Man's Inhumanity to Man, Part II

Satan's Emissaries

The history of Burma (Myanmar) provides a case study in cruelty and man's inhumanity to man.  Part I canvassed British colonial inhumanity to the native Burmese tribes.  Ironically, British "civilised" cruelty was little different to the capricious personality cults of many Burmese kings in previous centuries.  

The twentieth century witnessed a global explosion of repressive, totalitarian regimes.  Millions upon millions lost their lives, sacrificed upon the altar of secularist ideologies (Mao, Hitler, Lenin/Stalin, Pol Pot).  The Killing Fields were liberally irrigated by the blood of  millions of sacrificial victims to cult of Man as God.  Burma has been one of the longest running totalitarian regimes.  Now, it appears, even its dark times may be coming to an end.  Its repressive military regime is one of the last to survive--along with North Korea.

This is not to imagine, of course, that there are no repressive regimes left upon earth.  One only has to glance at Islamic authoritarian states (Saudi Arabia, Iran, Palestinian Authority, ISIS) to see brutal injustice continuing its work.  But the size and scale of the repression in Burma  and North Korea have taken human deification to another level entirely.

Emma Larkin describes the tender embraces of Insein Prison in Yangon, a place of fearsome repression, torture, and human suffering.
 Here was the ultimate fruit of Burmese Socialism--the Burmese version of totalitarian control over human subjects.  As the last days of the "Generals" appear to be unfolding Insein still exists and operates, but we hope not for much longer.  The tender embraces of the Generals have lovingly caressed the Burmese people for over fifty years--way too long.

Insein Prison was built to hold 2,500 prisoners.  Today some 10,000 are crammed within its walls.  Among the criminals incarcerated in jails across Burma are an estimated 1500 political prisoners.  These include students, writers, doctors, teachers, members of the NLD, and monks and nuns who have been arrested for voicing their disagreement with the regime.  After the people's uprising in 1988, the government began a systematic hunt-and-destroy campaign to purge the 'troublesome' elements from Burmese society.  It targeted down student leaders involved in the uprising and, later, outspoken NLD MPs elected in the 1990 election.  Hundreds of people were jailed, hundreds more were forced underground, and thousands fled to neighbouring Thailand.  [Emma Larkin, Finding George Orwell in Burma (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), p.146f.]

As you read the following account, bear in mind that the Generals have systematically lined their pockets in one of the largest kleptomaniac rapes of a country's resources and wealth of the century.  Resource rich Burma has been plundered by the elite totalitarian rulers as they have deliberately sought to model themselves after Burma's former absolute monarchs.  Why not?  It's the Burmese way.

Larkin met with Nay Rein Kyaw, who had been arrested by the regime in 1992.  He now lives in Thailand, and maintains a tiny one-room museum dedicated to memorialising Burmese prison life.

Nay Rein Kyaw was arrested in 1992.  Late one night two Military Intelligence officers accompanied by soldiers and police, came to his house and searched his bedroom. . . . He was taken into custody and interrogated.  "They didn't let me eat or drink for three days," he said.  "I was so thirsty I kept thinking that if I could just get to the toilet I could drink the water there, but when they let me go to the bathroom the guards stood in front of me and wouldn't allow me to scoop up any water."  Nay Rein Kyaw was beaten repeatedly and had electrodes applied to his genitals.  "They asked me why I wrote bad things about the government," he said.  "They wanted me to say I was wrong: that they are not oppressive, that they are being fair.  But I could not say those things." . . . .

Burmese activists know it is impossible to withstand extreme torture.  They can promise their friends only one thing: that they will endure the pain for three days.  This, it is hoped, provides others connected to them with enough time to go into hiding.  The interrogation process can take weeks or months; then, once it is over, detainees are usually sentenced in a military court and taken from the interrogation centre to the prison.  [Ibid., p.147ff]

We may ask, from where does such cruelty originate?   It does not come from the ether.  It occurs when ordinary, same-as-us human beings arrogate to themselves absolute power over life and death.  Or, to express it another way, when human beings reach forth to grasp at the powers of the Almighty God, to hold the power of eternity in their own hands.  This represents the quisling following in the steps of his true Master, the Satan who utterly hates both God and man--the creature made in his image.  Such malice and the cruelty are demonic, from the Pit.

In this sense the depredations and tortures of the Burmese people under the hands of the Generals, the Satan's quislings, provide a foretaste of Hell.  As we read of the sufferings of prisoners at the hands of those who would be as God, we see the future of all men who deny the Christ and prefer their own lusts and idolatrous devotions.  And, lest there be any doubt the point, we remind our readers that the Burmese Generals remain dedicated Buddhists.

At Insein [Nay Rein Kyaw] was put into a cell with four other political prisoners.  The cell was seven feet by eight feet wide, and had few amenities.  Each prisoner had a burlap sack and a blanket to be used as bedding on the concrete floor.  A low earthenware tray that was emptied once a day served as a toilet. . . . "The food was almost inedible," said Nay Rein Kyaw.  "Sometimes we found grass in the soup, and there were often pebbles or sand in the rice."  Once a week he was provided with his ration of protein: a small piece of boiled meat.  Each day he was allowed out of his cell for fifteen minutes to walk around the prison yard and bathe (using a maximum of fifteen scoops of water from the central trough).

Punishments were frequent.  You could be punished if you asked for more rice or talked at the wrong time, said Nay Rein Kyaw.  He explained how prisoners were immobilized with twelve pound iron shackles, were made to crawl over sharp stones, or were forced to hold impossible and humiliating positions such as squatting as if they were riding a motorcycle.  The worst punishment, he said, was solitary confinement.  In Insein Prison, prisoners have been confined in tiny kennels built to hold military dogs.  [Ibid, p. 150f.]

There is hope in Burma these days that the regime of the Generals is coming to an end.  There are signs that this is the case.   Let us hope so.  Let us hope the Burmese version of socialism will become little more than a fading bad dream.  May it be replaced in due time by the blessed reign of the Prince of Peace, who declared: "Come unto Me, all ye who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."