The Lady and the Peacock (19 page)

Everywhere she went, she and her companions were met by huge, ecstatic crowds which had often taken great risks to come out and greet her, defying the orders of the authorities to stay away. And as she moved across the country, to Tenasserim in the south, across the Irrawaddy Delta south and west of Rangoon on repeated trips, to the old capital of Mandalay and points in between, to the Shan States in the northeast, finally right up into the mountains of Kachin far to the north, her party's support ballooned; it was as if she was absorbing the country into her own person, and the country was absorbing her. And every trip she survived, every new crowd that hailed her, the junta's power and prestige shrank proportionately; because, as we have seen, power in Burma is a zero-sum game.

Bertil Lintner captures the mood of those early meetings.

She was coming to open a new NLD office in a suburb on the outskirts of Rangoon. It was scorching hot, April, before the rains. I went out there in a taxi and thousands of people were waiting in this scorching sun for hours—children, old women, people of all ages.

Suddenly you could see a white car somewhere in the distance trailing a cloud of dust behind it, then the car arrived—she had been given the car by the Japanese, a white Toyota, to travel around the country—and the cheers were incredible. And she got out, very relaxed, surrounded by her students, her bodyguards, and smiled at everybody and was garlanded, and she went up on stage and started talking.

And she talked for two or three hours and nobody left. Not even the children left. My Burmese is fairly rudimentary but I could understand what she was talking about, she was using very simple, down-to-earth words. “You've got a head,” she said. “And you haven't got a head to nod
with, you've been nodding for 26 years, the head is there for you to think.” That kind of thing, and people were laughing, it was a family affair. Then she left . . .
¹

The junta felt it bitterly. From the icy courtesy and civilized assurances of January, on the eve of Daw Khin Kyi's funeral, within a few months they were reduced to spreading libels and issuing murderous threats. They made a desperate effort to take the country back—by renaming it; and General Saw Maung was heading for the nervous breakdown which would see him removed from power.

*

On January 20, 1989, Suu and her party set off for the Irrawaddy Delta south and west of the capital, a flat land of endless paddies, dotted with small villages and seamed with wandering rivers, the intensely fertile flat country drained by the British; also the land where tens of thousands were to die in Cyclone Nargis in 2008. It was the first time that Ma Thanegi had kept notes on their progress—and the first time that the right of Suu and her party to move around freely was challenged.

“Great harassment in Bassein,” Ma Thanegi wrote of their official reception in one town. “Armed soldiers barred the way out of the house we were staying in, only allowing us out in twos or threes to visit friends etc. . . .” The town, one of the biggest in the delta region, had been flooded with troops by the Divisional Commander, one Brigadier Myint Aung, who seems to have taken the NLD party's arrival as a personal affront. In a letter to her husband, Suu wrote, “Here I am having a battle royal with the notorious Brigadier Myint Aung.” The town's harbor was “full of troops, most of the streets blocked, sandbagged and barbedwired . . .” The army had forced markets and offices to close, sent teachers out of the town on so-called “voluntary service” and fired guns in the air to deter local people from greeting them.

The morning after their arrival in the town, they learned that a number of local supporters had been arrested. Suu requested permission to talk to the brigadier: She wanted to register a complaint, she said, and would not leave the town “until I am satisfied there is fair play.”

Ma Thanegi wrote in her diary,

Request denied but a lower level meeting permitted, so I said I would go, please put down my name—the army looks down on women and they would think I would be helpless and weak. Ma Suu [throughout the diary Ma Thanegi refers to Suu using the “Ma”—“elder sister”—prefix, either as “Ma Suu” or simply “Ma Ma”] gave permission (“they have no idea I'm firing my first torpedo,” she said). Off I went, wearing a demure dress unlike what I usually wore, and slathered in perfume.

Looking all shy and sweet I talked to two midlevel officers and they were hearty with me. Their excuse for not allowing us to go around Bassein was that prisoners had been let out of the jail, two of whom were murderers on death row, and that it was dangerous for us with them out in the town. I'm sure they thought I would be terrified by this explanation—they repeated the word “dangerous for us” three or four times. So far I had been listening demurely but at that point I asked firmly, “If they were convicted of murder and are on death row, why were they let out?” [In Burma's traditional society, women are not expected to ask tough questions of men in authority, army officers in particular.] They gaped at me so I repeated my question. They were furious but could not scream at me as I was talking graciously . . .

When Suu and her party learned that the cars in which they had traveled from Rangoon had been impounded and that they were effectively bottled up in the town, Suu herself broke the deadlock by walking out of the house where they had spent the night and fraternizing genially with the soldiers drawn up on the street. The upshot of Suu's charm offensive, according to Ma Thanegi: “The troops were removed the day before we left and we were allowed to move around freely.” It was the first time Suu had come so close to a showdown with the army, but it was not to be the last.

At the next stop, however, their problems melted away. “The minute that we crossed into Bago Division, all harassment stopped,” she wrote. “Just over the border, we saw trucks and cars and thought that it was more harassment, but it was crowds welcoming us. Ma Suu gave a speech right there, holding the old type of square microphone that we had seen photos of her father using.”

As they were to discover, their official reception varied wildly from place to place, especially in these early months of the campaign, depending on the whim, or perhaps the political inclinations, of the local military authority. Suu and her colleagues adjusted their behavior accordingly. Ma Thanegi reports that in one town they visited they “had some trouble,” but in another soon afterwards “the township officer, military, said he was going fishing when he heard we were coming in and did so. So we went in, had lunch, Suu made speeches, and we left: no problem. When there is harassment we try to stay longer or to walk into town singing democracy songs or shouting slogans. If no harassment, just happy to go in quietly in the car and leave quietly.”

They returned to Rangoon, but less than a fortnight later they were off again, this time to the Shan States, the rolling hill country which is one of the most idyllic corners of Burma, home to the Shan people, cousins of the Thais.

The Shan States have a special place in the Aung San legend: It was at the town of Panglong, in the far north of the region, in February 1947, that Suu's father signed a historic agreement between the Burmans, the Shans, the Kachin and the Chins—all the most numerous ethnic nationalities in the country with the exception of the Karen—committing them to membership of the new, independent Union of Burma.
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The Panglong Agreement was reached immediately after Aung San's successful conclusion of independence negotiations with the government of Clement Attlee in London, and confirmed Attlee and his colleagues in their belief that he was the right man to take charge of independent Burma. So when Suu and her party colleagues set off there exactly forty-two years later, it was a trip of huge symbolic significance.

On February 9th, they were still in Rangoon, making preparations: “An Australian senator came to see Ma Ma at 8 am,” Ma Thanegi recorded. He had also been to see General Saw Maung, “who told him elections would be held soon, after discussions with parties. . . . Spent the night at Ma Ma's place. Ma Ma up and down stairs whole evening, signing letters, seeing to papers, books. Dr. Michael phoned after Ma Ma finished writing a letter to him.” Nobody wanted to miss the trip, starting in the morning. “Ko Maw”—Ma Thanegi's small, grouchy, short-sighted colleague—“is ill, but coming along anyway.” Others along for the ride included a
medical student and democracy activist called Ma Thida. Suu's personal bodyguards on the trip—Ma Thanegi refers to them collectively as “the boys” or “the kids”—were to include Aung Aung, the son of Suu's father's personal bodyguard Bo Min Lwin, and Win Thein, a student who had survived one of the March massacres before deciding to dedicate his life to Suu and the democracy struggle.

Suu and some of her “boys,” student members of the NLD who were her loyal bodyguards during campaign tours. The blazing smiles reflect the optimism of the party's heady first months in 1988 and '89.

*

They set off by car on February 10, 1989, “Tiger” at the wheel as usual, Suu elegant as ever in a mauve longyi and blue jacket, sitting in the back with Ma Thanegi. The journey along Burma's atrocious roads would be long, and the start was brutally early.

Left Rangoon 4:45 am, fifteen minutes late. Ma Ma a bit annoyed. She was sleepy in the early part of the morning. I held her down by the shoulders on bumpy roads; fragile and light as a papier-mâché doll. Forced to stop unplanned at Pyawbwe . . . Ma Ma VERY annoyed. Stopped for sugarcane juice at Tat-kone: delicious! Ma Ma loved it. Lunch at Ye Tar Shay. People in the villages amazed and overjoyed to see Ma Ma. Ate lunch, fried rice ordered from Chinese restaurant next door.

Among Ma Thanegi's many duties was ensuring that Suu did not eat anything that might upset her stomach: “Ma Ma looked so wistful when I swiped chili sauce and onions from under her very nose. Later I relented and picked out onions sans sauce for her. Chili sauce v. unhealthy stuff in Burma.”

Eleven hours after leaving University Avenue they arrived in the Shan States, high up in the chilly hills, to a reception far grander than Suu was prepared to accept. One is reminded of the ironical remark made about the Mahatma by one of his long-suffering aides: “It costs a lot to keep Gandhi poor . . .”
³

“Reached Kalaw 5:30
PM
and taken to Kalaw Hotel and told about elaborate preparations that have been made for her: New bed, new dressing table. Ma Ma dug in her heels as expected and we all went to stay in a small cottage.” The whole party had to sleep in a single, freezing cold room in the cottage. “Darn cold,” Ma Thanegi remarked. “Found out later
that poor Tiger sat up all night, couldn't sleep. Ma Ma ate no dinner, just some slices of banana and squashed avocado. Very cold, so Ma Ma put on flannel pajamas, long-sleeved thick t-shirt, thick socks; buried under thick quilts. Ma Ma slept badly because the kids [the student bodyguards sharing the room] who couldn't sleep because of the cold kept talking.”

“Told me she missed Rangoon. Then she said she missed Oxford: the heating system, and Dr. Michael's (warm) feet.”

Despite these privations, the following morning they had another early start.

February 11: she wore green plaid longyi, white jacket, green cardigan with matching scarf and gloves. Got up (had to) at 4:30. Left for Loilam at 5:30, after I insisted she eat soft-boiled eggs.

At her request I borrowed a tape of Fifties and Sixties songs to listen to on the way, coincidentally the same we were listening to in Rangoon. I remember her singing along loudly “Love you more than I can say” as she scooted upstairs. We sang along with the tape on the way: “Seven lonely days,” etcetera.

Ma Ma v. annoyed at easy-going plans. There was supposed to be a convoy on the road “for our protection” but there was no one in sight. We reached Loilam without seeing any. Ma Ma hit the roof.

Later they learned that anti-regime Shan insurgents, a powerful presence in these hills, had chosen a different way to keep them safe. “Found out later that trucks traveling along the road had been forced by insurgents to stay two or three nights at villages. The insurgents were clearing the way for our cars!”

As Tiger negotiated the narrow, winding, potholed road through the hills, Suu reminisced about her family life, about Alex and Kim. “She talked about how [her fifteen-year-old son] Alex had once poured ink all over a carpet, a white one; and how [her eleven-year-old son] Kim, visiting Rangoon with his brother and Michael in January and fed up with all the attention, “said he wanted a notice put in his grandmother's funeral program, ‘Do not pet Kim' . . .

“Lunch at Loilam, hurriedly prepared . . . pickled soybeans, we loved them.” The work of the tour was getting under way, without impediment from the army—and now they found out why: “Held two or
three meetings in Loilam, crowds gathered. One man came up to Aung Aung and said he and his people were taking care of security and not to worry. He was not wearing an NLD badge, so Aung Aung asked who he was . . . reply was ‘Shan insurgent' and he left hurriedly. Aung delighted.”