Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

Thant Myint-U believes that a peace deal is closer than at any time since 1948. Presidential adviser Win Min agrees that the level of trust between the ethnic fighters and the Myanmar army is exceptionally high. But Ko Minn Latt expressed grave concern that, with the nation as a whole unready for global competition, autonomous states were not ready to contend with such large neighboring economies as those of Thailand or Cambodia. The defining question is whether Myanmar can democratize without fragmenting into impotent pieces. How does the central government support a range of ethnic identities without losing a unifying, national one? How, indeed, can a national identity be forged that does not feel like a vestige of the generals’ artificial one? Many Myanmar-watchers fear a devolution similar to the splintering of the former Yugoslavia into long antithetical, warring republics.

The Buddhist emphasis on forgiveness is not without its ramifications here. There is, once more, little talk of retributive justice; moving on is more important than holding people to account. Win Min spent years in the jungle after the 1988 uprising; then he went to the United States to study, then moved to Thailand, where he became a professor. When he was invited to advise the new Burmese government, his family warned him that the regime might be using him to create an appearance of reform, but he yearned to be part of the changes he had hoped for. “We’re not at takeoff yet,” he said. “It takes time.”

Literary tea shops where writers gather for performances and readings have sprung up all over Yangon and Mandalay. “There’s a short-story tea shop just over there,” one local told me as we strolled through Yangon. “Detective writers and mystery writers go to the one next to the stop at the Macon Building. The poets go to Thirty-Seventh Street, and the novelists go to one on Thirty-Third Street.” Such events would have been impossible five years ago. Censorship under the junta was applied most rigorously to politics, religion, and nudity. According to Tin Win Win (who goes by the pen name Ju), depictions of poverty were also prohibited, since they were thought to show the country in a bad light. You had to secure a license to publish a book, which first had to pass a prepublication review. In 2012, the head of the censorship department announced on national television, “If it is going to be a true democracy, we have to abolish censorship.” These days, as Ma Thanegi noted, “Any news of any unfairness anywhere, it’s in the papers. We have never before seen such a situation. Even if nothing is done, at least we know.” Journalists long precluded from criticizing the government now do little else.

Thant Thaw Kaung, a leading publisher and foreign-book distributor, sold an English-language encyclopedia in 2007. A friend pointed out a paragraph-long entry for “human rights.” Thant withdrew the whole encyclopedia, collecting all copies that had been delivered to stores, lest someone higher up notice and send him to jail. He now distributes his books in English more widely and has set up traveling libraries to bus books in Burmese into villages.

The government department overseeing book publication, previously called the Press Scrutiny and Registration Department, has been rechristened the Copyright and Registration Department. Although books are no longer censored line by line before publication, the department reviews them after publication, and those that are too broadly critical of the government or military are taken out of circulation. A bestselling author in Myanmar may sell up to a hundred thousand copies of a title, but few foreign books are translated into Burmese. Most writers concentrate on short-form prose and poetry for magazines. Blogging is achieving some reach. But Ma Thida suggested that writers had internalized the spirit of censorship, and that it would take a generation before anyone would write with authentic freedom. She has started a magazine and a newspaper and has exhorted younger writers to expand their scope, arguing that freedom withers if it is not exercised. Her publications touch on long-standing hot-button issues such as ethnic conflicts, and fresher terrain such as women’s, gay, and disability rights.