Perfect Hostage: A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's Prisoner of Conscience
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Perfect Hostage: A Life of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's Prisoner of Conscience
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Overview
Aung San Suu Kyi is one of the world’s foremost inspirational revolutionary leaders. Considered to be Burma’s best hope for freedom, she has waged a war of steadfast nonviolent opposition to the country’s vicious militant regime. Because of her resistance to the brutality of the Burmese government, she has been under house arrest since 1989.
She has endured failing health, vilification through the Burmese media, and cruel imprisonment in one of the world’s most dreadful and inhumane jails. Suu Kyi has fought every hardship the junta could put her through, yet she has never once wavered from her position, never once advocated violence, and persevered in her message of peaceful resistance at all costs, earning her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, placing her among the likes of such renowned champions of peace as Gandhi, King, and Mandela. She is a truly heroic revolutionary.
In Perfect Hostage, the most thorough biography of Suu Kyi to date, Justin Wintle tells both the story of the Burmese people and the story of an ordinary person who became a hero.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781620876220 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2013 |
| Pages: | 496 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.10(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
AT THE SHWEDAGON
I do not think there is a word for evil in Buddhism. I think this is something you must ask real Buddhist scholars. But we speak of ill will, we speak of ignorance, we speak of greed, but we don't speak of evil as such. There is no evil, just stupidity.
Aung San Suu Kyi, in conversation with Ivan Suvanjieff, Rangoon, August 1995
Aung San Suu Kyi became a public figure, and a woman to be reckoned with, on a specific day at a specific time in a specific place. Even though she was not yet politicised in any radical sense, on the late morning of 26th August 1988 she mounted a temporary rostrum in the grounds of the gold-encrusted Shwedagon pagoda that presides over Rangoon and addressed a crowd variously estimated at between 300,000 and one million individuals. As a result of this speech she emerged as the active figurehead of an oppressed people; and her face — fine-boned and pale, but graced with dark eyes of beguiling intelligence and intensity — attracted the attention of even greater audiences from the pages of the international press.
She was aged forty-three. A bare six months beforehand she was to all intents and purposes nothing more (though nothing less) than the wife and companion of a well-respected English academic living in Oxford, with some academic ambitions of her own and four short books to her credit, and with two time-consuming adolescent sons to rear.
She wore, as she often did, traditional Burmese dress: a closefitting white top, or eingyi, half-sleeved and rising to the neck; a quietly colourful patterned Burmese sarong, or longyi; and simple sandals: apparel well suited to her diminutive, slender figure.
Contrary to myth, this was not her first public address. Two days earlier she had spoken briefly at another, smaller gathering at Rangoon's General Hospital, mainly to confirm that she would be speaking at the Shwedagon. It was word of this that brought out the huge crowd. From the late afternoon of the 25th the citizenry of Rangoon began making its way to the Shwedagon, some walking four or five miles to be there. Others arrived by bus, truck, motor car and bicycle, from the surrounding townships and further afield. Many thousands, determined to get as close as possible to the wooden stage from which she would speak, camped out all night, bringing with them rice-cakes and water, cushions, blankets and — indispensable in the hot, rainy season — umbrellas, though mercifully the lowering clouds that hung over the city forbore to break.
Some arrived a full eighteen hours before Aung San Suu Kyi herself appeared. Although the pro-democracy rally had been flagged, and talked about, for more than a week, it was the surprise, almost last-minute decision of Aung San Suu Kyi to speak that turned what already promised to be a memorable occasion into the biggest people-event Burma had yet known.
Her trump card was already in place on the platform: a giant portrait of the great Bogyoke (pronounced boh-joke, meaning 'big leader', or thereabouts), Aung San — not just her deceased father, but also the martyred father of Burmese independence and of the modern nation. Few knew what Aung San Suu Kyi stood for, or what she might say. But by simple virtue of being Aung San's daughter, it was scarcely imaginable she would disappoint. Such was the mood of yearning and anticipation that she could have recited a laundry list and still her every word would have been applauded.
The whole country was in turmoil. In March and April 1988 the military government had cracked down hard against protesting students. Then, at the beginning of the second week in August, it cracked down even harder against the people at large. Three thousand or more civilians, young and old, as well as not a few Buddhist monks, had been gunned down or hacked to death by the regime's soldiery on the streets of Rangoon, Mandalay and other Burmese conurbations.
A year later, similar numbers were butchered in Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Given that China's population is twenty-five times the size of Burma's, the hurt done to Burmese families was proportionately so much greater. Yet the Burmese people refused to be cowed, as perhaps too many were in the People's Republic. They continued their overwhelmingly peaceful protests, with the result that the army 'returned to barracks'.
As early as 15th August a seasoned British journalist, Michael Fathers, who had covered the long-drawn-out war in Vietnam, reported in The Independent that 'government in Burma has come to a halt'. Though few could have known it at the time, the return to barracks was a calculated stop-gap measure only, a chance for the Tatmadaw to regroup before reimposing itself on the nation with greater ruthlessness than ever before. But in that last week of August 1988 it seemed that anything might happen: complete restoration of the democracy that the dictator General Ne Win had kicked into touch in his 1962 coup; or utter meltdown, with all the further horrors that might entail.
When she spoke, Aung San Suu Kyi did not explicitly offer herself as a leader to oppose the generals; nor did she indulge in crude rabble-rousing. Quite deliberately, she projected herself as someone who sought reconciliation between all the disparate elements of Burmese society that were at loggerheads with one another — the beleaguered, fractious ethnic minorities included. She praised the rebellious students for their commitment and courage, but did not swing full-square behind them. She made an impassioned plea for the restoration of democracy, yet insisted that the army still had its part to play. The Tatmadaw was, after all, in large measure her father's creation, and she knew that not all Burma's problems — ongoing communist insurgency, for example, or the activities of Khun Sa and other 'opium warlords' in the north-east — could be solved by words alone.
In keeping with this level-headed, dispassionate approach, Aung San Suu Kyi avoided both the bludgeoning rhetoric of overstatement and the wimpish ambiguities of understatement. With five microphones attached to an improvised frame in front of her, she read a prepared text, written in impeccable, but slightly stilted, Burmese. From the outset of her public career it was possible to detect something of the governess about her: she would speak her mind, but be fair to all.
In a strange way, she projected herself as a sort of oriental Mary Poppins. Those who were well acquainted with her knew her skittish humour and her capacity for laughter; but 'on duty', such qualities were not just rationed, they were banished. And at the Shwedagon, Aung San Suu Kyi was very much on duty, for her people and for the nation her father had envisioned. On either side she was flanked by unarmed student 'bodyguards'. Also on the dais were several older members of her circle, who had various axes of their own to grind; and discreetly at the rear were her husband Michael Aris and their holidaying boys, Alexander and Kim.
It took a while for the crowd to still, even after Aung San Suu Kyi had stepped onto the dais. Monks wielding canes moved among the people, tapping the more noisy on the shoulders.
'Reverend monks and people!' she at last began, drawing the most respected strand of Burmese society into her purview; then, after paying tribute to the students who were at the forefront of the democracy movement, she begged a minute's silence, to remember the many victims of the regime's violence.
Advocating a 'multi-party democratic system' as the only acceptable cure for Burma's woes, she next introduced herself, momentarily going on the defensive. 'A fair number of people,' she said, were unacquainted with her 'personal history'. It was true, she admitted, that she had spent most of her life abroad, and that she was married to a foreigner — hardly qualifications for a patriot, in the average Burman's eyes. But it was not true that she knew nothing about Burmese politics. 'The trouble is,' she said, 'that I know too much.'
Again, Aung San Suu Kyi invoked her father's shade. She reminded everyone how selflessly and assiduously Aung San had worked to bring about Burma's independence; but also how it had been his intention to withdraw 'from power politics altogether' once his aims were realised.
'I could not,' she declared, in the most widely quoted part of her speech, 'as my father's daughter remain indifferent to all that is going on. This national crisis could in fact be called the second struggle for national independence.'
No clearer statement of Aung San Suu Kyi's readiness to involve herself in Burmese affairs could have been made. If necessary she was prepared to give up everything else in her life, but only for as long as it took to set matters aright. She steered clear of invective, and refrained from making personal attacks on any of the generals in power. She was at pains to save the army's face. Properly disciplined, the Tatmadaw was a national asset, 'a force in which the people can place their trust and reliance'.
'Let me speak frankly,' she continued, her voice rising. 'I feel strong attachment to the armed forces. Not only were they built up by my father; as a child I was cared for by his soldiers.' This took some by surprise, especially the handful of foreigners present, who knew Burma only as a country crushed by its military, as a bulletocracy. Yet, with bloodstains still visible on Rangoon's streets, it was essential, if change was to occur, for both the army's commanders and its rank-and-file to be won over.
What Aung San Suu Kyi wanted was a military wholly answerable to a civilian government, which in turn would be answerable to the people. Throughout her speech she reiterated the need for 'unity' as well as 'discipline'. Yet she also took the opportunity to distance herself from some older dissidents, many of whose reputations were badly tarnished. 'There are some veteran politicians,' she said, 'who wish to help me in various ways. I have told such politicians that if their object is to obtain positions of political power for themselves, I would not support them in any way.'
In other words, she wished to make plain from the outset that she was, and would be, nobody's puppet, nobody's stooge.
Many times the crowd applauded Aung San Suu Kyi as she spoke — at least those who could hear her. Some held up video cameras and cassette tape-recorders. At the end the applause was loud and long. But there are doubts as to how well or carefully she was listened to. The tannoy system used that day was hardly state-of-the-art electronics, and here and there were bawling babies and wailing children. For many, it was not what 'Daw' (as she had now to be called) Aung San Suu Kyi said that mattered, but the chance to lay eyes upon the Bogyoke's offspring, from however far away.
Yet for the woman at the centre of it all it was an extraordinary feat. To speak in front of not hundreds, not thousands, not tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands — far more in fact than Aung San had ever addressed at a single sitting — took rare determination and self-composure. Unlike her English husband, Suu Kyi was not even equipped with the experience of lecturing regularly at universities. As Aung San's daughter, it would have been enough simply to appear on the stage and let the seasoned politicians (who, over the preceding weeks, had been urging her to speak out) do the business. She would still have helped the cause of liberty in Burma.
But that was not her way. Three months later she told another journalist, Roger Matthews, in characteristically laconic manner, 'I was not really nervous. I did not have time to be. I was far more worried about actually getting there because of the terrible difficulty in getting through the tremendous crowds. Just to arrive on the platform was the most tremendous relief. But I can't say I would describe it as an enjoyable experience.'
As a very young girl — so the story goes — Suu Kyi was, like many small children the world over, afraid of the dark. But she refused to submit to her fear. Steeling herself, she crept downstairs in the dead of night in the family home a mile or so from the Shwedagon and stayed in the dark until her fear was overcome, then returned to her bed and slept.
Situations lay ahead that would be much sterner tests, an assassination attempt included. But behind her, metaphorically as well as literally, was the figure of Aung San.
Among the small books she had published was a brief, somewhat idealised biography of her father. His ideas, and in particular the idea that Burma must become a fully functional democracy that would embrace all its varied peoples, were also hers.
The portrait of Aung San behind her on the stage was a devastating juxtaposition: the delicate, middle-aged, but still beautiful woman dwarfed by the blown-up eminence of the national patriarch to whose memory even the dictator Ne Win and his fellow generals regularly paid homage.
There was the added poignancy that forty-two years before, in January 1946, Aung San himself had delivered a keynote speech to the people at the Shwedagon, close to where Aung San Suu Kyi was standing, at a time when Burma's independence from British rule had yet to be assured. In the popular imagination, long cauterised by the excesses of a heartless regime, it seemed as though a saviour had arrived. Where — through no great fault of his own, but because of a hail of assassins' bullets — Aung San had failed to deliver a lasting resolution, was it possible that Aung San Suu Kyi would succeed in righting Burma's wrongs and end the interminable nightmare that constituted its modern, and not-somodern, history?
CHAPTER 2THE SHWE PYIDAW
When China sneezes, the Irrawaddy floods.
Burman proverb
The cynic would say that 'Burma' (or for that matter 'Myanmar'), as outlined in the contemporary atlas, does not exist, and never has, in the sense of being a peaceable homogenous whole. At no point has any one ruler or government wielded unchallenged authority over the whole of that body of land bound to the west by India and, latterly, Bangladesh; to the north by China; to the east by Laos and Thailand; and with a lengthy coastline arched around the northeastern corner of the Bay of Bengal, more locally the Andaman Sea, backing onto the Indian Ocean.
At best a degree of harmony has prevailed among a moiety of the various ethnic components that make up Burma, but never for very long. Ironically, and disconcertingly for the critics of colonialism, the British came closest to establishing overall order, for a decade or two during the middle years of their imperial rule. It was also the British who were chiefly responsible for giving Burma its present shape, its agreed international boundaries. But even they chose to leave some of the mountainous 'frontier areas' — kept separate from 'ministerial Burma' — well alone. The threat of insurrection was never far below the surface; and the borders with China were not finally defined until after the British had left. Even the great Aung San could not persuade all the peoples of Burma to come unambiguously under the one umbrella. Some recalcitrant Karens refused to join his proposed Union of Burmese Peoples, while the assent of other important ethnic-minority groups was given only conditionally.
Yet this has not prevented at least the upper strata of the Burman people from subscribing to a somewhat fanciful national history stretching back in time far further than actual evidence allows — a history that Aung San himself sometimes evoked. Keenly dismissive of jingoistic nationalism as he was at other times, in his Shwedagon speech of 20th January 1946 he said:
Imperishable memories rise in our mind today as we stand on this sacred ground covered by the mantle of twenty-five centuries spread out from the holy ground of the Shwedagon Pagoda. Imperishable memories of the countless thousands who have participated in the endless march of history, of untold sacrifices and matchless deeds of heroism and valour wrought by giants of old and new rising ever to the call of historic destiny and the unquenchable and invincible spirit they have bequeathed to us as their richest legacy. We must, for a moment, bare our heads and bow to those dead and mighty, and we shall vow to them that we too in our time will lift ourselves to their heights and make ourselves worthy of their shades and the heritage they have handed down to us. Our nation shall live again!
Many myths have grown up around 'Burma' and its past. At their heart is the legend of Burma as the 'Golden Land' — the Shwe Pyidaw — which to this day is used by the military regime to promote controlled tourism to parts of the country that it aspires to rule in its entirety. The epithet was first used by the people of India, who called those lands east of Bengal Suvarnabhumi (which also translates as 'Golden Land') from perhaps as early as the second century BC. But it remains unclear just what it was that the Indians considered 'golden'. Either there were already some dazzling Buddhist pagodas, or at least temples of an indeterminate faith, or the Indians had in mind some other kind of riches.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Perfect Hostage"
by .
Copyright © 2013 Justin Wintle.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
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Table of Contents
Illustrations,
Principal Burmese Personae,
Glossary (including acronyms),
Map,
Prologue,
PART ONE: Land and Father,
I At the Shwedagon,
II The Shwe Pyidaw,
III After the Mongols,
IV The Salami Wars,
V British Burma,
VI Saturday's Child,
VII From Campus Oddball to National Hero (aged 20),
VIII '1300': The Year That Never Was,
IX Desperate Times, Desperate Remedies,
X Bo Teza: Reluctant Collaborator,
XI Snakes, Ladders and a Wife,
XII Old Enemies, New Friends,
XIII Getting There,
PART TWO: The Daughter,
XIV 19th July,
XV The Golden Rain Is Brown,
XVI An Indian Idyll: The 'Ugly One' Takes Wing,
XVII The Daughter of Some or Other Burmese General,
XVIII Things Fall Apart,
XIX Between Three Continents,
XX Thimphu, Kyoto, Simla,
PART THREE: Sixteen Months,
XXI Number One and Number Nine,
XXII White Bridge, Red Bridge,
XXIII 8.8.88,
XXIV Shadow of the Hundred Flowers,
XXV Digging In,
XXVI Squaring Up,
XXVII Suu Kyi's Tightrope,
XXVIII Danubyu,
XXIX The Door Slams Shut,
PART FOUR: The Political Madonna,
XXX Egg on the Generals' Faces,
XXXI Soldiers at the Gate,
XXXII Famously Alone,
XXXIII Freedom on a Leash,
XXXIV The Saddest Thing,
XXXV The Widowed Road to Depayin,
XXXVI Back to Mandalay,
Postscript: The Monks' Revolt,
Acknowledgements,
Sources/Further Reading/Websites,
What People are Saying About This
It is time for all respectable members of the international community to put weight behind their words and take active measures to secure the freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi and the Burmese people.
She’s my hero.
In physical stature she is petite and elegant, but in moral stature she is a giant.