F.E.E.R: The Burmese Fairy Tale

[ftubbkk@xxxxxxx]

The Burmese Fairy Tale

By Ma Thanegi
F.E.E.R

February 19, 1998

Like many Burmese, I 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 grey 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. I 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.


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


'Sanctions have increased tensions with the government and cost jobs.
But they haven't accomplished anything positive'