It’s Not Easy to Bring Down a Dictator

How encouraged we felt after watching the documentary, “Bringing Down a Dictator,” about the end of Slobodan Milosevic’s rule. It was previewed at a conference held in Virginia by the United States Institute of Peace and the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict (and will premiere on PBS on Sunday).

That meeting gathered practitioners of nonviolence, some who had already brought down their dictators--from nations such as Chile, South Africa and my native Poland--and some from nations that have yet to do it, such as Belarus, Iraq and Burma, renamed Myanmar by its military rulers. By the end of the conference I felt like a walking encyclopedia of nonviolent ideas, strategies and tactics.

Then I traveled to Burma. As a precaution I left behind the materials from the conference and my precious copy of “Bringing Down a Dictator.” This was a wise move. Wise, too, is to leave behind all those ideas about how nonviolence and civil society can easily bring down a dictatorship. If every rule has an exception to confirm it, then Burma is the ultimate exception to the rule about the immense “power of the powerless,” to paraphrase Vaclav Havel.

The Burmese are kind and gentle people, so it is hard to watch them so thoroughly subdued by the military regime. Although dissenting ideas are easily found here, strong civil society is not.

In 1988, students inspired a general nonviolent revolt here, but the generals clamped down. Two years later in the parliamentary elections, 82% of the seats went to the opposition National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, but the ruling junta prevented the victors from taking office. Thus the Burmese believe that even if they stand up to the regime, they may be crushed. Meanwhile, the junta learned to nip in the bud whatever the civil society may be planning. (Or the military brass: Witness the recent sacking of three high-ranking officials suspected of being coup plotters.) One way to do it is to impose extremely harsh punishments for the slightest show of dissent (two actor brothers from Mandalay got seven years behind bars for a joke, and a man got a 25-year sentence for possessing an unregistered fax machine).

Having a strong and unquestioned leader in Suu Kyi is a mixed blessing, because she eclipses others in the movement. Civil society in Burma is not sufficiently unified, organized, focused or powerful enough to bring down a dictatorship or even diminish its power.

So if there were any chance of this regime leaving the stage in a peaceful way, it would not happen because of inside pressure. But it may happen from a mixture of outside pressure and inside negotiations.

Since October 2000, this has been the reason for hope among the Burmese and Burma-watchers. During 14 months of talks between the generals and Suu Kyi, it has been them versus her, a far cry from the round table of negotiators that spelled the end of communist rule in Poland, but talk they do.

The Burmese talks are negotiated by United Nations special envoy Razali Ismail, but there’s no word about progress other than it’s “going well.” This is frustrating for the Burmese. Those inside the country, more docile, cannot affect the outcome. Those outside call for transparency, but that’s doubtful. It is equally doubtful that if any result is obtained, it will satisfy the Burmese or the regime, for that matter.

In Poland, where before the round-table process began, secret talks were held between recently released political prisoners and the hated generals who put them behind bars. The result was a less than satisfactory agreement, but it was the only one on the table. It led to unfree and unfair elections, but that ultimately proved to be a more than satisfactory beginning to the peaceful end of communist military dictatorship.

We can hope for the same in Burma. There are many ways to bring down a dictator.

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Anna Husarska is a Paris-based journalist and political analyst.