Though unpunished, Southeast Asia’s former strongmen continue to die off ignominiously. Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines died in exile in 1989 and was brought home by his wife in a freezer. Pol Pot, who sent nearly two million of his fellow Cambodians to their graves in the late 1970s, was probably murdered in 1998, then cremated on a rubbish pile along the Thai-Cambodian border. In Indonesia, former President Suharto is counting out his days at home, allegedly too ill and befuddled to answer charges.
One of Suharto’s greatest admirers, longtime Burmese strongman General Ne Win finally succumbed to old age on 5 December. His corpse was barely cold when it was cremated privately the same afternoon. In a land ruled by generals, this was a remarkably mean spirited farewell to the man who created the Burma Army after World War II.
Ne Win’s passing had been eagerly anticipated for decades. He retired as president in 1981 for health reasons and was said then to be “counting his days”. He counted many more, and nobody really knew his true age. Over 90, he was superstitious about others knowing his exact date of birth and astrological chart. He adopted the name Ne Win (“Sun of Glory” or “Brilliant as the Sun”), as a nom de guerre that conveniently concealed his Sino-Burman origins. His real name was Shu Maung.
Every six months or so, the colourful Burmese rumour mill would pronounce Ne Win to be at death’s door, or suggest that Burma’s ruling State Peace and Development Council was suppressing news of his death. Each time, the reclusive Ne Win would bounce back in rude health, appearing at a society wedding, in the UK or Singapore for medical check-ups, or even occasionally receiving visiting dignitaries such as Suharto, as one supreme leader to another.
The undignified sendoff given Ne Win by the SPDC is by no means out of character. A similar fate met senior General Saw Maung, chairman of the State Law and Order Restoration Council, which preceded the SPDC. Alcoholic and delusional, Saw Maung was removed in a palace coup after Army Day in 1992. He was barely heard of again, and died in 1997. Other generals who fell from the junta’s grace for corruption or megalomania, or who were simply up for retirement, have also passed into obscurity.
Yet the three generals who continue to dominate the SPDC - senior General Than Shwe, his deputy General Maung Aye, and intelligence chief Lt-General Khin Nyunt - all owe their positions, indeed everything they have, to Ne Win. Ne Win always placed loyalty well above capability, so their treachery must have blighted his final days.
Indeed, Khin Nyunt’s once close personal links to Ne Win marked him out as more than a protege - almost an adopted son. Those links weakened as Ne Win grew older and more withdrawn, and as his grandsons’ sometimes violent misbehaviour as members of the Scorpion Gang became more indefensible.
Ne Win officially retired from his last post as chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party in July 1988. Tensions were mounting as the great pro-democracy demonstrations of August and September approached. In a blunt and at times characteristically foul-mouthed speech, Ne Win warned that when Burmese soldiers shoot, they aim to kill. Ne Win’s successor was Sein Lwin, “The Butcher” - a nickname earned from antics that included personally beheading dacoits.
Ne Win’s July prophecy came true soon enough, and an estimated 3,000 civilians died in the bloody suppression that brought the SLORC to power on 18 September 1988. This was no repeat of People Power two years earlier in the Philippines when nuns stopped tanks with rosaries. Ne Win’s soldiers did what the Filipino armed forces could not: they gunned down or bayoneted their own people.
Despite denials by the SLORC, Ne Win remained politically influential well into the 1990s. His family enjoyed social and business privileges ranging from hotels to telecommunications. All this came crashing down in March when Aye Zaw Win, the husband of Ne Win’s favourite daughter, Sandar Win, and their three sons were accused of fomenting a coup.The four men were tried and sentenced to death in September. To outsiders, details of the alleged coup seemed almost preposterous given the amount of black magic and astrology involved. There had also been no real coup since Ne Win’s own in 1962. Yet in Burma, as well over 1,000 political prisoners can attest, nothing is more serious than challenging the right to rule of the military - or trying to split it.
To the prickly, insecure junta, such conspiracies, however feeble and farfetched, are treason of the highest order. When Ne Win’s name threatened the generals as a possible rallying point, they confined him to his lakeside home, then boycotted his funeral. He had become a nobody.- Asia News Network.
(This special report was done for the Nation by the author who writes for Asia-Inc and was formerly a Special Correspondent for Asiaweek magazine.)