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BURMA: Hints of a ‘Velvet Revolution’

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Oct 30 2006 (IPS) - When a senior U.N. official returns to Burma in mid-November for a second visit this year, he will encounter a ruling junta feeling the heat from a sudden burst of non-violent activity that aims to register public discontent against decades of tyranny.

In May, during Ibrahim Gambari’s first visit to Rangoon, there was hardly a hint of the quiet resistance being guided by a group of former university student leaders known as the ‘88-Generation’ and who enjoy wide respect for their courage in taking on the military dictatorship.

The highlight of the May visit by the U.N. under secretary-general for political affairs was a one-hour meeting he had with Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the opposition National League for Democracy. Gambari, the first outsider in over two years to meet with the Nobel peace laureate, pressed for her release from house arrest, but the request was turned down. The past week marked 11 years that the pro-democracy icon has spent under house arrest over three cumulative periods.

The current burst of resistance unfolding in Burma has also thrown up features that Gambari will find difficult to sidestep – the detention of five leaders of the 88-Generation in late September for alleged ‘’subversive” activity. One of those detained, Min Ko Naing, enjoys legendary status as an activist and was only released from prison in November 2004 after being subject to 15 years of solitary confinement in a Burmese jail.

Sunday marked the beginning of one initiative that appears innocuous at first glance but, on second look, conveys a serious political tone, given the oppressive climate in that South-east Asian nation where the junta has clamped down on all political activity and expression. For a week, till Nov. 4, the 88-Generation students have urged citizens across the country to participate in ‘’Multiple Religious Prayer.” The silent activity to be held in temples, churches and mosques across the predominantly Buddhist country will also include candle light vigils.

‘’It is an attempt to test the political space in Burma,” says Khin Omar, chairwoman of the Network for Democracy and Development, a group made up of Burmese political exiles active along the Thai- Burmese border. ‘’They want more people to get involved as part of the democratisation process because they want change to come from within the country.”

This initiative, in fact, suggests the new route the student leaders have decided to take against the regime, she explained in an interview. ‘’They have to be creative to establish whatever space there is in Burma for the public to participate in.”

And those familiar with the iron grip with which the junta runs Burma, such as Zin Linn, who was jailed for nine years for his political activity, admit that this lead by the 88-Generation should offer a hint at how far people will dare to face the junta – although silently. ‘’The people inside Burma are afraid to move and openly display support to activity that may get them into trouble,” said Zin, a spokesman for the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, the elected government that was forced into exile by the junta in the early 1990s.

‘’This campaign is easier for the people to participate in. It is pursuing non-violent means,” he added in an interview. ‘’It will help to initiate the public into politics again. The student leaders are getting the people to move step by step.”

The call for prayers comes on the heels of two similar turns to non- violent means in October taken by the 88-Generation to engage with the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta is officially known. One was the ‘’White Expression” campaign, where people were urged to wear white clothes as a mark of honesty and purity, and the other was a campaign to collect signatures to back a petition calling on the junta to release of all political prisoners, including Suu Kyi.

The petition, which is finally destined for the U.N. garnered over 535,000 signatures and is already being viewed as a benchmark of what more the former student leaders could achieve as the conscience of the nation. ‘’They took a huge risk in this signature campaign, and two leaders were arrested after it began,” says Bo Kyi, joint secretary of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Burma, a human rights group operating along the Thai-Burmese border which campaigns for the release of the country’s political prisoners.

‘’They took many steps to inform the public before getting signatures,” he told IPS. ‘’The announcements were made by word of mouth, over telephone and through reports that appeared in the international media. They want the people to get involved in shaping their future by taking part; to do something other than talking.”

The SPDC’s reaction after the signature campaign ended was predictable. It accused the student leaders of ‘’tricking” the public into signing the petition, according to a report in ‘The New Light of Myanmar’, a newspaper serving as the mouthpiece of the junta. Rangoon’s regime, which calls the country Myanmar, made little effort to stop the petition being circulated at the beginning.

Such a mixed response stems from the SPDC’s awareness that 88- Generation has no political agenda and also its ‘’own curiosity about the support the student leaders have,” says Khin Omar. ‘’The SPDC was also using this moment to test the ground.”

The leaders of 88-Generation emerged during a pro-democracy uprising in August of 1988, when tens of thousands of people, led by students, took to the streets of many cities demanding greater political and civil liberties from a military regime that has been in power since a 1962 coup. The junta responded with brutality, killing hundreds of demonstrators in a hail of gunfire, and subsequently arrested and jailing the leaders that survived.

And as current developments at the United Nations show, the world body has grown increasingly troubled at Burma’s worsening political condition, with the junta tightening its grip to avoid a repetition of the 1988 pro-democracy uprising. Last December, Gambari made a telling argument about the oppression in the country in a report delivered to the Security Council.

Many of his revelations û including the torching of villages, systematic attack on civilians, forced labour and a growing humanitarian crisis û were recently echoed in another report released in October by the U.N human rights envoy to the country. Together, they have pushed the SPDC into a corner and have helped to strengthen the case for greater involvement by the Security Council, which already regards Burma as a country of international concern.

‘’The international community has to listen to the 88-Generation,” says Khin Omar, a former student leader who was on the streets of Rangoon during the bloody showdown in 1988. ‘’They want to be able to resolve the political crisis in the country.”