Podcast Transcript

25 October 2007
Burmese Life

U.S. Embassy London's Glenn Tosten, shares his recent experience of life in Burma.

In light of the current situation in Burma, I wanted to share my personal insight into this remarkable country. My wife and I just moved to London from Burma, where we lived for the past two years while I worked with the American Embassy in Rangoon and she with the Australian Embassy.

I am excited, while at the same time nervous, about the recent news coming out of Burma and wanted to help people in the UK better understand why what is happening is so very, very important to the wonderful people of Burma.

But before I can even begin to start trying to put things into perspective, you need to know a bit more about life in Burma, including its economy, its highly superstitious military leader, and its international symbol for nonviolent resistance-Aung San Suu Kyi.

Sadly, life in Burma is hard. Living under a military junta is difficult, and the political situation in Burma has weakened the economy. The junta is one of the most restrictive governments in the world, often times being compared to North Korea. I remember coming into work one Monday and being introduced to a Burmese lady in tears. The lady was the wife of one of the Embassy's local guards. The guard had been arrested and taken to prison because he was at work at the Embassy rather than at home when the police came to his house for the nightly census check. Forms, accompanied by fees, must be submitted prior to being out of your house overnight. Applications must also be submitted for gatherings of 5 or more people.

The heavy hand of the government has had a very negative effect on the Burmese economy. Under British rule, Burma was the richest country in Asia and was the world's largest exporter of rice. Today it is the poorest country in Asia, where people are lucky to earn a mere 1,000 kyats ($0.75) a day. Half of the children in Burma under five are chronically malnourished, rivaling parts of sub-Saharan Africa, and people have told me farmers have even started selling or trading their children to child traffickers in exchange for food. Complicating this even more is Burma's two-tier pricing system where some people can get goods at a much cheaper rate than the black market, which is frequently more than twice the price.

Other children have it even worse. The U.S. Department of Labor, the International Labor Organization (ILO), Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, EarthRights International, and numerous other governmental and nongovernmental organizations have documented children are used by the military as porters and are forced to march through known landmine areas ahead of the military. And, if a child can avoid being malnourished, sold to child traffickers and used as a human landmine detector, he still faces the startling fact that an estimated 150,000 children die each year of malaria, acute respiratory infections, and diarrhea.

In response to their dissatisfaction with the authoritarian, and inept, rule of the military Junta, the Burmese people elected Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in May 1990. She won the elections despite being held under house arrest. Rather then recognize the results of the elections, the Junta chose to keep Kyi under house arrest. The very next year she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in Burma. To date, Kyi has spent 11 of the past 18 years under house arrest. Despite her continued detention, she remains Burma's symbol for hope, and I saw photos of Aung San Suu Kyi or NLD flags hung from the walls of nearly all of the homes I visited.

People put up with this restrictive government, meager earnings, difficult living conditions, and the imprisonment of their leader until the government decided to increase state employees' salaries by more than 10 times and, more recently, increased fuel costs more than 500% to help fund moving the capital from Rangoon to some remote jungle location further north-a decision made after Senior General Than Shwe consulted with his astrologer.

I should say that many Burmese visit astrologers and numerologists. One quiet day at the Embassy, I was talking to a local employee, and he asked me for my birthday. I told him the date, and he pulled out an antique book of numbers and told me that I would be married by the end of the year and children would quickly follow. Well, he was right about the marriage , but so far not the children part-but quickly is really a subjective term, isn't it?

But I digress. In August 2007, the government decided to raise the price of fuel by nearly 500% to finance construction in the nation's new capital. Not only did transportation costs skyrocket, but prices for rice and cooking oils-Burmese essentials-also skyrocketed. People were angry and started to protest.

The protests started small as the memory of 1988's killings of demonstrators is still fresh. However, these protests really started to gain momentum and strength in numbers once the monks started participating. Of the 50 million Burmese citizens, nearly 500,000 are monks, and as Buddhism is the center of the nation, the monastery is the center of nearly every village. In early September, a protest was held in a small village located in the middle of the country. The protest turned violent and several monks were injured. The following day local monks took a few government officials hostage, demanding an apology from the government for bringing violence to what was otherwise a peaceful protest.

The government did not apologize, and monks from around the nation began protesting, with as many as 100,000 monks taking to the streets in Rangoon. In the ensuing days, the military was called in and several dozen protestors have been killed with many hundreds more arrested, and the protests have appeared to have been quelled yet again.

We left Burma earlier this year but have continued to follow the events in the press and emails we receive from our Burmese friends. Only time will tell what will happen, but know this is about more than just an apology to the monks. The Burmese people want change. They deserve change. And I for one hope amazing people of Burma continue to stand up for their rights until they are successful in achieving Aung San Suu Kyi's release and a peaceful and democratic nation.

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