True Grit

Her Father's Blood

Aung San Suu Kyi and the Struggle For Burmese Freedom

We have just finished reading Peter Popham's biography of Aung San Suu Kyi.  It is a well-done biography of Myanmar's famous leader.  [Peter Popham, The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi (Croydon:  Rider-Ebury Publishing, 2012.]

The whole book is valuable for a whole lot of different reasons.  Suu Kyi, of course, is now a political leader in what is an increasingly progressive, emerging state, Myanmar (formerly Burma).  We have had the privilege of visiting Myanmar twice in recent years.  One does not have to travel far, nor meet many people, before one hears about Suu Kyi's work and exploits in helping Myanmar change from being a military dictatorship to a democratic republic. 

What sort of a person is Aung San Suu Kyi, then?  A remarkable one, is the straightforward reality.  Try this on for size . . . .

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.

Repeated Folly

Men Rising Above Their God-Ordained Station

Myanmar, or Burma, has drawn the attention of the world's media in recent days with a largely free election and a staggering majority for Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy.  This has occurred under military rule--a rule which has persisted in Myanmar for over fifty years.  It remains to be seen where it will all lead.  We hope it leads to a much greater good for that country.

Burma was a former British colony; its economy was largely shattered as a result of the Japanese invasion in 1943 and the resulting land war throughout the country.  Eventually Japan was defeated and driven out by the Allies.

The leader of the Burmese army at the time, Ne Win seized power from the post-war elected civilian government, and the resulting military regime was welcomed by the populace.  Emma Larkin [Finding George Orwell in Burma (New York: The Penguin Group, 2011)] describes what developed from there:

Unintended Witness to the Truth

Patterns of Oppression

Emma Larkin, in her book Finding George Orwell in Burma [New York: Penguin Books, 2011] describes how the regime of state censorship applies in Myanmar.  She records a conversation with a printer and publisher in which he describes how the Press Registration and Security Department ("PRSD") operates.

The PRSD is a veritable army of "scrutinizers" headed by members of the Military Intelligence.  It has the awesome task of searching through every single printed item--whether school textbook, magazine, calendar or song lyrics--for a word, a sentence, a picture which might be considered anti-government.  Ko Ye picked up a copy of a lifestyle magazine that was lying of the desk.  Its rough, grey pages were filled with short stories, articles about moves, and profiles of popular singers.  He flicked through the magazine and showed me where censors had scrawled with a pink highlighter across certain paragraphs or, as was the case on some pages, whole articles.  Scribbled alongside each scrawl was the single word "hpyoke" or "remove".

"Why these particular pages?" I asked.