Page 377 - The Rough Guide to Myanmar (Burma)

History CONTEXTS 375
HOUSE ARREST
the 8888 Uprising itself was soon brutally crushed. Undeterred, Aung san suu Kyi established
the National League for Democracy (NLD) in september 1988 with former eminent
generals turned regime opponents Aung Gyi and tin oo. Her newly launched political career
was brought to an abrupt halt in July 1989, however, when she was placed under house
arrest – the first in a long sequence of home detentions which would last for fifteen of the
next 21 years. Her international profile, meanwhile, rose ever higher, cemented by the award of
the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. this Mother teresa-like status in the West largely insulated her
from criticism – and continues to do so to this day – although some questioned both the
usefulness of Gandhian passive resistance in the face of brutal military rule and the NLD’s
isolationist stance, with its self-declared tourism boycott and support of ineffectual Western
sanctions which (it’s argued) served to plunge the country into further atrophy.
Brief periods of release from house arrest and attempts to travel the country were met with
repeated military intimidation, most notably in 2003 when at least seventy NLD supporters
travelling with Aung san suu Kyi were killed in the Depayin Massacre in sagaing state.
Meanwhile Aung san suu Kyi herself was repeatedly caricatured in government media as a
“Western poster girl” and “foreigner” thanks to her years abroad and UK-based family.
RELEASE – AND INTO POWER
Aung san suu Kyi was finally freed from house arrest in November 2010 and immediately
threw herself back into the political fray. However, she began to show notable signs of
entering into an increasingly murky sort of Realpolitik, meeting with government cronies and
being careful not to say anything that might antagonize her mainly Buddhist voting-base – her
repeated failure to speak up for the horribly oppressed rohingya during a wave of communal
clashes in 2012–2014 was particularly widely criticized.
supporters argued that she was doing what was necessary in order to secure democracy for
her country, which duly arrived with the NLD’s landslide electoral victory in 2015. Aung san
suu Kyi was appointed to the specially created post of state Counsellor – the de facto head of
the country in all but name. What has followed (see pp.378–380) has been a disappointment
even to her most ardent former supporters, with political critics jailed, the rohingya brutalized
as never before, fighting continuing in shan and Kachin states and the lady herself becoming
an increasingly remote figure in far-off Naypyitaw, now behaving increasingly like the generals
she fought so long to replace.

Than Shwe relaxed some state controls on the economy (although without any
significant beneficial effect), cracked down on corruption and, in 1997, led Myanmar
into ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations). Ceasefires were also
negotiated with Kachin and Shan rebels (although fighting against the Kayin would
continue until 2012). Despite these modest reforms, spending on the army continued
to soar even while investment in health and education remained among the lowest in
the world. The junta was also accused of increasingly widespread and serious human
rights abuses: as many as a million Burmese were shipped off to rural labour camps
and forced to work unpaid on government projects, while there are also reports of
hundreds, possibly thousands, of summary executions.
In 2003, Kyin Nyunt, the (relatively) moderate prime minister of the regime – now
renamed the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) – announced a seven-step
“roadmap to democracy”. A subsequent power struggle with Than Shwe saw him

1974 1987 August 1988
The first widespread protests Ne Win’s numerologically The 8888 Uprising sees mass nationwide
against the military regime inspired currency reforms protests against military regime; Ne Win
are brutally suppressed wipe out the life savings of resigns and Aung San Suu Kyi emerges as the
many Burmese figurehead of the democracy movement

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