I asked to speak to the manager and minutes later, I’m being directed outside the building, along the road and back inside another building, that backs onto the same building I have just left. I sat and patiently waited. Finally, a man dressed in army uniform entered from the street. He asked, “Why do you want to travel to Bhamo?”
“I want to catch the ferry to Mandalay”, I replied. “OK, I will authorise the tickets”, he said. As we left, I asked who he was. He said, “U Kyaw Myint, deputy minister for transport.”
- Extracted from Dennis Guild, “Burma: Waiting for Suu Kyi”, Green Left Weekly, 5 July 2008.
This little anecdote is part of Guild’s long discussion of politics and everyday life in Burma. He concludes with the exhortation, “Let’s hope the world will place principle before profit and help free Suu Kyi and her people before she turns 64.”
A bit of context may be helpful here…some New Mandala readers will not be aware that Green Left Weekly is a newspaper sold on many Australian university campuses and anywhere the remnants of the old Left congregate. According to Wikipedia, “The newspaper strongly supports the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela led by Hugo Chávez, and has recently opened a bureau in Caracas to improve its coverage of events there.” As Australia’s self-proclaimed “leading radical newspaper” it also has regular Burma coverage.
As examples of a certain kind of activist and polemical position some of its Burma articles are worth a quick look. Of course it is not everyone’s cup of tea…but there is clearly still some kind of audience (or, dare I say it, a market) for this kind of commentary.
13 responses so far ↓
1 Dennis Guild // Aug 10, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Thanks for your comments Nicholas. I tried to get this article published during the Howard/Downer years without success. Green left published what Rupert’s editors rejected. At the time I was told by a spokeswoman: “We will print what we want, from whom we want, when we want, and how we want, this has come from the top.” As an undergraduate journalism student I felt sad that Newscorp selected the truth that suited them. But then the reality is that they exist from the profit of advertising. We learnt this in the first year at university – but what are we left with when the silver runs dry?
Congratz to GLW for having the heart to publish the story “Waiting for Suu Kyi”.
Burma seems to be a wounded animal with nations (corporations) the world over feasting from her flesh. This reminds me of the Neil Young song “I’ve seen the needle and the damage done, a little part of it in everyone.”
We in the west should lead by example, and practice Principle before Profit and Ethics before Economics. Otherwise we run the risk of being labeled hypocrites and the International Human Rights Instruments promoted by some of us seen as a smokescreen that obscures a different reality. If we don’t, the likes of Robert Mugabe & General Than Shwe would be quick to point out our hypocrisy.
The reconciliation theme promoted by Australia’s new government offers hope that we all need - especially those in Burma. The world could do with a lot more Aung San Suu Kyi’s, Yoko Ono’s and yes, why not - Kevin Rudd’s!
PS. I enjoyed your review re the Aw Saw & Paramilitary by Desmond Ball et al. I would love to get a copy of the book sometime.
Regards
Dennis
2 Moe Aung // Aug 11, 2008 at 3:02 am
Don’t you think the double standards and seizing the moral high ground consistently go hand in hand? Where would the West be without double standards and a forked tongue?
3 Dennis Guild // Aug 11, 2008 at 10:04 am
Hi Moe Aung,
Thanks for your response.
Of course you are right! It seems double standards and morals do go hand in hand and have contributed much to the wealth of the west. But it is good that some in the west have seen a need to reconcile with those they have wronged. Perhaps the UK could follow the theme and reconcile the wrongs that have contributed to Burma’s current position today? It may well be the elixer to lift Gordon Brown from the political doldrums!
In the theme of Yoko Ono’s late partner…”imagine” what the world would be like if we extinguished double standards and instead practiced the higher aspirations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights! Much better for mankind and the planet than the sociopathic ‘dog eat dog’ mentality that exists within the minds of many at the individual or state level.
4 jonfernquest // Aug 11, 2008 at 2:52 pm
“I want to catch the ferry to Mandalay”, I replied. “OK, I will authorise the tickets”, he said. As we left, I asked who he was. He said, “U Kyaw Myint, deputy minister for transport.”
It’s weird how sometimes just as Joe tourist you brush shoulders with big wigs in Burma.
I remember going to the ministry of tourism to get a tourist visa extension for which I needed a personal interview with the minister of tourism (or maybe it was the deputy minister).
The appointment was cancelled with the excuse:
Wun-gyi wun sho-nei-de [Minister diarrhea -ing]
Did get the signature though.
5 Charles F. // Aug 11, 2008 at 3:18 pm
The dog eating is in a different thread.
6 Dennis Guild // Aug 11, 2008 at 7:03 pm
Dear Jon,
Interesting tale. Hope the minister got over his ‘kee ben nam’ -perhaps brought on by K9 consumption.
7 Moe Aung // Aug 12, 2008 at 9:06 am
Hi Dennis, more likely hot chilli than K9 but he hardly needed to be specific. Yeah, Lennon dreamt the dream but sadly it’s likely to remain a dream. Just too much greed in this world and it’s spread like an epidemic - the virus of ‘looking after number one’. There just ain’t enough people who put people before profits.
8 Dennis Guild // Aug 12, 2008 at 11:56 am
Hi Moe,
Hot chilli indeed! I just love that Belacan. Best I had was at Katha (George Orwell’s former residence) on the Irrawaddy where the flying fishes play on that road to Mandalay. Have a Burmese mate in Cairns that makes a pretty good version.
John Lennon admitted that he was not the only dreamer…so those of us that share his dream… have to keep that dream alive… and spread the belacan…the vegemite……for all to share…and challenge the greedy…whether it is a multi - national corporation…a military regime…a democratic regime …in our continued struggle for social justice!
9 Hla Oo // Aug 12, 2008 at 8:22 pm
“I want to catch the ferry to Mandalay”, I replied. “OK, I will authorise the tickets”, he said. As we left, I asked who he was. He said, “U Kyaw Myint, deputy minister for transport.”
The reason U Kyaw Myint was quite accessible and humble was he wasn’t from the army. He was the Chief Mechanical Engineer of Burma Railway before he became one of the deputy Ministers for Transport.
He graduated from Rangoon University (BOC College) as a mechanical engineer and was a Fulbright scholar during U Nu’s reign and I think he went to Stanford in US. He is retired now and the reason I know him well is he is one of my distant uncles.
10 Moe Aung // Aug 13, 2008 at 5:42 am
Hear, hear, Dennis. The more the merrier indeed sharing JL’s dream, but you know the price you are likely to pay once you become too effective to be tolerated by the establishment. Look where it got our hero, an early grave, not that he’ll ever be forgotten for singing “imagine” which happens to be one of my all time favourites.
Hla Oo, I bet your uncle would have got the top job in his department if the military hadn’t put their own in position or had he been ex-army himself.
11 Hla Oo // Aug 13, 2008 at 10:14 am
Moe Aung, you’re right in the cases of other govt. departments in Burma. But for some reason, the army couldn’t put ex-armys in the engineer dominated departments like Railway, Construction, and Irrigation, where the top posts are still held by the professional civilian engineers.
But that time is ending soon as the Burmese Army now has their own University of Engineering for about ten years now. If the army is still in power for next ten more years, army engineers will take over all civilian engineering posts, eventually.
12 Dennis Guild // Aug 13, 2008 at 10:45 am
Hla Oo,
If your still in touch with your distant uncle thank him for my safe passage. I thought he was quite a gentleman and hope he is enjoying his retirement.
Moe Aung,
Yes, it is strange how those in power are so afraid of those who want to do good. Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Aung San Suu Kyi et al.
Politics…an early grave…I hope not - especially for ASSK.
In the next life I will write romance novels - perhaps it is safer!
13 Moe Aung // Aug 14, 2008 at 3:43 am
Yes Dennis, best-selling bodice rippers or whodunnits, sex and violence in massive doses please - today’s opium of the people on top of the real stuff, religion beaten hands down where communism never succeded. No competition to consumption and instant gratification, is there? Nowhere near as famous as John Lennon, Kirsty McColl still got done, and I don’t buy the lone gunman or freak accident theories.
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