Burma A Country Under the Boot

By Daniel Benjamin

May I at all times be free

Of the four nether realms

The three scoundrels

The eight inauspicious locations

And the five enemies . . .

In Burma's myriad pagodas, those words from the Buddhist Okasa prayer are often on the lips of worshipers these days. They are an incantation against the five enemies -- water, fire, robbers, people who wish evil on others, and rulers. Down through the centuries, it is the last category that has been most feared. But rarely in living memory have the Burmese so urgently believed they needed protection from their rulers.

The despondency has grown out of 27 years of one-man misrule. Under the authoritarian leadership of General Ne Win and his military cohorts, the country has been beggared and its people forced into silence. Last week, the first anniversary of explosive antigovernment riots, Burmese were suffering through a renewed campaign of repression. For the ruling junta, which has changed the nation's name to Myanmar to reflect the country's ethnic diversity, the main target is the National League for Democracy, the first organized, broad-based movement dedicated to democratic reform since Ne Win came to power in a 1962 military coup. In recent weeks, hundreds in the N.L.D.'s upper echelons have been jailed. Its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is under house arrest, where she began a hunger strike on July 20 that reportedly ended just last week.

She is an improbable liberator for backward Burma, though perhaps born to the task. Her father was the national hero General Aung San, who led the struggle for independence from Britain only to be assassinated by a rival in July 1947, a mere six months before colonial rule ended. Until just over a year ago, Suu Kyi lived in England with her British husband Michael Aris and her two sons. Her return to Burma in April 1988 was a matter of happenstance: she came home to nurse her mother, who died last January. But the explosive antigovernment protests that gripped Burma swept Suu Kyi, 44, into her nation's turmoil, from which she emerged as a clear, determined voice of opposition. Says a Rangoon lawyer: "She is the only person in our politics who is stainless."

Her rise has been astonishing. As the daughter of Aung San, she was met with great deference, but her courage, bearing and oratory enabled her to build a following. The N.L.D., which she helped found last year, has grown to some 2 million dues-paying members in a country of 40 million people. During electrifying tours of the countryside, she disregarded the army guns that menaced her and her followers. And she has routinely flouted martial-law regulations prohibiting gatherings of more than five people. At one rally in Rangoon, soldiers aimed automatic weapons at the crowd that gathered to listen to her. "We are grateful to those who are giving the people practice in being brave," she snapped. While an officer recited over a loudspeaker the law prohibiting gatherings, Suu Kyi used her own microphone to confront the intruders: "May I request that the loudspeakers be quiet. I can control this crowd. You don't have to."

Suu Kyi's self-possession and determination have prompted obvious comparisons with Philippine President Corazon Aquino and Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. But in Burma the obstacles to reaching power are, in Suu Kyi's words, "much worse, much tougher." She did not inherit a large political organization or support network, as Aquino and Bhutto did. Nor has Burma, a hermit nation since 1962, been susceptible to the kind of international pressure that helped force Ferdinand Marcos out and ensured a fair election for Bhutto. No large business class or organized church exists to throw its heft behind one politician, only a military establishment set against the entire society. Says a Western diplomat of the officers who run the nation: "These are crude, uneducated, narrow-minded people. They don't understand what democratic politics is all about or what drives a modern economy."

It is by no means clear that Suu Kyi understands what drives a modern economy either. She seems to have given relatively little thought to the kinds of economic issues that would immediately confront her should she find herself in power. Her views on trade and foreign investment remain vague. Instead she has concentrated on a simple credo: to restore democracy to Burma and bring "freedom from fear" to its people.

Burma's current unrest has left thousands dead -- no precise count is available -- since September 1987. It was then that the regime sought to curb inflation by striking at an immense black market. Without warning, the government declared that all 25-, 35-and 75-kyat bank notes were invalid. (A dollar then bought 6.6 kyats at the official rate and as many as 80 kyats on the black market.) The decree eliminated 60% of the currency and with it the savings of rich and poor alike.

In a country that has seen its per capita income sink from $670 in 1960 to $200 today, the move was incendiary. Unrest simmered for months, then exploded last August. Ne Win had officially left office in July, but continuous riots brought down two heads of state before a junta of 19 officers that called itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council took control in September. The chief of staff, General Saw Maung, assumed the presidency. But student protests went on, and only the council's pledge to hand over power after free multiparty elections quelled the unrest.

After making that promise, however, the government for a long time balked at setting a date for the balloting, and many doubt that it will occur by May 1990, as promised by the junta. If the election were held today, the Burmese believe the N.L.D. would capture 75% to 80% of the vote. But the current regime has shown little inclination to allow genuinely reformist parties to exist, much less hold power. Consequently, the likely rules of the contest would prohibit the N.L.D. from taking part. That would probably tip victory to opportunistic parties eager to do the military's bidding. Says a European diplomat: "All the obedient little parties will go along. You'll end up with a gang of puppets willing to jump when the military pulls the strings."

While many believe the promised election has become one of the grand fictions of Burmese life, Suu Kyi refuses to release the military from its commitment. The latest round of repression came in response to her decision to attack Burma's other grand fiction: the official retirement of Ne Win. General Saw Maung, like both his short-lived predecessors, claims that Ne Win, 78, is no longer involved in politics. But the populace and the diplomatic community are convinced that the old strongman still pulls the strings. Before she was put under house arrest, Suu Kyi told TIME, "We decided, Enough of the shadowboxing; let's get at the real enemy."

Her boldness reached a peak at the end of June, when she appealed to the military to overthrow the widely feared strongman. "Ne Win is the one who caused this nation to suffer for 26 years," she said. "Officials from the armed forces and officials from the State Law and Order Restoration Council, I call you all to be loyal to the state. Be loyal to the people. You don't have to be loyal to Ne Win."

In the following weeks, the regime stepped up harassment of the N.L.D. On July 20, Suu Kyi was arrested in Rangoon with 42 other top N.L.D. leaders. The organization's offices all over Burma were ransacked and files were seized. Reports of torture by troops grew more frequent, and arrests mounted. The N.L.D. estimates that 2,000 activists have been taken into detention. The army has launched a campaign of intimidation throughout the countryside. Said an underground activist in Taungyii: "Outside Rangoon, it's just naked military power. The soldiers can do what they like."

Not only is the country's political situation bleak, but its economy is also near failure. The Burmese Way to Socialism, Ne Win's odd amalgam of Buddhism, socialism and isolationism, proved a road to ruin. When Saw Maung took power, he declared that the economy would be opened up, but central planning and widespread corruption still discourage improvement. With foreign debt at a mountainous $3.8 billion, 75% of all foreign-exchange earnings are needed to service the loans.

The numbers merely quantify the depth of the despair and poverty that grip the nation. In conversations with TIME during four weeks of recent travel in Burma, merchants, monks, farmers, students, bureaucrats, police and political activists confirmed not only growing fear of the junta but desperation about the deterioration of daily life. Buildings seem to crumble before one's eyes. Most homes are bamboo huts; electricity is a rarity. Agriculture is a primitive matter of human hands and muscle. Burma was long a bountiful land, but faith in the kyat has sunk so low that rice traders are turning to export instead of domestic markets. Shortfalls are already being felt in some regions, and a nationwide man-made famine is not inconceivable.

Economically and politically, the hand of Ne Win continues to blight Burma. But a strong appetite exists for change, for democratic institutions and a free market -- even if the means of bringing it about appear remote. Some believe recovery will come only with the death of Ne Win, who reportedly still plays tennis at his lakeside villa in suburban Rangoon. Others feel that that is only half the equation: Burma's best hope, they suggest, languishes under house arrest in Rangoon.

With reporting by Ross H. Munro/Rangoon