The Burmese Fairy Tale

The Burmese Fairy Tale



By Ma Thanegi



FAR EASTERN ECONOMIC REVIEW FEBRUARY 19, 1998 THE 5TH COLUMN





(The writer is a pro-democracy activist and former political prisoner.
She lives in Rangoon.)



Like many Burmese, l am tired of living in a fairy tale. For years,
outsiders portrayed the troubles of my country as a morality play:
good against evil, with no shade of gray in between-a simplistic
picture, but one the world believes. The response of the West has been
equally simplistic: It wages a moral crusade against evil, using such
"magic wands" as sanctions and boycotts.



But for us, Burma is no fairy-tale land with a simple solution to its
problems. We were isolated for 26 years under socialism and we
continue to lack a modern economy. We are tired of wasting time. If we
are to move forward, to modernize, then we need everyone to face
facts.



That may sound like pro-government propaganda, but I haven't changed
since I joined the democracy movement in August 1988. I have lived
most of my life under the 1962-88 socialist regime-another fairy tale,
this one of isolation. In 1988 we knew it was time to join the world.
Thousands of us took to the streets and I joined the National League
for Democracy and worked as an aide to Aung San Suu Kyi.



I worked closely with Ma Suu, as we all called her, for nearly a year.
I campaigned with her until July 20, 1989, when she was put under
house arrest and I was sent to Insein Prison in Rangoon, where I spent
nearly three years.



I have no regrets about going to jail and blame no one for it. It was
a price we knew we might have to pay. But my fellow former political
prisoners and I are beginning to wonder if our sacrifices have been
worthwhile. Almost a decade after it all began, we are concerned that
the work we started has been squandered and the momentum wasted.



In my time with Ma Suu, I came to love her deeply. l still do. We had
hoped that when she was released from house arrest in 1995 that the
country would move forward again. So much was needed-proper housing
and food and adequate health care, to begin with. That was what the
democracy movement was really about-helping people.



Ma Suu could have changed our lives dramatically. With her influence
and prestige, she could have asked major aid donors such as the United
States and Japan for help. She could have encouraged responsible
companies to invest here, creating jobs and helping build a stable
economy. She could have struck up a constructive dialogue with the
government and laid the groundwork for a sustainable democracy.



Instead, she chose the opposite, putting pressure on the government by
telling foreign investors to stay away and asking foreign governments
to withhold aid. Many of us cautioned her that this was
counterproductive. Why couldn't economic development and political
improvement grow side by side? People need jobs to put food on the
table, which may not sound grand and noble, but it is a basic truth we
face every day.



Ma Suu's approach has been highly moral and uncompromising, catching
the imagination of the outside world. Unfortunately, it has come at a
real price for the rest of us. Sanctions have increased tensions with
the government and cost jobs. But they haven't accomplished anything
positive.



I know that human-rights groups think they are helping us, but they
are thinking with their hearts and not their heads. They say foreign
investment merely props up the government and doesn't help ordinary
people. That's not true. The country survived for almost 30 years
without any investment. Moreover, the U.S., Japan and others cut off
aid in 1988 and the U.S. imposed sanctions in May last year. Yet, all
that has done nothing except send a hollow "moral message."



Two Westerners-one a prominent academic and the other a diplomat-once
suggested to me that if sanctions and boycotts undermined the economy,
people would have less to lose and would be willing to start a
revolution. They seemed very pleased with this idea, a revolution to
watch from the safety of their own country.



This naive romanticism angers many of us here in Burma. You would
deliberately make us poor to force us to fight a revolution? American
college students play at being freedom fighters and politicians stand
up and proclaim that they are striking a blow for democracy with
sanctions. But it is we Burmese who pay the price for these empty
heroics. Many of us now wonder: Is it for this that we went to jail?



Unfortunately, the Burmese fairy tale is so widely accepted it now
seems almost impossible to call for pragmatism. Political correctness
has grown so fanatical that any public criticism of the National
League for Democracy or its leadership is instantly met with
accusations of treachery: To simply call for realism is to be labelled
pro-military or worse.



But when realism becomes a dirty word, progress becomes impossible. So
put away the magic wand and think about us as a real, poor country.
Burma has many problems, largely the result of almost 30 years of
isolationism. More isolation won't fix the problems and sanctions push
us backwards, not forward. We need jobs, we need to modernize. We need
to be a part of the world. Don't close the door on us in the name of
democracy. Surely fairy tales in the West don't end so badly.

.

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