The Lady and the Peacock (66 page)

“In recent years,” Sharp writes in the book's recently updated first chapter, with a hint of pride,

Various dictatorships . . . have collapsed . . . when confronted by defiant, mobilized people. Often seen as firmly entrenched and impregnable, some of [them] proved unable to withstand the concerted political, economic and social defiance of the people.

Since 1980 dictatorships have collapsed under nonviolent opposition in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, Madagascar, Mali, Bolivia and the Philippines. Nonviolent resistance has furthered the movement towards democratization in Nepal, Zambia, South Korea, Chile, Argentina, Haiti, Brazil, Uruguay, Malawi, Thailand, Bulgaria, Hungary, Nigeria and various parts of the Soviet Union.
¹⁴

The little book that was begotten in Manerplaw went on to inspire an organization of Serbian activists who called themselves Otpor, the Serb
word for resistance, and who in turn invented a raft of brilliant, startling, nonviolent tactics to undermine the tyrannical rule of Slobodan MiloÅ¡evićc, leading directly to his downfall in October 2000. That revolution, as one journalist wrote “became a textbook standard for nonviolent, peaceful struggle” and prompted the creation of a group called Canvas, run by two Serb veterans of the victory, which “works with activists from nearly fifty other countries,” including Iran, Zimbabwe, Tunisia and Egypt.

Nobody, we are told, saw the largely bloodless Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions coming: The West was convinced that violent jihad was the only sort of revolution the Muslim world was interested in. But from Tehran to Algiers, intelligent Muslims saw the disasters that fundamentalism brought in its train; they looked around the world for a better approach, and the ideas incubated by Sharp and Helvey helped them to identify it.

Arriving on the Burmese border when Suu was in her first years of detention, Helvey and Sharp brought a much-needed element of rigor and analysis to the nonviolent struggle as Suu had preached and practiced it. “For all her wonderful qualities,” Sharp said in an interview with the
Irrawaddy
in March 2011, “and her heroism and inspiration for those who believe in democratic rights and the rights of the Burmese people, [Aung San Suu Kyi] is not a strategist, she is a moral leader. That is not sufficient to plan a strategy.” Clearly both qualities, the strategic and the moral, are required for success. It is also true that, with its army so willing (unlike, say, Serbia's or Egypt's) to massacre unarmed demonstrators, Burma is one of the toughest schools of revolution in the world. But without Suu's “heroism and inspiration,” Helvey and Sharp would never have made that trek to Manerplaw; and
From Dictatorship to Democracy
would not have been written.

The so-called “butterfly effect” identified by Edward Lorenz, by which the flapping of a butterfly's wings in Brazil can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world, is perhaps the most vivid contemporary elaboration of the workings of karma. But the flashing of the peacock's fan has been no less consequential.

T
HIS
book was conceived in 2006, when Suu was under house arrest with no end in sight: Her detention was routinely extended year after year and she was isolated from the entire world, including her sons and her other close relatives. There was therefore no possibility of informing her about the project, let alone seeking her cooperation. At least four biographies of her had already been published, one in Japanese, one in French and two in English, and the following year the most substantial so far, Justin Wintle's, appeared. But when the uprising of the monks erupted, which culminated with a group of them paying their respects at her gate in September 2007, it was clear to me that she was still a figure of immense importance and influence, despite her isolation. This was not the sad story of a lost cause: Suu was still at the heart of the Burmese conundrum. Her story demanded a fresh approach.

There are many things about Suu's life that are fascinating and instructive. It is extraordinary to observe a woman emerge from the comforts and duties of suburban life in her early forties and take on a stature and role unimaginable even a year before. It is moving to witness her forge a bond of love and trust with her people, one that owed its origins to her father's name but which flourished because of who she was and what she did and said. Within months of accepting the leadership of the democratic movement, she was already a legend throughout her country.

But it never went to her head. I obtained proof of that when an acquaintance in London, who unfortunately I cannot name, gave me the diaries kept during Suu's campaigning trips in 1989 by Ma Thanegi, her close companion. Suu's radiant humanity shines out of those pages, along with her good humor, her stoicism, her appreciation of modern lavatories, and her frequent explosions of temper. Some people who know little about Suu have attacked her for “abandoning” her family to go into politics. She has never worn her heart on her sleeve, but the depth of her
feelings for her husband and sons and the intensity with which she was missing them are two other things that shine from these pages.

I met Ma Thanegi herself three times between 2002 and 2010. When I told her I had been given the diaries and planned to include extracts in this book, she did not demur. Her place in this story is, in the final analysis, a sad one. For the most vivid and frenetic months of Suu's political life, she was her closest companion, and they became intimate friends, but, as I described in Part 4, Chapter 5, the friendship did not survive Ma Thanegi's imprisonment.

It is claimed that in jail she had been won round by Military Intelligence; and if true, talking negatively about Suu and her party to the likes of me was the price, and quite a modest price, that she was paying for a quiet life. No one who has never lived in a country as viciously repressive as Burma can presume to judge those who prove insufficiently robust to resist the pressure. And if she was not strong enough to resist the MI, Ma Thanegi was by no means the only one: She herself wrote in the diary that, even during the honeymoon months of the NLD in 1998 and 1999, the only person within the party's top circle who was never suspected of being an informer was Suu herself. There were some in Rangoon in 2011 who believed that Suu's reluctance to do as she did in 2002 and resume traveling around the country was connected to the fact that she did not fully trust all those around her.

*

I paid my sixth visit to Burma in 2010, intending to report on the elections and then stay on to interview Suu again on her release. Unfortunately MI caught up with me, the day after I had lunch with Ma Thanegi, and I was expelled eight days before Suu's release. I was baffled as to how they had tracked me down: The correspondent of the
Times
, a friend of mine, was never touched, even though we had interviewed the same high-profile NLD leader a few days before, had been in touch with the same NLD foot soldiers, and were generally not behaving like tourists.

Months later, back in Europe, I woke up one morning convinced that it was Ma Thanegi who must have told MI about me and got me thrown out. She was friendly when we met in November, and she gave me a fascinating (though very sententious) interview over lunch in a
smart cafe near Bogyoke Aung San Market in central Rangoon. But when I shared my suspicion with Burmese acquaintances, they tended to agree. It could be true. By reporting my presence, she might have felt she'd killed two birds with one stone: reassured her MI minders that she was still of use to them in tracking down undercover reporters, in the highly sensitive days leading up to the election; and at the same time prevented me from meeting Suu on her release. After all, I now knew more about Ma Thanegi's relationship with Suu than anyone else on earth. It might well have occurred to me to ask Suu what had gone wrong between her and her acid-tongued aristocratic friend . . .

Arriving back in Bangkok I immediately applied for another visa, using my second passport—but I was turned down: I realized that I was now on Burma's blacklist.

However, five months later, with a different identity and a substantially altered appearance, I succeeded in returning to Rangoon and meeting Suu. It wasn't a formal interview—she didn't like talking to biographers, she explained, lest she gave the erroneous impression that she was endorsing the contents of their books—but we had a friendly conversation that was by turns funny, teasing and illuminating. Ma Thanegi's name, like much else, was not raised.

Suu pictured in her office upstairs in the NLD's Rangoon headquarters during her meeting with the author in March 2011.

This was in March 2011, and it was already clear that Suu was taking a different approach to her freedom than she had on previous occasions. She had given numerous interviews to foreign (and some local) journalists and had met various foreign politicians and other officials passing through the country; her family members abroad had been granted visas, in some cases for the first time in decades, and her younger son Kim was among those who had visited, bringing with him Michelle Yeoh, the Chinese film star who plays the role of Suu in Luc Besson's dramatization of her life,
The Lady
. But while in 1995 she had immediately begun addressing supporters over her garden wall, and in 2002 she had wasted no time in going back on the road, this time she did nothing of the sort. Instead, she invited her party officials and members to come visit her in Rangoon: During my week there, the party headquarters filled up every morning with out-of-town supporters. It was an efficient way of getting back in touch with people she hadn't seen for many years, but it did not capture the imagination like her earlier forays, and it left open the question of how
much support she still enjoyed out in the country, after so many years of absence. It was a choice that smacked of timidity, even timorousness—not qualities one had ever associated with her.

Suu meeting her son Kim at Mingaladon Airport, Rangoon, during his visits to her in 2011.

One year later, however, it was clear to me that this approach must have been decided in consultation with the new government: the first test of a new policy of cooperation and coordination which would subsequently change the political climate of Burma beyond recognition.

The first public sign that something was afoot was an invitation to Suu to meet the new head of state, President Thein Sein, on August 19, 2011, in Naypyidaw, a city she had never before set eyes on. She was also invited to participate in a high-powered seminar on the economy the same day, where she was photographed joking with senior generals. After her meeting with the President, the two of them were photographed under a portrait of her father, and later she had dinner with the President and his wife.

It was the beginning of a relationship which has no parallels in Suu's history. During the previous two decades, her very few publicly announced meetings with senior regime officials had been stiff and formal, and without any useful follow-up. Private meetings, such as her negotiations with Brigadier-General Than Tun in 2004, were held in deepest secrecy, with word of them emerging only years later if at all.

But soon after her first meeting with Thein Sein, it was clear that this time was going to be different: The government announced a flurry of reforms, including the legalization of trade unions, the setting up of a human-rights commission, and changes to the electoral law, which allowed the NLD to register as a party again. The release of some political prisoners was not a surprise—Than Shwe had done no less in 1992, soon after taking the top job—but when Thein Sein announced that work on a highly controversial dam on the Irrawaddy was to be suspended because it was “against the will of the people,” it was clear that Burma was moving into uncharted territory. The dam was being built by the Chinese, and 90 percent of the energy it produced was earmarked for export straight back to China, but suddenly it seemed permissible to thwart the plans of Burma's giant neighbor when they conflicted with the opinions of ordinary Burmese. This was extraordinary. President Thein Sein had spent his whole career in the army before swapping his khaki pants for a
civilian longyi, but these were not the sorts of ideas that any of Burma's former military rulers had ever come close to voicing.