Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

Nor has education recovered from the systematic attack it endured, though literacy has improved in recent years. The government now pays young people to study, but many still choose not to do so. Most schooling is focused on rote learning, and most teachers can be bribed, given their measly official salary of $60 a month. Progressive teachers complain that it is nearly impossible to teach critical thinking to students who have never heard of dissent. The urban university campuses were reopened as institutes of higher learning only in 2014. “In a democracy, the people are the key players,” Nay Phone Latt commented, “and if they are not educated, how can they fulfill this function?” Ko Minn Latt, the ambitious mayor in Mon State, became involved in politics after seeing a seventh-grade schoolgirl shot down by police in 1988. “I was at first one of the activists. I want this and I want this. No compromise, no discussion,” he said. “What I am trying to do now is to help people to become democrats.”

The country that is now Myanmar has rarely focused its military power outward; it could never stand up to China or India, the leviathans between which it is sandwiched. The military’s main preoccupation is securing the borders with Bangladesh and Thailand and quelling the various ethnic militias that have doggedly struggled for generations to gain autonomy. Burmese exiles interviewed in camps in Thailand some years ago said they wanted only to return home, no matter what the government did or said. These days, popular sentiment holds that the junta leaders should apologize, but need not stand trial or be punished. The generals can see that sentiment is moving in the direction of accountability, and they react with a not entirely irrational paranoia.

American Buddhist monk Alan Clements interviewed Suu Kyi in 1995 for his book The Voice of Hope. Clements wondered how she would reconcile the Buddhist idea of forgiveness with the need to punish oppressors. She said that if the generals would confess to their crimes, it would be easier to forgive them. The result was an immediate crackdown. No South African–style “truth and reconciliation committees” will be forming anytime soon in Myanmar. Everyone understands that the generals will walk away only if their bank accounts are secure. “They’re old and they don’t want to go through the effort of looking after the country again,” Ma Thanegi said. “They’re not interested. In fact, they were never interested. At this point, I don’t care if they are not punished. It’s a luxury to punish them, and we don’t have that luxury.”

The government of Myanmar, long based in Yangon, was moved abruptly in 2005 to the brand-new planned city of Naypyidaw, about two hundred miles north in what had previously been wilderness. The United States had built a highly fortified embassy in Yangon after the September 11 attacks and declined to move to the new capital. I attended one demonstration in Yangon, the organizers of which—having obtained the requisite permits—were protesting the requirement to obtain permits to demonstrate. The crowd was angry and their message was clear, but the government officials and legislators at whom it was aimed would neither hear nor see it. Naypyidaw is a city of government functionaries, largely out of reach of the radicals in Yangon and Mandalay. This geographical buffer protects the government from its own people.

More than a quarter of Myanmar’s gross domestic product comes from natural resources. Major corporations have begun to invest there: consumer-product manufacturers such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi, and General Electric; financial-services companies such as Visa and MasterCard; and extraction companies such as ExxonMobil and Chevron. Businesses without so much leverage are wary of Myanmar’s persisting violence, lack of governmental transparency, erratic policy, and unreliable utilities. Many skilled people left the country after 1988, creating a vacuum of competence. Some hundred thousand Burmese professionals are living in Singapore alone, working as construction supervisors, accountants, dentists, and doctors. Without them, foreign companies struggle to set up shop, but likewise, until foreign companies begin operations, many emigrants have no incentive to return. Foreign governments are also hesitant in this uneasy dance. As Derek Mitchell told me, “The international community has dealt with Myanmar as a cause, and now has to deal with it as a country.”