Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Democracy Movement

Introduction: An Unlikely Leader

Both Aung San Suu Kyi and Rosa Parks have become enduring and vivid symbols of the civil rights movements in their respective countries. By refusing to give up her seat to a white person and move to the back of the bus, Parks ignited a firestorm of race-related protests that galvanized civil rights crusades led by later figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. In the beginning, Parks was not a civil rights leader. She was a citizen who had decided to take a stand against the social oppression that was predominant against African-American people.

Like Parks, Suu Kyi did not start out as a leader of the Burmese people. Though she had an influential father, Suu Kyi was living in England with her family before becoming involved in Burma's fight against the military regime. Upon her involvement, however, the petite, quiet woman fought tirelessly on behalf of her home country's democratic movement. She generated publicity for her cause and enlisted international support against the Burmese military junta. Her efforts even earned her the Nobel Peace Prize.

This paper examines Aung San Suu Kyi's role in the political and democratic movements in Burma. The first part examines the political climate in Burma prior to Suu Kyi's arrival. The next part details Suu Kyi's influence, particularly with regard to her work with the National League for Democracy (NLD). The following section evaluates the results of the NLD's efforts and looks at what remains to be done. In the conclusion, this paper recommends courses of action that Western nations could take in helping the cause of democracy in Burma.

Post-Liberation Burmese History

Since achieving limited autonomy from British rule in 1935, Burma has had a tumultuous history of different factions competing for political power. The nationalist movement held sway through the 1940s. After World War II, the nationalist movement was controlled by a group called the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League. This faction was led by Aung San, whose efforts to fight Japanese imperialism had made him a local hero. Aung San was also the father of Aung San Suu Kyi.

In 1947, Aung San persuaded England to recognize Burmese independence. In the 1948 election, his Anti-Fascist People's Freedom League won a majority of seats for the constitutional convention. However, Aung San and six cabinet colleagues were assassinated by political rivals (Thadithil).

By 1948, independent Burma was under the leadership of U Nu. However, the new democratic government could not address the country's disparate problems, from the rebellious Karen minority to the inflation and corruption that resulted in widespread instability.

In 1962, a military faction headed by General Ne Win took advantage of this instability and staged a coup. The new military government instituted a "Burmese Way to Socialism," a system of governance that closed itself off to foreigners and did not tolerate any form of domestic dissent. The military government silenced many of its critics, the bulk of whom were Buddhist monks and pro-democracy students. The new government also instituted a state-controlled economy (Kurlantzick).

Since then, Burma remained under military rule. The repressive practices fueled protest from a wide swath of Burmese society. In 1988, a dispute between students and a teashop owner escalated into riots lasting several months. As a result, the military government was overthrown by yet another military faction.

This new government instituted important changes. First, it changed the country's name to Myanmar, a change that was not adopted by other countries. It abandoned state socialism in favor of a free market economy. The government was controlled by the official State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), which oversaw the country's political and military affairs upon the arrival of Aung San Suu Kyi back to her home country in 1988.

Burma in 1988 and Suu Kyi's Initial Involvement

To her detractors, Suu Kyi is a troublemaker and a destabilizer, whose Burmese identity is called into question by her marriage to an Englishman and her two mixed-race children (Straub). Her supporters believe otherwise. By virtue of birth alone, Suu Kyi's Burmese heritage runs deep — she is the only daughter of Aung San, a staunch fighter against colonialism in Burma and one of the country's most beloved national heroes.

Aung San Suu Kyi was born in 1945 and spent her early years in Burma before moving to India, where her mother was appointed ambassador. She then attended Oxford University's St. Hugh's College, where she studied politics, economics, and history. In 1972, she married Oxford scholar Michael Vaillancourt Aris, with whom she had two sons. Throughout the 1980s, Suu Kyi continued her scholarly career, working as a visiting scholar at institutions such as Kyoto University's Center for Southeast Asian Studies and the Indian Institute for Advanced Studies in Simla (Pederson 26).

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Rangoon, Burma, to nurse her ailing mother. She thus became a witness to the massive protests that shook the country that year, as well as the SLORC regime's brutal and bloody repression of those demonstrations. In later interviews, Suu Kyi recalled how she had always steered clear of political activism, especially among Burmese exiles in England. However, she stated that the 1988 events changed her view, since "this is not a time when anyone who cares can stay out" (Straub).

The cause for democracy in Burma had been shattered in 1962 by Ne Win's coup. It was during his regime that the government instituted isolationist policies that fostered antagonism toward anything foreign. This suspicion toward foreign ideas such as democracy continued to dominate the Burmese military government (Kurlantzick).

The Burmese Way to Socialism had resulted in a bankrupt economy and widespread discontent. The country's black market had grown enormous and was doing more business than the state-run economy. By 1987, the United Nations had classified Burma as one of the world's least-developed nations (Kurlantzick).

To address this problem, Ne Win declared all of Burma's high-denomination banknotes worthless, as a form of "shock therapy" for the economy. Instead, this action triggered widespread revolt. Various groups protested in the streets, demanding political liberalization, an end to the state-run economy, and a transition to a market-based system. These protests grew more frequent and more violent (Kurlantzick).

The first protesters were mostly student activists who took to the streets to agitate for radical political reform. In March 1988, Ne Win's troops arrested students and locked them in an airtight police van. As a result, 41 wounded students suffocated to death (Clements).

On July 23, 1988, Ne Win surprised Burmese citizens by announcing his resignation and calling for a national referendum on the country's political future. However, any hopes for a peaceful transition to democracy were dashed when the ruling Burma Socialist Program Party opposed his pronouncement. This set off another series of protests, which the ruling party met with violence. Between September 18 and September 21, the army killed thousands of students, monks, and other civilians to quell the burgeoning rebellion (Thadithil).

In an event later known as the "Massacre of 8-88," infantry troops were dispatched to a protest with orders to kill. Survivors later recalled kneeling in front of the soldiers, calling them brothers and urging them to join the fight for freedom. The troops fired into the crowd, killing an estimated 3,000 people. Thousands more were imprisoned. Witnesses likened the Burmese bloodbath to the Tiananmen Square massacre in China (Clements).

It was during this period of intense turmoil that Suu Kyi stepped into Burma's political arena. On August 26, 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi spoke before an estimated 500,000 people and announced her decision to join Burma's movement for democracy and to agitate for a parliamentary system. For Suu Kyi, the decision was both political and personal: "I could not, as my father's daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on" (Clements).

In the aftermath of Ne Win's resignation and the SLORC repressions, the military formalized the SLORC. Under the leadership of General San Yu, the government of the renamed Myanmar abandoned Burmese socialism and instituted a free market economy to attract much-needed foreign investment into the ravaged economy (Thadithil).

However, the SLORC also reinstated martial law. The military junta imposed a curfew, replaced civil courts with military tribunals, and prohibited any public gathering of more than four people. Those who flouted these rules were rounded up and imprisoned (Myoe).

To appease critics like Suu Kyi, the SLORC dangled the promise of "free and fair multiparty elections" slated for the spring of 1990. As a result, over 200 parties registered with the SLORC's election committee. The most popular party by far was the National League for Democracy, co-founded by the charismatic Aung San Suu Kyi and several pro-democracy colleagues (Myoe).

Though initially cautiously optimistic, many democracy activists and international observers realized that the promised elections were a mechanism for the military to root out its detractors. The military placed democracy groups under surveillance and subjected members to harassment. From 1989 to 1990, over 500,000 citizens were forcibly evacuated from their urban residences into disease-ridden "satellite towns" (Clements). Many of those evacuated were supporters of the NLD.

The NLD and the 1990 Elections

During this time, Suu Kyi continued speaking before large crowds, drawing people to defy curfew laws to attend NLD meetings. During many of her talks, she faced down troops who had been ordered to shoot her. While many people initially listened out of curiosity, they were won over by her courage and passion. She spoke eloquently about the need for democracy and advocated various methods of non-violent civil disobedience (Kurlantzick).

In an effort to quell her growing popularity, the SLORC placed the charismatic leader under house arrest in 1989. However, this move made Suu Kyi an even more sympathetic figure for democracy, both within Burma and around the world. Bowing to both internal pressure and international criticism, the SLORC junta decided to hold the promised elections in May 1990 (Thadithil).

Prior to the elections, SLORC troops rounded up several thousand more NLD supporters from the cities and transported them to the satellite areas. With most of her supporters removed and Suu Kyi under house arrest, the SLORC felt confident it would win the elections (Thadithil).

To the SLORC's dismay, however, the NLD won 392 out of 485 seats in parliament (Kurlantzick). Initially, the SLORC promised to honor the election results and even invited NLD representatives to assume power as soon as possible. Observers believe this stance arose from the SLORC's desire to blunt international criticism and encourage foreign investment.

This stance was short-lived. The SLORC regime annulled the election results soon after and tightened its control. More NLD members were arrested. The SLORC reinstated martial law and vowed to remain in power until a pro-military government could be installed. The government also refused to release Suu Kyi despite growing international pressure.

The growing international support was particularly evident in 1991, when Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. The Nobel Committee heralded her as "one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent years" (Straub).

Despite this prestigious recognition, the military government refused to let her leave the country to accept the award. Nevertheless, human rights activists around the world hoped the prize would prompt other governments to impose sanctions against the military junta. Others hoped that the resulting international attention would protect Suu Kyi from harsher repressive measures, such as arrest or execution.

In January 1993, the military junta finally convened the long-overdue Constitutional Convention. However, instead of duly elected government representatives, the convention members were mostly people selected by the military. Despite the election results, the NLD was allotted only 88 seats. Over the next three years there was much debate, though no constitution was drafted. Frustrated over the charade, the NLD delegates withdrew from the constitutional convention in 1996 (Thadithil).

Throughout this period, the SLORC continued its systematic repression of civil rights. Since Buddhism was central to Burmese life, monks and religious figures were frequent targets. In one incident in Mandalay in September 1990, SLORC troops entered a monastery, disrobed, beat, and imprisoned several religious leaders. To escape imprisonment, torture, or execution, some opposition leaders fled to border areas beyond SLORC control (Silverstein 440).

Despite their stranglehold on power, the SLORC continued to face vocal opposition from both Suu Kyi and her supporters. Muslim groups that had initially been vocal about religious repression were forced to flee to Bangladesh after several leaders were arrested and tortured. Ethnic minorities such as the Karen seethed with unrest over their exclusion from government policy-making (Silverstein 440). In urban areas, student groups and Buddhist leaders continued to protest.

Together with the ethnic minorities, Burmese opposition leaders formed a national coalition called the Democratic Alliance of Burma. This coalition created a shadow democratic government to rival the SLORC. Since Suu Kyi remained under house arrest, her cousin Dr. Sein Win assumed the presidency of the opposition government (Silverstein 441).