The following is a series of excerpts from the book From the Land of Green Ghosts: A Burmese Odyssey, by Pascal Khoo Thwe. They were submitted by an anonymous reader for their relevance to the current ongoing protests led by monks in Burma. As the submitter says, "When I re-read these sections, they seemed so pertinent to what is happening now it is scary. It seems history does repeat itself. The BBC seems to have forgotten that protests were also headed by monks in '88, and the military regime had no qualms gunning them down."

The book itself is an absolute must-read for anyone with an interest in Burma. Apart from being beautifully written, it offers a native perspective on the country and the political events that have unfolded in the last century - something that is rare among books written on Burma.

Hopefully these passages will provide some valuable insight and inspiration for readers.

Propaganda
In Burma, apart from good and bad news, there was ‘fragrant’ news. The term denoted news that was good but that was given a sarcastic or hostile twist by the regime. The ‘fragrant’ news from the West at that time was of the new computer age, of advanced technologies and of political freedom. People reacted in different ways to the news, but always and necessarily from a position of ignorance. Our teachers could hardly enlighten us, for they both shared the general ignorance and were at the same time obliged to apply the official ideology to the scraps of puzzling information that came their way. The result was an amalgam of the regime’s anti-colonialism and resolutely pre-modern superstition.

First Demonetisation
Just before the end of the academic year, in October 1985, the state radio announced without warning that the government had demonetized the currency. All hundred-,fifty-, and ten-kyat banknotes were declared worthless, and were to be replaced by seventy-five-, thirty-five- and fifty-kyat notes some months later. There was an immediate build-up of political tension, and the universities, colleges and many schools throughout the country were closed. I had hardly any money left.
Everywhere—in the tea and noodle shops, the markets, even the churches, the conversations were only about the demonetisation. Never since the military coup of 1962 had there been such bitter and general discontent, nor such a sense of the Burmese spirit being so alive. Some people went mad or committed suicide. While the rampant inflation—universally blamed on the government—had been a disease, the demonetisation was a lethal injection.

Second Demonetisation
Perhaps lightning does not strike in the same place twice, but in late 1987 the Burmese government did the unthinkable—they demonetized the currency for a second time, decreeing that all seventy-five-, fifty-, thirty-five- and twenty-five-kyat notes were to be demonetized without compensation. They were to be replaced by notes that could be divided by nine, which astrologers had long ago told General Ne Win was his lucky number. I lost nearly all my savings again.

You could feel in the air that sooner or later there would be a catastrophe. It really is true that before an earthquake the atmosphere can be absolutely still, and the air stiff with unendurable heat. The Burmese associate intense heat and stillness with earthquakes, and earthquakes are taken as omens of ensuing chaos and disaster for the nation. That was exactly the psychological atmosphere in Mandalay at that time.

Tea-shop Incident-Leading to ’88 Massacre
A student called Maung Phone Maw from Rangoon Institute of Technology had allegedly been killed by riot police after a ‘town and gown’ brawl involving the son of a high-ranking government official. The incident had begun trivially. A group of students in a Rangoon teashop (called by a strange chance the ‘Sanda Win Teashop’) wanted to play a tape of the songs of a popular Burmese singer. Some drunks prevented them, and one of the students was badly injured. The assailants were arrested, but the police soon released the prime suspect because—as everyone assumed—his father’s connections with the regime made him invulnerable. A few hundred students demonstrated against this apparent injustice, and threw stones at the riot police. The Lon Htein (police) fired into the crowd, and Maung Phone Maw was shot dead.

A week or two later, in March 1988, the tensions in Rangoon culminated in a full-blown insurrection, a volcanic eruption of political rage. The government temporized, offering to set up a full inquiry into the death of Maung Phone Maw, and urging the students to remain calm. The inquiry was to issue its report within a month. Eyewitnesses insisted that Phone Maw had been beaten to death by the police, but the commission of inquiry—to the surprise of no one—came to a different conclusion: that the victim himself was to blame, and that he was a hooligan. It suggested that Phone Maw and another student had died of gunshot wounds after being fired on by civilians whom they were harassing. The worst sufferers of all, according to the report, were the paramilitary police, the Lon Htein, twenty-eight of whom had been hurt by ‘rowdy students’ who had thrown stones at them. Rumors abounded that the Rangoon students were going to organize a full-scale boycott of all educational institutions, including schools, unless the authorities released full and true details of what had happened.

For me, using words like ‘boycott’, ‘strike’, ‘demonstration’, ‘human rights’, ‘democracy’, ‘student union’ and the like during this time was like learning a new language—or perhaps like rediscovering a long-forgotten one. It was astounding, unthinkable, that the students were actually going to defy the authorities. Even to think about the possibility felt like committing a crime. Yet as soon as you thought of it, it seemed to become possible, and then inevitable. The discourse of the regime was all of perfection, of a country so fully at ease with its rulers that none of the ideas denoted by the words above could find a place in our consciousness. They were almost literally unthinkable. Yet here they were beginning to be thought, and as they were you could sense the growth of huge rage.

Then I heard on the BBC World Service details of the killing of more students in Rangoon. Students had been trapped by the riot police by the side of Inya Lake. They were fired on, beaten and some were chased into the lake, where their heads were held underwater until they were drowned. In another demonstration some students who had been wounded by the Lon Htein were taken in vans, along with dozens who had been killed, to Kyandaw crematorium and cremated alive along with the corpses. Later the BBC supplied details of the actual numbers killed, missing and arrested—up to a hundred. The state radio denied all of this, insisting that only a few students had been involved in disturbances, no more than a handful had been arrested, and none at all killed. In response—as it seemed the BBC said that it had its information from good sources within Burma. Soon afterwards the state radio admitted that there had been killings, but gave a figure only a tenth of that suggested by the BBC. The more the regime denounced the hated BBC (the broadcasts of which it did not have the technical means to jam until 1989), the more it blamed it for fomenting the troubles in the country, and the more it reluctantly confirmed (at least in part) all the BBC claimed, the more people tuned into it to hear the truth. The BBC World Service audience soared.

State radio began to insist that the riot police had contained and stabilized the situation. At first the rest of the population kept their distance from the students, but gradually they were drawn in. What started as a small student demonstration in the center of Rangoon near the Sule Pagoda soon swelled to a crowd of fifteen thousand, cheered on by bystanders and by people watching even from the windows of government-owned offices.

Mandalay Uprising
The Mandalay University—in common with Rangoon University and all the schools—had been closed a term and a half before the end of the academic year. It was rumored that monks were going to lead the popular movement in Mandalay—which meant that an immensely respected and influential group would give order and coherence to what so far was a vast but uncoordinated uprising of public feeling. In the words of someone we had not yet heard of, but would soon come to love, (Aung San Su Kyi) a ‘second Burmese struggle for independence’ was being born in March 1988.

Tension was already high in Mandalay, and there was the feeling that the city was ready to join the uprising, when a novice monk was shot dead. It was believed that he had been shot by a police sniper through a window of his monastery as he sat and studied. His body was carried around the streets, and it was possible to see the bullet wounds. Monks and students now led the growing demonstrations in Mandalay. In the neighboring town of Sagaing, many demonstrators were shot dead and their corpses dumped into the Irrawaddy and into sandpits. When rumors of this reached me I was unable to believe them. Even when I saw photographs of the decomposed corpses with obvious bullet wounds on various parts of their bodies I could not believe my eyes. I took my bicycle and rode down to Sagaing, and dismounted beneath the Sagaing bridge. As I stood there, I saw twenty or thirty corpses float past. I still do not understand why the regime made no attempt to hide the evidence of the atrocities—unless it was to sow terror or express contempt.

In Mandalay, ten to twenty thousand people marched daily through the city center and around the Zaygyo Market. In their hundreds they took to surrounding the police stations in the area, silently holding up placards, banners and photographs of those who had been murdered in Mandalay. Then the troops were sent in, wearing their Second World War helmets, driving in their green Hino trucks.
Virtually every day rallies and conferences were held in monasteries and public places. Artists, schoolteachers, office workers, doctors, nurses and civil servants joined the students and monks. It is hard to describe the thrill people felt in finding their voices for the first time, in being able to speak out about subjects that for more than twenty years had been unmentionable, and in finding that virtually the whole nation shared the same thoughts. It suddenly became obvious that the regime had no base at all in society. Despite all the–still existing—apparatus of repression, it had lost all political control and was isolated. Ancient traditions rose to the surface as the protests and demonstrations began to resemble Burmese pwes. Jesters—who had often been jailed for their jokes about the regime—found that they could appear before thousands without prison vans waiting for them behind the stage. All the way along the streets down which wound the immense processions of demonstrators people stood offering food and drink. And always the processions were led by hosts of russet-robed monks, so that from a distance the demonstrators seemed to be walking behind giant red ants.

General Ne Win’s ‘Resignation’
Finally, General Ne Win appeared on television. On 19 July 1988 the Burma Broadcasting Service had admitted for the first time what the authorities had always previously denied—that forty-one people (rather than only two) had indeed been suffocated in an overcrowded prison van in Rangoon in the March riots. On 23 July an emergency congress of the Burma Socialist Programme Party was convened at the Saya San Hall in Rangoon. That evening virtually the whole nation heard on the radio or watched on television the extraordinary speech made by Ne Win.

To general astonishment, Ne Win said that the ‘bloody events’ of March and June showed a ‘lack of trust in the government and the party that guides it by the people who were either directly involved in or were lending their support to the events. But it is necessary to find out whether it is the majority or minority that support those people who are showing lack of trust. Since it is our belief that the answer to the question—a multi-party or a single-party system—can be provided by a referendum, the current congress is requested to approve a national referendum…if the choice is for a multi-party system, we must hold elections for a new parliament.’

Then, even more astonishingly. One of his aides read out the next part of his speech, in which he announced that he felt some responsibility for ‘the sad events that took place in March and June’ and, because of his advancing age, requested to be ‘allowed to relinquish the duty as party chairman and also as party member’.

Our astonishment turned into excited delight. It seemed that the impossible was about to happen—after twenty-six years of military socialist dictatorship there was the possibility of a return to the free Burma of which our grandparents had so often spoken. It was scarcely believable.

Our joy was tempered with anxiety only a few minutes later as Ne Win resumed reading the rest of his speech himself. He came back to the disturbances in the streets, and his words were ominous: ‘In continuing to maintain control, I want the entire nation, the people, to know that if in the future there are mob disturbances, if the army shoots, it hits—there is no firing into the air to scatter.’ This was an astonishing psychological mistake—compounded when Ne Win added that the riot police fired with live bullets because they could not afford rubber bullets and tear gas. This was instantly taken as a challenge to the entire nation.

Butcher of Rangoon as Head of State
At the end of the week it became clear that our anxieties were only too well founded, when the successor to Ne Win as President of Burma and Chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party was announced: it was Sein Lwin, the butcher of Rangoon. In 1962 Sein Lwin had been the commander of the soldiers who stormed the campus of Rangoon University, killing scores of students. During the uprising in Rangoon in mid-March 1988 the Lon Htein had beaten and shot students, raped female protesters, and chased others into Inya Lake, holding their heads under water until they drowned. The commander of the Lon Htein was Sein Lwin. Nothing could have been more brutally insulting to the people of Burma than that this man should now be elevated as head of state. Nothing could more clearly show that the ‘retirement’ of Ne Win was a trick and a subterfuge.

The almost immediate result was a resurgence of demonstrations fuelled by hatred of ‘the Butcher’. They swept the country, and curfews were imposed in one town after another. Police again fired directly into crowds of demonstrators, but still the protests continued.

Massacre of Monks in Mandalay
I stopped near a monastery where I saw army trucks blocking a road down which some five thousand to seven thousand demonstrators were marching. There were monks, students and schoolchildren. The procession was on its way to link up with others in Mandalay. They were chanting their slogans but were entirely peaceful. Monks were holding aloft banners with slogans such as ‘Stop the killing—we want peace and prosperity’. They were in the front as the leaders. Since monks are universally revered in Burma—although the regime’s attitude to them was more of fear and suspicion—their presence seemed to protect and give validity to the whole march. It never crossed my mind, nor, I am sure, the minds of the hundreds of spectators who lined the road, that anyone would defy our ingrained and unquestioned reverence for the monastic order.

A single line of soldiers blocked the road in front of the demonstrators, who were still some distance away. I could see soldiers lying in wait behind trees and buildings with their machine-guns pointed in the direction of the unarmed marchers. I could not understand why, if they were going to order the demonstrators to stop, they were making themselves invisible.

I leaned my bike against a tree, went up to the first floor of a house and, watching from a window, waited to see what would happen that would explain these strange tactics. When the demonstrators came into full view I suddenly realized they were advancing into a trap. The palms of my hands froze. Without warning the soldiers opened fire indiscriminately, shooting directly into the crowd for about two minutes. The most vivid thing was seeing the crimson robes of the monks covered with blood as they dropped to the ground. That monks could be gunned down was unthinkable—I never thought I would see the day when such a thing could happen on the civilized streets of the holy city of Mandalay, allegedly founded on the instructions of the Lord Buddha himself.

The spectators fled in panic, while the screaming demonstrators tried to carry their wounded and dead away. It was a day in which (to use a Burmese expression) the sky had fallen down. What was as horrible as anything was the robotic way, their faces completely without expression, the soldiers carried out their orders to fire into the crowd. You felt that here were two worlds—one, the world of those begging the government to help and listen, the other of people who understood absolutely nothing.

08:08 8/8/88
Rage at the appointment of Sein Lwin continued to grow throughout the country. It became clear that there was unanimity among the people that such a man must not be their ruler. The idea was conceived and began to gain ground that there should be a day of nationwide demonstrations and a general strike. The day chosen was the auspicious one of 8 August—8/8/88—and the action would begin at eight minutes past eight. The attempt to organize for that day was assisted by a stroke of luck. Christopher Gunness arrived in Rangoon as the BBC correspondent, and immediately began broadcasting on the Burma section of the BBC World Service accurate and vivid accounts of what had been going on—including the fact that about two thousand demonstrators had already been killed in incidents throughout the country. He also revealed the plan for a nationwide day of action on 8 August, so the whole of Burma knew what was being prepared.

At eight minutes past eight on the auspicious day, the dock workers in the port of Rangoon walked out. Then the processions and demonstrations began, swelled by people who had come into the city from the countryside, until virtually the whole city seemed to be on the streets. The demonstrators carried portraits of Aung San, the hero of the independence struggle and founder of modern Burma, red flags for courage, and flags with the peacock emblem, the symbol of Burmese students since the nationalist, anti-British demonstrations of the 1920s. Simultaneous demonstrations broke out throughout the country—in Sagaing, Shwebo, Moulmein, Taunggyi and many other towns—and in Mandalay.

We heard horrifying accounts of what had happened in Rangoon. After a day of peaceful and cheerful demonstrations, trucks of soldiers and Bren-gun carriers rushed out towards thousands of people gathered near the Sule Pagoda and fired at point-blank range directly into the crowd. Corpses had been seized by the military and taken straight to the Kyandaw crematorium. There were credible reports that the wounded had been cremated along with the dead. Troops had also killed two to three hundred people in Sagaing, near Mandalay, and many of the injured had drowned while trying to escape by swimming across the Irrawaddy.

The ‘Butcher’s’ Resignation
After eighteen days in office, on 12 August 1988, Sein Lwin resigned. It was generally believed that the decision to change the president was taken at a meeting over a game of cards in General Ne Win’s house. Sein Lwin was replaced by a civilian (although an ex-army officer) called Dr Maung Maung, the only intellectual ever known to be close to Ne Win. A few days later the Central Bar Council of Burma issued a statement condemning unequivocally all the killings in Burma over the weeks since 8 August, and declaring that the use of the security forces against the people was illegal and against the constitution.

Although Maung Maung was presented as a moderate, everyone knew that he was a puppet of Ne Win and his clique. He set out to appease the populace, and announced that the Burma Socialist Programme Party was being abolished. He was himself a Mandalayan—which did not stop a mob burning down his house in a suburb of the city within days of his appointment. It was enough that he was a continuation of the universally despised regime.

Meanwhile the regime had begun a ‘dirty tricks’ campaign designed to sow confusion among the populace. They began freeing criminals from prison and releasing them among the protesters, hoping that this would create suspicion and anarchy. Sometimes they were caught and lynched by the crowd. In Mandalay, the young monks’ organization, the Yahanpyo (‘Young Monks Association’)—which Sein Lwin had suppressed many years before—was revived, and helped to police the town. They escorted many of the released criminals to the safety of monasteries, and punished them if they reverted to their old habits.

The plan of the regime was obvious—to infiltrate the protest movements with criminals, and to so undermine the stability of the country that they would have an excuse for a military coup. The regime also tried to provoke riots between the majority Buddhist population and the Muslims. Sometimes this worked—as in Moulmein, where some Muslim shops were burned down. But usually the attempts failed. Then they created the fantasy of an elaborate anti-Burma conspiracy involving the Communists, the CIA, M16 and the BBC which was out to incite instability in the country. The only effect of this was greatly to increase the audience for the BBC’s Burma Service and for the reports of Christopher Gunness, because everyone felt that this was the best way of learning the truth about what was happening in Burma. It was through the BBC that we learned that around two thousand people including monks, women and children had been killed through-out the country.