Aung San Suu Kyi’s election win saw the former political
prisoner put in charge of Myanmar ’s
first civilian government since 1962
By Gethin
Chamberlain
 |
Buddhist monks in Kwin Ka Lay
village, Kayin state. Photograph: Gethin Chamberlain
|
“I want to be a
soldier, to fight,” says 11-year-old Khin Soe Win, glancing round at the other
children sitting in the gleaming new classroom. Another boy also has his hand
in the air; he too wants to be a soldier.
The pair are in the village
of Kwin Ka Lay Myanmar ’s
Kayin state. We are a good 12 hours’ drive from the city of Yangon ,
the last three hours having been traversed on dirt roads.
It is not entirely clear who controls the surrounding area: there
are Karen National Liberation Army checkpoints on the road, but also army
patrols – white pickups packed with soldiers and machine guns on the cab roof.
The children are answering questions on what they might do
when they leave school. One wants to be a nurse, another a builder, another a
farmer. Khin Soe Win is unswayed. “It is tiring and hard being a soldier, but I
want to sacrifice for my country.”
But he and his friend don’t want to fight for the Tatmadaw, the
national army. They want to join the KNLA. When he talks of country, his
teacher explains, he means Kayin – what used to be known as Karen state.
The Karen are one of the 135 ethnic groups recognised by the
Myanmar
constitution, a minority who engaged in a six-decade fight with the central
government. They may have signed a ceasefire and backed Aung San Suu Kyi
inNovember’s historic elections, but the desire for self-determination remains
undimmed and a natural scepticism in the region is just one of the new leader’s
problems.
Five months on from the election that swept the Nobel
prizewinning democracy campaigner’s National League for Democracy into power, Aung
San Suu Kyi now leads the country’s first civilian government since 1962. Simply
winning enough votes to wrest power from Myanmar ’s
powerful military was seen by many as the greatest triumph of the woman known
to everyone as “The Lady”, generating excitement at home and an international
wave of goodwill. But if her government is to be judged a success, it faces
formidable challenges on its own doorstep.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s first challenge was to entrench her own
position. Her hopes of securing the presidency were dashed by the refusal of
the military to change the constitution, which bars her from the role because
her sons hold British citizenship. It was a setback, but one she sidestepped by
taking on the new role of “state counsellor”, effectively placing herself above
the president, Htin Kyaw. She also holds the roles of foreign minister and
minister in the president’s office. No one has been left in any doubt that she
regards herself as being in charge.
But the military has not relinquished its grip on power. The
army retains control of three key ministries – defence, home affairs and border
affairs – and has 25% of the seats in parliament. Any changes to the
constitution require a 75% plus one majority, and last month the commander-in-chief
of the army, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, made it clear that he saw no need
for further liberalisation.
“The Tatmadaw has steadfastly held on to the multiparty
system for five years and progress has also been made. During the next, second,
five-year phase, deviating from the present situation will not be accepted,” he
said. Aung San Suu Kyi may hope that further constitutional change will come
sooner rather than later, but in the meantime she has a dysfunctional country
to run.
“This is one of the most corrupt countries in the world,” a
senior western diplomat said last week, trying to dampen some of the rampant
optimism that her victory has generated. “Bad things happen here every day. You
will see problems everywhere.”
I believe in this new government, but I'm prepared to take
action in case things go wrong
Abraham, Karen National Union
Driving east out of the capital, the built-up area quickly
gives way to countryside. The traffic, bumper to bumper in the city, thins out.
Many people travel in makeshift buses fashioned out of flatbed trucks, with
chrome metal frames built over the top. Passengers are crammed in tightly: some
hang off the back.
Many men wear the wraparound sarongs known as lungis. Women
carry umbrellas unfurled to keep off the sun, their faces painted in a white
paste,thanakha, which serves as both a cosmetic and a sun screen.
The landscape is dotted with gilded Buddhist stupas, some of
them enormous. Several are under construction, festooned with necklaces of
bamboo scaffolding.
The European Journalism Centre has arranged a series of
meetings in villages in Kayin state, where the EU is funding development
projects with some of the £550m it has pledged to spend in Myanmar
by 2020 in the hope of helping the new government tackle some of its most
pressing problems.
The first destination is the town of Hpa -An.
As the road pushes farther into the countryside and turns south, there are fish
farms and rough huts on stilts, water buffalo in the fields, water melon stalls
by the roadside. Monks in deep red robes walk along the roadside, soliciting
donations.
In the village of Kawt
Ka Lway Thailand ,
which is less than 100km away. Daw Lay Phyu is 85 and bent 90 degrees at the
waist. She walks with a stick but insists on living alone in a large hardwood
house raised on stilts. Two of her daughters are in Thailand
working as housemaids, while one son works there selling snacks, another in a
plastics factory.
Only one daughter, Daw Ngwe Thin, 55, remains living nearby.
She says she only stayed because she was worried about leaving her mother alone.
Two of her own daughters have also gone to Thailand
to find work. “Incomes here are so low, everyone wants to go to Thailand
for work. There has not been fighting here for years but there is just no money
here.
“We want our children
back and factories to come for the village and the road to be mended, and if we
can have electricity we can make profits for our lives and our children.”
There are electricity cables running between posts down the
main street of the village, but they are not connected to the houses. The
village is clean and tidy, but desperately poor. Aid groups are working with
some of the villagers: Ngwe Thin has borrowed money from them to buy a pig, which
gave birth to seven piglets that she sold to raise money. The money is
important: there is no state pension and the number of people in the country
over the age of 60 is predicted to rise from 9% to 19% by 2050.
In the offices of the Pa-O ethnic group in Hpa-An, it is
civil rights that vex the workers who have been recruited to tackle corruption
and police indifference to crime. Without help from the police, the workers say,
they are limited in what they can do, other than plead the cases of those they
are trying to help. They rattle off the challenges: land grabs by members of
the military, rapes, child labour, trafficking, domestic violence, forced
labour.
Khin Than Htwe, a formidable former professor aged 58, describes
how two children abandoned by their parents were sold to a tea shop by their
neighbour. The children lived on Bilu Kyun island, she says, a place named
after the ogres which legend says once inhabited it. The children were looked
after by a female neighbour after their parents split up and went away to work.
But the neighbour came to hear that the owner of a tea shop in the city of Mayyamline ,
across the water on the mainland, needed waiters. So she sold the children, who
were about seven years old, for 700,000 kyats (about £420).
The tea shop was near the university and a student from the
island saw the children working. He informed their grandmother, who lived on
the island. She went to the tea shop to demand that the owner release the
children, but he refused. He had paid for them and they were his.
“The grandmother came to us and we went to the tea shop and
negotiated with the owner,” says Khin Than Htwe. “He said we could buy them
back. But we didn’t have the money. Every day, we went to see him, to explain
about child labour and how he could go to jail. In the end, he handed them over
to make us go away.”
The group informed the parents, who ignored them. They
didn’t waste their time with the police. “We don’t believe in the police. If
they get money they will do something, but the minimum they demand is 50,000
kyats (£30). They don’t want to do anything if they don’t think they will get
money.
“It shouldn’t happen. Children should be in school. If they
are in a tea shop or a factory, it is a loss to the country.”
Around a quarter of children go to work in the city, and it
is more prevalent in the rural areas, says Khin Than Htwe. They are only given
food as payment, no money. And there is trafficking into China
too – teenage girls mainly. Their parents let them go to work in Thailand ’s
prawn and fish industries and they are trafficked from there.
The road out of Hpa-An runs alongside wooded hills before
the landscape begins to become flatter. After a couple of hours the vehicles
turn on to the dirt track that leads to Kwin Ka Lay, another three hours away. Now
there are only occasional villages and river after river to cross. In the
monsoon season, the village can only be reached by boat.
Buddhist prayer flags line the road around shrines. There
are country-made vehicles with more than a hint of Mad Max about them: a small
tractor engine or generator fixed to the end of a long girder, two tractor
tyres at the front, a cart bolted to the rear. The rider, masked against the
dust, sits on the girder and steers with the aid of two long handles. Behind
the driver, men and women sit on straw on the flat bed of the cart.
This area is the territory of the KNLA’s Brigade 6, but
since the ceasefire the army is also present. The Karen National Union, the
political wing of the KNLA, signed a preliminary ceasefire in 2012 and the KNLA
agreed a ceasefire code of conduct with the military last November. It holds, up
to a point, but the Karen want the army out of the area entirely. The army has
other ideas.
Kwin Ka Lay is a mixed village, Buddhists and Christians
living alongside each other. In the Buddhist monastery, three KNU men sit on
the wooden floor. Arbram, 42, wears a black beret with a gold KNLA badge. He
has a red-and-white striped woven Karen top, as do Nay Gay, 29, and Hai Hku, 43.
They all want a federal state. “We want the government to remove the military,”
says Arbram. “It is like being in prison. There is no freedom of movement.”
The jury is out on the election results, he says. “There is
a saying in Myanmar :
you need to believe, but you also need to act. The idea is that 50% [of me] believes
in this new government, but 50% [is prepared to] take action in case things go
wrong.”
Nam Paw Lay Lay Wah, 35, has lived in the village all her
life and vividly remembers the fighting when she was a child. She hopes she has
seen the last of it. “We had a bunker in our house. When there was fighting we
would run to the bunker. I remember my sister and my dad were in the garden at
the farm and the soldiers used to pass by there, so the KNU dropped bombs on
the area. There were two big trees and my sister and my dad were trying to
shelter under them. My dad grabbed my sister and a moment later a bomb hit the
tree she was hiding under. It was like this until I was 18.”
It was not just the military who lost out in November’s
elections; many of the ethnic parties found themselves marginalised as voters
decided that the only way to ensure change was to back Aung San Suu Kyi. But in
their hearts, the people here remain Karen, says Nam Paw Lay Lay Wah.
“With the new elections taking place, I was really happy. But
I do not expect that much from this new government because I know that there
are so many things to be taken care of in this country.
“In five years, it will be impossible to change a whole
nation. But I believe there is a will to change. Maybe if they win yet another
election, things will start to really change. Also, I do not have complete
faith in this ceasefire agreement because it is just a signature on a paper. The
peace process is very fragile, everyone knows that. I want to see it work but
whether we have enough patience I don’t know.”
The National League for Democracy manifesto supported a
federal union, but back in Yangon there seems little
agreement on how that might be achieved, given the army’s grip on
constitutional change.
U Aung Shin, a member of the NLD’s central executive
committee who was imprisoned from 2000 to 2009 for his involvement with the
party, says the international community must exert pressure for change.
“Assistance of international actors is essential. We need a
better relationship between the military and civilians,” he says. “Their
attitude should be government from a democratic way, to change the mindset of
the military to stay away from dictatorship.”
U Tin Maung Oo, a decorated former infantry officer and
member of the parliamentary commission for legal affairs and special issues, agrees.
“People welcome federalism. But if you can’t get agreement from the military
you can’t change the constitution. We need a good military/civilian
relationship.” But neither he nor anyone else seems able to suggest how that
might be achieved if the military are unwilling to bend.
A couple of days later, an earthquake of magnitude 6.9
struck Myanmar .
It was a big quake, but originated far beneath the surface and there was little
damage. Earthquakes can send shockwaves around the world, but many other
factors determine whether there is any significant impact at the epicentre. Those
who voted for The Lady must hope that the same does not apply in politics.
THE LONG ROAD TO
DEMOCRACY
1824 Britain
makes its first incursions into the country. Two years later the Treaty of
Yandabo cedes the Arakan coast to Britain .
By 1886, Britain
has completely annexed the country, making it part of British India .
In the 1920s, protests begin against British rule.
1937 In response to the protests, led by students, intellectuals
and Buddhist monks, Britain
declares Burma
a crown colony separate from India .
But in 1942 the country is occupied by Japan ,
with assistance from the Japanese-trained Burma Independence Army, later known
as the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League, led by Aung San, father of Aung
San Suu Kyi.
1945 Britain
regains control of the country from Japan ,
also with assistance from the AFPFL, which by now has changed sides after it
became clear that Japan
had no intention of honouring its promise of granting independence. Two years
later, Aung San negotiates an agreement for independence, but is then
assassinated by political opponents, along with six members of the interim
government.
1948 Burma
achieves full independence under U Nu as prime minister, but a decade later he
is ousted by the military under General Ne Win. In 1960, U Nu wins a general
election but riles the military again by promoting Buddhism as the state
religion and tolerating separatism.
1962 Another coup led by Ne Win overthrows the government. The
Social Programme party becomes the only political party. Twelve years later, a
new constitution transfers power to a people’s assembly under Ne Win and other
military officers.
1987 Demonstrations begin against the government, provoking
a violent response from the military. Thousands die in anti-government riots. Two
years later, the State Law and Order Restoration Council declares martial law
and Aung San Suu Kyi is placed under the first of a series of house arrests. The
country is renamed Myanmar .
1990 The National League for Democracy (NLD) wins a general
election but the military ignores the result. Aung San Suu Kyi wins the Nobel
peace prize in 1991.
2003 Khin Nyunt becomes prime minister, promising a new
constitution, but is placed under house arrest in 2004. Three years later, anti-government
protests by monks end in thousands of arrests, but in 2008 the military offers
a new constitution. It does, however, award 25% of seats in parliament to the
military and bans Aung San Suu Kyi from office.
2009 Aung San Suu Kyi is jailed for breaching house arrest
for three years, later commuted to 18 months’ further house arrest. Her party, the
NLD, boycotts the following year’s election, which is won by the military-backed
Union Solidarity and Development party.
2011 Thein Sein becomes president. The following year, the
NLD makes big gains in byelections, winning 43 out of 45 seats it contests. Aung
San Suu Kyi is elected to parliament, becoming leader of the opposition.
2015 A draft ceasefire is signed with 16 rebel militias. The
NLD sweeps to victory in the general election, winning an overall majority. Four
months later Htin Kyaw is installed as president. GC
This article was amended on 17 April to remove a reference
to Yangon as the capital of Myanmar .
The country’s capital is Naypyidaw.