Note: When talking about the military government in Myanmar, I have consciously chosen to be vague about identities
and places or have changed minor referential points to protect the individuals who spoke with me based on the fear
that was expressed to me by all who said anything about the government. Nearly all of the hotels I stayed at, which
had to be registered with the government, were recorded so I took an extra caution in avoiding talk with hotel
personnel about political issues.
I did not really know what to expect when I landed in Myanmar, but I was cautious. I had spoken to several people
who had lived in Myanmar, but since emigrated to the U.S. long before I made my trip. One person I had started to
interview had refused to continue citing concern for the safety of family members who stilled lived there.
I met a Burmese man in Bangkok just before I left for Myanmar who told me how he had been arrested for political
activities of some kind and was sentenced to three years. During the first week of jail, the inmates were to have
their heads shaved, but it wasn’t a clean shave. Instead their heads would be haphazardly shaved here and there to
humiliate them. Not ready to give into the humiliation, which was even greater because he is a Buddhist and views
his head as the most spiritually important part of his body, T____ refused to have his head shaved. He was sent to
solitary confinement for his refusal. There was no bathroom in the cell and he didn’t want to drink water because
he would then have to smell his own piss. He was beat up several times that first week. He fought back every time,
but this just meant that he was beat more. The guards were soldiers, but the chief administrator was a civilian and
he happened to make rounds after T____’s first week of confinement. The warden spoke to T____ and asked him why he
wouldn’t agree to have his head shaved. T____ explained that as a Buddhist, his head was sacred and that it was okay
for them to shave his entire head, but not to humiliate him by shaving here and there. The warden convinced the guards
somehow to shave T____’s entire head and he was released from the solitary confinement.
Unlike China, where specific websites are blocked and all internet service providers have to be licensed, the internet
is not available in Myanmar. Email is though, but I was never able to get it to work. The hotel staff didn’t seem
surprised.
In the Bagan countryside I saw wells and a pipe that the U.N. had built so villagers would not have to travel so far
to get water for everyday household needs. When on a trek to see hill tribes in Shan State I saw wells, schools, even
medical facilities built by the U.N., but I couldn’t seem to find anything that the government had offered the villagers.
I asked my guide, “The U.N. builds schools, wells, even medical facilities for the hill tribe villagers.
They pay taxes don’t they? What does the government give them?” “The government gives them their land,”
was his reply. Thinking the relatively isolated hill tribes must live independent existence from day-to-day,
I asked “Do the villagers handle their own criminal problems?” “If it is not a very serious matter, they will
deal with it themselves. Otherwise they will go down to the police in the town.” When I asked my guide if “they”
told him not to talk about the government. He smiled and shrewdly replied after thinking for a moment, “I don’t
know much about the government.”
Some people I met seemed surprisingly informed about what was going on between Myanmar, its neighbors and about
events even outside of Myanmar. I had heard that some publications were now available in the country. When I
asked someone about this I was told that magazines such as Time were available, but sensitive information was
censored before it was made available to the public. At my hotels, which were registered for foreign use and
typically did not have anyone, but foreign guests staying at them, the televisions often offered MTV Asia, CNN
and sometimes HBO, a Thai channel a Malaysian channel. All televisions offered the military government channel
but I was told that “government TV is all lies. We don’t believe what they say, we just laugh.” When I asked
about the official paper, New Light of Myanmar, I was told the same. Where do the informed get their information?
BBC radio.
Being a white-skinned foreigner in Myanmar during the rainy season when there aren’t a lot of foreigners like myself
walking around, you get used to people staring at you because you are different. You also get used to hearing people
giggling behind bushes or closed shutters as you walk by and start to acquire some level of comfort with this fact.
However, you can still discern between people watching you out of curiosity and those watching you to keep tabs on
what you are doing.
While in Mandalay, I was walking through the market taking pictures and I noticed a man in his thirties was following
me. I would see him and then walk and he wouldn’t be there, then I’d turn the corner and there he was again. A little
later I was walking down the street and felt someone looking at me from a car as I passed. I looked to see two men in
a car and the one closes to me turned away, but I noticed they had a red light on their dashboard, which I believed
marked the vehicle as a police car. They were about the same age as the man who had been following me and dressed
nice, nicer than the average person, just as the man who had been following me. Not sure if I was just being a
little paranoid, I asked someone I met later about the police and was told that aside from traffic police who wore
uniforms, the police only wore uniforms when in the office. Was I being followed, was I being watched, or was I
just being overly suspicious?
In one town I visited, a man entered a small business just off the main street where I was sitting and sat down.
He talked to the proprietor of the business and asked me where I was from, then, the proprietor left to look for
someone to help us with our transaction. The man explained to me that he was fifty year’s old and had grandchildren.
Then lowering his voice to a whisper, he grimaced and motioned with his foot as if he were extinguishing a cigarette
butt saying, “We are under the boot…You understand?” I said I thought so and asked him if he was talking about the
government. He said, “Government no good,” shaking his head back and forth and then went on to complain about the
government being responsible for Myanmar’s poor economic state.
It’s not as though people living in Myanmar look downtrodden and miserable. I saw as many smiling faces here as
anywhere. Ignorance is bliss, they say and so poverty is relative for most. However, the fear of the government,
even for the simplest thing, can be palpable at times. I was at an airport and I wanted to take a picture of a
janitor’s tattoo, which I admired for its design. He didn’t seem to mind, but made a quick glance over towards
the customs area where an official was busy with some traveler’s luggage and then asked me to follow him to the
other side of a wide pillar so that he we could not be seen by the customs officers though anyone else in the area
we were in could readily see us. Only then did he say it was okay for me to take the picture.
In another town I spoke to a merchant and his son and they told me how the military government had decided to
reroute and pave a new road through their centuries-old village. They were given one week to move without
compensation. Needless to say, this cost them dearly. The farmers in the village suffered greatly as well.
Their traditional homes were situated next to large trees, which would cool the air near their homes and offer
some relief from the intense heat of Myanmar. Their new homes did not have the benefit of such trees and were
very hot. They told me that the people are very angry, but cannot do anything. I asked them what they thought
about Aung San Suu Kyi. They said everybody like Aung San Suu Kyi.
Everyone I asked, in every town I visited, did like Aung San Suu Kyi. T____ was the most guarded about his
support of Ma Suu, as she is also known. He said that she was symbolically the future of Myanmar, though everyone
may not agree with everything she says.
I had a particularly long conversation with one man and tried to explain that I felt Americans, like myself, were
selfish compared to Asians. So I asked him what he felt motivated the military leaders to impoverish Myanmar if
they were not selfish people. He explained that they may not be selfish because they were helping their extended
families become rich if not their country.
When I was processed by immigration after arriving at Yangon airport, my name was checked against a list of foreigners,
presumably not to be admitted to the country, handwritten in a book and arranged by country and then alphabetically by
surname. The two airports I subsequently flew to, Mandalay and Heho, had an immigration desk where I had to be
processed through as well. It didn’t matter if I arrived from a domestic flight or not. Though immigration officials
in any country will ask where you are staying during your visit, my experience in Myanmar bordered on the absurd. At
my hotel in Taunggyi, I had to fill out two forms. One was to register as a foreigner staying in Taunggyi and the
other was for the hotel to register that a foreigner was staying with them. Most of the information, passport, visa
information, and foreign residence, was duplicated except one form asked me for my father’s name and age. Each form
was in triplicate. I also had to tell each hotel I stayed at where I came from and where I was going.
One man told me not to talk politics because there were spies everywhere. “Everyone hate government. They have
guns. They from the country—no education.” Where were the military, I asked, because I rarely saw military except
when I was in Shan State where they were a common site. “They outside of town.” At last he told me, “Don’t ask
people about Aung San Suu Kyi. You leave and go America, [but] they [the military will] take me away.”
Later that same day I went to the edge of a town wondering if hill tribe villages might be within walking distance
because the elevation of the town was so high. I came across a neighborhood of huts and dirt roads and began
walking through the area taking some pictures. After I short while I turned back and stopped at a restaurant for
a drink and took a couple of pictures there as well, then began walking down the main street when someone from
behind me yelled, “brother.” He yelled a second time and I turned around to see a short, dark skinned, dirty man
probably in his thirties holding up a nearly full package of cigarettes and he said the word “smoke” to offer me
one. I motioned that I didn’t want one and he asked me “Where going to?” I motion that I was going straight,
but I was a little annoyed that this man, like everyone else, was interested in where I was going. He walked
alongside me and I started to veer left to walk down Bogyoke Aung San Road, but he followed me. Looking into
his eyes, I notice that they were glazed over as if he was high or drunk. My camera bag was over my shoulder
and I had a camera in my hand with a large, 300-millimeter camera lense attached to it.
After my earlier conversation, I was on alert and I started to question things about this man who decided he
wanted to walk with me. He’s a farmer: both his clothes and himself are dirty. His body is small, but muscular
from long days of work in the fields. Yet he has a full or nearly full packet of foreign cigarettes in his hand,
not a cheroot like you’d expect for someone with his apparent income level.
A boy is playing on the side of the street. He has a homemade cart of sorts about two and a half feet by two and
a half feet. It’s just a few boards nailed together on four small steel wheels and he uses a stick to help him
push it. He’s at the top of a hill now and ready to turn around. He smiles at me and I smile back lifting my
camera to get ready to take some pictures. The man walking next to me starts talking to the boy and the boy’s
smile fades rapidly. I can tell that the man is telling the boy to go away with his cart. Somehow he is insisting
that the boy not take it for a ride. Then the man suggests that we go into a small eatery that we are walking by.
I say “No,” and try to motion for him to go on and walk by himself still holding my camera up. He motions for me to
walk on instead, even pushing me slightly after motioning me to stop looking at the boy. I start to get a little
scared because I’ve never encountered someone so aggressive like this during my time in Myanmar. I’m also concerned
after having received a warning earlier in the day and the cigarettes, which seem out of place with the man, suggest
payment for something he was to do.
I decide to put my camera away and walk on until the man stops following me. He yells, “Brother,” a couple of times
as I walk, but I ignore him. After walking for a couple of blocks, I look back and don’t see him anymore. I’ve
become paranoid. I see a soldier or policeman of some sort across the street with a walky-talky and his is walking
parallel to me. I keep walking and decide to turn into the market area so that I won’t be followed anymore. When
I walk back to the street a few moments later the policeman is no longer there. I walk back to my hotel and make
arrangements to take a taxi to the next city on my agenda the following morning. It rains the rest of the day,
but I still feel like I’m captive in my hotel.
One of the last people I met in Myanmar had a brother-in-law who was serving a four- year term to be followed by
a six year term. His crime? Political activities associated with Aung San Suu Kyi’s party.
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