Aung San Suu Kyi (20 page)

In 1957 U Thant was appointed Burma's representative in the United Nations, and he immediately made himself known as an effective and pragmatic politician. His mild, gentle, and in several ways typically “Burmese” manner appealed to most parties in the otherwise very split United Nations. Not to all, however. He acquired enemies, for example, when his negotiations led to Algeria's independence at the beginning of the 1960s. “It was the job I liked the best,” he later told the author June Bingham, “but it took me a long time to regain confidence from the French.”

Despite that, when United Nations secretary general Dag Hammarskjöld was killed in an airplane crash in September 1961, U Thant was selected to be his successor. He had strong support among the African and Asian countries, and the superpowers understood him to be no great threat to their dominance in the Security Council. The Burmese was, quite simply, eminently suitable for the role that President Roosevelt had suggested that the world organization's secretary general should play: he should be a moderator, not a player in his own right.

But unlike most secretaries general, who had often been recruited on account of their administrative gifts, U Thant was not satisfied with that role
alone. He pursued the policy that the United Nations must be impartial but not morally neutral. In cases where the United Nations Charter and the organization's fundamental principles are subject to gross violation, one must react, he felt. He was, for example, deeply critical of the United States' war in Vietnam and offered several times to mediate in the conflict, but President Lyndon B. Johnson declined each time. Perhaps U Thant foreshadowed the debate on human rights and humanitarian intervention that characterized the United Nations several decades later, when the Wall had fallen and a more open international climate seemed to be within reach.

When Ne Win seized power in 1962, U Thant had already been appointed as secretary general, and Burma's new dictator could not attack him, however much he wanted to. Ne Win detested U Thant, partly because he had been such a close ally of U Nu, and partly because he remained Burma's most brightly shining star on the firmament of international politics. That role was one Ne Win would gladly have awarded to himself.

There is nothing to indicate that U Thant was directly involved in the decision to give Aung San Suu Kyi an appointment at the United Nations, but it is not unthinkable that he had something to do with the matter. The bonds between the Burmese living in New York were close, and Aung San Suu Kyi often spent time in the company of the secretary general's family.

But it was also clear that there were two factions among the Burmese in New York: the ones who were critical of the regime and the ones who supported it. The latter had as their base Burma's embassy and the United Nations delegation appointed by Ne Win. U Thant often invited both groups to Sunday lunch at his home in Riverdale in the Bronx, a house with a large garden and a beautiful view out over the Hudson River. “Other Burmese friends would be there, a convivial company, and Burmese food much to our taste would be served. On special occasions, such as the birthday of one of his grandchildren, the grounds of the house would be decked out to receive the Burmese, and also the heads of many of the permanent delegations to the UN,” remembered Ma Than É.

Aung San Suu Kyi was given a post on the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, and the work assignments were just about as entertaining as they sound. The committee had the task of scrutinizing the budget and costs of several of the United Nations' most important
executive institutions, like the World Health Organization, and the aid programs within the UN Development Programme (UNDP). The committee was independent of both the secretary general and the general assembly. Soul-destroying or not, it gave Aung San Suu Kyi unique insight into the work of the world organization.

In the evenings she involved herself in volunteer work, something that the younger members of the United Nations personnel were at that time more or less expected to do. Suu Kyi did her “social service” at the Bellevue Hospital at the top of First Avenue. The hospital had been founded way back in 1736, and it is today the oldest publicly owned hospital in the United States. Over 80 percent of the patients come from socially vulnerable conditions and do not have comprehensive health insurance. The situation was about the same in the 1960s. Suu Kyi spent many weekday evenings and often one of the days on the weekend at the hospital. She read for the little ones in the children's wards and sat on night duty by the beds of the elderly. The hospital also takes in many patients with psychological problems, and Suu Kyi acted as a support in the waiting rooms before they got to see a doctor.

Ne Win had now been in power in Burma for over eight years. The economy had collapsed and the civil war had been aggravated by an unwillingness of the regime to negotiate with the ethnic minorities, or even to recognize their right to their own culture. The conflict with Guomintang had been resolved at the beginning of the 1960s, thanks to the Chinese and Burmese forces making a combined attack on its strongholds in the northeastern Shan state. The soldiers had been driven over the border to Laos, where many of them joined the United States' escalating war in Indochina. Other parts of the GMD forces ended up in northern Thailand, where it is still possible to distinguish a number of villages that in principle are populated entirely by aged GMD soldiers and their descendants.

But peace there was not. GMD was only a part of the problem, and in the political power vacuum that arose after the flight to Laos and Thailand, other local warlords and ethnically loyal guerrilla groups saw an opportunity of increasing their influence. In order to meet the guerrilla uprising, Ne Win chose to put his trust in the local militia, the so-called Ka Kwe Yes (KKY). The system amounted to allowing the warlords in the Shan mountains full
freedom to sell opium and heroin, and in many cases the Burmese Army helped them with transport and protection. In return, the warlords promised to fight against the guerrilla groups that were at war with Rangoon.

The Burma expert Bertil Lintner is of the opinion that there were three reasons why Ne Win chose that solution. First, there was no money in the public treasury to finance a comprehensive, long-term war against the ethnic guerrilla groups. The trade with opium was decisive for supplying the soldiers with weapons, ammunition, uniforms, and necessities. Second, it undermined the Shan rebels' own possibilities of gaining income from the opium fields if the KKY militia took the trade monopoly into its own hands. Third, it was already clear that Ne Win's economic politics were a failure. There was a great shortage of all kinds of goods on the markets inside Burma, and the international drug trade became a way of acquiring capital and everyday commodities for the country.

KKY transported the opium to the market city of Tachilek, which is situated on the border between Thailand and Laos, and there they were paid in pure gold—hence the region's “golden triangle” moniker. Despite the ever more chaotic situation, Ne Win was convinced that his Burmese “socialism” was the only conceivable road. At the same time, relations with Khin Kyi and her family grew frostier and frostier, which even Suu Kyi was made to experience during the time she was living in New York. Ma Than É tells of an episode at the home of U Soe Tin, Burma's ambassador to the United Nations. He was a liberal person who served the junta in a diplomatically correct manner, but he was also keen on keeping in contact with those of the Burmese diaspora who were critical of the regime. One autumn when the General Assembly had its annual meeting they were invited to his home for a formal lunch. The ambassador's residence was also situated in Riverdale, but the house was not as striking as U Thant's. When Suu Kyi entered the spacious rectangular-shaped living room she saw that the sofas had been arranged so that they stood against the walls, with small tables in front of them. U Soe Tin's wife moved quietly around from table to table serving fruit juice and snacks before she retired to the kitchen to prepare the lunch. Suu Kyi was invited to sit down on one of the sofas where two of the delegates at the General Assembly were already sitting. Ma Than É sensed from the atmosphere in the room that all was not as it should be. After a few introductory
courtesies, the leader of the delegation started interrogating Suu Kyi. How did she come to be working for the United Nations, despite the fact that nobody in her home country had given her such an assignment? What passport did she use when traveling to the United States? Was she not aware that her diplomatic passport had expired since her mother was no longer working as an ambassador in India? She was committing an illegal act when using that passport and she must immediately hand it in. During this whole maneuver, the others in the room looked unceasingly and with anxious expressions at Suu Kyi, and they mumbled in agreement as soon as a new accusation was aimed at her. It was clear that somebody in Rangoon, in all probability Ne Win personally, had given them the task of degrading Suu Kyi, but she showed no signs of taking the criticism to heart. She explained calmly and collectedly that she had of course applied for a new passport in London, she had handed in her papers several months previously, but the application had for some reason gotten stuck in the bureaucratic process. She was unable to understand why the whole business had been so delayed, she said, and anyway, all the “uncles” in the room certainly understood that one could not travel to another country without any passport at all, did they not?

At that point, Burma's ambassador in London came to her relief. He confirmed that the application had been handed in and sent to Rangoon for approval, but that it had gotten stuck in the system there. Everyone in the room knew that the bureaucracy in Burma under Ne Win had become extremely corrupt and ineffective, and some of those who had muttered supportively when Suu Kyi had been attacked now started instead to fidget uncomfortably. Through her quiet, simple explanation, the barely twenty-fiveyearold Aung San Suu Kyi had not only gotten out of the question about her passport, but she had also turned the whole discussion into a criticism of developments in Burma.

The contrast could not have been sharper between the cosmopolitan life Aung San Suu Kyi had lived when she was growing up and the daily life she would later have to get used to during the years in house arrest. But still she seems to have taken the whole thing calmly when she was isolated in the house on University Avenue in July 1989. Most of those around her had been arrested during recent months. She had learned to live with the risk.

“My only worry was that my sons got back safely to England, especially if Michael was not allowed to come and get them,” she said later.

However, the junta had no plans of stopping Michael. They hoped that he would take both the children and Suu Kyi with him back to Oxford. If Aung San Suu Kyi left the country, they could prevent her from returning. A one-way ticket out from Burma, and they would be rid of that problem.

Michael's journey at the end of July was given almost greater international attention than the arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi a few days earlier. He has written about it in
Freedom from Fear.
Suu Kyi was still a relatively unknown politician belonging to the opposition in a country that nobody in the West had bothered about for decades. Michael was no celebrity either, but he was a Western academic who disappeared without a trace for twenty-one days in one of the world's toughest dictatorships. The scenario fitted hand-in-glove with Western media logic.

When Michael landed at the shabby, badly maintained Mingaladon Airport in Rangoon, the whole runway was occupied by soldiers, military vehicles, and officers, all waiting for the tall Englishman to descend from the plane. He was immediately taken to the VIP lounge inside the main building, where an officer told him that he was to be allowed to visit his wife and sons, but only if he accepted certain specific conditions. He was not permitted to leave the house on University Avenue and he was not permitted under any circumstances to speak to the press or anybody from the British Embassy during his stay in Burma. He agreed to these demands. His only aim with this visit was to see his family again and to take their sons with him back to Oxford. Contrary to what the generals thought, he did not believe for one minute that Suu Kyi would accompany them back home. “She had decided this was her task, and I had no ambition whatsoever to talk her into something else,” he said later, as quoted in the
New York Times
.

After the brief interrogation at the airport, he was put into a military vehicle and driven away. No outsider knew anything about his whereabouts. It was as though he had gone up in smoke. The international press wrote about the English academic who had been kidnapped by a junta refusing to answer questions about where he was being “held prisoner.”

The military drove him straight to the house on the shores of Lake Inya, and as soon as he had crossed the threshold, he was confronted by the news that Aung San Suu Kyi was on a hunger strike. She had stopped eating three days ago in protest against the torture her friends and party comrades were being subjected to in the prisons. She refused all special treatment and demanded once again that she be thrown into the Insein prison along with the others.

The family lived through twelve days of uncertainty. Kim and Alexander played, read, and watched from the sidelines as their mother's condition slowly worsened. Guards were posted everywhere around the house and on the street outside, but they all behaved correctly and in a disciplined manner toward the family. The soldiers had great respect for Aung San's child and grandchildren, despite everything. Some of them looked after the boys and taught them judo and karate in the garden. The boys did not openly show any emotions, as one of Aung San Suu Kyi's assistants said
later: “It's the British stiff-upper-lip training, and the training of their mother, who's been trained by her mother” (quote from Barbara Victors,
The Lady
).