Echoes of Bob Dylan in Myanmar

Optimism remains strong for a political settlement

BY ROGER MITTON
Monday, August 6, 2001
Asiaweek

Odd, how memory-triggers work. I've just finished reading a biography of the American comedian, Woody Allen. In discussing a documentary film about Allen, the author refers to a biopic, Don't Look Back, about Bob Dylan's 1965 tour of England. I was an undergraduate at Liverpool University then and Bob Dylan was one of my idols. When I heard he would play the Liverpool Empire, I was among the first in line to buy tickets. Just before dusk on the evening of the show, my girlfriend and I were standing at the foot of the steep slope of stone steps that led up to the great old Adelphi Hotel. It was a blustery late afternoon and no one else was around; out ambled Bob Dylan, wearing a black leather jacket, open-necked white shirt and casual slacks. He was a small, thin, baby-faced 23-year-old with skin so white it looked cadaverous. He paused up on the top step, slipped a cigarette between his lips, lit it with a quick motion of his Zippo, took a deep drag and gazed out across Liverpool's dark, satanic skyline. I half-expected to hear: "Yeah, it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall . . ." But there was just a silence blowing in the wind. We never spoke. I'm not sure he even noticed us. We gazed up at him until he turned and shuffled back inside.His concert was a movable feast. I recall it and that chance sighting of him every time I play my Best of Bob Dylan CD.

I was playing it last night after I had returned from a wedding party at the Peninsula Hotel in Bangkok, during which I had been discussing Myanmar with a fellow journalist. He told me how much he loved the country and its people. Yet he was not at all sanguine about a political settlement coming out of the current talks between the military regime and pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi. I told him I remained optimistic. And I do. But I have to admit I appear to be blowing against the wind on this one. I have yet to meet anyone who shares my confidence, and as I listened to Dylan's songs, I wondered why I feel this way. Is it really just wishful thinking? Well, no, it isn't. There are, in fact, many reasons for my buoyancy, but perhaps one of the strongest - and the one little appreciated - is simply that it is based on a reading of some of the people I've met on both sides of this political divide during my visits to Myanmar. I'd liketo tell you about a couple of them who inspire hope, rather than instill despair.

They are U Tun Tin and Colonel Kyaw Thein. You may not have heard of them. But to me they are the kind of unsung heroes who will, ultimately, transform Myanmar. I first met Col. Kyaw Thein on March 9, 1999, at the Peninsula Hotel (you see the memory triggers). It was early in the morning and I had gone over to the hotel to try to see the Myanmar generals who were visiting Thailand.

Bizarrely, I found I was the only journalist there. Indeed, some of the hotel staff and the Myanmar and Thai officials looked askance at me, as if I'd breached a security cordon. But then Gen. David Abel appeared with a group of other ministers and he chatted amiably with me, as did the Thai foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan. I asked the Myanmar ambassador if I could have a word with one of the government's top leaders when they came down, and he said he'd try to arrange it; meantime, he introduced me to a round-faced, boyish-looking man in a white open-necked shirt. He was genial, spoke excellent English and told me he was Col. Kyaw Thein with the Office of Strategic Studies at the Defense Ministry in Yangon. He had no card with him, so I wrote down his name and number. He told me that if I was interested he'd try to arrange for me to go on a trip that was being arranged for foreign journalists to observe anti-drug programs in Shan State. The dates made it impossible for me to go, but I told him I would like to see him again.

I did so on my next trip to Yangon when I interviewed him about the opium eradication schemes he directs. He spoke candidly, especially of negotiating the surrender of drug lord Khun Sa and he even arranged for me to visit another former opium baron, Law Sett Han, in his fortified compound on the outskirts of Yangon. But I don't want to focus on that now; I just want to say that Kyaw Thein impressed me as a sincere, intelligent man who would be a credit to any government. It is not often that one is able to say that about people these days.

I shared this thought with all the Western ambassadors in Yangon and with their counterparts in Bangkok. I was surprised to find they all agreed. The Americans and the Australians regard him as among the best of the OSS team, and that is saying something. He reminds me of Surin or of Singapore's George Yeo.

I liked his candor, especially when he conceded that some officials may be involved in the drug trade. "If you mean a government employee then you are right," he told me. "Because every country has some black sheep, no one is perfect. But I can assure you that nobody at my level or above is involved in this sort of business."

A year or so later, I found myself sitting next to Kyaw Thein at a dinner that the regional commander in eastern Shan state was hosting for a group of foreign correspondents in Kyaingtong. Kyaw Thein told me that he was born in Yangon, he is now 54. He still lives in the city's suburbs and drives to the office before 7 a.m. each day in order to beat the traffic jams and be in time for his daily briefing to Gen. Khin Nyunt, with whom he has a close rapport. As a staunch Buddhist, he neither smokes nor drinks. He also mentioned that he has always wanted to go to India to visit the four major Buddha sites. He has served as an assistant to Maj.-Gen. Kyaw Win, who is now conducting the talks with Suu Kyi. That alone bolsters my optimism.

Across the political divide is Tun Tin. Totally different, yet oddly similar. Now 70, Tun Tin is a former lawyer - one of the nation's best and brightest - who was struck off the bar during the Ne Win dictatorship. That is a disgrace, and even though it is too late for him to resume practicing, it would be a fine gesture if that disbarment were revoked. Tun Tin speaks with the same kind of bright-eyed, gentle sincerity that emanates from Kyaw Thein. You feel comfortable and reassured in the presence of both men. Tun Tin's law career was rudely interrupted in 1958 when, during Ne Win's first assumption of power, his outspokenness fell foul of the new military regime. He was exiled to the Cocos Islands. After that Nelson Mandela-like episode, Tun Tin resumed work but was detained yet again under the second Ne Win dictatorship in the mid-1960s and confined at a military intelligence center. As if he had not suffered enough, Tun Tin was arrested yet again in 1989 - having by then thrown in his lot with Suu Kyi's fledgling NLD - and he was put in solitary confinement at Insein Jail for several years.

I met him at his modest home on Pyay Road shortly after he had been released.I had no idea what he would look like. I arrived at the little wooden house at about 9.30 a.m. and sat waiting. He shuffled in, a stooped man, with a graying brushcut, a ruddy veined face and clear piercing eyes. I am always amazed by how those who have spent years in prison have been able to maintain their mental faculties. Tun Tin has retained a sharp, astute mind; you can't outpsyche him with clever questions, he spots them coming a mile off. And what is most endearing is that unlike many lawyers and politicians, he is not at all garrulous; quite the opposite, he is open but in a very soft-voiced, modest way - and extremely soliticious. He had arranged coffee and cakes and pastries for me, far too much really, and he fussed over me, anxious that I should be welcomed with as much typical Myanmar hospitality as possible. He showed me some books,faded old hardbacks of the kind one might find in an English village library. He was very proud of them and they had clearly sustained him during his oppressed days. One was a novel by Nevil Shute.

We chatted about this and that. General things. What struck me most was that despite his periods of incarceration, when he clearly had suffered grievously, as any intelligent man like he would when deprived of contact with the world, he displayed no bitterness. In Insein, he had been allowed no books and no visitors. It is too awful to contemplate and it made me think of Dylan's song, The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll, who never done nothing to William Zanzinger, the rich rake who killed her and got away with a mere six-month sentence because of his connections with Maryland's moneyed and mighty. But you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears, take the rag away from your face, now ain't the time for your tears, Dylan advises.

Tun Tin had no rich and powerful connections; he had simply an unshakable belief in democracy and liberty. He still has. Right now, he is acting as Suu Kyi's legal representative in the perverse case being brought against her by her brother, San Aung, who has belatedly decided he'd like half the family compound. When I asked Tun Tin about the talks between Suu Kyi and the regime, he told me he believed they have a 50-50 chance of success. "We are hopeful," he said. He spoke glowingly - but not sycophantically - of his party leader Suu Kyi, just as Kyaw Thein speaks admiringly of his boss Khin Nyunt. It seems to me they are, in a curious way, both on the same wavelength but at opposite ends of the political spectrum. Both are honest, admirable men. A credit to Myanmar. That is why I believe the talks will succeed. I look forward to the day they do, when I hope I'll go for a burger to Mr. Guitar in Yangon and hear them singing Bob Dylan songs again - and it won't sound at all incongruous.

Now ain't the time for tears and despair. It is the time for optimism and good faith.