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Aung San Suu Kyi's home sits beside Inya Lake, beyond a guarded checkpoint where an armed military officer screens cars, essentially, for the presence of white people. Burmese are allowed to drive on past the house where Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest. Caucasions are stopped and questioned. It's a line, literally and figuratively, most expats would not even think of trying to cross. But as with most of Myanmar's control apparatus, enforcement relies on fear. A determined person could just swim across the lake and show up, dripping wet, at her back door, which is exactly what some very motivated Missouri man did a few days back, and why Aung San Suu Kyi is now facing charges under the "Law Safeguarding the State from the Dangers of Subversive Elements."
John Yettaw, 53, seems to be a slightly unhinged religious idealist with big plans for converting Myanmar's biggest celebrity to Mormonism. Suu Kyi let him stay in her house for a single night, reportedly out of pity. The junta has taken this opportunity to further characterize Suu Kyi as a dangerous, unpredictable criminal who lacks the discipline to follow rules set by the state. (Anti-Suu Kyi propoganda largely hinges on this theme, noting, in addition to other transgressions, Suu Kyi's failure to pay various parking tickets in the 1990s.) I have long been disturbed by the West's obsession with pretty Suu Kyi and American politicians' resultant inability to consider any diversity of opinion within Myanmar. Now it appears that the same infatuation, confronted with the convoluted logic of a paranoid dictatorship, might help send Suu Kyi to prison for a very long time.
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Aung San Suu Kyi's home sits beside Inya Lake, beyond a guarded checkpoint where an armed military officer screens cars, essentially, for the presence of white people. Burmese are allowed to drive on past the house where Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest. Caucasions are stopped and questioned. It's a line, literally and figuratively, most expats would not even think of trying to cross. But as with most of Myanmar's control apparatus, enforcement relies on fear. A determined person could just swim across the lake and show up, dripping wet, at her back door, which is exactly what some very motivated Missouri man did a few days back, and why Aung San Suu Kyi is now facing charges under the "Law Safeguarding the State from the Dangers of Subversive Elements."
John Yettaw, 53, seems to be a slightly unhinged religious idealist with big plans for converting Myanmar's biggest celebrity to Mormonism. Suu Kyi let him stay in her house for a single night, reportedly out of pity. The junta has taken this opportunity to further characterize Suu Kyi as a dangerous, unpredictable criminal who lacks the discipline to follow rules set by the state. (Anti-Suu Kyi propoganda largely hinges on this theme, noting, in addition to other transgressions, Suu Kyi's failure to pay various parking tickets in the 1990s.) I have long been disturbed by the West's obsession with pretty Suu Kyi and American politicians' resultant inability to consider any diversity of opinion within Myanmar. Now it appears that the same infatuation, confronted with the convoluted logic of a paranoid dictatorship, might help send Suu Kyi to prison for a very long time.
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How to explain the complexity of Burmese political theater? Suu Kyi, says a Burmese judge, is guilty of harboring an American who swam to her home, thereby violating the terms of her arrest. No one is even mildly surprised by this. And yet, as the Post’s Tim Johnston puts it in his excellent Post analysis, the case “had all the trimmings of due legal process: judges, defense attorneys and a system of appeal when the judges barred some of the defense witnesses.” After she was sentenced to three years of hard labor, General Than Shwe made a show of magnanimously commuting her sentence to 18 months under house arrest.
Why all the machinations? Why not just send her back to her villa and be done with it? Johnston characterizes the drawn-out trial as a “response” to international pressure, but that seems like a stretch; even when the world isn’t watching, which is to say, even when the accused is not Suu Kyi, Burma tries political dissidents. It does so because even totalitarian regimes need to justify themselves to the people they rule and the bureaucrats who do their bidding. At some level Suu Kyi’s elaborate trial was held for the benefit of the minor officials, judges, and attorneys who orchestrated it—educated people who need to believe that their jobs are necessary and just, that they are ministers of due process rather than yes-men for a bunch of thugs.
In October of 2004, when Burma’s army suddenly decided to arrest its prime minister, the state-run paper ran with the headline “NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.” This is a terrifically weird thing to say in an isolated dictatorship run at the whim of a paranoid general, but it enables the kind of self-delusion that makes life as a Burmese bureaucrat tolerable. Suu Kyi's attorney says he has "never known" an acquittal in a political case. Presumably he'll still go to work tomorrow.
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It seems like a strange time to be hopeful about a change in U.S. policy toward Burma, what with the regime having just sentenced a Missouri man to seven years hard labor and all. But opponents of U.S. sanctions have more reason for optimism than they've had since the embargo began 12 years back. In February, Hillary Clinton dared to point out that sanctions against the Burmese people hadn't had any appreciable effect on the regime. The Huffington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and DoubleX have all published recent pieces critiquing the West's myopic focus on Suu Kyi's release. Yesterday, to my amazement, Suu Kyi's lawyer himself published an op-ed cautioning "against focusing too heavily on her plight to the exclusion of the broader situation in Myanmar."
Today Sen. Jim Webb—a critic of sanctions and supporter of engagement—arrives in Yangon. He will supposedly be meeting with General Than Shwe, and will be the first Senior American official to do so—ever. He'll be pilloried for it, but he's there with the blessing of an administration rightly skeptical of the status quo. The suffering and sacrifice we have imposed upon ordinary Burmese has done nothing to advance our interests or theirs, and Suu Kyi's outrageous conviction is just further evidence of that inefficacy.
Photograph of crowd protesting Burmese government by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images.
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It seems like a strange time to be hopeful about a change in U.S. policy toward Burma, what with the regime having just sentenced a Missouri man to seven years hard labor and all. But opponents of U.S. sanctions have more reason for optimism than they've had since the embargo began 12 years back. In February, Hillary Clinton dared to point out that sanctions against the Burmese people hadn't had any appreciable effect on the regime. The Huffington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and DoubleX have all published recent pieces critiquing the West's myopic focus on Suu Kyi's release. Yesterday, to my amazement, Suu Kyi's lawyer himself published an op-ed cautioning "against focusing too heavily on her plight to the exclusion of the broader situation in Myanmar."
Today Sen. Jim Webb—a critic of sanctions and supporter of engagement—arrives in Yangon. He will supposedly be meeting with General Than Shwe, and will be the first Senior American official to do so—ever. He'll be pilloried for it, but he's there with the blessing of an administration rightly skeptical of the status quo. The suffering and sacrifice we have imposed upon ordinary Burmese has done nothing to advance our interests or theirs, and Suu Kyi's outrageous conviction is just further evidence of that inefficacy.
Photograph of crowd protesting Burmese government by Yoshikazu Tsuno/AFP/Getty Images.
