The hasty disposal of Burmese strongman Ne Win on 5 December may have owed something to an incident in 1974 when the body of former UN Secretary General U Thant was returned home. A xenophobe of the first rank who sent tens of thousands of Indian and Chinese lifetime residents “home” in the 1960s, General Ne Win resented U Thant’s international standing.
Students were convinced Ne Win would deny U Thant any honours, and seized the coffin for their own ceremonies. It was recovered after bloodshed and over a 1,000 arrests. U Thant’s remains now lie in a forlorn mausoleum close to Shwedagon Pagoda. Nearby is the heavily gilded Maha Wizaya Pagoda - often called Ne Win’s pagoda.
It has been under construction for over two decades, and with his passing, some say, can finally be completed. Disneyland helped inspire its unusual, somewhat gaudy interior.
History may not be any kinder to Ne Win than the junta, though he was once a hero. A student failure, he will be remembered as a thakin (master), as young activists against British rule styled themselves in the 1930s. He was also one of the legendary 30 Comrades trained by the Japanese in the early 1940s. The comrades pooled their blood in a ceremony in Bangkok to drink an oath before entering Burma through Tennasserim with Japanese imperial forces. The most famous member of the group was its leader, Bogyoke (Great General) Aung San. He was the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel laureate, champion of democracy in Burma - and Ne Win’s nemesis since returning home in 1988.
According to Suu Kyi, Aung San never trusted Ne Win. Others say the straitlaced Bogyoke particularly disliked Ne Win for his loose ways with women. (Ne Win ended up marrying six different women seven times.) Aung San was assassinated in 1947 by a jealous political rival armed by maverick British officers. Efforts to link Ne Win to the slaying are not really credible.
Ne Win’s glory days continued in the post-war years when he created the Burma Army from scratch with almost no outside support, pushing back insurgencies that at one point threatened to overrun the capital. Relying on lean, threadbare light infantry, Ne Win’s military struggled to maintain the Union of Burma, a melting pot of some 135 minorities often hostile to central Burman rule. It was a union in name only. Until the late1980s, Rangoon was facing some 20 low intensity but brutal insurgencies, and controlled none of its borders. Burma’s indigenous hatreds were often compared toYugoslavia, with Ne Win as a kind of Asian Tito.
Indonesia these days arouses stronger Yugoslavia-type concerns than Burma, which since 1988 has made real progress with ceasefires. But many doubt if the price Ne Win exacted was justified by the tenuous unity he maintained. The barbarism against minorities guaranteed that resentment and warring would continue. It lingers on to this day, particularly in the remoter Shan states. Wa state is still out of control.
In 1958, Prime Minister U Nu asked Ne Win as army chief to form a caretaker government and bring order for stable civilian rule. Ne Win did a good job, and U Nu returned to the premiership in 1960. But Ne Win had tasted power and was unable to overcome his antipathy to disorderly civilians - be they politicians, businessmen, academics, journalists or diplomats. He was much more at home in a universe ordered by astrologers and numerologists, and peopled by saluting minions in khaki.
In 1962, he seized power, established a military revolutionary council and set about reducing the most resource rich country in South-east Asia to a pauper state. Ne Win’s idiosyncratic Burmese Road to Socialism had very little to do with socialism and was most notable for leading backwards. The country became so withdrawn that it pulled out of the Non-Aligned Movement. Missionary schools were closed, and the teaching of English discouraged. Ne Win claimed he was keeping Burmese culture pure. Instead, it was ossifying in an impoverished, philistine environment in which even religion - the great comforter to the masses - was subject to political control.
Always unpredictable, Ne Win shouted down anyone who contradicted him. In his later years, he claimed that nobody told him of the gravity of the economic situation - even though his erstwhile offsider Brig-General Aung Gyi constantly sent him letters about it. Ne Win and Aung Gyi fell out not long after the 1962 coup. Each blamed the other for blowing up the historic Students Union, killing around 100.
Ne Win banned horse racing at home but went to Ascot in England. He imagined himself to be a reincarnation of an ancient Burmese warrior king, and had a soft spot for royalty, a favourite visitor being Britain’s Princess Alexandra. His love of beautiful women was only rivalled by his passion for jewels from Myanmar’s fabled “treasure lands”, particularly rubies and jade.
Although Ne Win, more than any other individual, charted Burma’s post-war course, that always sounded like an excuse for even greater inertia in a country that has failed by any standards.
Can it change? Not any time soon - Ne Win’s ghost still walks the Burmese corridors of power in the shape of the ungrateful junta and officer corps he created. - DF.