Just what’s happened since remains unclear, as foreign media have been banned from the country. But there are chilling signs of a crackdown similar to the one in 1988, after pro-democracy demonstrations paralyzed Burma. In that episode, some 3,000 people were ultimately killed. Now human-rights groups and the few foreign journalists in Rangoon report mass arrests by truncheon-wielding riot troops and scattered shootings; a handful of protesters have been killed. Civilians are said to be acting as human shields to protect the monks, and vice versa. Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi—Burma’s long-detained pro-democracy leader and arguably the nation’s highest moral authority—has reportedly been moved by her captors from house arrest to jail. What happens next will depend on “the resilience, the determination and the bravery of the people,” said Britain’s top diplomat in Burma, Mark Canning, in a telephone interview.
Whatever transpires, Burma’s brutal military government, which has ruled the country since 1962, faces an existential crisis of its own making. The junta, which refused to honor the results of elections held in 1990 after Suu Kyi and her fellow democrats won by a landslide, has persistently staked its legitimacy on its self-declared mission to preserve national unity and defend Buddhist tradition. To bolster its religious credentials, it has funded new monasteries (the country has an estimated 300,000 monks) and showered friendly Buddhist clergymen with lavish gifts. Leaders regularly visit religious sites where they burn incense, give alms (a crucial way to gain merit) or inaugurate new buildings. Burma’s 74-year-old strongman, Gen. Than Shwe, made one such stop last November when, according to state media reports, he drove home nine jewel-encrusted stakes with a gold mallet to demark a new pagoda.
After China crushed the Tiananmen uprising in 1989, Beijing sought to win back public loyalty by dramatically improving living standards. Burma’s government, in contrast, has talked reform but failed to deliver, and the economy of this resource-rich nation is now in tatters. Government handouts haven’t blinded the monks to the everyday suffering many encounter. ‘‘This is about a whole host of economic pressures, and the monks are a very interesting barometer," says Canning.
The tipping point seems to have come recently when, thanks to inflation, the communities on which monks depend for alms were suddenly rendered unable to afford to feed the customary two meals a day. The holy men took to the streets in anger.
Their frustration seems to be almost universally shared. State propagandists claim the country has lately enjoyed double-digit growth, but outside analysts paint a much grimmer picture. Experts use proxies like energy use, fertilizer consumption and trade flows to approximate Burma’s true growth figures. Each of these indicators has slackened of late; according to the Asian Development Bank, electricity usage plunged 32.4 percent from 2004 to 2005. “That’s something you just don’t get in an economy that’s growing by 10 percent a year,” says economist Sean Turnell of Burma Economic Watch at Australia’s Macquarie University. By his estimate, Burma has lately grown by only about 2 percent a year—insufficient to keep pace with population growth—and gains have been largely confined to oil and gas exports that do nothing to enrich average households.
Than and his cronies have profited most, of course, which hasn’t helped their Buddhist credentials. A new report by Transparency International last week listed Burma among the world’s most corrupt countries. Although he claims to live in Buddhist austerity, Than is believed to have millions stashed in Singaporean banks and in 2006 staged a lavish wedding for one of his daughters at which she received multimillion-dollar gifts (a video of the nuptials made it onto YouTube).
All of this infuriates ordinary Burmese, and the country is now fragmenting. According to veteran Burma watchers, top military leaders seem to fear being pushed aside by disgruntled subordinates. And a similar power struggle is playing out in the religious establishment. Senior clergymen loyal to the junta have appeared on state TV in recent days urging monks not to join the demonstrations. But they’ve been widely ignored by abbots who are likely planning strategy by cell phone, says Aung Zaw, editor of an English-language Thai magazine with extensive contacts inside Burma.
Many citizens now seem to be pushing for the junta’s ouster with little thought of what comes next. “The young people are saying, ‘Get the military out of power’,” says David Steinberg, a Burma expert at Georgetown University. “But if the government were to resign—which is 99.9 percent not going to happen—do you think you’d have democracy?”
To prevent more bloodshed or another coup, foreign governments, including Washington and Beijing, have urged restraint. China is keen to avoid the disintegration of what many see as its client state just months before the 2008 Summer Olympics. The situation is also sticky for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which welcomed Burma’s membership back in 1997 but has since failed to moderate its behavior.
Wilson, the former Australian ambassador, laments what he terms “missed opportunities” to engage Burma’s leaders, especially by the United Nations. Indeed, even after the shooting started last week, China blocked a Security Council resolution condemning the crackdown, though Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon did send a special envoy to Burma to negotiate with the junta. Steinberg says diplomats must give the generals “a face-saving exit” of some sort; otherwise, he worries, they’ll feel trapped and respond with the same ruthlessness they displayed in 1988. Even if the trap they’re ensnared in is one of their own making.
