East Asia Today : Memories of 1988

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East Asia Today
August 7th 1998 
Memories of 1988

Looking Back to 1988

Ten years on, the political stalemate continues. The military's grip on
power, remains firm and the prospects of dialogue with the democracy
movement are bleak. In addition, though ASEAN is showing itself
increasingly willing to criticise the Rangoon junta, diplomacy remains
largely ineffectual - a huge contrast with August 1988, when millions of
people poured onto the streets of the Burmese capital, and other cities, in
support of a nation-wide general strike. Martin Morland was the British
Ambassador at the time:

Martin Morland: It was a changing picture from 8th August to 18th of
September when it all went wrong. It came really in three or four phases.
The first phase was an unprecedented demonstration going on in the capital,
which hadn't happened for thirty years, and people were quite astonished by
that. Then there was brutal shooting and a lot of people were killed and
for the next two or three days it was a mixed scene, with army bands
roaming round Rangoon, shooting people, taking the bodies away,
demonstrations springing up here, springing up there, all anonymous and so
on. Then Sein Lwin resigned and there was a sort of awful calm and nobody
knew quite what would happen next. Over the subsequent weeks, you got the
flowering of liberty in an astonishing way. People put their heads out and
thought my God I can say what I like, I can write what I like, things are
really changing, and there was a feeling in the air which was absolutely
electrifying. By the time the clampdown came, almost every single ministry,
every group, in Rangoon anyway, had been marching with banners identifying
themselves, all calling for a change in the political system. Even the
police band went out and said "were playing for the people." It was
atmosphere of sort of Mardi Gras...it was quite extraordinary.

Christopher Gunness: Now ten years later that excitement has effectively
come to nothing, as the demonstration by Aung San Suu Kyi a few days ago
demonstrated. Where does that leave the country in terms of its
development? We've had universities allowed to function for only two of the
last ten years, what has happened to education in Burma?

Martin Morland: The worst effect, and it won't be felt immediately, is that
in X years' time there will be no doctors who were qualified in these
years, there will be no engineers, there will be no lawyers. The effect on
the country will be felt gradually, but it will be nonetheless awful for
that. And one would hope that somewhere in the army there will be people
who realise that you simply cannot carry on like this, that you must do
some kind of a reconciliation with the students. The only way to do a
reconciliation with the students is to do a reconciliation with the NLD. 

Christopher Gunness: Do you think that we in the West are partly to blame
for this, that our engagement with Burma has been fixated with diplomatic
and political processes and actually the social processes within a country
like Burma have really been ignored?

Martin Morland: I think it's very difficult for outsiders to do a great
deal about those processes in the present political stand-off, besides the
general pressure which I think should not be underestimated. 

Christopher Gunness: As far as that pressure is concerned, we've seen ASEAN
policy certainly being questioned by ASEAN members themselves. We've seen
indications of something more robust from Japan. These sorts of Asian views
are now coming into line with what the Europeans and the Americans have
said. How heartened should we be by that?

Martin Morland: I don't think that in itself will overturn the regime. But
Burma is no longer cut off from the outside world to the extent it was. The
Burmese people have a miserable life and they are encouraged by seeing that
they have solidarity with not just the West, but also with ASEAN now, and
that there are pressures from outside which remind the ordinary Burmese
that they are not totally forgotten.