Big Brother Burma, Over Easy

Jacquelyn Suter

A woman named Aong San Kyi…something like that…was just recently released from house
arrest in Burma, in Myanmar, what’s it?

If the above musings describe you, you definitely need a read-me-first sheet. No offense, but a
little education is in order. There’s a number of highly interesting reads out there on this country,
adventuresome travelogues and excellent reportage, that will bring you up to basic speed with
minimal intellectual exertion. Start here with some Burma Lite.

The realm of evil fantasy

No better subtext for the country can be found than the writings of George Orwell, that intrepid
British author who served five years in Burma as a member of the colonial administration, and
immortalized his time there by writing Burmese Days. But it was his 1949 book, Nineteen Eight-
Four that would prove uncannily prescient for military dominated, post-1962 Burma. This book
invented the term Big Brother as a metaphor for all-pervasive surveillance and oppression.

Taking Orwell as her spiritual traveling companion, Emma Larkin, in Finding George Orwell in
Burma, interweaves her own keen-eyed travel reportage with his writings to bring us a fascinating
glimpse of a country under self-siege. Although easy to read, Larkin is no backpacker pundit. An
American journalist who studied Burmese at the School of Oriental and African Studies in
London, she’s especially insightful in relating example after example of how ‘oppression of an
entire nation of some 50 million people can be completely hidden from view.’ Indeed. Ever
wonder what’s behind those romantic, lichen-covered high walls in Rangoon? Military
compounds – all over the city.

In Nineteen Eight-Four, the doomed hero asks, ‘where does the past exist?’ Books, memories.
Larkin relates how the banned writings of Orwell and Aung San Suu Kyi ‘travel between trusted
friends...from hidden libraries all over the country and form a parallel universe of alternative truths
and secret histories.’
Welcome to Shan State, no visa required

‘It was the diaries that brought me here. Only a few months before, but a world away, I had sat in
the …silence of the British Library in London pouring over a collection of 19th c. notebooks,’ so
reports Andrew Marshall in his adventure-filled book, The Trouser People. The diaries would be
those of the British imperialist Sir Geoge Scott, extending Queen Victoria’s sun-never-sets-on-
the-empire to Upper Burma in the late 1800’s.

Marshall dogs the footsteps of Scott in Burma’s little visited north where he has rude awakenings
with some of Scott’s favorite people, the headhunting Wild Wa. Today, those same headhunters
have morphed into the United Wa State Army, one of the most heavily armed narco-traffickers in
the world, keeping Thailand’s roustabouts well supplied with yaa baa.

Marshall shifts between his own experiences and Scott’s long-ago adventures. So that we don’t
get stuck in tantalizing bygones, Marshall reminds us that, just as Scott pacified the Shans, the
present military regime carries out a modern-day reprise on the ethnic people: ‘While foreign
tourists took day trips on beautiful Inle Lake…less than 60 miles away…people were being raped,
shot and beaten to death.’ Sobering, as tourists capture that Kodak moment at the Lake.

The dream is over

Historically, the Shan States were a collection of princely fiefdoms each ruled by a Saopha
modeling themselves on the former royal court at Mandalay. Reading like a fast-paced historical
novel, Patricia Elliott’s The White Umbrella provides a sweeping account of one of the most
influential and powerful of these courts – the Saopha of Yawnghwe (present day Nyaungshwe).

But nothing can substitute for the same story, told upfront and personal, by someone who knew
all participants intimately and experienced this life herself. Such a reminiscence has just recently
been published: The Moon Princess by Sao Sanda, a daughter of the Yawnghwe Saopha.

One of the most articulate chapters of The Moon Princess relates the political maneuverings
between the ethnic minorities and Burma’s father of independence, General Aung San. Sao
Sanda explains how the Shans had misgivings about Aung San’s rush to independence under a
new Union of Burma fearing, as the animals in Orwell’s Animal Farm, that while all would be
equal, some would be more equal than others. This fear would indeed materialize a decade later
in 1959, when all Saophas were forced to ceremonially abdicate in front of then Army
Commander, Ne Win.

‘If you want a picture of the future…

imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever.’ This chilling image is from Orwell’s
Nineteen Eight-Four, but it could well describe the brutal ending of another Shan Saopha, the one
in Hsipaw. Twilight Over Burma is the firsthand account of his Austrian wife, Inge Sargent.
Similar to The Moon Princess, the book describes the fairytale existence of the court at Hsipaw
until 1962, when Ne Win’s troops surrounded the residence and seized the Saopha. His poignant
note smuggled of out prison read, ‘miss you all…I am still o.k.’ He was never seen again.

The fire next time

If the Burma Lite books went down smooth, then maybe you’d like to try a more robust brew.
Shelby Tucker’s, Burma: The Curse of independence, would satisfy . It’s an accessible, well-
researched history of Burma from WWII through the end of Burma’s independence period when
General Aung San was assassinated.
If you want to go even further into this darkest of histories, Outrage by Bertil Lintner, will not
disappoint. A recognized authority on Burmese politics and insurgency, Lintner picks up where
Tucker leaves off, at the explosive demonstrations staged by the people in 1988.

These demonstrations were the context for General Ne Win’s infamous quote, ‘when the army
shoots, it shoots to kill.’ Indeed it did. When the slaughter began, one of the first victims was an
18-year old girl, a Buddhist novice. ‘She was still tightly holding a portrait of Aung San when she
fell dead to the street.’ It was at this time that Aung San Suu Kyi’s political involvement began by
her memorable address to masses of people in front of the country’s most sacred pagoda, the
Shwedagon. This is The Lady, Aung San’s daughter, who has spent the past 13 years under
house arrest and has just been released.

These 1988 demonstrations, the first major ones after the military takeover in 1962, formed the
backdrop and playbook for the recent disruptions in October 2007.

In 1963, James Baldwin wrote The Fire Next Time as an eloquent plea for America to come to its
senses about race relations. If they did not, he subtly warned, a line from an old slave song might
come true: ‘God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time!’ What does this
book have to do with Burma? Much, maybe not much, depends…. But the title most certainly
has a nice ring to it.