Myanmar Activist’s Backers Wonder if Compromise Is in Order

The scene in Myanmar was a familiar one: Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, headed to a political gathering that would test the limits of the military regime’s tolerance, was in her white Toyota, going nowhere. The engine was off and the vehicle surrounded by police officers.

She was, they said, free to travel in only one direction--home. So for nine days, the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize camped out with supporters until early this month, when she was forcibly escorted the few miles to her posh lakeside residence in Yangon, the capital.

Like a similar roadside protest in July 1998, Suu Kyi’s aborted trip focused world attention on the struggle for democracy in Myanmar, formerly Burma. The standoff unleashed international criticism on the ruling generals, with British Prime Minister Tony Blair calling her treatment a disgrace.

The military responded by raiding her National League for Democracy, or NLD, headquarters and placing leaders under house arrest, their phone lines and access to outsiders cut.

Suu Kyi, 55, faded from center stage to plan her next move. But a decade after the junta voided her party’s landslide electoral victory and announced that it was keeping power, her options appear to be fewer. Many in Yangon are beginning to question whether her democratic goals might be better served if she softened her all-or-nothing approach and sought some form of accommodation with the generals.

“No one doubts her courage or commitment to democracy, and she’s admired for that,” said a Western resident of Yangon. “But people are growing poorer, many of the universities are still closed, and the standoff between the government and the opposition has brought Myanmar to a standstill. People I talk with would like the two sides to sort out their differences and just get on with the job of rebuilding a devastated country.”

In November, a revered abbot, Ashin Kunthalabhivamsa, released a letter backed by about 1,000 monks at his monastery near Mandalay, scolding the country’s key leaders--Suu Kyi, former strongman Ne Win and junta chief Gen. Than Shwe--for their unwillingness to compromise. They “have been fighting one another over the past 10 years and that makes us, the monks, sick at heart,” the abbot wrote.

In a country where monkhood is the most respected institution--Myanmar has nearly as many monks (350,000) as soldiers (400,000)--his message was significant. At about the same time, a senior monk in the city of Bago spoke out, urging dialogue and agreeing with the abbot’s comment that the two sides should “join hands and work for the good of the country.”

Even some Western diplomats, who consider Myanmar’s repressive junta the most repugnant government in Southeast Asia, believe that Suu Kyi’s tactics have failed to yield any progress toward democracy. If anything, they say, the regime--known as the State Peace and Development Council--has solidified its control and is in a stronger position today than it was five years ago, despite U.S.-led economic sanctions.

Through intimidation and imprisonment, the regime has caused hundreds of NLD members to renounce allegiance to the party. And through negotiations and payoffs, Myanmar’s leaders have bought peace with the independent armies of drug-producing minority groups. Today, the regular army encounters resistance only from scattered pockets of ethnic Karen rebels.

“We could not have stability and development until we had peace, and today we have that peace,” Foreign Minister Win Aung said in an interview last year. “You have no idea how much better off the country is today than when I was a boy, no idea how many bridges and schools the government has built. The world just has to give us a chance.”

Most political analysts find his argument unconvincing. However, the military, which has ruled the country since 1962, appears to have convinced itself that it is winning the battle for control, if not for international acceptance. The state-run media even sent up what might have been a trial balloon recently, suggesting that perhaps the NLD should be closed down and Suu Kyi exiled.

With foreign investment plummeting in Myanmar--Unocal is the largest remaining U.S. investor--China has gained greater economic, military and diplomatic leverage and has recently agreed to help build a $90-million pulp-and-paper factory. Japan, India and Australia have hinted that they might be more accommodating toward Yangon if it showed greater openness and flexibility in dealing with Suu Kyi.

The opposition leader is an Oxford graduate whose father, Aung San, helped lead the nation to its 1948 independence from Britain. Suu Kyi was first placed under house arrest in 1989 and has battled the regime since then.