by Alison Vicary

My detention by the Burmese military regime for 6 days in Rangoon was a display of the idiocy that lurks behind brutality. Not only is this regime responsible for countless violations of human rights and the destruction of the economy it is also inane and idiotic. The treatment accorded to the 18 foreigners - 6 Americans, 3 Thais, 3 Indonesians, 3 Malaysians, 2 Phillipinos and 1 Australian, who had handed out innocuous pamphlets the size of business cards, was not in accord with the brutal realities of Burma, but it does reflect the deteriorating state of Burmese political and cultural life.

We handed out 9,000 leaflets in a country where the mention of Aung San Suu Kyi's name is dangerous, where Burmese regularly receive long prison sentences (which are served) and where they are treated like animals for the most routine of political actions. The distribution of the leaflets was organised and supported by Burmese pro-democracy groups ASEAN NGO's. It was designed to support the call for the convening of Parliament on August 21 by the elected representatives of Burma, who have been denied their right to govern.

We distributed in teams of three, based on nationality, except for myself who was with the two Phillipinos. My team was detained at the airport along with the Indonesian team. The other teams were arrested at their second distribution point about 4 hours earlier. I was searched and manhandled into the back of an army truck. I was never told who had detained me, where I was going, where I was, and the reason for my detainment. To my knowledge I was never charged. There was no lawyer. In fact it was intimated that to have a lawyer was detrimental to my case. It took the military more than 48 hours to allow consular access. The Australian Embassy in Rangoon (and the other embassies), knew no more than we did which was absolutely nothing.

Individuals in the group though receiving different treatment at the beginning of the incarceration, were predominantly not physically maltreated. This is not consistent with the routine treatment of Burmese political prisoners who upon detainment are either blindfolded or have a hood placed over their heads. Torture is an integral part of the interrogation, intimidation, intelligence gathering and punishment procedures of the Burmese Military Intelligence Service. However, the invisible military authorities in some distant space did not know how to respond to the disruption 18 foreigners had created in the streets of Rangoon. Despite their protestations to the contrary they were frightened of international pressure, yet, our action was something that the military could not tolerate. This is a regime that cannot cope with even the mildest form of dissent. However, our guards and interrogators went out of their way, after the initial day, to ensure our physical well being. Our schizophrenic treatment reflected both their fear of international pressure and the military's need to intimidate and humiliate.

I was interrogated on three separate occasions. The first interrogation started at the time of arrest, 3.30 pm and did not end until the next morning. Much of the questioning was designed to gather intelligence information about Burmese democracy groups in Thailand and Australia. Their questions were an indication of the intellectual disease that has infected Burma. My interrogators were products of the United Solidarity Development Association (USDA) propaganda courses. This is the 'civilian' political wing of the military. This organisation dispenses favours and resources to those exhibiting allegiance to the regime. Indeed the USDA is integral to the spy system that operates in Burma and is instrumental in the divide and rule policy of the regime.

The interrogation in retrospect seems farcical, despite the serious intentions of my interrogators. Often the interrogation would become lodged in long arguments over semantics. This was partly because the English skills of my interrogators were not up to the task. So much time was spent (and this helped avoid the real issues that interested the military) on arguing about the differences between concepts such as 'organisation' and 'group'. It was impossible for my interrogators to understand that much political activity in Australia was undertaken by groups of people who did not formally join an organisation. They seemed to believe that individuals belonged to underground organisations that were orchestrated with military like precision.

Another sign of the crippling impact of repression on the understanding of my interrogators was their inability to grasp that much knowledge was publicly available. In my third bout of interrogation I was questioned on the Burma Support Group, which is a small group of people, Burmese and Australian, who work at a grass roots level on issues relevant to the democracy movement in Burma. I was questioned as one of the "leaders" on the "operations" of the "organisation". Fearful of the implications of admitting involvement, I denied any knowledge of its existence, stating that there were many such groups in Australia. Some time during the interrogation another man came into the room and spoke softly in Burmese to one of my interrogators. I then heard, "we have found the Email address of the Burma Support Group." It's not hard to imagine the surprise I felt upon this revelation, as anybody with pedestrian Internet experience would have been able to access such public information. !
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However, the police station where I was being held would not have Internet access, as Email, Internet and faxes are illegal and access to the outside world is not tolerated by the regime. Even military intelligence is not exempt from this type of curtailment. Ownership of such facilities is punished with long prison sentences.

The military regime changed the name of the country to Myanmar (Myan = quick; Mar = strong) after suffering a resounding defeat in the 1990 election. Maybe the military are scared that the name change will be forgotten, because everything possible was prefixed by Myanmar - "Myanmar food", "Myanmar noodles", "Myanmar rice", "Myanmar people", "Myanmar language". The propaganda courses seem intent on creating a people that are xenophobic and fearful of any sort of change. The irony is that during the week of my detainment "Burma" slipped back into usage and the term "Myanmar" began to fade into obscurity, as feared by the military. One of the Americans related the following story. When they were at the police station, they in good American fashion demanded to see a lawyer. The response of the official was to scream loudly, "This is not the United States, this is Burma!" This was quickly followed by an embarrassed and softly uttered, "Myanmar."

The military attempted to counter the 'damage' done by the distribution of the leaflets by directing a barrage of propaganda against us in the local press. Care for our physical well being was not due to any commitment to justice or human rights. It was a propaganda exercise designed to circumvent international pressure and to show the internal population that though dissent inside Burma would not be tolerated, the foreigners (aka "axe handles", "saboteurs" etc) were well looked after. To this end we were subjected to continual video taping and photographing. The highly offensive nature of this intrusion would involve continual rearrangement of the furniture to show our 'good conditions.' At the beginning of my detention I was not provided with a bed or bedding. I was not allowed to mix or to talk with any of the 5 who were held at the same police station. This would all change for the cameras. Beds would be brought in with bedding, which was promptly removed after the cameras!
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or the embassies left. We would be allowed to mix at dinnertime for the cameras, then shuffled off, to our respective 'quarters'. Meal times were the real show, in a country where many people are increasingly finding it difficult to feed their families as prices rise and incomes decline, we were filmed before a range of dishes, with our captors serving us. These ludicrous 'dinner parties', were designed to disguise the idiocy of detaining people for distributing innocuous pamphlets.

The regime is intent on keeping the people of Burma in a totalitarian time warp. How can Burma succeed economically, politically and culturally when it is ruled by a small military elite, bent on destroying the intellectual fabric of a nation. The universities are closed, the schools are closed. All dissenters, writers, academics, professionals and artists are silenced mercilessly. How can this be acceptable? There are no real books available and the bookshops are only stalls on the foot path. The books on Burma were published before the 1962 military coup and even these are old and irrelevant in the present struggle. There is virtually no literature available, Burmese or foreign. What is available is trash and gives a distorted picture of Burma and the rest of the world. All the newspapers are full of the most inane propaganda - either soldiers opening some meaningless seminar or making a donation to a Buddhist monastery. There is no substantive political news about home or a!
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broad. The curtailment of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to move about in her own country is presented as a picnic on a bridge which the military is helping to arrange. The news about the West includes bare bums (we all go about naked), paedophilia, children who kill and Leonardo Di Caprio. We have our rubbish news but the military has ensured that there is nothing but rubbish.

My own reading material included a novel by Mario Vargas Llosa, Illywacker (provided by the embassy) and two magazines of book reviews. These were continuously perused and inspected by my military guards. They asked me lots of questions about books - How many did I own? What sort of books did I read? I couldn't help pointing out that I had read many books on Burma that they would never see, let alone read. Despite the oozing stupidity of the propaganda that seeped from their mouths, my intellectual freedom had an obvious and disturbing effect upon my captors. There were many questions about Burma, about the economy, the cause of the Asian economic crisis (something they were only vaguely aware of). According to military propaganda, good economic management had meant that Burma had escaped these problems. There were questions about healthcare, plastic cards, the ever-present kangaroo. Much of the answers were unsettling to my 'interrogators' as it didn't correspond to the sex c!
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raved and bare bum version of the west that is presented by the regime. My impression was that many Burmese are desperate to understand the world outside of the insular enclave that the military has fostered. The curtailment of the intellectual development of a people, who respect learning and education, is a crime that should be added to the long list of crimes inflicted by a regime on its own people.

In Australia we debate multiculturalism. In Burma the military is actively propagating the racial superiority of the Burman ethnic majority (40% of the population are non-Burman). While being interrogated I was told, "you must understand that the ethnic people are simple people who cannot rule themselves." When I pointed out the irony of Burman's directing the 'simple folk', when they couldn't even make the electricity work, the officer from military intelligence, seemed little inclined to continue the propaganda charade. The state of the country was highlighted when at about 2.00 am during the interrogation, the lights went out. Two of the military intelligence officers left the room to look for candles, only to reappear with one birthday cake candle. The interrogation had to proceed in darkness. The guards attempted to explain to me that there are no refugees, there are only insurgents. This dialogue ended in silence when I pointed out that the world had better things to do !
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than make up false human rights reports about Burma. There were many times when my captors would lapse into confused and often a sad silence, when confronted with unknown information.

//part I//

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