Double karma, p.5
Double Karma, page 5
5
Thandar:
I still can’t believe he did that — nor that I said yes. How serious could he have been, proposing to me on general strike day? At the time, I thought really serious. Min was awkward but sincere about his feelings when he found a way to express them. The longer we were together, the more it seemed he had no intention of returning to the US but wanted to forge a life with me in Burma. Min said he was deeply attracted to me. The feeling was mutual, but he was hard to figure out: he never tried making an advance on me, like other men did. When it came to his work as a photographer, or expressing opinions about art and politics, he was as confident and forthright as anyone I’d met. But when it came to dating, he was passive and shy; it was as if he didn’t understand his role, as the man, to take the lead. So when he proposed, I didn’t hesitate to say yes. Not only had he taken initiative at last, but in recent weeks he had begun taking more liberties by holding my hand, kissing my cheek, or stealing the odd peck on the lips. And it worked. A hopeless romantic, I fell for him.
Min wanted to tie the knot right away. I said there was plenty of time and insisted on waiting until the national struggle was over. I did want to marry him, but I thought we should wait until democracy came to Burma; until the Army got out of politics and civilian rule became the law of the land. Because I wanted us to take that personal step in a free society, I thought we should keep our engagement a secret until final victory was won. If the uprising failed and the government threw everyone in jail, they would find out I was engaged to an American, and there would be trouble for the two of us and my family. I insisted we tell no one, including my parents, until the struggle was over. Only when the regime was toppled, free elections were held, and a democratic people’s party took government would we formalize our commitment.
When August 8, 1988 began, such a fate seemed inevitable. Throughout the country, people stopped working to observe the general strike. In Rangoon streets, masses numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Soldiers abandoned their posts to join us rather than acting against their fellow citizens. It was exhilarating, this sense that people power was truly prevailing after twenty-six years of dictatorship. The historic events surrounding us only heightened our euphoria in the wake of our breakfast engagement. How could I not have said yes to Min when every big rally, every shouted slogan, every smiling face among the thousands we saw that day was like a giant “yes” to our collective and personal futures?
The euphoric feeling lasted until just before midnight, when Tatmadaw forces came out of the shadows and began spraying civilians with automatic gunfire. From that moment on, there was no future to talk about — only the present. Our lives were now at risk. Two more days of violence followed. Troops opened fire at Rangoon General Hospital, killing medical staff as they tried to protect patients. One of the dead was a mentor in my nursing program, a good friend and one of the most selfless people I had ever met. In the weeks that followed, more of civil society joined the demonstrations. Rallies were held in cities and towns throughout the country. Meanwhile, Ne Win’s replacement resigned after eighteen days.
On August 26, Aung San Suu Kyi formally began her political career with a speech at Shwedagon Pagoda that drew half a million people. She condemned all violence, calling for a people’s consultative committee to act as an intermediary between students and government. The resistance soon expanded to include civil servants, lawyers, writers, actors, and singers. Former prime minister U Nu — deposed as Burma’s last democratic leader in 1962 — proclaimed a parallel government with himself as prime minister. And, as expected, student activists formed the All Burma Federation of Student Unions, making ours a truly national movement. For a few weeks, it seemed, the popular uprising was gaining critical momentum; this was our finest hour as citizens, with so many people courageously standing up to this morally bankrupt regime.
But I can’t say I was proud of everything, and there were troubling signs that the People’s final victory might prove elusive. Several weeks of violent clashes between protesters and district authorities led to the collapse of municipal government; neighbourhood committees took over local administration. Prisoners staged riots, including at Insein, where nine thousand inmates, including hardened criminals, either escaped or were released by the government. Meanwhile, in our zeal to punish an evil regime, some of us played judge and jury of anyone deemed to have colluded with it. One day, spy agents from the state’s Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence were exposed after infiltrating the protest movement in Rangoon. Activists responded by arresting these people and chopping off their heads. In North Okkalapa Township, outraged citizens beheaded four police officers with an ancient sword. Elsewhere, suspected informants were similarly decapitated, the offender’s head impaled on a stick and displayed in a public square as a warning to would-be traitors.
A sense of chaos began to take hold. The government refused to budge on our demands, ignoring our threats of an indefinite strike. By mid-September, our actions had failed to move the country any closer toward representative government. How would it end? The answer came on September 18 with a grim announcement over state radio: the Tatmadaw had launched a coup against the sitting regime. The Burma Socialist Program Party was disbanded, the cabinet replaced with a new military junta called the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or SLORC. Soldiers were deployed throughout the country, their orders to dismantle strike centres and blockades wherever they found them. Resisters were to be shot on sight. This was a military coup against a military regime. Could things possibly get worse?
With precious little time to act before we’d all be arrested, the students’ federation called a series of emergency meetings. At the one I attended with Min, a group of self-appointed martyrs proposed that we continue marching in the streets. The rest of us knew this plan was suicidal. None of us could forget the White Bridge Massacre, the RASU campus raid, Black Friday, or Ne Win’s warning the day he retired as dictator, that when the Tatmadaw shoots, it doesn’t shoot up in the air, it aims for its target. Hadn’t the SLORC just given shoot-to-kill orders? And yet, because our power as a movement had grown since March, there were more than a few dreamers still among our ranks, students who believed that continued acts of civil disobedience would be met with nothing more than a prison term. How sadly delusional!
There was a second option, I told everyone, raising my voice above the chatter: we could leave the capital, dissolve the ABFSU, and regroup in the jungle as a revolutionary movement.
The moment I said it, conversations stopped. People turned to face me, some with fear in their eyes, others shaking their heads in dismay. Min clutched my hand to get my attention. We hadn’t discussed this idea in private, so my bringing it up here came as a shock to him. Truth be told, I shocked even myself. Until Thida’s death, I still believed the Tatmadaw had at least a shred of basic decency. When all those soldiers came to our side, I thought there was still a chance that the generals would hand back power to the people. But then they started killing protesters by the dozen and slaughtering medical staff at RGH. A government that murders health care workers and other civilians is not interested in sharing power. Many of us would die for democracy, so why not go down fighting? Several comrades, I reminded everyone, had already left for the jungle while we sat here in Rangoon, twiddling our thumbs.
One of the martyrs was unconvinced. He said it was impossible to join the insurrection from Rangoon. I repeated myself: Some of our brothers and sisters had already joined the Karen National Liberation Army and other ethnic rebels near the border. These rebels had weapons and could train us to become battle-ready. It might take a while, but if we combined our resources, we could build the capacity to fight back and overthrow the SLORC. The room fell silent. Some of my comrades, if not surprised that a woman was calling for violent insurrection, seemed alarmed that I had raised the possibility so openly. This only made me wonder about the more weak-kneed among them, those who might not have disagreed with revolution in principle but, if arrested, might feel compelled to reveal its strongest advocates. Scanning the room, I was no longer sure who I could trust. But my concern was moot for the moment. A vote was held; we would continue marching in the streets, with a rally scheduled for the next day.
* * *
Min:
Thandar scared the hell out of me at that meeting. I had no idea she was capable of armed struggle; she had given no clue in all our time together. My fiancée was a nursing student, a future health care provider, not a killer. So her intervention at that meeting of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions came as a shock. Since the end of May, our relationship had deepened to the point where all I could think about was how we would spend the rest of our lives together. It didn’t matter where. I could easily imagine us building a future in California or staying here in the new democratic Burma. But how long would this New Burma take to become reality? And would it ever happen if armed struggle was the way to get there? I worshipped the ground Thandar walked on, so I had to trust her. But I had a funny feeling that our commitment to marriage had just become a theory to be shelved indefinitely.
Was she saying she’d be willing to go into the jungle and join the rebels herself? I asked, confronting her after the meeting. She was surprised by the question. Of course she would. And I would join her there, right? She looked at me earnestly, no doubt recalling my promise in Mandalay. I thought of her family, of how devastated her parents would be if she joined the rebels. I felt sick. But yes, I replied, of course I would join her there.
I had come to Burma to take pictures, not wage war. The notion of killing for democracy seemed hypocritical and self-defeating, a contradiction. Mine was the wrong temperament for armed combat. I detested the patriotic machismo of US gun culture, from the obsession with defending private property to the nauseating legacy of proxy wars in Southeast Asia and Central America. I had contempt for the gun culture’s narcissistic freedom fetish, its demonization of any man who refuses on principle to own a gun. This was a culture steeped in white supremacy that enabled all sorts of knuckle-dragging bigotries. Forced at eighteen to register for Selective Service, I had vowed never to report if Uncle Sam came calling, which luckily didn’t happen. I thought I had avoided guns for good. But now here I was in Burma, engaged to a future health care worker who suddenly wanted me to channel my inner Rambo.
As it happened, Thandar was outvoted at the meeting so the question of joining the rebels was put off. Instead, she would join a group of students for another rally the next day. I would be there with my camera. But from the moment I arrived downtown late that afternoon, I knew the rally was doomed. The jubilation of recent weeks had been replaced by a deep sense of foreboding, of inevitable carnage. In the days before the coup, the Tatmadaw’s presence had been limited to Rangoon’s periphery; now the soldiers were everywhere, with Army units deployed throughout the city. Making my way to the rally on foot, I had just reached the corner of Sule Pagoda and Bogyoke Aung San roads when a Tatmadaw Jeep pulled up to the curb behind me. Four soldiers jumped out, each carrying a Kalashnikov rifle. All skinny recruits barely out of their teens, wearing uniforms far too big for them, they carried weapons that seemed bigger than their bodies. They ran past me, toward Sule Pagoda, with a crazed look in their eyes — a combination of deer-in-the-headlights fear and steely, single-minded intent.
I followed behind them from a good distance. Within a block of the Buddhist shrine, I saw what was happening: the four soldiers were joining a couple dozen others who had spilled out from the alleyways onto both sides of the street, each unit falling into formation with a larger group in the centre under the barked commands of a bullhorn. I had arrived, a few minutes late, on the wrong side of the street; a mass of soldiers blocked my view of the front. But this was where Thandar and I had agreed to meet, so it must have been the nursing students the Tatmadaw were confronting. The soldiers took no notice of me; I turned around and snuck up an alley, circling back until I came out to the area where the students were. From the sidewalk, I searched desperately for Thandar but couldn’t find her in the front row, which was composed entirely of nursing students chanting “Democracy now!”
Where the hell was Thandar? The protesters kept chanting slogans. The commanding officer shouted his orders into a bullhorn. The soldiers knelt on the ground and aimed at the crowd. The chanting stopped. For a moment there wasn’t a sound but the safety clicks of a hundred rifles echoing off the buildings around us. And that’s when I spotted Thandar in the front row, leading her group. The commanding officer gave the order. Between the first report of gunfire and the second, I thought I saw a red splotch appear on the front of my fiancée’s white blouse. But it wasn’t Thandar whose body went limp and fell to the ground; it was the student standing next to her. Four others dropped like rag dolls while she remained standing. The crack of gunfire was soon accompanied by ear-piercing shrieks as people realized what was happening and began to scatter. When I saw Thandar turn to run, I began chasing her. At one point I tripped over a boy crossing my path. When I looked up, my fiancée was gone.
For some time afterward, I would second-guess my response after the shooting began. Instead of hanging on with the deep current of humanity flowing down Sule Pagoda Road, why hadn’t I fought against the crowd to look for Thandar? Why had I assumed, after scanning the pavement for bodies, that she had dodged the bullets and escaped down a side street? But I was too hard on myself. After losing her, I could not have ignored the soldiers shooting in my direction. I had to go with the crowd. Pulling out my camera, I clicked away as I ran. Within a few minutes, dead bodies were everywhere. I took pictures of it all: of the dead and injured being lifted onto rickshaws, pickup trucks, or the backs of bicycles, and of people risking their own lives to provide water, tourniquets, or medicine to those struggling for theirs. Eventually I put the camera down to help out, spending several hours into the evening assisting with transports to the hospital. Then, exhausted, my clothes soaked with the blood of Burmese students, I returned to my low-budget hotel in Chinatown.
The man at the reception desk turned away at the sight of me, not wanting to witness anything he might have to report to his employer — or the police. Safe in my room, I took a long shower before sitting down to guzzle a couple of Tiger beers. Then I fell asleep until a crowing rooster awoke me at dawn. After putting on a clean cotton shirt and a pair of jeans, I stuffed my bloody clothes into a bag for the trash bin, grabbed my camera, and left the hotel. Wandering the empty streets, I looked for signs of the slaughter I had seen a few hours earlier. As with the White Bridge Massacre, the city had been cleansed of most evidence of atrocity. But there was at least one telling detail. An image that, despite its lack of human subject, told the story: a blood-spattered curb, the crimson pool beside it having drained into a sewage hole next to a swept-up pile of abandoned flip-flops. My last photo in Rangoon.
I hailed a taxi. As the car made its way toward Mayangone Township, my mind kept returning to a young student I had tried to keep warm as he lay dying in the street, the blood gurgling from his mouth as his guts fell out. I was haunted by the bewilderment in this boy’s eyes, his disbelief and despair that his short life was already coming to an end. At Thandar’s house, Mr. Aye met me at the front door and directed me to the living room where his wife was waiting. The floor was covered with shattered glass and books pulled from their shelves. Antique British sofas had been torn open with knives. Mrs. Aye directed me to one of them before joining her husband on another. There was no sign of Thandar or her brothers.
“The Tatmadaw raided our home at three in the morning,” explained Mr. Aye. “They took Thandar to Insein and her brothers to the police station. Aye Maung and Hla Min will be released in a few hours,” he added, “but Thandar is likely to receive a long prison sentence. And you have been in the thick of it, Min. You should leave the country at once.”
But I had to tell Mr. Aye that Thandar and I were engaged to be married.
He sighed. He told me that one day I would make a fine son-in-law. But I would not be much help to Thandar, or to the family, from a jail cell. The uprising was over. I had to leave.
Mrs. Aye, wiping away a tear, nodded silently as her husband spoke.
I never saw them again.
6
Mr. Aye was right: I should have fled the country as soon as our conversation ended. There would have been no shame in flying home. I could have had my photos published, raising awareness of the situation in Burma in real time. I could have lobbied for Thandar’s release. For a few hours, I did consider leaving. But hopping on a plane at the first sign of trouble seemed the easy way out. Choosing that moment to return to my life of safety and privilege in the United States felt wrong when all the new friends I’d made in Burma were stuck, living through the fresh hell of a SLORC dictatorship. And Thandar, my fiancée, in the worst hell of all at Insein.
Thandar had called on her fellow students to go into the jungle and fight. I opposed violence for political ends, but I had come to Burma to gain new experience and perspective. The more I thought about it, the relentless brutality of the SLORC made the notion of joining an armed insurrection defensible. A reckless bid for democracy through guerilla warfare might seem counterintuitive, but who was to say that joining the rebels meant I had to embrace a combat role myself? There was plenty one could do that didn’t involve fighting, and I could still be useful to the revolution with my camera. So there it was: in the time it took me to gulp down a few nervous shots of Mekhong whisky in my hotel room, I decided to join the rebels.
There was not a lot of time to act. If I was arrested in Rangoon, the SLORC would eventually match my photo with their records from March, find my real name, and uncover my fake identity as a farmer from Mandalay. Tracking my movements over the previous months, they could also identify me as a foreign enabler of pro-democracy student radicals, establishing a connection to Thandar that would endanger her family while making her own situation worse. So if I wasn’t getting on a plane to go home, I needed to leave the city right away.
