schools and grammar schools followed. “We are trying to get all the students who have absconded (gone underground) to come back to the legal fold,” said Khin Nyunt, the junta official. “We cannot open until they do.”

“It’s a great loss,” a Rangoon reporter murmured. “A whole year of schooling--gone.”

-- Leadership appears anonymous and bureaucratic. Pronouncements are sometimes issued in the name of Saw Maung, but more often attributed to the Law and Order Restoration Council or the Tatmadaw, the armed forces.

Politics Moribund

If the political problems are solved, the Western diplomat said, “there is no reason why Burma should not take off.”

But the politics of Burma was lost in the quarter-century of one-party, one-man rule by Gen. Ne Win, a devious, erratic but forceful leader who ostensibly retired from the scene last summer at age 77. His successors, the diplomat declared, are “third-rate nonentities.”

While Ne Win’s style was described as whimsical, he earned a certain respect from the Burmese, tarnished only by the disastrous, quasi-socialist economic system he imposed on his country. The generals who rule now are dismissed as merely heavy-handed by Rangoon political reporters.

They lack a political touch. In a film prepared for foreign aid donors, endless scenes of the vandalism of the summer riots--wrecked machinery, trashed offices--are shown with a musical score of Hawaiian and tango instrumentals.

With their credibility questioned, the junta leaders face a bonfire of rumors fed by their own secrecy and a cowed but sullen and suspicious populace. Rumor control is a priority project.

Justifies Crackdown

Wednesday’s editorial in the government’s Working People’s Daily was an example of the fixation. “At the height of disturbances in September last year,” the editorialist wrote, “the Tatmadaw (the military) had to step in and assume responsibilities of state. In the wake of rumors that the Tatmadaw was going to arrest the students who had taken part in the demonstrations, they absconded and went underground. . . . Rumors were spread that insurgents with sufficient foreign assistance and arms were ready to welcome the students.”

Last week’s three-day tour for more than 40 foreign reporters, the first mass invitation to outside journalists in decades, was designed to spike what the generals insisted, and largely proved, was a groundless rumor.

A report by Amnesty International, the London-based human rights organization, asserted that students who had fled to insurgent bases along the Thai border and returned under a government program had subsequently been arrested. Government planes flew the press contingent to the provincial cities of Taunggyi, Loikaw and Meiktila to meet with student returnees there, and later to Rangoon to hear other students tell their stories.

Dispute Amnesty’s Account

In Taunggyi, Kyi Moe and Myo Win Htun, two of the students mentioned in the Amnesty International report, disputed the account. Both had returned to Burma from a Thai reception center for students who crossed into Thai territory. Thai authorities have said that the students were returned only after receiving pledges from Burmese leaders that they would not be detained.

“We were not arrested or mistreated when we came back,” Myo Win Htun told the reporters. “We were taken in for blood tests and questioning. Maybe that started rumors.” The students, speaking in an open forum, said that Burmese authorities questioned them about conditions in the Thai camp, their experiences at the border and the leadership of the Burmese insurgents with whom they initially made contact. The interrogations lasted about an hour, the students said.

Private talks with other student returnees from Thailand--more than 300 have come back under the Thai-Burmese program--confirmed a pattern of return without arrest.

In private conversations with eight of the students, however, none seemed assured that they weren’t being watched by government agents. All said that they had taken part in demonstrations and fled when the military took over because they feared arrest. A state worker encountered in a stroll through the Taunggyi market pulled a reporter aside to say that one of his co-workers, who had fled and returned, had been fired from his job.

Most Returned Voluntarily

With few exceptions, the students presented to the visiting reporters had been repatriated from Thailand, apparently in response to the Thai government’s concern that they be well treated on their return. Most said they left Thailand voluntarily, but several, including Myo Win Htun, described what they called psychological pressure by the Thais to return.

A far larger group of returnees, more than 2,000 according to Burmese authorities, turned themselves in at camps in Burma. Without access, there was no way to determine whether they had been treated similarly to the returnees from Thailand. Earlier this month, a State Department spokeswoman disclosed that U.S. authorities had received “credible reports” that some returnees were arrested and died in government custody. Those reports could not be confirmed or disproved by the reporters on last week’s trip.

Most of the students interviewed said they would continue the struggle for multi-party elections in Burma. Kyi Moe, one of the students mentioned in the Amnesty International report, was asked how long the dissidence will last. “As long as there is blood in our bodies,” he replied.

180 Parties Registered

At latest count, more than 180 parties have registered to take part in the elections. The key figures remain those who rose to prominence during the anti-government demonstrations.

Junta spokesmen at Friday’s Rangoon press conference insisted the military will give way to civilian rule once the elections are held. “The government is not a party, it will not contest the elections,” said Khin Nyunt. But Ne Win’s old government party, the Burma Socialist Program Party, will take part under its new name, the National Unity Party. No individual has emerged as leader of the NUP.

Most of the political attention has been centered on Aung San Suu Kyi, the 43-year-old, British-educated daughter of Aung San, Burma’s revered independence leader. Suu Kyi has made “political trips”--campaigning is barred--throughout the country, and, according to diplomats and Rangoon reporters, she has been drawing big crowds. By some accounts, the turnouts have been so large that government agents have hassled her supporters in an effort to deter them.

Another major figure is Aung Gyi, 70, who was ousted from Suu Kyi’s party after he accused her of having Communists as close advisers. Aung Gyi, a one-time colleague of Ne Win, has formed his own party, possibly positioning himself to pick up the pieces of Suu Kyi’s following if her party is declared illegal.

The government can ban any party it sees as unfit or a threat to national security--and, if the junta has a political credo, it is anti-communism.