Asia-Pacific, Development & Aid, Headlines, Human Rights

BURMA: Expats Keep Democracy Hopes Alive

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Aug 8 2008 (IPS) - Aung Moe Zaw still lives in the hope that democracy will take root in Burma, 20 years after hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Rangoon to oppose that country’s military dictatorship. ‘’More people have joined our democracy movement. We are very optimistic about it,’’ the 41-year-old said in an interview on the eve of that anniversary better known in Burma as ‘8-8-88’, the day when this spirit of democracy flowered, Aug. 8, 1988.

It happened 26 years after the military had grabbed power in a coup, in March 1962, and ruled the country with an iron grip and a policy of isolationism.

‘’The momentum is still with us, if you look at what has happened since then. The international community is with us and is better aware than it was in August 1988,’’ added the leader of the Democratic Party for a New Society (DPNS), the second largest political party in the country.

Yet against such feelings of hope for a moment that has been pivotal in this South-east Asian nation’s struggle to become a democracy is the brutality and the bloodshed that also marked those heady days. The military dictatorship at the time crushed the pro-democracy uprising with force, troops firing into unarmed crowd, leaving over 3,000 protesters dead.

But that is not all. That brazen attack on unarmed citizens has hardly diminished, taking other oppressive forms in the ensuing years. It has consequently undermined the pro-democracy leaders that emerged out of the 8-8-88 protests to build a country that celebrates political and civil liberties.

Aung Moe Zaw typifies this predicament of Burma’s pro-democracy leaders, men and women who have been denied a chance to shape their political vision. He cannot talk freely and champion democracy in his country. He has to do so as a political exile in Thailand.

He is not an exception. Many Burmese who won seats at the 1990 parliamentary elections – held due to the pressure of 8-8-88 – have had to flee the country. The regime refused to recognise the results of the poll, where the National League for Democracy (NLD), an opposition party that was formed after the pro-democracy protests, won with a thumping majority. These elected Burmese arliamentarians who escaped set up the National Coalition Government for the Union of Burma (NCGUB) in exile.

And for the country’s democracy leaders who chose to stay behind and fight, the regime responded with arrests and long periods in jail or under house arrest. The most famous among them are Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate who leads the NLD, and has spent over 12 of her last 18 years under house arrest. The other is Min Ko Naing, a leader of the ’88 Generation’ university students who spearheaded the 8-8-88 protests, currently in jail for the third time in the past two decades.

The junta’s repression of democracy is best captured in Burma’s notorious prisons, where over 10,000 political activists have been jailed since the protests of August 1988, of which 2,000 still remain behind bars. And during the two decades, 137 political activists have died in Burmese jails or while being interrogated.

‘’The ’88 demonstrations produced many new leaders for Burma’s democracy movement but they were denied the freedom to build a new culture. They have been jailed or kept under house arrest,’’ says Bo Kyi, a former political prisoner and leading member of the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a group based on the Thai-Burma border championing the rights of the imprisoned activists.

‘’Those who have been freed and have not stopped working for democracy, like Min Ko Naing and the other leaders of the ’88 Generation,’’ he said during a telephone interview from Mae Sot. ‘’It is a very difficult decision they make being politically active. They know they can be sent back to prison. And they know the suffering there.’’

The junta’s use of Burmese jails to crush the hint of democracy since 1988 has been amplified by the longer prison sentences jailed political activists have been given than during the years before the pro-democracy uprising. ‘’Previously, a prison sentence for political activity would last seven years or a little more. But since a-8-88, political activists have been given 20 year sentences to even over 50 years,’’ says Win Min, a Burmese national security expert teaching at a Thai university in Chiang Mai.

‘’The jail has been one method the military regime has used to crush the political space for democratic activity. There is less space today than during the period shortly before the ’88 uprising,’’ he said during a telephone interview from Chiang Mai. ‘’The military has used more coercive power to control the political process and they appear relatively stronger than opposition groups.’’

The junta’s new found friends since 1988, such as China, India, Russia and the governments from a 10-member regional bloc, the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN), have also contributed to its staying power at the expense of a healthy Burmese democracy. This international protective net came to the regime’s rescue last September after it was condemned for the brutal crackdown of peaceful pro-democracy protests led by tens of thousands of Buddhist monks.

It may be a daunting political landscape, but Burma’s young political leaders like Aung Moe Zaw are far from conceding defeat. They want to keep the legacy of 8-8-88 alive, a reminder of a country in need of political reform. ‘’We have to use every possible means to convince the regime that democracy is good,’’ he says. ‘’We are not going to give up no matter how more restricted and controlled Burma is today than 20 years ago.’’