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Big Brother Burma, Over Easy

Jacquelyn Suter

A woman named Aong San Kyisomething like thatwas just recently released from housearrest in Burma, in Myanmar, whats it?

If the above musings describe you, you definitely need a read-me-first sheet. No offense, but alittle education is in order. Theres a number of highly interesting reads out there on this country,adventuresome travelogues and excellent reportage, that will bring you up to basic speed withminimal 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 intrepidBritish author who served five years in Burma as a member of the colonial administration, andimmortalized his time there by writing Burmese Days. But it was his 1949 book, Nineteen Eight-Fourthat would prove uncannily prescient for military dominated, post-1962 Burma. This bookinvented 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 inBurma, interweaves her own keen-eyed travel reportage with his writings to bring us a fascinatingglimpse of a country under self-siege. Although easy to read, Larkin is no backpacker pundit. AnAmerican journalist who studied Burmese at the School of Oriental and African Studies inLondon, shes especially insightful in relating example after example of how oppression of anentire nation of some 50 million people can be completely hidden from view. Indeed. Everwonder whats behind those romantic, lichen-covered high walls in Rangoon? Militarycompounds 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 trustedfriends...from hidden libraries all over the country and form a parallel universe of alternative truthsand secret histories.

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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 inthe silence of the British Library in London pouring over a collection of 19th c. notebooks, soreports Andrew Marshall in his adventure-filled book, The Trouser People. The diaries would bethose of the British imperialist Sir Geoge Scott, extending Queen Victorias sun-never-sets-on-the-empire to Upper Burma in the late 1800s.

Marshall dogs the footsteps of Scott in Burmas little visited north where he has rude awakeningswith some of Scotts favorite people, the headhunting Wild Wa. Today, those same headhuntershave morphed into the United Wa State Army, one of the most heavily armed narco-traffickers inthe world, keeping Thailands roustabouts well supplied with yaa baa.

Marshall shifts between his own experiences and Scotts long-ago adventures. So that we dontget stuck in tantalizing bygones, Marshall reminds us that, just as Scott pacified the Shans, thepresent military regime carries out a modern-day reprise on the ethnic people: While foreigntourists took day trips on beautiful Inle Lakeless than 60 miles awaypeople 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 Saophamodeling themselves on the former royal court at Mandalay. Reading like a fast-paced historicalnovel, Patricia Elliotts The White Umbrella provides a sweeping account of one of the mostinfluential 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 knewall participants intimately and experienced this life herself. Such a reminiscence has just recentlybeen published: The Moon Princess by Sao Sanda, a daughter of the Yawnghwe Saopha.

One of the most articulate chapters ofThe Moon Princess relates the political maneuveringsbetween the ethnic minorities and Burmas father of independence, General Aung San. SaoSanda explains how the Shans had misgivings about Aung Sans rush to independence under a

new Union of Burma fearing, as the animals in OrwellsAnimal Farm, that while all would beequal, some would be more equal than others. This fear would indeed materialize a decade laterin 1959, when all Saophas were forced to ceremonially abdicate in front of then ArmyCommander, 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 OrwellsNineteen Eight-Four, but it could well describe the brutal ending of another Shan Saopha, the onein Hsipaw. Twilight OverBurma 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 Hsipawuntil 1962, when Ne Wins troops surrounded the residence and seized the Saopha. His poignantnote smuggled of out prison read, miss you allI am still o.k. He was never seen again.

The fire next time

If the Burma Lite books went down smooth, then maybe youd like to try a more robust brew.Shelby Tuckers, Burma: The Curse of independence, would satisfy . Its an accessible, well-researched history of Burma from WWII through the end of Burmas independence period whenGeneral Aung San was assassinated.

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If you want to go even further into this darkest of histories, Outrage by Bertil Lintner, will notdisappoint. A recognized authority on Burmese politics and insurgency, Lintner picks up whereTucker leaves off, at the explosive demonstrations staged by the people in 1988.

These demonstrations were the context for General Ne Wins infamous quote, when the armyshoots, it shoots to kill. Indeed it did. When the slaughter began, one of the first victims was an18-year old girl, a Buddhist novice. She was still tightly holding a portrait of Aung San when shefell dead to the street. It was at this time that Aung San Suu Kyis political involvement began byher memorable address to masses of people in front of the countrys most sacred pagoda, theShwedagon. This is The Lady, Aung Sans daughter, who has spent the past 13 years underhouse arrest and has just been released.

These 1988 demonstrations, the first major ones after the military takeover in 1962, formed thebackdrop 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 itssenses about race relations. If they did not, he subtly warned, a line from an old slave song mightcome true: God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time! What does thisbook have to do with Burma? Much, maybe not much, depends. But the title most certainlyhas a nice ring to it.