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A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES ASIAWEEK NOVEMBER 12, 1999 (

Our correspondent goes on assignment to ASEAN's No. 1 pariah - and discovers that nothing is quite as it seems.
BY ROGER MITTON

I taxi from Yangon's Traders Hotel to the National
League for Democracy headquarters to arrange an
interview with Aung San Sun Kyi. It is the start of my
fourth trip to Myanmar in 18 months. When I arrive,
one ot the party's daily meetings is under way and the
crowded room is hot and sticky. Vice-chainnan Tin Oo pumps
my hand and gestures at at the supporters. You can see we are
still operating," he says. The interview tentatively arranged, I go
outside and wait to he swooped on by military intelligence office
rs. I have a media visa so I am not overly concerned, although
the stern questioning and repeated picture-taking is always
unnerving. Nothing happens. I gaze around, somewhat sur-
prised, then head down busy Shwe Gon Taing Road.
I stroll to the teashop across the road where the spooks sta-
tion themselves. Still nobody approaches me. Over the next

week, I return to the NLD offices, sometimes twice a day, and
talk with party leaders and supporters flocking in and out. No
official meddling. Later, I ask Yangon mayor, Col. Ko Lay,
about the policy of allowing what is, in the regime's view, an
opposition party to hold daily meetings (without a permit, it
would be unheard of in Singapore, let alone Hanoi and Vien-
tiane). Oh, they can do that in the NLD headquarters," he says,
blithely. "We don't bother them. They are a political party."
In case you hadn't guessed it aleady, a lot of nonsense is
written about Myanmar. As a veteran colleague told me when I
began covering the beat: "The first thing you must do is dis-
abuse yourself of all your previous notions about this place. It is
not what you think it is." That is an understatement. On my first
visit, I wandered around Yangon in a state of nervous anticipa-
tion looking for fierce, gun-toting troops on street corners

ASIAWEEK NOVEMBER 12, 1999

and gaunt people cowering in doorways. But I couldn't see
policemen, let alone soldiers. Now I am back to dig deeper
and bust a few myths. Among them:
• Foreign publications are unavailable.
On the drive from Yangon airport, kids run up waving
copies of Asiaweek and other international magazines. In my
hotel, I get the International Herald Tribune and the Asian
Wall Street Journal delivered to my room (as well as the gov-
ernment's New' Light of Myanmar). CNN and BBC World are
on TV. I have no problem e-mailing from my room. John Chen
of Eagle IT. Myanmar's only private e-mail provider, expects
Internet service by year-end.
• The regime has banned condom sales to spread AIDS
among the youth and sap their potential for rebellion.
Daft, you say. But in Myanmar I learn not to dismiss any-
thing out of hand. Late one afternoon I visit a pharmacy. It is
staffed by three young women. I ask for condoms. They giggle
and direct me to one of Yangon's ubiquitous. open-fronted, all-
purpose convenience stores. There, the jovial owner floods me
with options. Onlookers gather as boxes and boxes of condoms

shower around me: Malaysian, Thai, Korean, Japanese and the
local Burmese brand, Aphaw, which comes in a spiffy four-
pack, allegedly tested in the U.S.A:' It carries clear, graphic
instructions in Burmese, together with advice that condom use
prevents the spread of AIDS and other sexually transmitted dis-
eases. I buy a pack for 200 kyat (60 cents). There are murmurs
of approval. Yes, good. Burmese is best." (Don't bet on it.)
• Suu Kyi is under house arrest.
She is not. Yangon people routinely see her out and about
- at the supermarket, at the hairdresser's, at the pagoda, at
embassy receptions, at party meetings.
• No one without official authorization is allowed to travel
the streets of urban centers between 8 p.m. and 4 a.m.
I stroll around all hours of the day and night. On a typical
evening in Yangon I get a 200-kyat (60-cent) haircut at 8.30
p.m., and there are other customers waiting. After a beer at a
nearby pub, I head for supper at the 50th St. Bar & Grill. The
roads fanning out from the landmark Sule Pagoda are teeming.
The cinemas are packed. It is much the same outside the capital
- even at the Kyaikto Motel at the top of the tortuous pat

ASIAWEEK NOVEMBER 12, 1999

Myanmar' S famous balancing-boulder stupa at
Kyaiktiyo, 160 km southeast of Yangon. Despite
the bfl colic setting deep in the hills, the settlement
bustles with people well after 8 p.m.

OF NEW BRIDGES AND CLOSED CAMPUSES
I have also heard that there are travel restrictions for
journalists. I soon discover that this is another
canard. When I tell the regime's main spokesman
Col. Hla Mim that I plan to travel outside of Yang-
on, he says: Go where you want. If you need a
visa extension, let me know."
I decide to hire a car and driver and visit the
former capital Mawlamyine, a small port city 120
km south of Kyaiktiyo. We leave at 6 a.m., quick-
ly clearing the almost empty streets (Yangon is a
slow-starting city). The journey takes seven hours,
and we do it with only one short break. The road
is fine as far as Bago, then it deteriorates a little,
then improves again - although remaining nar-
row. I see no other Caucasians during the whole of
this trip, so I am bemused when, halfway to Maw-
lamyine, we pass a large sign in Burmese and
English that says: Please give all assistance to
international travelers."
But it is surprise rather than bemusement that I
feel when, in the final stretch, we pass over a cou-
ple of new suspension bridges, obviating the need
to take the old car ferry at Mottarna. Painted a pas-
tel orange shade, they are long and sleek, and again
beg the question: How do they do this? Forced
labor'? Surely not for such skilled engineering
work? Certainly, the regime denies it; although
Burmese exiles claim it continues. All I can say is
that on my travels, the various road crews I see are
invariably military men not civilians. On the drive,
we pass squads of uniformed conscripts doing
maintenance work and clearing the verges.
As for Mawlamyine itself, I suspect Kipling
would find it little changed. They still smoke
whacking white cheroots and the temple bells still
call. Down in the sidestreets around the jettys,
however. it is not so nice. There is an overpower
mg air of desolation and squalor, only marginally
mitigated by the silent dignity of the people. Yet
the bounty of produce in their market is astonish-
mg: meat, fish, rice, fruit, vegetables and wonderful arrays of
fresh flowers. People buy big bunches of them! It is hard not to

feel optimistic surrounded by flowers. But before I get too in-
toxicated. I decide to visit the local university.
Perhaps the most telling thing about Myanmar is that the
campuses remain closed. Even Foreign Minister Win Aung
looks sad when he talks about this. And frankly it is an area
where the regime has been less than honest. Last year, I was as-
sured that the universities would reopen soon. some depart-
ments have, but by and large most are still do not. The cam-
pus of Mawlamyine University, a relatively new building, is in
utter neglect. Lecture rooms are untouched since they were pad-
locked three years ago. Moldering papers and specimen jars
gather dust in musty rooms. The quadrangles are littered with
the ashes of open fires and dog exereta. The regime can talk all
it likes about securing ceasefires with rebellious minorities, but
if it can't risk opening the universities to allow its youth to get
an education then there is no real stability.

NE WIN'S GUN-PACKING GRANDSON
One evening in Yangon, I unwittingly refute the assertion that
the military police check residences for unauthorized guests

ASIAWEEK NOVEMBER 12, 1999

staying overnight. I have been invited to the home of a Muslim
family for dinner, and I walk across Yangon unchallenged. The
family members are not fans of the regime and spend much of
the evening castigating the generals. When I mention that the
rule forbidding late-staying guests will now oblige me to leave,
they burst out laughing. That hasn't been in effect for years,
they say. So I stay and watch cricket on satellite television.
Eventually it is time to leave and they assure me that it will
be safe to walk back through the dark streets. "That is one thing
we have," says family patriarch Mahmud. "It has always been
that way, even for women." When I ask mayor Ko Lay about
this, he laughs: "You can walk the streets at night, no problem.
Nobody gets harmed, no rape. This is not like Patpong or Holly-
wood." An American lawyer who has lived in Yangon for live
years echoes this. "I think it is due to the strong ethic of the peo-
pIe." says John Pierce. 'They will walk in and out of a bank car-
rying a transparent plastic bag full of money and not worry at
all." But others tell me break-ins, pickpocketing and drug use
are rising in urban centers, especially among the youth.
Next day, over breakfast, I hear a rumor that fomer dicta-
tor Ne Win's grand kids have been involved in a notorious
shooting incident on Maykha Road, where the despot lives out
his dotage. Later, a government official relates a similar tale. A
visiting Malaysian businessman had arranged to have lunch
with him at the Nawarat Concorde Hotel (run by Ne Win's
favorite daughter. Sanda, and her husband Aye Zaw Win).
Gossiping in the car, they absently drove past the entrance and
turned in the next driveway. It was the exit, so they stopped and
began to reverse. Suddenly,
another car, preparing to leave,
drove straight at them before
abruptly braking. The driver, a
young man of about 20, jumped
out and assuming they were

foreign guests berated them.
'Can't you see this is the way
out! You people think you can
come here and do what you like!
Well, **** you!" He gestured
with his middle finger, then
pulled out a revolver and thrust
it in the Malaysian's face, telling
him to be more careful in future.
Horrified, they apologized and
decided to lunch elsewhere.
They headed to the Inya
Lake Hotel - and were dis-
turbed to see the gun-toting
youth following and using his
mobile phone. When they
are arrived, he parked alongside.
Seconds later, a policeman on a
motorbike roared up. The youth
told the cop about the incident at
I the Nawarat. The cop chastised
the Malaysian and took his
license, telling him to collect it
later at the police station on Pyay Road. Days later, when the
businessman sent an assistant to get the license, the cop called
the youth who turned out to be none other than Kyaw Ne
Win, one of the ex-dictator' 5 grandsons. The cop asked if it was
okay to return the license. Kyaw Ne Win said no, not unless the
businessman collected it in person. So the cop refused to hand it
over. "This is how it is in Myanmar," the official tells me. "You
are a relative of Ne Win or some other general, you can do any-
thing, even buy guns and threaten visitors."
It seems to me that this is an exception, yet such incidents
help fuel perceptions about Myanmar. No one is immune; cer-
tainly not foreign reporters. Those who parachute in are predis-
posed to seeing spies under every bed. The Washington Post re-
cently reported: "At the monthly happy hour at the Australian
Embassy fin Yangoni, a Burmese military intelligence officer
sits at the end of the bar, watching and listening for hours on end
without speaking to anyone." Having attended these functions
and not seen this spy, I decide to try and spot him (although it is
a given the world over that intelligence operatives attend
embassy functions). I station myself at the bar of the Australian
Club in Golden Valley, nibbling pate' and pizza and quaffing red
wine. As usual, the place is full of business folk, diplomats, trav-
elers and assorted expats. We chat about the regime, Suu Kyi,
the Irrawaddy delta reclamation project, the difficulty of getting
good beef, former drug baron Law Sitt Han. All the while, I
look for the silent spook. When I mention him to regulars they
laugh derisively and say: "Who cares?"
Not that the international media has a monopoly on distortion

ASIAWEEK NOVEMBER 12, 1999

One evening, up in Mandalay, I watch the
news It is almost entirely about outdoor rallies held
around the country at which community leaders laud
the regime and berate the NLD. I lose track of how
many times the news reader, in her droning mono-
tone, relates how so-and-so praised this or that new
achievement and castigated the foreign axe-handles,
lackeys and stooges a.k.a. Suu Kyi and the NLD.
Even amiaNe, level-headed foreign minister
Win Aung joins the assault on Suu Kyi. He tells me:
'She opposes whatever the government tries to do.
She is always attacking, adopting a confrontational
approach. This is really wrong." Yet his side does
exactly the same. Myanmar' 5 state-controlled media
oppose whatever the NLD tries to do, relentlessly
attack Suu Kyi and adopt a confrontational style of
reportage about her party. The daily cartoon in the
New Light of Myanmar shows Suu Kyi as a gap-
toothed witch followed by a sour-looking maven of
NLD cohorts. Until the generals stop such pettiness,
they cannot expect balanced observers to give any
credence to their contention that Suu Kyi does noth-
ing but criticize.
Besides, she has a point. Even the generals ad-
mit their rule is not blemish-free. Crumbling power
generation, paltry foreign-exchange reserves, near
empty hotels, closed universities, a bankrupt nation-
al airline, lousy relations with the West (and, now,
after the recent Bangkok embassy siege, with neigh-
bor Thailand, too), insurgent skirmishes threatening
to flare up again and these are only at the top of
the list. Bizarrely, all the military leaders I meet say
they are making progress and contend that criticism
from the outside hinders their attempt to bring sta-
bility and development. Col. HIa Mm, one of junta
strategist Gen. Khin Nyunt's most articulate offi-
cers, tells me: "There is too much barking from out-
side. We can easily get derailed."
The barking, however, can damage both sides.
At the time of my visit, almost every Myanmar
watcher is pondering reports that Suu Kyi not only
opposes humanitarian aid, hut is critical of Red
Cross assessment visits to nine detention centers
(including Yangon's Insein Jail and the central pris-
on in Mandalay), and has condemned Australian moves to set
up a human-rights commission in Myanmar. It is a controver-
sial and brave stand that draws flak from even her hearty sup-

porters in the West,' and it is one that the regime exploits. "She
is the only politician I know," says HIa Mim, "who lobbies
against help for her own people, even humanitarian help."
This is one of the questions I plan to ask Suu Kyi when I
meet her. But 1 have been warned that she is not an easy per-
son to interview; diplomats and fellow journalists tell me to he
careful posing "critical" questions. There is a sense with Suu
Kyi (and with the regime, for that matter) that either you are
with us or you are against us. Before going to see her, I visit
three so-called NLD rebels. All party veterans elected in 1990.
they wax indignant about how Suu Kyi runs the NLD in a dic-
tatorial manner. When I ask one of them, Tin Tun Maung,
about policy debate and decision-making, an acetylene anger
flares in his eyes. "She told us our heads are not for nodding
they are for thinking. That we are supposed to question things.
But when we question her decisions, she shouts at us and calls
us traitors." I leave unsure whether they are sincere, or have
been compromised by the regime.

SUU KYI IN THE DARK
I finally interview Suu Kyi for the first time in Tin Oo's house
during yet another Yangon blackout (this one caused by a storm
that has brought down a tree across the power lines outside the

ASIAWEEK NOVEMBER 12, 1999

house). We sit for 90 minutes in a corner of the big, darkened
room, the candles flickering in the gloom and dogs howling in
the lane outside (perhaps disturbed by the intelligence officers
who have followed Suu Kyi and on this occasion are waiting to
take my picture as I leave). I ask about her stand against
humanitarian aid. She bristles. "What stand against humanitari-
an aid?" Even the candles seem to tremble.
I refer Suu Kyi to reports in staunchly pro-NLD foreign
publications saying that the party under her leadership has op-
posed international NGO involvement in Myanmar. "No, we
haven't," she retorts, angrily. "We have never said that all
NGOs should leave Burma or not come in or anything like that
And we've never said that we are against humanitarian aid per
se." She explains that her stance is that such aid
should only come in "provided you make sure it is
given to everybody in an even-handed way." Later, I
bounce this off a Yangon-based NGO representative.
'That is ridiculous," he splutters. "There is no devel-
oping country in the world where you can guarantee
that some aid will not be misused by the government
for its own purposes. If that was a rule, then no one
would get any aid."
But if the pro-democracy advocates are to be

believed there is ample evidence that the regime has
exploited such assistance in the past. Whatever, the
end res~t, as always, is that the people get screwed.
Little aid reaches them because few Western gov-
ernments dare go against Suu Kyi. Being culpable in
the continuing impoverishment of the Myanmar
people is a secondary factor in their considerations.
One of the most common comments you hear
in Yangon concerns the futility of Western eco-
nomic sanctions against Myanmar. I raise the topic
with Suu Kyi to get her reaction to the increasing
number of people - many of them scathing critics
of the regime - who say sanctions are ineffective
and hurt only the ordinary people of Myanmar. I
blink in surprise when her reply comes out of the
half-darkness. "Sanctions are not causing hardship
to the people," she says. "That we can say. So to
people like that, ~ would just say: Prove it, prove
that sanctions are hurting the people of the country.
And they can't really prove it. The U.S. sanctions
are not such that they in any way affect the Bur-
mese economy to a great extent.
The bottom line is that few people, even the
most rabid anti-regimers, believe economic sanctions
will precipitate change. For most Myanmar people,
the economy is as it was 40 years ago, with some
marginal improvements over the past decade. Even
outside Yangon, where the power supply is woeful
to put it mildly, there is not the slightest sign of dis-
content. Rather people demonstrate a fatalistic accep-
tance that this is how it is, how it always was, and
l how it looks like it will be for the foreseeable future.
At the end of the interview, I mention to Suu
Kyi that I had been warned about her prickliness.
She appears taken aback and affects surprise, saying that as
politician she has been interviewed by many journalists asked
much the same questions as mine and never takes offense.
appreciate that and thank her again for meeting me, especial
since Tin Oo has said she was ill earlier in the week She looks
well now, surprising given the stress under which she constat-
ly lives. Frankly, I don't know how she endures it. I leave the
house after her, smile for the intelligence officers' cameras,
clamber through the branches of the fallen tree and head off
down the quiet lane to catch a taxi back to the Traders Hotel.
Tomorrow, I return to Bangkok. And already T am thinking
about when I will come back to Myanmar. Where nothing is
ever quite as it seems.

Myth: The regime banned condoms to spread AIDS among rebellious youth. It didn't.