My Conscience: An Exile’s Memoir of Burma

My Conscience

An Exile’s Memoir of Burma

U Kyaw Win

Foreword by Sean Turnell

My Conscience

An Exile’s Memoir of Burma

Copyright ©

2016

U Kyaw Win. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Cover art by Han Win depicts the eleventh century temples of Bagan, Burma. The Irrawaddy River and Shan Highlands are in the background.

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8

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paperback isbn: 978-1-4982-8271-0

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Foreword: The Song of U Kyaw Win by Sean Turnell

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Home Again

Chapter 2: The Burmese Way to Socialism and Father

Chapter 3: In Coalition with My Conscience

Chapter 4: Blood and Loneliness

Chapter 5: My Song

In Memoriam

Appendix 1: What’s in a Name?

Appendix 2: Manassas Call for Worldwide Solidarity for a Democratic Burma

Appendix 3: Supplemental Illustrations

Bibliography

In this lively and moving memoir U Kyaw Win, one of Burma’s most outspoken opposition leaders, vividly brings home the heavy toll exacted on his nation and family by a half century of rule by a succession of incompetent, brutal and swaggering military dictators. Once one of the most prosperous nations of Southeast Asia, by the beginning of this century Burma earned a UN classification as one of the poorest members of the international community.

In unfolding the story of his family Dr. Win also unfolds the troubled history of modern Burma. We see through his eyes a nation ruled by fear by a military clique whose loyalty is kept in place by material rewards and special privileges while the Burmese people sink deeper into poverty and despair. But the Burmese picture is not one of unremitting gloom.

In fresh detail accompanied by insightful analysis, Dr. Win expounds on the popular uprising of 1988 which, though in the end bloodily suppressed, came close to overthrowing the regime and gave rise to one of its most powerful and determined opponents, Aung San Suu Kyi.

He also recounts the regime’s unprecedented use of force against Buddhist monks protesting a rise in fuel prices which aroused such popular hatred of the regime that it forced upon the military leadership the need for change. For the past few years that process of change has been underway. Burma is gradually opening to the outside world and its harsh totalitarianism is easing.

Burma still has a long way to go and it remains to be seen as to how accommodating the still dominant military leadership will be to the reform process. As Burma stirs favorably it would be remiss not to take our hats off to Dr. Win for a consuming and for the most part lonely five decade long struggle for Burmese freedom. At eighty-two he can let up a bit, secure in the knowledge that he has contributed greatly to breaking the Burmese log jam.

Burton Levin

American ambassador to Burma, 1987–90

I spent three years in Burma in the 1960s as a junior member of the British embassy, and returned there 25 years later as ambassador. I was at my post during the uprising of 1988, and its aftermath, so vividly covered in the book. The author with Riri his Indonesian wife describes a huge range of experiences and events throughout these years, his objective to make Burma’s vicissitudes known to the widest possible audience and to point the way to the future. He managed to involve the great and sometimes the good in his efforts, in the U.S. from ex-President Carter downwards and in Burma all the main players. While his father did his best to give Ne Win and the army the benefit of the doubt he rejected their claims from the outset. I can only add that U Nu once told me emphatically Burma was two thousand times better under the British, two thousand times.

Martin Morland

British ambassador to Burma, 1986–90

To the memory of my Father,

The Reverend U On Kin, 1894–1980

And my Mother,

Daw Sein Thit, 1896–1979

Foreword

The Song of U Kyaw Win

A country’s collapse into the brutality and arbitrariness that is the hallmark of dictatorship brings with it many victims. Most apparent of these is the population ruled over in such a State, whose lives and freedoms become as precarious as their economic prospects. Less obviously apparent is the fracturing of the lives of the people who are forced out and away. Often constituting an especially enterprising and courageous cohort, these exiles suffer individually, but so too do the countries from which they have made their escape, and to which they could have contributed so much.

This book tells the story of one such principled exile from Burma, U Kyaw Win. Son of a Burman father and a Karen mother, U Kyaw Win personifies the diversity that can and should be Burma’s strength, but which all too often has come to be the exploitable source of ethnic and religious chauvinism, division, and repression. Such iniquities have all been too apparent in recent times in Burma, alas, but countering them has not just been a key part of U Kyaw Win’s past. As he puts it, the quest for a vision of a larger inclusive social reality over the constricting impulses of ethnicity remains the central task for true Burma nationhood in the twenty-first century.

Today the cause of Burma has become well known and even fashionable. It was not always so, and for many years U Kyaw Win’s voice against the atrocities and injustices in Burma was a lonely one. From demonstrating on the sidewalks of San Francisco in the mid-1970s (when Burma was in the mere spring of its fifty-plus years of darkness), founding and publishing The Burma Bulletin, undertaking relief work for Burmese refugees in the wake of the bloody events of 1988, to organising Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s honorary degree from American University, what U Kyaw Win calls his song has been one of metta (loving kindness) and garuna (compassion).

U Kyaw Win modestly describes his lifelong effort as being simply to brighten the corner where he is. As an individual motivation that is a fine goal, but it also brings with it the considerable virtue of bringing enlightenment to the rest of us.

Sean Turnell

Associate Professor of Economics

Macquarie University

Sydney, Australia

28 December 2015

Acknowledgments

I have relied on recollections of events and substance I remembered, experienced, and articles I published in The Burma Bulletin during its nineteen years’ existence (1973–1992) to write this memoir. I have also relied on my letters to editors which were published in various periodicals, the speeches I made, and the interviews I gave.

My Woodstock School classmates Kenneth Bonham, Nirmal Chand, Ashoke Chatterjee, Gordon Hostetler, Ho Kang Liu, and Margaret Winfield Sullivan, helped me with material I might otherwise have forgotten or overlooked about our days in India and beyond.

Ethan Casey early on helped build the foundation and framed the architecture of the book by recording my dictation and turning them into many successive drafts.

My wife Riri and son Zali kept me moving on track as the writing progressed, sometimes giving me more advice than I needed or wanted, but patiently countenancing to the end. They helped me tremendously verifying my facts or otherwise refreshing my memory of events that might have gone into obscurity.

U Nwe Aung, from his perch in Germany, helped find our young compatriots Ko Min Hein and wife Ma Wutyi, who made assiduous efforts to obtain a copy of Sir Hubert Rance’s historic telegram to Lord Listowel, from the British Library’s archives to which Patricia Herbert, a former librarian there, pointed the direction.

April Lynn Htut, accompanied me to Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC and helped me research the name of the senior associate who, in 1975, had lent me his ear about the situation in Burma but whose name I had totally, and unforgivably, forgotten. April had just a fortnight earlier graduated summa cum laude from Bucknell University.

Christine Pulliam, public affairs specialist, and her scientist colleagues at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics identified the comet I had sited over Rangoon’s skies in November-December 1948. I am vindicated.

My fellow survivors of De La Salle Institute, an orphanage in the Irrawaddy Delta jungles, during the trying World War II years, 1942–1945: Robert Anthony, Father Edward Evans, Brother Patrick Minus, FSC, Robert Murdock; and Heather, who lived with her parents Thomas and Ada Joyce at Sookalat Rubber Estates, six miles from De La Salle, shared memories of DLS and the Brothers of Christian Schools at Hnget Aw Zan village while we were traumatized by the war.

Burton Levin and Martin Morland, former American and British ambassadors to Burma, respectively, and John Haseman, Colonel, U.S. Army (Ret), who was the U.S. defense atttaché to Burma from April 1987 through June 1990 provided me with their eyewitness accounts of the tumultuous uprising for democracy.

Walter Marciniak, Commander, U.S. Navy (Ret), former U.S. naval attaché to Indonesia, enlightened me on naval protocol. Walt, the old sea dog, has great respect for the Royal Navy despite its participation in wars in 1770s and 1810s.

U Kin Oung, another retired officer but of the Burma Navy, an activist in our homeland’s struggle for democracy exiled to Australia, filled me in with many details from personal knowledge of the assassination of General Aung San and the godfather Ne Win era.

Ashin Gunissara, Gerald Holbrook, Mary Maxwell, and Kyin Kyin Nyein collaborated on the music to Free, Free, Our Country is Free!

Gail Fisher, Ashin Gunissara, and Ellen Scheffler contributed a tremendous amount of their talents and time with the photographic and other illustrations, which make the Chinese adage A picture is worth a thousand words, come to life. (Ellen accompanied Riri and me to India as our photographer where we were received in private audience by His Holiness the Dalai Lama for the second time in forty-four years.)

Professor Josef Silverstein, a distinguished Burma scholar and friend of long years shared the depth of his knowledge and wisdom.

Several others inside Burma, at great risk to themselves and to their loved ones, provided me with information during the darkest times when the military had sealed the country. Their identities must remain unrevealed for obvious reasons.

Professor Richard Soulen, a long-time friend and author several times over, helped me harness my thoughts and focus my writing.

Professor Sean Turnell of Macquarie University, who has done so much to help Burma’s antiquated economic policies transition from the remnants of the Burmese Way to Socialism to an open market and equitable economy, for writing the foreword to this book.

Doris and Tom Baker of Filter Press, Palmer Lake, Colorado, provided pre-press services, which greatly relieved me of the technicalities of seeing this book to fruition.

Finally, to Susan Zingale-Baird, who snuck into my study while I was not watching and left a note on my desk: Win, make time and write your story, before she returned to her job at the University of Pennsylvania. Here it is Susan. Thanks for the nudge. How can I not love you for that?

I shall forever be grateful to these and all others who generously gave their time and talents to help me tell my story.

U Kyaw Win

Boulder, Colorado, USA

The Dalai Lama and Win in Dharamsala, September

2014

. In the meeting, the Dalai Lama signed the letter of endorsement for this book. Photo by Ellen Scheffler.

1

Home Again

When my mother died in April 1979 and my father eleven months later, I was prevented from performing my duty to comfort them when they took their last breaths. I had been stripped of my citizenship by the Burmese military junta after it toppled a democratic government in 1962. Failure to perform that final duty is a wound in me that will never heal.

I tried for many years to return to Burma, but it was in vain. Every time I applied for a visa I had to complete a long form giving the military regime detailed information about myself and my family. Then in 2001, after living for more than forty years as an exile in America, I was pleasantly surprised to be issued a visa. General Khin Nyunt, the second most powerful man in the junta, had authorized it. Khin Nyunt was chief of intelligence at the time and widely feared, but he fell from grace three years later.

The regime was using the Venerable Dr. Rewata Dhamma, a Burmese Buddhist abbot based in England, as an emissary to coax democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other opposition leaders into toning down their rhetoric. Early one morning in California, Dr. Rewata called me from Malaysia and said, If I can get you a visa to Burma, will you go? I will speak to General Khin Nyunt.

I will, Reverend, I told him. But I don’t want them to trap me.

Don’t worry about that, he assured me. He gave me the names and telephone numbers of two senior intelligence officers and told me to call them if I ran into a problem. I went into Burma with trepidation. I didn’t know what to expect, but I was emboldened by the holy man’s assurance.

During those forty years, I had been busy earning a living and raising a family in America. I had also been speaking out against the junta. When my wife, Riri, and I left Burma in 1961, I took a job teaching at the U.S. Army Language School (now the Defense Language Institute), at the Presidio of Monterey in California. I took out a mortgage in 1962, in order to provide a home for our first child, Zali. I became an American citizen in 1966, because being a stateless person was not an option.

The Junta, My Nemesis

When U Nu, the Burmese prime minister ousted in the 1962 coup, came to California in 1969, I secretly hosted him. Earlier in London, he announced his intention to raise an army to overthrow the military regime. He did not believe it was wrong by Buddhist tenet to kill the killers.

I launched, and for nineteen years published, a quarterly newsletter, The Burma Bulletin, as a chronicle of the movement and a voice for Burmese living abroad. I took every opportunity to expose the brutality of the military led by General Ne Win that had forcibly sealed the country off from the outside world. When widespread unhappiness erupted into unrest in August 1988, the military responded by killing thousands of protesters. The effect was like the lid coming off a pressure cooker. The massacre, the ensuing movement led by Aung San Suu Kyi, and her National League for Democracy’s overwhelming victory in the 1990 elections, which was nullified by the regime, had finally compelled the outside world to notice Burma. I had been a witness and a participant from afar in the country’s tortured history throughout my exile. But things had turned out differently than I had hoped.

I went to Burma in November 2001. I was apprehensive. Before I went, I made sure that family and friends were aware that I was going. One person I told was Betty Jane Southard Murphy, a Washington lawyer with connections to the senior Bush White House and a loyal friend for half a century. B. J. said, If you run into a problem, let me know. I also informed Denis Gray, the longtime Associated Press bureau chief in Bangkok, as well as Nick Williams Jr., the Los Angeles Times Bangkok bureau chief, and the Burma Desk at the Department of State in Washington. Members of my church’s prayer chain in Boulder, Colorado, lifted me up.

In the departure lounge at Bangkok airport were several Burmese, but only the women were dressed in native attire. They seemed cautious and reserved in their body language toward me; perhaps they suspected that I was associated with the military regime. By wearing Burmese national dress, which consisted of a collarless white shirt, a longyi or sarong, and a jacket called taik pon eingyi, I was making a statement of my cherished Burmese heritage. The longyi is of Indian origin, which the Indians call lungie. The taik pon eingyi [jacket] is of Chinese origin. Sandwiched between China and India, Burma draws from the cultures of both these giants.

I felt anxious and constricted, but I did not consider backing out. I vowed to myself that if I was interrogated I would tell the truth, but would not tell everything. I was not going to be intimidated.

Map of Burma

As the plane came to a halt on the tarmac in Rangoon, I spied an armed soldier standing at the foot of the stairs. He was just guarding the plane, but my heart skipped a beat. In Burma we have a saying that if a ghost senses your fear he’ll frighten you all the more. (Superstitious Burmese believe in ghosts.) So I put up a brave front.

As the passengers disembarked, the lone Burmese monk on the plane nodded at me and asked, "Dagah gyi [benefactor]—what is your zah ti [origin, place of birth]? Thongwa ba, paya [Thongwa, Reverend]," I answered. The friendly exchange helped relax me.

In those days only a trickle of tourists went into Burma. I got into the immigration line for foreigners. There was a man, untidily dressed in a longyi, a short-sleeved shirt without a jacket, and flip-flops, scrutinizing the passengers. His eyes told me that he was military intelligence. When he spied me, the only person in the foreigners’ line dressed in Burmese attire, he said, Myanmar passport holders are the next line. I told him I didn’t hold a Burmese passport.

When the young women at immigration noted my age in the passport, they became deferential. Oh, uncle, the young ladies at customs greeted me. Do you have any presents for us? We are poor. I gave them a few lipsticks. As I was collecting my bags, I spotted two young women waving frantically at me from the other side of the glass partition. I was expecting somebody to meet me, but I didn’t know who would show up. When I got out of the secure area, I had to ask, Whose daughters are you? One turned out to be the daughter of a childhood friend and the other a relative. Neither had been born in 1961 when I left the country. Their fathers were long gone.

Outside the airport I saw soldiers standing guard in front of buildings. There were more cars. Forty years ago, privately owned automobiles had been few and far between; to get around, people had relied on public transportation and their own feet.

My plane arrived at 8:30 a.m. From the airport I made a beeline for Twante, my father’s birthplace and my boyhood hometown, about twenty-five miles away from Rangoon by ferry and road. My first duty was to do homage to my parents at their final resting place. Images of long years past flashed through my mind’s eye. Standing over their graves in the tiny church compound, I was emotionally exhausted.

Even though it was November, the heat and humidity were overwhelming. The Methodist school that my father had co-founded with an American missionary in 1919 still stood, but the football field was filled with dwellings. Private schools in Burma were nationalized in 1963, and the Methodist Mission had been broken up and occupied by squatters. The footpath behind the school had become a road, but the roads in Twante were little more than unpaved bullock cart tracks with bamboo-and-thatch houses lining both sides.

From my parents’ graves I went to Shan Zu, the town’s Shan quarter in the shadow of the Shwehsandaw Pagoda where a cousin’s family lived. From their home you could hear the pagoda’s tinkling bells. Twante had grown and was much more crowded than I had known it. In my day, you had to cross the Rangoon River on a sampan to Dalla and then take a bus to Twante, but the more practical route was by boat or sampan on the Twante canal. The road to the pagoda, which used to cut through bamboo groves and jungle, was now completely built up. Even though the town had grown, it had hardly developed. There was still no indoor plumbing, garbage collection, electricity, or telephones in most areas.

I ate lunch in Shan Zu, but I wanted to get back to Rangoon before dark. My family home in Twante was no more. I returned to Dalla and re-crossed the river on a filthy, ragtag ferry. I looked for life jackets on the crowded ferry. They were secured tightly in a difficult-to-reach place. I checked in at Yuzana Garden hotel, which in colonial times was the chummery [bachelor quarters] of Steel Brothers Company, a British mercantile conglomerate that was the setting of a Maurice Collis book, Trials in Burma (1938). A reception clerk later remarked that my voice sounded familiar. I kept mum. I did not want to let the cat out of the bag that she had indeed heard me on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Burmese Service in some interviews I had given and two pieces I had recently done on Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers and another on the American form of democracy. BBC shared several letters commenting on my contributions it had received from listeners.

The next day I called the U.S. embassy and asked to speak with Priscilla Clapp, the chargé d’affaires. The United States had withdrawn its ambassador from Burma after the 1988 uprising and conducted diplomatic relations with the junta at the chargé level, in rebuke. She was unavailable, but Karl Wycoff, the deputy chief of mission, was. I told him who I was and that I would like to see him. Apparently, the State Department had cabled the embassy to inform them of my coming. I’ll come to your hotel, Wycoff said.

When he arrived, I asked him whether I would be under surveillance. Probably, he said. They use about fifty people to tail a person they want to keep under surveillance. You won’t see the same face twice. He said he hailed a cab from the street to come to my hotel instead of using an embassy car. He wanted to avoid being tailed. He spent about forty-five minutes briefing me on the situation in Burma. I wanted the embassy to know my travel plans up country. He gave me his home and direct office phone numbers, and the 24/7 number for the embassy’s Marine guard station. I saw him one more time before I left the country. If you run into a problem at the airport at departure, call, he said. Someone from the embassy will be there within fifteen minutes.

An amusing incident took place while I was leisurely strolling westward on Merchant Street from Sulé (SOO-laye) Pagoda Road. A neatly dressed chap standing under a tree on the sidewalk made eye contact. A hand-scribbled sign in Burmese, "Baydin [astrologer], was tacked onto the trunk. How much do you charge? I asked. It was about a dollar. How accurate is your forecast?"

"Hman thint tha-laut taw, hman ba deh [it is as accurate as it can be]," he said.

Do you refund the fee if you are incorrect?

He pounced back, You have to pay whether or not I am correct.

I was willing to do my tiny part to help alleviate poverty in my homeland. He asked for the date and time of my birth and the day of the week, and then scribbled some calculations in a little note book. You come from far away. You are successful and prosperous there. You are a teacher. You have gone through several setbacks in your life, but you are a fighter. You have been victorious every time. His articulation of the Burmese language was polished, poetry to my ears. I went back to that same spot the next day. He was no where to be found. Could his have been one of those fifty faces Karl Wycoff, the diplomat, had said I would not see more than once?

Next, I went to Syriam where my three cousins lived. The eldest was Daw Mya Mya Lay, (elder sister, Ma Ma Mya, to me). At eighty-eight she was the most senior of my paternal bloodline still living. When I arrived at the front gate, she was standing outside the front door, calling out ChoCho,ChoCho (my familial name to family and childhood friends). I rushed to her and went down on my knees and touched the ground at her feet with my forehead and the palms of my hands. (This physical expression of deep respect rendered to one’s parents, elders, and teachers, is of Indian origin.) I had not seen her in more than forty years. She, as the firstborn of my father’s eldest brother, was a second mother to me (the lastborn of her father’s younger brother) under our kinship system.

Many years ago, my mother told me that after my birth she became very ill and Ma Ma Mya and her sisters cared for me. Ma Ma Mya was twenty-one years my senior. On my subsequent visit, two years later, frail as she was, she insisted on accompanying me to Thongwa where our families had lived long ago. She pointed out the landmarks as the van drove us across paddy fields. She showed me my first home, which was still standing but in a very dilapidated condition, and the land where her’s had once stood but had since been occupied by another house. I never saw her again.

On Sunday I attended the Methodist church on Creek (now Bo Myat Tun) Street where my father had been pastor for more than half a century. Aung Than, a boyhood playmate in Twante, was now the sexton, living behind the church. Word had spread that I was in Rangoon, so friends and relatives came to church to see me. One woman asked if I remembered her. No, I don’t, I confessed.

When I was very small, you told me you would cook me and eat me once I turned five. You frightened me. I will never forget that.

Did I say that to you? Well, I can’t do that now, can I?

Another childhood friend was Margaret, whose father Saya Tha Hto, was a teacher at the Methodist Boys’ High School located at the corner of Creek Street and Montgomery (now Bogyoke Aung San) Street, before World War II. Margaret and I were dancing partners in a kindergarten recital and I had been made to sing to her:

I will give you the keys of heaven,

I will give you the keys of heaven,

Madam, will you walk?

Madam, will you talk?

Madam, will you walk and talk with me?

She initially responded:

Though you give me the keys of heaven,

Though you give me the keys of heaven,

Yet I will not walk; no, I will not talk;

No, I will not walk or talk with thee.

But in the last stanza she relented:

Thou shall give me the keys of my heart,

And we will be married till death us do part;

I will walk, I will talk,

I will walk and talk with thee.

Margaret’s father had become a leader in the separatist