On the first day I arrived in Burma the dean of a religious establishment who received me in his very humble house in a poor neighborhood, said this would have brought him in jail just a few years ago. Back in Thailand a friend tells me about how ‘They’ can hear everything you say, even from inside a house across the street. Both in- and outside Burma the sayings go: “The walls have ears! They will follow you! They know what you are doing!” I was sometimes worried. I did not stay in guest houses every evening and more against the likings of the military regime I talked a lot about politics and visited places I was not allowed to go. Would they know and would this mean danger for the people whom I spoke and who helped making this possible? I was afraid to leave the country with my camera and my notebooks. I was cautious and happy that the guard of the security check in the airport smiled at me and told me: “Two bananas”.
I know (still little) about the oppression of the people of Burma but above all I could also hardly see it. No wonder an ignorant outsider thinks everything is fine! Tourists might go back home and speak about the beauty of the country. Some have got a glimpse or a sense something is wrong or at least strange about this country that seemed to be frozen in time, but going beyond the façade is very difficult.
The people in Burma build their own societies without any support from the military government while the government builds its own world with the money it takes from the people and likes to destroy what is not theirs. Later during my first day in Burma I write in my notebook that I feel both the people and the government are building their lives next to each other. They both have their very delicate Truman Show, like the movie were reality consists of staged scenes. The pro-government demonstrations Gambari got to see on an earlier visit for example are forced and are illusions. The smiles of the people are also part of their script, they control their real anger and disagreement.
The people seem to ‘just live their lives’ but they know they are trapped, that the newspapers are full of lies and that their reality is being controlled through the treat of torture, imprisonment and more commonly named as ‘trouble to the people’. The generals on the other hand are mostly deceiving themselves, and unfortunately often also the outside world, by believing their own lies.
Nothing is what it seems and so many books and researches reveal this. Many actors keep up a ‘fake reality’. An opposition group for example sends their request for amendments of the proposed constitution to the ‘officials’ but admit that it is just to ‘show’ the people (in this case their own ethnic group) that they think about them, or using a frequently heard saying: “that they are doing for the people”. Even without receiving an answer they know their requests will be ‘not accepted’.
Researching about future political parties and the activities of another strange group called the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA), stated to be a government –operated NGO, I ask if somebody can confirm my feeling that they might become a political party. Some said vaguely to know something about this being announced. This morning I find a study from 2006 titled: The white shirts. How the USDA will become the new face of Burma’s dictatorship. It again is all planned! Reading more about the seven-step roadmap of the government supports this hypothesis.
The second book I find is Secret Histories. Finding George Orwell in a Burmese Teashop. Orwell is sometimes said to be the prophet of Burma and people joke he did not only wrote his first novel about their country but that with Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four they form a trilogy describing Burma’s cruel reality. Burma is often called to be ‘Orwellian’.
In a country full of fortune tellers, prophecy newspapers and where ‘official’ decisions are often based on horoscopes, the future ‘seems’ more uncertain than almost anywhere else. Nobody knows what will really happen tomorrow. Some however did make some plans!
Will the ‘secret’ plan of the military top continue to be implemented at all costs? It reminds me of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), a think thank that contributed to the strategic planning of the Iraq invasion that took place years later.
Even without being part of the ‘military plot’ against the people of Burma, one can reveal parts of its strategy by reading between the lines.
The future of Burma is maybe only uncertain when the people take the power! That is likely why many people of Burma and some neighboring countries are so afraid of this real change.
No comments:
Post a Comment