years.12 By the time of the election in 2010, after decades of crushing the opposition and strengthening itself, the military was the only well-established institution in the country, so it could afford to cede some of its power in the confidence that it would retain a pre-eminent position.
As the transition progressed, it would become increasingly clear that it was irreversible – albeit within limits that, in moments of euphoria, were not quite visible. But the transition would also bring to light complexities and dark aspects of Burmese society to which very few had previously paid attention: the intercommunal violence in Arakan and beyond; the emergence of an extremely exclusionary brand of Burman ethno-nationalism that seemed to permeate every stratum of society; and the ambiguous, and sometimes explicitly racist, positions taken by the pro-democracy camp and long-time defenders of human rights. All of this contradicted what one author has termed the ‘neat, if overly simplified, plotline of bad military versus good citizenry’13 that many foreign journalists and external observers, including me, had long taken almost for granted.
Before the transition period, the most common narrative on Burma was that of a democratic opposition led by a courageous and graceful woman, heroically combating by nonviolent means a brutal and cruel regime led by a clique of thuggish generals. Admittedly, quite what the ideology of Aung San Suu Kyi and her party was had never been clear, and nor had her vision of the country’s future, beyond some platitudes about human rights, democracy and freedom. But it was easy to believe that her heart was in the right place; and the sacrifices that she and many pro-democracy activists, who had endured years of jail, were clear proof of their courage and commitment.
The many conflicts with ethnic minorities in the country’s periphery were seen either as some sort of subplot, subsumed within the central epic story of democracy versus dictatorship, or as part of the same struggle, on the assumption that Suu Kyi’s NLD and the ethnic groups were on the same side. The plight of the Rohingya minority, in many respects unique, barely registered, or was seen as part of the wider struggle of the minorities for their rights. The communal cleavages that in the past had violently pitted Rakhine against Rohingya in Arakan, or Buddhists against Muslims in central Burma, were little understood, and were often explained away as mere manipulations by the military. At times they probably had been orchestrated by the military; but the military was exploiting deep divisions that pre-dated its rise to power, and – as would become clear during the transition – were more pervasive in Burmese society than most foreigners had realized.
Such distortions and simplifications, as well as the idealization of Suu Kyi and the pro-democracy camp, had to do with the fact that the country had been largely closed to foreigners, but also with the way many of us approached the issue. Orientalist fantasizing surely played its role, but the point of entry to Burma was equally important, if not more so. This was usually not Burma itself, but Mae Sot, a Thai town on the Burmese border where a sizable Burmese community has lived for decades. Most of the Burmese people living in Mae Sot are labourers working in garment factories, or refugees of all ethnicities living in a camp nearby. But our contacts were usually either Burman political exiles, many of whom had fled the country after spending years in Burma’s prisons as political prisoners, or activists of ethnic minorities, mostly Karen, either belonging to or closely associated with the Karen National Union (KNU). In a sense, Mae Sot was a distorted microcosm of Burma. Karen and Burman activists lived alongside one another, often working and socialising together. It was not uncommon to share a drink with groups that would include, say, a former Karen guerrilla and a Burman ex-political prisoner, both of whom would share a loathing for the military regime, appear to share the same goals, and express similar admiration for Aung San Suu Kyi.
It was self-evident that the military dictatorship was the common enemy, and that would lead many of us to assume that the same goals were shared by the pro-democracy camp, mostly ethnic Burmans, and the Karen insurgents – and by extension other ethnic groups. At that time, few politically conscious members of the ethnic minorities had much reason to distrust Aung San Suu Kyi. While everybody knew that the NLD was a pre-eminently Burman party, it was fair to allow it the benefit of any doubt, given that it had never held power and had made vague promises of federalism.
As journalists, our next step usually included an incursion into the territories held in Burma by the Karen guerrillas – or by some other group, such as the Shan or Kachin – along the Thai or Chinese borders. These were trips on which the reporter would be embedded with armed groups keen to present a positive image of themselves. Moreover, in central Burma, travelling as undercover journalists with tourist visas, who could potentially expose anybody talking to us to danger, we would mostly interview NLD politicians or other pro-democracy activists loosely associated with the party. It is unlikely that those sources were willingly misleading us; most of them were probably sincerely committed to the causes they claimed to defend. But they offered us a very narrow picture of the country, and we often had only ourselves to blame. We rarely asked ‘hard questions’, or talked with government officials, who in our stories remained the faceless bad guys lurking in the shadows. Many of us had formed an idealized image of Burma, and most of our contacts and sources were happy to help us to confirm it again and again.
I was beholden to that image when I travelled to Rangoon for the first time, in November 2010. It was just a few weeks after the election, and Aung San Suu Kyi had recently been released from house arrest. The NLD headquarters was a ramshackle building not far from the iconic Shwedagon Pagoda, constantly watched by secret policemen sitting in a tea shop across the street. Most members of the party I interviewed in the headquarters were former political prisoners with harrowing stories about the harsh conditions they had endured in jail, generally narrated in an almost casual manner. It was difficult not to sympathize with their cause, even though the party had an excessive resemblance to a personality cult devoted to Aung San Suu Kyi, often described as ‘our great leader’.
The first man I interviewed there was the legendary U Win Tin. Born in Central Burma in 1930, Win Tin had worked as a journalist for most of his life. He had been the editor-in-chief of a couple of newspapers, including one that was closed in 1978 for its critical coverage of the Ne Win regime. In 1988 he took an active role in the popular uprising that toppled Ne Win, and was one of the cofounders of the NLD. He was said to have been one of the key figures in convincing Aung San Suu Kyi to join the struggle for democracy. After that, he had spent almost nineteen years in jail, at times in solitary confinement in a dog cell. He was an affable man who would wear the blue shirt that all prisoners wear in Burma’s jails as a gesture of solidarity until his death in 2014. If Suu Kyi was often described as the ‘mother’ of the pro-democracy camp in Burma, U Win Tin was surely its ‘father’.
The NLD was in a very precarious position in those days. After it refused to register for the election, the government warned its members that they could not carry on with any political activity and were only allowed to do ‘social work’. Even in the worst years of persecution by the military, the NLD had been recognized as a political party – though this had rarely implied the freedom to organize or campaign. But now, for the first time since its founding, it had been explicitly outlawed as a party, or at least put into a dangerous legal limbo. ‘The government has told us that we can become an NGO or something like that, but we cannot do that: this is a political party, and the most popular in the country for that matter, as we won the last free elections with an overwhelming victory’, U Win Tin told me, referring to the party’s victory in 1990. ‘For the moment we don’t know if the government is allowing us to work because of the international support we enjoy or they are waiting for the right time to attack us. Maybe they are waiting to convene the parliament and form the new government to take action against us. We don’t really know, we are waiting to see what happens. In any case, when Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was released it was clearly demonstrated that she enjoys the support of most of our country and the international community’, he added.
A few months later, in August 2011, I had the chance to interview ‘the Lady’ – as Suu Kyi is widely known – in the same ramshackle building. With her aristocratic demeanour and unfailing politeness, Suu Kyi impressed a young journalist
