Perfect Hostage: Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma and the Generals
Justin Wintle (Arrow, 2007)
When friends gave me this book as a gift, they certainly hit the mark. I have more than a passing interest in Myanmar/Burma and this biography has added immensely to my understanding of this tragic country and its “imprisoned” people.
Having briefly visited Burma (in October, 2007 – three weeks after the September protests) and developed friendships with both indigenous and foreign Jesus-followers seeking to bring change there, reading Winkle’s book was much more than a fascinating account of the struggle for freedom in a distant land. It had a very personal ring to its story and the context seemed more than a little familiar.
While the book centres around Aung San Suu Kyi (pronounced Ong San Sue Chee) – the Nobel Peace Prize-winning leader of the democratic movement in Burma, who has been under house arrest for most of the past twenty years, it really is much more than just a biography. Wintle spends the first fifty pages detailing the history of Burma and its people, and then the next hundred pages describing the life and work of Aung San Suu Kyi’s father – the iconic General Aung San.
Aung San, the “pin-up” hero of Burmese independence, is revered in his homeland in much the same way as Mandela in South Africa or Martin Luther King Jnr in the USA. Even the military junta, according to Wintle, seeks to claim him as its own. Having helped lead the struggle for independence from the British, Aung San was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Executive Council (effectively Prime Minister) in the transitional government, leading up to formal independence (4th January, 1948). Sadly, he and six of his fellow ministers never saw the day, having been assassinated at a cabinet meeting less than six months prior (July, 1947). Wintle suggests that the primary reason for this was Aung San’s commitment to an inclusive and unified Burma – one that would embrace and give voice to all those living within Burma’s borders – not just the dominant (and Bhuddist) Burman majority (of which he himself was a member), but also the myriad of tribes such as the Karen, Shan, Chin and Kachin. It is these ethnic minorities who have suffered so brutally under the current junta’s rule.
Of course, whether Aung San’s vision for a fair, just, democratic and non-discrimatory Burma would ever have stood a chance of becoming a reality is a speculative question. For as Wintle notes, the historical divides and prejudices run deep and long. And so often the ideals of young leaders degenerate into despotic, self-serving regimes – witness Mao Zedong among others. Regardless of whether this would have happened to Aung San, Wintle suggests that the gap between the real Aung San and the young martyred Aung San (aged just 32) has grown enormously through his early death. Like JFK he is idealized by his countrymen precisely because he promised so much but was denied the opportunity to demonstrate whether he could deliver.
One misconception I had of Burma was that the Burmese people were essentially peace-loving and gentle, and that the huge excesses of the military junta these past fifty years were an aberration, not consistent with Burma’s past. How wrong I was. As Wintle notes, “thoke-thin-ye – getting rid of one’s rivals – was the Burmese way of achieving power.” (p148) That the current junta is so ruthless in eradicating any opposition to their rule is not an enigma. Sadly, it is historically the way of Burma. In fact, the tragic “…truth about Burma (is that) it is a place where the victims of violence, not its perpetrators, are punished.” (p410)
Anyway, I digress! The final three hundred pages is about Aung San Suu Kyi. Having set the scene with his historical survey, Wintle outlines her life’s journey – from young daughter of a national hero in an increasingly militaristic country, to education in India and England, to marriage to an Oxford academic and motherhood of two boys. For all intents and purposes that is how the story of Suu Kyi could have continued and indeed ended.
In fact, the irony is that it was only the impending death of her mother that caused Suu Kyi to return to Burma for an extended period, after more than a quarter of a century (over half her life) abroad. It could easily be suggested that she had become by this time, more British than Burmese.
However, while caring for her dying Mum, Suu Kyi came into daily contact with many who were the targets of the junta’s aggression. As she listened to and questioned them about their stories, the harsh reality of life under the repressive regime began to touch her. The journey from there to leader of the democratic movement occurred over a matter of months, coinciding with a succession of protests against the junta.
Wintle presents Suu Kyi as a reluctant democratic leader. She was drawn into becoming the focal point of the struggle not through any desire to be so, but because as daughter of the national hero, others looked to her for leadership. Indeed, her father’s shadow looms large over Suu Kyi’s life, even though she was only a toddler when he died. His legacy and mission are certainly the fuel that has fired many of her actions and propelled Suu Kyi into such a role.
Why such a long struggle?
Not far from the surface of this ongoing story of struggle is a question that all who suffer or ponder Burma’s pain eventually ask – how is it that such a repressive regime has been able to remain in power for nearly half a century? When the tipping point for change has come tantalizingly close (particularly in 1988/9 and 2007) why has the momentum, both internally and externally, been unable to cause the generals to run for the hills?
While Wintle doesn’t directly answer this question, he does paint a picture that hints at factors such as the unwillingness of other Asian countries to stem the trading of arms, drugs and key natural resources. The junta, it seems, has always been able to access the money and arms required to survive any attempts by the international community to force their hand.
One can’t help feeling that the blood of Burma’s many victims are on the hands of nations such as China, Thailand, Japan and Singapore. (Though of course such self-centred actions that fly in the face of justice and ethics are not the sole domain of these nations – witness our own Western nations’ involvement in many other global contexts).
However, alongside quite plausible reasons such as this, Wintle suggests that the 1988 uprising “…failed not because some of its participants turned to violence, but because it was, as a whole, not forceful enough. There was a devout, Bhuddist reluctance to fight fire with fire, to organize a people’s militia that might easily have secured weapons from across Burma’s permeable borders…A land once famous for dacoitry seemed no longer to have any dacoits…” (pages 271-2) (Note: don’t worry – I had to look the word up – it means “a member of a band of armed robbers in India or Burma”!)
Here the writer questions the wisdom of Suu Kyi to hold so tightly to the principles of peaceful non-resistance. While there’s clearly genuine admiration for The Lady and her values, Wintle more than once expresses a degree of exasperation that having come so close to toppling the regime, in his view principled non resistance ensured failure to throw the knockout blow. Late in the book he again suggests that Suu Kyi’s commitment to peaceful resistance had undermined her power. “Force, or the threat of force, is the language Burma’s dictators best understand.” (p427) In other words, if you don’t use some of the same arsenal, you’ll get nowhere.
To be fair to him though, Wintle does acknowledge that:
Suu Kyi’s position was that to resort to force of any kind, however physically inconsequential, would fatally damage the principles she stood for. Any victory gained by violence could only perpetuate violence, and it was Burma’s historic culture of violence that she wished to dismantle. (p283)
I was reminded as I read the last pages of the book that there is no “happy ending” in this story. The struggle continues. Its key character is still imprisoned and isolated. Growing older by the day (now well over 60), this gracious lady holds steadfastly to what may seem to many, a futile course of action. Numerous times she has resisted the option to exit the scene. Indeed the Generals must have grown weary of the opportunities they have given for Suu Kyi to go back to England (thus ridding them of the problem). The temptation must have been great at times – particularly when her husband was dying of cancer and her boys were growing up. Meanwhile the regime continues to intimidate, arrest, imprison, torture and kill dissenting voices, all the time diminishing the numbers who work toward a free and just Burma. Wintle summarises that:
In every sense we may think of, Aung San Suu Kyi has become the perfect hostage. Her principled stand against a modern tyranny has been adroitly turned against her by unprincipled captors. Kept in captivity, in part brought about by her own intransigence, the songbird’s freedom has a price that no one can, or any longer dares, pay. The latest apostle of non-violence is imprisoned by her own creed. (417-8)
Of course the story is not finished yet. History reminds us that sometimes in the most demoralizing circumstances, and in places and times when almost all hope has been extinguished, change makes a dramatic and unexpected entrance. The tipping point arrives. On a bleak and sub-zero Romanian winter night hundreds of residents of Timisoara gathered to celebrate the outlawed Christmas, not realizing that in a few short days the decades-long tyranny of Nicolae Ceausescu would be over. On a hot and steamy Manila February, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds blocked the way of Marcos’ army faithfuls, acting as human wall and so triggering the collapse of the twenty year old regime. The tipping point eventually arrives, and then all the seemingly pointless and unproductive resistance and struggle finally makes some sense.
And yet, for those who suffer in Burma, the wait and the struggle must seem intolerable. Those who fight for change; those who continue to suffer under the fear, torture and repression of Than Shwe and his cohorts; those who seek to aid and care for the victims of the junta’s war against its own people; those who agitate and pray for change from outside Burma’s boundaries – must surely cry out “How long, O Lord? How long?”
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