CLOSE ENCOUNTER IN BURMA BOILOVER
September 28th 2007 10:57
MY EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT OF THE MYANMAR MADNESS AS BURMA DESCENDS INTO BADNESS
I was sitting in the funky Monsoon Restaurant in Theinbyu Road near the Sule Pagoda in downtown Rangoon on Tuesday September 18, when the first of the maroon-robed flag-waving monks marched past, a group of about 400, with a large contingent of supporters.
I was lunching with a young Burmese business woman who was compiling a register of the nation’s known mining resources, and she was upset that some associates were accusing her of cronyism because she had to deal with military contacts to get her information.
Suddenly the clatter of this busy restaurant ceased. An eerie silence set in, and then from outside came the clamour of chanting, shouting, and strange sound of the slapping of hundreds of slippered feet, slippers being the term for the leather thongs that most folk wear here.
I looked out the window and there they were – the marching monks. The notion that this might happen had been the talk of town for days as tensions increased, and now it had begun.
Seeing a demonstration in Rangoon is a surreal sight, something I’d never witnessed before even though I’d lived in Rangoon for year in 2004-2005 while working as a journalism trainer for the English-language Myanmar Times, and had visited frequently.
What was even more surprising than the marching monks was their retinue of ordinary people, many holdings hands, with their faces screwed up in absolute anguish.
This was open defiance, and it was unprecedented in recent history.
It took almost an hour for the parade and the crowds to pass the restaurant and when they were gone I quickly hailed a cab, noticing the obvious tension in the streets as I was driven to the Myanmar Times office where other taxi drivers were arriving to report that demonstrations had broken out all over town.
The paper’s veteran reporter, Chit Thein Oo, bustled into the editor-in-chief Ross Dunkley’s office reporting the same, and noting ominously that now it had begun it would build and get bigger and last a long time.
There was a quick discussion of whether staff photographers should be sent out but Ross Dunkley decreed it was a waste of time. “They’ll only get arrested,” he said, “Like last time.”
AFP had local photographers and reporters on the ground who seemed immune from arrest.
After leaving the office and touring the city by cab again I saw seething knots of demonstrators in many of the streets, and I knew I was witnessing history.
I returned to my hotel observing that a longyi-clad guy in a white collar-less shirt, who had mysteriously materialised the day before, was still sitting on an old wooden kitchen chair by the lift on the floor, watching.
He was presumably secret police, and when I passed one of the hotel’s management staff in the corridor I asked her, “Who is that man? What is his job?”
She smiled, rolled her eyes, and said, “Government guy.”
I’d arrived in Rangoon days earlier to, among other things, attend a cocktail party for the launch of Burma’s first trendy young woman’s magazine, Now! published by Ross Dunkley’s Myanmar Consolidated Media Group, and from the moment I arrived I noticed how the mood in the city had dramatically changed and deteriorated from previous visits.
The people are naturally fearful of saying anything derogatory at all about the government to strangers, especially foreigners but on this trip that reserve was gone.
People immediately launched into unprompted diatribes about how bad things were, especially about how hard it was to get by financially. The local currency, the kyat was going off the rails – in recent years it had hovered around the 800 to 1000 kyat per US dollar mark, but money changers in the market were offering me 1450 kyat to the dollar before serious bargaining even began. The price of petrol had risen dramatically, almost doubling, bus fares increased to the extent that some workers could no longer afford to travel to work. Drinking water was hard to get. The electricity supply was more erratic than usual, and the Yangon City Electricity Supply Board foreshadowed in the days leading up to the demonstrations that what they optimistically called 24-hour power would end in November because “When the rainy season ends we lose a lot of our hydropower. But if we had natural gas supplies we could keep the power on 24 hours a day.”
But the bountiful natural gas supplies Burma has have been sold off by the generals for handsome profit to neighboring nations such as India.
Plus rice was expensive. Everything was expensive, and the government was busy sinking millions and millions of dollars into some stupid new capital city set in nowheresville far from Rangoon.
As seasoned Burma watchers know, it’s not freedom or democracy that tips the balance in this crazy dysfunctional pariah nation – it’s the hip pocket nerve that triggers the uprisings, every time.
When the people can’t eat they get angry.
On arrival, coming from the new expensive airport, I began worrying about my taxi driver, Zaw. He was visibly was going off his head, drawing attention from other drivers, and one thing I knew from experience in Rangoon is that it doesn’t pay to draw attention.
Not only did he tell me how bad things were the moment I sat in this cab, but he became excited, banging his fist on the steering wheel, shouting and spraying spittle on the windscreen, shouting that it was all f@!#ing shit, that the government was f@!#ing shit, giving me examples of the government’s excesses, telling me that many people had been sent broke after buying seized cars the generals had originally organised to be smuggled in from the Thai border, and sold for absurd prices, sometimes $12,000-$15,000 dollars for a clapped out 10-15 year old Toyota, and then they declared the smuggled cars illegal and seized them with no compensation.
He took me on a side excursion and drove me past the mansion belonging to one of Burma’s richest industrialists, Tay Zar. He slowed down and pointed up the driveway at the two Ferrari’s, one red, one yellow, plus a new sporty Mini Cooper gleaming in the sun, shaking his head in rage. Owning two Ferrari’s is a particularly stupid show of ostentation in Rangoon because the roads are mostly so dilapidated it’s doubtful a car could crank up beyond 50kph on a good day.
Tay Zar’s ostentation is also known in Singapore where a report from Teo See Tuck in the Irrawaddy Journal recently observed, “He has registered several companies in Singapore to operate businesses for the junta. He owns many black luxury cars, such a Mercedes, a BMW and a Lexus with the cars' plate numbers 2727. They move in and out of the Meritus Mandarin hotel to chauffeur the junta's VIPs and families to medical check-ups at Mount Elizabeth and sightseeing in Singapore.
“When the VIPs arrive in Singapore, he arranges transportation and pays for medical bills, all expenses paid by his company, Pavo Trading Pte Ltd. The company has a special import license to send goods to Myanmar and the Myanmar Port Authority gives the goods special consideration.”
Tay Zar now operates his own airline, Air Bagan, but it’s widely known that his service to Bangkok has lost a motzah and during the time I was there, splashy newspaper ads promoted the airline’s daily healthcare flights to Singapore complete with medical concierge for US$545.
During my stay in Rangoon, a female confidante of Tay Zar’s said he confirmed to her that the airline was bleeding money but it didn’t concern him because he had a ten year plan.
Taxi driver Zaw’s final complaint to me was that he’d just copped a 10,000 kyat parking fine and yet none of the cars belonging to the rich that were also illegally parked were booked.
It’s f@#!ing shit, he repeated.
But such is the daily inequity of life in Rangoon
I was sitting in the funky Monsoon Restaurant in Theinbyu Road near the Sule Pagoda in downtown Rangoon on Tuesday September 18, when the first of the maroon-robed flag-waving monks marched past, a group of about 400, with a large contingent of supporters.
I was lunching with a young Burmese business woman who was compiling a register of the nation’s known mining resources, and she was upset that some associates were accusing her of cronyism because she had to deal with military contacts to get her information.
I looked out the window and there they were – the marching monks. The notion that this might happen had been the talk of town for days as tensions increased, and now it had begun.
Seeing a demonstration in Rangoon is a surreal sight, something I’d never witnessed before even though I’d lived in Rangoon for year in 2004-2005 while working as a journalism trainer for the English-language Myanmar Times, and had visited frequently.
What was even more surprising than the marching monks was their retinue of ordinary people, many holdings hands, with their faces screwed up in absolute anguish.
This was open defiance, and it was unprecedented in recent history.
It took almost an hour for the parade and the crowds to pass the restaurant and when they were gone I quickly hailed a cab, noticing the obvious tension in the streets as I was driven to the Myanmar Times office where other taxi drivers were arriving to report that demonstrations had broken out all over town.
There was a quick discussion of whether staff photographers should be sent out but Ross Dunkley decreed it was a waste of time. “They’ll only get arrested,” he said, “Like last time.”
AFP had local photographers and reporters on the ground who seemed immune from arrest.
After leaving the office and touring the city by cab again I saw seething knots of demonstrators in many of the streets, and I knew I was witnessing history.
I returned to my hotel observing that a longyi-clad guy in a white collar-less shirt, who had mysteriously materialised the day before, was still sitting on an old wooden kitchen chair by the lift on the floor, watching.
He was presumably secret police, and when I passed one of the hotel’s management staff in the corridor I asked her, “Who is that man? What is his job?”
She smiled, rolled her eyes, and said, “Government guy.”
I’d arrived in Rangoon days earlier to, among other things, attend a cocktail party for the launch of Burma’s first trendy young woman’s magazine, Now! published by Ross Dunkley’s Myanmar Consolidated Media Group, and from the moment I arrived I noticed how the mood in the city had dramatically changed and deteriorated from previous visits.
The people are naturally fearful of saying anything derogatory at all about the government to strangers, especially foreigners but on this trip that reserve was gone.
People immediately launched into unprompted diatribes about how bad things were, especially about how hard it was to get by financially. The local currency, the kyat was going off the rails – in recent years it had hovered around the 800 to 1000 kyat per US dollar mark, but money changers in the market were offering me 1450 kyat to the dollar before serious bargaining even began. The price of petrol had risen dramatically, almost doubling, bus fares increased to the extent that some workers could no longer afford to travel to work. Drinking water was hard to get. The electricity supply was more erratic than usual, and the Yangon City Electricity Supply Board foreshadowed in the days leading up to the demonstrations that what they optimistically called 24-hour power would end in November because “When the rainy season ends we lose a lot of our hydropower. But if we had natural gas supplies we could keep the power on 24 hours a day.”
But the bountiful natural gas supplies Burma has have been sold off by the generals for handsome profit to neighboring nations such as India.
Plus rice was expensive. Everything was expensive, and the government was busy sinking millions and millions of dollars into some stupid new capital city set in nowheresville far from Rangoon.
As seasoned Burma watchers know, it’s not freedom or democracy that tips the balance in this crazy dysfunctional pariah nation – it’s the hip pocket nerve that triggers the uprisings, every time.
When the people can’t eat they get angry.
On arrival, coming from the new expensive airport, I began worrying about my taxi driver, Zaw. He was visibly was going off his head, drawing attention from other drivers, and one thing I knew from experience in Rangoon is that it doesn’t pay to draw attention.
Not only did he tell me how bad things were the moment I sat in this cab, but he became excited, banging his fist on the steering wheel, shouting and spraying spittle on the windscreen, shouting that it was all f@!#ing shit, that the government was f@!#ing shit, giving me examples of the government’s excesses, telling me that many people had been sent broke after buying seized cars the generals had originally organised to be smuggled in from the Thai border, and sold for absurd prices, sometimes $12,000-$15,000 dollars for a clapped out 10-15 year old Toyota, and then they declared the smuggled cars illegal and seized them with no compensation.
He took me on a side excursion and drove me past the mansion belonging to one of Burma’s richest industrialists, Tay Zar. He slowed down and pointed up the driveway at the two Ferrari’s, one red, one yellow, plus a new sporty Mini Cooper gleaming in the sun, shaking his head in rage. Owning two Ferrari’s is a particularly stupid show of ostentation in Rangoon because the roads are mostly so dilapidated it’s doubtful a car could crank up beyond 50kph on a good day.
Tay Zar’s ostentation is also known in Singapore where a report from Teo See Tuck in the Irrawaddy Journal recently observed, “He has registered several companies in Singapore to operate businesses for the junta. He owns many black luxury cars, such a Mercedes, a BMW and a Lexus with the cars' plate numbers 2727. They move in and out of the Meritus Mandarin hotel to chauffeur the junta's VIPs and families to medical check-ups at Mount Elizabeth and sightseeing in Singapore.
“When the VIPs arrive in Singapore, he arranges transportation and pays for medical bills, all expenses paid by his company, Pavo Trading Pte Ltd. The company has a special import license to send goods to Myanmar and the Myanmar Port Authority gives the goods special consideration.”
Tay Zar now operates his own airline, Air Bagan, but it’s widely known that his service to Bangkok has lost a motzah and during the time I was there, splashy newspaper ads promoted the airline’s daily healthcare flights to Singapore complete with medical concierge for US$545.
During my stay in Rangoon, a female confidante of Tay Zar’s said he confirmed to her that the airline was bleeding money but it didn’t concern him because he had a ten year plan.
Taxi driver Zaw’s final complaint to me was that he’d just copped a 10,000 kyat parking fine and yet none of the cars belonging to the rich that were also illegally parked were booked.
It’s f@#!ing shit, he repeated.
But such is the daily inequity of life in Rangoon
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