Myanmar’s Fight for Democracy : Civil war: O.C. man slips into his homeland in long-running crusade to help rebels battling military government.

The man who has a death grip on the wooden gunwales of a long-tail boat roaring up the Moei River between Thailand and Myanmar seems a marvel of inconsistencies.

One moment, he will bark at his wife or daughter, “Don’t ask stupid questions!” The next, he will plant a kiss on his wife’s cheek in thanks for bringing his 28-year-old daughter, Dewi, into the world.

He is vain enough to pay to have his graying hair tinted so artfully that it is difficult to spot the dye job. And then he will hand over his money to refugees and rebels to advance the cause of democracy in his native land a “milli-milli-milli-inch” further.

He will break into a dance, eyes rolling at the sky, head wagging, when he hears music from neighboring India blare from his portable radio instead of the BBC news, and then grin like a baby Buddha at his own antics. And he will sob helplessly as a student explains why she continues to fight the military government in Myanmar, formerly Burma.

But there is one consistent thing about this hefty, bespectacled man who grits his teeth as the boat shudders and lurches across another set of cold, white rapids: During his every breathing moment, his heart beats in perfect rhythm with the ailing heart of Myanmar.

This overriding commitment to his homeland is the only reason U Kyaw Win has agreed to a harrowing, one-hour journey up the river’s treacherous rapids in darkness in a narrow 30-foot boat. So terrified is he of capsizing that he would rather have slept on the riverbank’s clammy wet sand and waited until morning. But go he does, because people are waiting for him.

The boat slows, and the boatman flashes a signal into the dark jungle lining the steep riverbank. “This is a Karen (pronounced ka-REN) checkpoint,” Win says. “They’ve radioed ahead to expect us. Otherwise, we’d be shot.”

A light blinks in return. The 110-horsepower diesel engine with its 10-foot propeller shaft and rudder, dipping like a tail into the water, roars into action. The boat rushes on, past 4,000-foot, jungle-covered mountains that jut like dark, inverted ice-cream cones against an even darker sky.

The boat’s destination: Manerplaw, the Karen rebel headquarters on the Myanmar side of the Moei River.

Just as Gettysburg became a watershed event in U.S. history, so may Manerplaw be remembered as a turning point in Burmese history. Almost from the inception of independence from Britain in 1948, most of Myanmar’s ethnic groups have striven for their own independent states.

But today, the Karen, Shan, Kachin, Mon, Arakan, Chin and Karenni from the sparsely populated highlands, as well as ethnic Burmese students and political refugees from lowland cities, have come to realize that a united front is perhaps the only way to achieve democratic freedoms.

Over the last two years, they have assembled periodically at Manerplaw to produce a blueprint for a democratic government. Myanmar’s military government, the State Law and Order Restoration Council, commonly referred to as SLORC, a dismal acronym that sounds more appropriate for a “Star Trek” antagonist, has tried to wipe out Manerplaw, militarily and otherwise. It does not want the people of Myanmar to remember it at all.

The morning after the boat ride, as refreshed as he can be after sleeping on a wooden floor padded only by a thin rattan mat, Win dons the traditional red-striped shirt worn by the Karens and a longyi-- a Burmese sarong--to visit the graves of two friends who died since his last visit.

Manerplaw--the name means victory field-- sprang out of the jungle nearly 20 years ago as a temporary refuge for those fleeing the Burmese army. It has since grown to 3,000 inhabitants, with another 12,000 in the “suburbs”--the surrounding villages.

The rebel base is tucked into a small jungle clearing. Its startling and eerie permanence reflects the sad tenacity of the conflict that grips Myanmar. Dirt roads around the encampment clatter with rusting Japanese pickup trucks. Blue wooden street signs mark every intersection. A newly painted bandstand sits at the edge of an expansive parade ground. Electric power lines run from a small hydroelectric plant. A black mesh satellite dish pulls in American football games late at night. A steady stream of Western visitors register at a guest house managed by a former chef of a hotel in Rangoon, now called Yangon. Young rebel soldiers loll listlessly in the windows of long wooden barracks.

So many people have died here over the last 20 years that the community outgrew one graveyard and had to add another. And yet, none of this is “home” to those who live here.

It is easier to untangle a grapefruit-sized ball of snarled fishing line than to unravel all of the whys and wherefores of Myanmar’s civil wars, which date back 45 years. With much detail left out, this is how the story goes:

In 1886, Britain completed its conquest of Burma, a wild, Texas-sized expanse of territory that the British considered a part of India, and imposed peace on the occasionally warring ethnic groups. In 1937, Burma was granted a degree of self-government as a confederation of states.

After a brief occupation by the conquering Japanese during World War II, the returned British granted the country independence in 1948. A young, charismatic Burmese army officer named Aung San had united most of Burma’s various ethnic groups in a bid for independence. But before the dawn of independence, Aung San and most of his closest collaborators were assassinated. His daughter, who figures prominently in more recent Burmese history, was only 2 years old at the time. The surviving leaders were unable to forge and hold together a coalition that the nation’s ethnic groups could work with. For 14 years, the country--once the wealthiest in Southeast Asia--saw a succession of more or less democratic governments.

Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so do politicians. Another charismatic leader, Gen. Ne Win, a comrade of Aung San, seized control of the government in a bloodless coup in 1962 and imposed an isolationist and xenophobic ideology on the country. Called “The Burmese Way to Socialism,” ruinous economic and social policies were implemented by the country’s only legal political party, the Burma Socialist Program Party. Horse racing, beauty contests and popular dance competitions were banned (even though Ne Win continued to gamble at Ascot in England). Banks were nationalized. Buddhism was designated the state religion. All private enterprises, down to the smallest mom-and-pop grocery stores, were taken over by the government. No further foreign investment was allowed.

In rural schools, languages of the ethnic minorities could no longer be taught, and Burmese replaced ethnic minorities on the staffs of state governments. Foreign journalists were expelled. The military and the secret police became a privileged class, endowed with good salaries, land, private hospitals and their own stores. Best estimates are that the military now numbers between 230,000 and 300,000 troops in a country of 42 million.

“Ne Win said Burma would become a heaven on earth,” recalls a man who was a mathematics teacher in the mid-1960s and is now director of the Karenni refugee operations. For his family’s safety, he does not want his name in print. “In 30 years, it has become a hell instead of heaven.”

Although leaders of the ethnic groups had established governments in exile even before Ne Win took over, his policies turned the country’s ethnic minorities solidly against him. The majority Burmese followed suit when things became so bad that not even they could stand it.

The Burmese have a long history of ruthless, autocratic rulers, says U Kyaw Win’s Indonesian wife, Ghandasari Abdullah Win, a political science professor at Golden West College in Huntington Beach. Perhaps that is why they put up with Ne Win, whose devotion to numerology had led him to hold every important meeting, or begin every campaign on a month’s ninth day or its multiple. His devotion to yedayache, a traditional Burmese method of controlling fate by performing actions prescribed by soothsayers, led to his order that the nation switch from driving on the left side of the road to the right.

Although protests and strikes erupted periodically here and there, the Burmese by and large resigned themselves to a more difficult life, even when Ne Win declared the 50 and 100 kyat bills valueless, wiping out the savings of many people. They even reconciled themselves to economic policies that began engendering food shortages in a country that was once among the world’s largest food exporters.

The first sign that their patience was wearing thin came in 1974, after the body of U.N. Secretary General U Thant, then the country’s most famous statesman, was shipped back to Yangon, then known as Rangoon. Ne Win, who did not like U Thant, wanted to bury him without honors.

As U Thant’s body was transported through the streets, it was snatched by students and carried to Rangoon University, where Buddhist monks performed proper burial rites. The army moved in and shot 300 to 400 unarmed students and arrested nearly 2,000 others.

The situation simmered until 1987, when Ne Win demonetized the 25, 35, and 75 kyat bank notes, wiping out 80% of the nation’s currency then in circulation. True to his enchantment with the number nine, he ordered the issuance of 45 and 90 kyat notes instead. Student protests erupted. By 1988, the unrest had spread throughout the country. On Aug. 8, 1988, tens of thousands of people demonstrated for a new government, and Ne Win’s army retaliated by killing hundreds of demonstrators. Nevertheless, for six weeks hundreds of thousands of monks, government workers and students staged demonstrations in every large city and town in Myanmar.

The State Law and Order Restoration Council came into being and, after ruthlessly repressing the demonstrations, restored a semblance of order in the country. Although Ne Win retired and put the government in the hands of Gen. Saw Maung, the 81-year-old general is still thought to be making all the important decisions.

In the midst of the political upheaval, in April, 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi (pronounced Ong Son Sue Gee), the daughter of Aung San, the leader assassinated in 1947, returned home from England to take for her ailing mother. Before long, she exhibited her own flair for leadership. Burmese and minorities alike rallied around her National League for Democracy, which scored an overwhelming victory in elections in May, 1990, even though she had been under house arrest and unable to campaign freely for almost a year. To the military government’s astonishment, her party took 392 of the 485 contested seats in the 492-member assembly.

The election changed nothing. SLORC still had the guns. It ignored the results, and began arresting the elected opposition members, most of whom fled to Manerplaw. In 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. She was not allowed to leave the country to accept her award, and remains under house arrest.

“Just about one year ago, Manerplaw was bombed and shelled, right around here,” says U Kyaw Win, his eyes widening. “But they didn’t capture the place.” He snickers. Win recalls the bombing as he prepares to take part in a secret rebel summit that would provide a tempting target for SLORC if the rebels’ plans were known. One by one, most of Myanmar’s ethnic leaders have sneaked into Manerplaw for three days of talks.

“You know, SLORC has waged a campaign against the ethnic groups,” Win says. “It’s called the ‘Four Cuts’--cut off their finances, their food, their communications, and the heads of their leaders.” Win weighs the possibility of a mass decapitation with all the heads being in one place, then dismisses it with a wave of his hand.

“SLORC’s too busy preparing for its national convention in Rangoon,” he says. Shortly after the Manerplaw summit, SLORC opened a monthlong convocation, aimed at drawing up a new constitution. It announced at the opening session that the military had to play a major role in any government. And it said that Aung San Suu Kyi would remain under house arrest.

Win falls asleep during the Manerplaw meetings. More happens behind the scenes and outside the formal gatherings than in the meeting hall. It took the ethnic leaders 10 years to see the futility of fighting for separate nations, he laments. Unless they move quickly to unify their armies--which total less than 20,000 soldiers--and devise a plan for a unified Myanmar that the international community can support, SLORC is likely to wipe them out.

But the ethnic groups are handicapped by communications problems. The third of Myanmar that they control consists of thousands of small villages in vast, jungled mountain ranges. In a nation that has only a handful of elevators, and where the largest hotel just began accepting credit cards this month, the rural areas are even further devoid of modern communications, including telephones, and in most areas, roads.

While Win snores softly and the ethnic leaders drone on, teen-age soldiers keep watch at the front lines. The fighting in Myanmar follows the rhythm of the seasons. The national army advances in the dry season, and the rebels reclaim territory when the monsoon returns. The dry season has just begun and the Myanmar army is moving supplies to the front lines, about three hours away from Manerplaw, first by boat up the Moei and Salween rivers, and then by foot through the forests.

The tranquil beauty of the place is shattered by gunfire: the Karen are hunting for food. Dirt bunkers topped by thin logs scar the earth. Just 900 feet as the crow flies from their posts, across a narrow, deep ravine and perched on a mountain with a rocky cliff face, sit the enemy soldiers. They yell at the Karen rebels. The tone is goading, teasing, but not angry. Neither group shoots at the other. At this distance, it is a waste of bullets.

MONDAY: Myanmar’s refugees. If they were not so self-sufficient, maybe the world would not have ignored them for so long.

The Opposition

All-Burma Students’ Democratic Front, an underground student group founded in 1988.

Karen National Union, a government in exile for the Karen people.

Kachin Independence Organization, a government in exile for the Kachins.

New Mon State Party, a government in exile for the Mon people.

National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma--more than 100 parliamentarians who fled after Myanmar’s military refused to abide by the 1990 election’s results.

Democratic Alliance of Burma, an umbrella organization that embraces the ethnic governments in exile.

National Council of the Union of Burma, another umbrella organization.

Source: Times reports

Researched by JANE STEVENS