Min-Min hawks postcards to foreign tourists who stroll through the market, but she was undoubtedly getting commissions on the jewelry, paintings and other trinkets I bought from the vendors she took me to. And she did so with the warmth and friendliness the Burmese people are famous for. Which was more than could be said about less fortunate hawkers in the largely empty marketplace, who had a sense of desperation in their eyes as they approached me hoping to make a sale. The brutal crackdown on the public protests led by the country’s revered Buddhist monks had rocked Burma to its core, not to mention ruining business for millions of people try to eke out a living in this beautiful yet tragic land.
I could feel the sense of gloom on Rangoon’s streets in the days after the crackdown. “There’s nothing to smile about,” one Burmese political observer and writer told me over a bowl of noodles in the back room of a local shop. One could say that about Burma for the last three decades, though somehow its people manage to survive. Now, however, even survival is in question. Prices for gasoline, rice and other staples are at their highest in years. People are in such dire straits, including the tiny middle class and the business community, that they’ve been forced to drastically cut back on their daily donations of food and money to local Buddhist monasteries—a key part of the Buddhist tradition, in which believers try to “make merit” through good thoughts and deeds that they hope will carry over into their later years and their next lives.
The military junta that has ruled the country with an iron fist for the past two decades has managed to run Burma’s economy into the ground, but it continues to pad its overseas bank accounts with millions earned from oil and gas production deals with foreign companies. The injustice—and dwindling food supplies and donations—proved too much for dozens of monasteries, which quickly organized and put monks into the streets of major towns and cities to say enough was enough. While calls for democracy, elections and human rights made great fodder for international media reports, the recent uprising in Burma was about the economy. “The socioeconomic condition is affecting both the public and the monks,” one activist whispered to me over coffee in a rundown hotel, where we hoped not to attract the attention of military intelligence agents.
The next crisis could be a spiritual one. Buddhism is a core part of Burmese society, but many people are increasingly unable to offer alms to the monks because they are too poor or, more recently, because their local monasteries are surrounded by soldiers. Many people fear there will be a “spiritual disconnect” among a population already outraged their by the shootings, beatings and arrests of thousands of unarmed holy men. The fate of the monks remains unknown. It’s very likely that thousands have been arrested and thousands more child monks ordered to return to their home villages. Other monks remain detained within their monasteries. “[The crackdown] was a very, very big mistake,” a senior aid worker in the northern city of Mandalay told me over morning tea. “People will never forget this, and they will never forgive.” The junta went into damage control by offering new donations of food and money to monasteries, and when it was refused, state-run newspapers doctored photos to make it seem as if the monks were accepting the gifts. On the contrary, the aid worker said, the monks are preparing for another round of protests, “maybe even with weapons this time.”
Until recently it was unthinkable that Burmese monks would resort to violence. But the country has very likely stepped into the abyss: a complete and possibly irreversible break between the ruling junta on one side and the Buddhist clergy, civil society, the business community, farmers and armed rebel groups on the other. “It’s really a common cause now,” said an insider with the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Even more frightening is the question of whether the junta even realizes the realities on the ground. Since the armed forces first seized power in 1962, the military has ruled with the attitude that only it can lead the nation and anyone who complains about its governance is an ungrateful traitor. Recent stories in the junta’s laughable mouthpiece newspaper, the New Light of Myanmar, which claimed that the monks who took to the streets were impostors and that the protesters were organized by foreign governments, provide disturbing indications that the junta has completely lost touch with reality.
It remains to be seen whether the Buddhist clergy and other opposition forces like the NLD can capitalize on the current disarray within Burma and the unprecedented international condemnation from the outside. The country’s 300,000 monks, despite having numbers and organization in their favor, are not a political movement. The student activists who led the last major uprising in 1998 are a spent force, and Suu Kyi and the NLD, despite their heroic status, can be as stubborn as the generals. “I appreciate what the monks are doing, but what’s needed is a coordinated political movement,” said one former student leader who spent five years in prison. “Just calling more people into the streets is not a strategy.”
Concerned international players such as the United States, the European Union and the United Nations also need to come up with a strategy. The Burmese whom I’ve met here are begging for continued pressure to force the junta to seriously negotiate with the opposition, likely with Suu Kyi as its representative, on releasing political prisoners, national reconciliation, power sharing and eventually new elections. Well-meaning but naive measures, such as American First Lady Laura Bush’s call on the junta on Wednesday to “step aside” immediately, are not going to advance that goal. Why on earth would the generals step down when they control the armed forces and the economy and have friendly relations with both India and China?
For now the West’s best course of action is to continue applying pressure until the junta begins genuine talks with Suu Kyi about a way forward. That’s what the Burmese people I’ve met here want. Inevitably, the military will be part of any future Burma, but there’s always hope its role can be eventually scaled back, as has been the case in Indonesia during the past decade. The U.S. and exiled Burmese groups should also halt their calls for economic sanctions and tourism boycotts, because, as history shows, they’re a blunt weapon that always hurts ordinary people more than ruling elites. That’s a lesson the Burmese already know. “I can make about $10 a day, but only when foreigners are here,” my taxi driver in Rangoon told me. “You can’t shut us off like that. The only reason you saw them shooting the monks is because people were able to come in and out and have contact with us.” Perhaps that’s the kind of voice the world needs to hear.
