Returned Burmese Demonstrator Finds Generation Gap at Home

Aung Naing, a 19-year-old apprentice mechanic with what passes for the punk look in Burma, is in good standing with the law, but he’s got a bit of trouble with his parents.

The youth, who goes by the alias Ya Coot, took to the streets in nearby Mandalay last summer when anti-government demonstrations swept the country. When the military took power in September, he fled to the jungles, fearing arrest.

“I went with my friend,” Aung Naing told a reporter who was here interviewing students who had returned to their homes under a government amnesty program.

“A bad choice of friends,” snapped his mother, who for three months did not know what had happened to her son.

He had gone to the Thai border, had a generally miserable time and caught malaria. But Thursday, malaria seemed minor compared to what he might catch from his father.

In a generation gap further widened by the tumultuous events in Burma in August and September, the young apprentice, who wears an earring and a side-sheared haircut, had rejected parental pleas and joined the protests. He expressed no regrets.

Hla Maung, wearing a traditional Burmese jacket and cap, said he was glad that his son had returned but that he should not have gotten involved in anti-government politics in the first place. On his chest, the father wore a government decoration, awarded for alerting the military when Communist insurgents attacked an air base in 1977.

The parents said their son is a good, honest youth. Was it wrong for young people to work for a different kind of political system in Burma? “I have no idea,” the father said. “As a civil servant, I’m not interested in politics.”

Somehow that attitude was not passed along to his son. “Everybody was taking part (in the demonstrations), so I took part,” Aung Naing explained. “We had our demands.”

The father sees developments another way: “There was anarchy before the military took over. Now peace has been restored.”