The Burmese military initiated a coup in 1962, taking over the country, eliminated the constitution, and set up their own socialist policies. For 26 years, these policies were followed and enforced until 1988, when a student uprising led the military to change their leadership and style of control over the population. Instead of having a dictatorship with only one general, they formed a three general consulate. This consulate required the three generals to decide policy without any consent from the common citizen. This ruling system, called a military junta, demands complete obedience from the people. If one refuses, the junta willingly hands down sentences of death and torture to prove their power over the people.
Information coming out of the locked down nation of Myanmar, formally known as Burma, has the world watching as monks and demonstrators are arrested and shot down in the streets by soldiers. There has been no major attempt at a nation wide demonstration since the 1988 uprising, where 3,000 demonstrators were murdered by the military junta. A thirst for freedom has risen on an overwhelming scale within the Burmese population and many refuse to let their military rulers quench that political thirst. This new wave of dissatisfaction began with anger over raised fuel prices in August, and has spawned into 100,000 people defying a government that places fear and hatred into the people.
“I knew that I wouldn’t be seeing my family for I was expecting at least a couple of years,” said Sai, a Hawaii Pacific University student and Burmese citizen, telling of when he was arrested by the military back in 1997 at the age of 17. Thrown into a military prison for one year without trial, Sai became a victim of the military crackdown on citizens who questioned their government’s strict authority. “My friends at that time were arrested and put in jail for 6 months without trial for talking about Benjamin Franklin or the Bill of Rights from England.”
In Burma, it is common for the military to find out about traitors that speak out against their policies through the most unexpected sources. Sai notes that “in school if the professors heard any talk from the students they would go report it to the head master and then the head master would call the military police.” There is great paranoia in Burma due to these methods taken by the military, and to be incarcerated for discussing political issues in University is a punishment unthinkable to students here in the United States. Unfortunately, these methods are a way of life to many Burmese people like Sai.
The Burmese leadership has also long attempted to cut off all influence of western culture. “I had a copy of speeches from Charles De Gaulle, Nietzsche, and other history books, and they confiscated them all,” said Sai, reflecting on his arrest experience back in 1997. “I also had a copy of Karl Marx’s ‘Communist Manifesto,’ but for me it was just a book.”
Torture is a tool used by the Burmese military to maintain dominance over those citizens who, in the eyes of the military, are threatening their rule. The day Sai arrived at the military prison, Mi14, he was faced with the possibility of dying for treason. One of the cells he was kept in was small and extremely dirty, with a ceiling comprised of twisted barbed wire. “They made me kneel down and watch as they boiled my friends’ hand and rip his nails out while beating me with fists and guns,” explains Sai, remembering a night of pure horror in that prison. “After a few days in that cell they transferred me to the water cell, where I was kept in a foot of disgusting water, without any light.” Sai was held in the water cell for countless days, and with no light, he had no idea how long he was there. “I can’t remember, I passed out several times and to this day I still don’t know.”
There is great unrest consuming the land of Burma and the world has an obligation to give an immediate reaction. “The intervention from the world must be awareness on a massive level. If my country becomes victim to a civil war than a major crisis will fall upon the region,” said Sai, fearing that if nothing is done to stop the insanity and bloodshed, then the world will witness more suffering and death. “The US and European Union must pressure China to become more involved with the chaos inside Burma,” Sai said, believing that if China withdrew its support from the Burmese military, their brutal power structure would eventually collapse.
The Burmese people are the ones on the front lines protesting for basic freedoms and the right to live. They must be the ones to liberate their country and deliver a new way of life to their fellow citizens. “We must educate the rising generation of Burma in the ways of democracy, and that is how we will save our country’s future.”
