Monday, December 2, 1996
MAINTAINING HUMAN DIGNITY IN THE DARKNESS: "A Normal Life"
Letter from Burma By Aung San Suu Kyi
Recently, when a friend asked me how things were with me since the authorities had taken to barricading off my house periodically, I replied that things were fine, I was simply carrying on with my normal life. At this she burst out laughing. "Yours in not a normal life, in fact it's the most abnormal life!" And I could not help but laugh too.
I suppose the kind of life I lead must seem very strange to some but it is a life to which I have become accustomed and it is really no stranger than a lot of things that go on in Burma today. Sometimes as we walk around the garden while the road outside lies quiet, shut off from the rest of the city, my colleagues and I agree that were we to write about our experiences in the form if a novel it would be criticized as too far-fetched a story, a botched Orwellian tale.
No doubt there are other countries in the world where you would find the equivalent of the huge billboards brazenly entitled "People's Desire," advertising the following sentiments:
* Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views
* Oppose those trying to jeopardize stability of the State and progress of the nation
* Oppose foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State
* Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy.
But I doubt that in other countries you would find just around the corner from such an unwelcoming, xenophobic proclamations, a gigantic, double-faced, particularly unattractive version of a traditional boy doll with puffy white face, staring eyes, a stiff smile and an attache case (that bit is not traditional) welcoming tourists to Visit Myanmar Year. Bizarre is the word that springs to mind. "Fascist Disneyland," one frequent visitor to Burma commented.
There is so much that is beautiful and so much that is wrong in my country. In the evenings when I look out to the lake from my garden, I can see the tattered beauty of the casuarinas, the tropical lushness of the coconut palms, the untidily exotic banana plants and the lushness of the barbed wire fence along the edge of the shore. And across the still waters festooned with dumps of water hyacinth is the mass of a new hotel built with profit rather than elegance in mind. As the sun begins to go down the sky lights up in orange hues. The Burmese refer to this hour as the time of blazing clouds and also the time when the ugly turn beautiful because the golden light casts a flattering glow on most complexions.
How simple it would be if a mere turn of light could make everything that was ugly beautiful. How wonderful it would be if twilight were a time when we could all lay down the cares of the day and look forward to a tranquil night of well earned rest. But in Fascist Disneyland the velvety night is too often night in the worst sense of the word, a time deprived of light in more ways than one. Even in the capital city Rangoon, electricity cuts are not infrequent and we are suddenly plunged into darkness. The inability of the government to supply adequate electric power makes it necessary for many households to contrive arrangements of their own, linking up a wire to a neighboring source that they might enjoy a bit of light at night. The local authorities turn a blind eye to such arrangements, accepting due compensation for their discretion. However, if you happen to be a member of the NLD, trying to bring light into your household can easily result in a two-year prison sentence. The other, and more real, darkness of night in Fascist Disneyland is that so many political arrests are made during the hours when all decent people should be resting and allowing others to rest.
Visitors to my country often speak of the friendliness, the hospitality and the acme of humor of the Burmese. Then they ask how it is possible that a brutal, humorless authoritarian regime could have emerged from such a people. A comprehensive answer to that question would involve a whole thesis but a short answer might be, as one writer has put it, that Burma is indeed one of those lands of charm and cruelty. I have found more warmth, more wholehearted love and more caring concern among my people, as we hope together, suffer together and struggle together, than anywhere else in the world. But those who exude hate and vindictiveness and rave about annihilating and crushing us are also Burmese, our own people.
How many can be said to be leading normal lives in a country where there are such deep divisions of heart and mind, where there is neither freedom nor security? When we ask for democracy, all we are asking is that our people should be allowed to live in tranquility under the rule of law, protected by institutions which will guarantee our rights, the rights that will enable us to maintain our human dignity, to heal long festering wounds and to allow love and courage to flourish. Is that such a very unreasonable demand?
