How can I begin to tell you about Burma? Should I start by telling you about the things that I've seen and done, the friendliest people in the world, about funny incidents that occurred during the month I spent there? No, I just can't start by telling you that. First of all I have the responsibility to tell you about what's going on in Burma politically, or at least what I've seen, read and heard. You, my dear readers, have the responsibility to read it.
I don't know how much you know about the corrupt military government and I can't summon it all up, but I will try to at least make you interested and maybe I can tell you something that you didn't know.Tatmandaw and the people, cooperate and crushing all those harming the union.
A few weeks before I flew from Thailand to Burma (because it's not allowed to cross the land borders, the government want full insight and control of the tourists coming in and leaving the country), I bought a Lonely Planet. Before I started reading it, I honestly didn't know that much about the situation there. What I knew was this:
- The places tourists can visit are very restricted.
- Aung San Suu Kyi has been in house arrest for many years.
- A couple of years ago there was a big demonstration for democracy among monks, some monks were killed and others put in prison.
- - There was a big natural disaster a few years ago and the government wouldn't let foreign help across the borders, which led to many people dying.
- There has been a growing number of Burmese immigrants in Sweden during the past five years.
- Recently I read that Burma and North Korea have plans on building nuclear weapons together.
I understood that visiting Burma would be a different journey than the others I've done on this trip. Despite the things I already knew about the country, I was rather shocked when I started reading about the situation in detail in my guidebook. The first chapter poses the question: "should you go?" (read it at http://www.lonelyplanet.com/) which made me face a question I hadn't asked myself until then. At this point I already had a ticket to go, but tried to read the chapter with an openness of a ticket less person. After reading it, I felt a little bit confused, but decided that I should still go. The reasons for this decision were:
- It's possible to travel Burma in a responsible way, where most of the money spent goes to the people, not the government (for example choosing private bus companies and guest houses and avoiding government fees as much as possible).
- Most of the people want tourists to come and if travelling the "right" way and communicating with the people, this might be a chance for them to hear about the outside world and to feel free to talk about their situation.
- The more outsiders there are to see what's going on, the harder it is for the government to mistreat their people.
- I can try to tell as many people as possible outside of Burma about the situation, so that more people know.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't travel to Burma thinking that I could change the situation, but even if I can support someone by listening to and spreading their stories or buying their services, I'm glad.
One thing that made me a bit frightened was to read about the government spies that are everywhere. The spies follow all tourists at some point during their trip, to make sure that we're not spreading anti government information of some sort. They also ban a lot of websites, including this blog, youtube, lonely planet, sometimes my e-mail, but surprisingly not facebook. Nothing that you write on internet is safe while in the country, the government takes pictures of computer screens to make sure that people are not surfing "bad" pages or writing wrong things. After being in the country for a while, the spies didn't scare me as much, my friends and I even noticed them a few times (we think). As long as you're not handing out leaflets or talk loudly about the government or Aung San Suu Kyi, it's safe - for tourists.
Locals, however, must be much more careful. One monk in Mandalay invited me and my Belgian friend Aurore for coffee in his room (his exact words were: "If you have time, I would like to invite you to my room" which made Aurore say: "that's a little weird" haha). As we sat down, he showed us a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi that he had on his wall and asked: "do you know this lady?". He also had a copy of her book Freedom From Fear, that he had bought while studying Buddhism in Sri Lanka. He told us that it is very dangerous for him to own these items. He also told us that there are many monks in prison since the protests in 2007. One of the monks had been on a hunger strike until he died, because he was not allowed to wear his monk robe in prison. I asked if it was true that there are monk spies and he told us: "yes, there are fake monks that live in the monasteries to spy on other monks". He also said that he used to go to Mandalay Hill sometimes to talk to the tourists, but now he couldn't do it anymore, someone had warned him because they suspected that he was talking about politics.
Maybe what I've written seems a little bit messy and unstructured for someone who doesn't know that much about Burma. So, the basics: Burma has been in control by the same military regime since 1962 (14 years after receiving independence from the cruel British, who had colonized the country for 80 years. Read Burmese Days by George Orwell, fantastic book!) The country is actually not poor, it exports oil, gas and gems for huge amounts of money every year (Thailand alone buys two billion dollars worth of oil every year, but even England buys from Burma). The problem is that the corrupt government doesn't give a shit about the people and not only do the people lack the right to vote, they don't even have the right to express their opinion in any way.
In 1988, there was a big pro democracy demonstration in Yangon and other parts of Burma. The military junta killed over 3000 people demonstrating peacefully. This, however, led to the first democratic election in 30 years. Aung San Suu Kyis party won by 82%, but never got to take over power. Aung San Suu Kyi had actually been put in house arrest one year before the election (and is still there).
In 1995, the government were trying to make tourism a new source of income and they started working for the project "visit Myanmar (the new name for Burma) in 1996". This work included lots of people being forced to work without being paid to make everything nice and pretty for the tourists. In Bagan, where the famous temples are, a whole town was forced to move with one weeks notice to enable the government to build hotels there. This led to a big boycott among the tourists, and the project was a failure. The government are mostly interested in the tourists in tour groups. These tourists money goes straight to the government. The independent travellers are not as popular, since most of us avoid spending any money that might end up in the governments pockets (although it's impossible to completely avoid it, there's a 12% tax on almost everything and the money for the visa and the departure tax are government money for sure).
In 2007, the gas prices went up by 500% in one day. This led to the famous monk demonstration for democracy. Although the monks demonstrated peacefully, some of them were killed and many put in prison. After this, the UN put some pressure on the government and they finally promised to hold a public election. One day before the election cyclone Nargis hit the country and somewhere between 100 000 and 300 000 people went missing. Burma refused to take any help from the outside (terrified of what the help workers might see) and this caused much more people to die than what would have been necessary. The promised election was still held the next day, even though many people were not able to get to the voting places. The people who actually voted were supervised, so that they'd chose the "right" party and the military regime of course won.
Now is an interesting time for Burma, the government has promised to hold an election again this year, but they refused to say what date until a few days ago. So on the 7th of November it' time again. A hotel manager I talked with in Yangon right before I left didn't have much hope for the election though. He said that there will probably be some trouble during the following months and then the election will be like the last; supervised by the regime.
There are so many more things that I could tell you about this country, but I think I've said enough for now. All I can do now is hope that you'll read this and give my best hopes for the future and for the election in November.
