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I vividly recall the scene in the film Beyond Rangoon in which a dignified woman walks confidently through a large crowd. Thewoman is small in physical stature yet enormous in prestige. Hersupporters are cheering, waving flags, and hoisting her portrait.Her slight build, colorful dress, and gracious smile stand in markedcontrast to the heavily armed, drably uniformed soldiers lurking inthe shadows. Without warning, the soldiers burst from the darkness,storm into the crowd, and form a line to keep the woman fromreaching a nearby stage.
The standoff is fraught with danger. The woman and her compatriotsare well aware that the soldiers have a history of firing onpeaceful demonstrators, and they would not hesitate to do so againin the name of public order. Yet the woman shows no hint of fear.She steps forward, waving off those who try to stop her. Sheadvances slowly, resolutely, staring deeply into the eyes of the soldierwho is pointing his rifle directly at her. The woman standsthere as the symbol of freedom, face-to-face with the soldier, a symbolof violence and subjugation. Her determination and confidencebegin to unsettle the soldier. He starts to tremble in confusion andfear and finally relents. The woman steps gingerly, even graciously,through the line, followed by a flood of her supporters. It is a smallvictory of peaceful means over aggression.
Though the scene might be Hollywood fiction, the event wasquite real. It happened in the Southeast Asian nation of Burma inthe late 1980s. The woman depicted is named Aung San Suu Kyi(pronounced Ong Sahn Soo Chee). Suu Kyi has become perhaps theleading political dissident in the world. Her struggle to bring freedomand justice to her country garnered her the Nobel Peace Prizein 1991 and many other awards, including the Presidential Medal ofFreedom from the United States.
When I sat down to plan my journeys, Burma was one of theplaces I put at the top of my list. I definitely wanted to meet SuuKyi, but I knew that would be no easy matter. In fact, it was nearlyimpossible in recent years for a writer to speak with her. Journalistswere rarely permitted to enter Burma. Those who were discoveredinside the country were promptly detained and unceremoniouslydeported. The government has been terrified that Suu Kyi and herpro-democracy colleagues would gather further international supportand incite a popular uprising. They have good reason to befearful.
In March 1988 groups of university students took to the streets ofRangoon, Burma's capital, peacefully demonstrating against thetotalitarian regime founded by General Ne Win in July 1962.Responding to this perceived threat, the police shot to death twohundred demonstrators. Halfway around the world, Aung San SuuKyi, a woman of slight build with delicate features, long black hair,and extremely elegant manners, was living a normal life in Oxford,England, with her husband (an Oxford University professor) andher two sons when she received word that her mother had suffereda severe stroke. Suu Kyi immediately flew to Rangoon to be by hermother's side. She had no idea at that time that she would eventuallywind up in the heart of a brewing social storm.
Burma is a country of approximately fifty million people in aland area just slightly smaller than the state of Texas. It borders theAndaman Sea in the south, Tibet in the north, Bangladesh andIndia in the north and northwest, Thailand in the east and southeast,and Laos and China in the east and northeast. The people arechiefly Burman (68 percent) with minority populations of Shan (9percent), Karen (7 percent), Rakhine (4 percent), Chinese (3 percent), Mon (2 percent), Indian (2 percent), and other ethnicities (5percent). Though the official language is Burmese, over one hundredlanguages are spoken in the country.
Eighty-five percent of the people are Buddhist, 4 percent areMuslim, 4 percent are Christian (mostly Baptist), and the remainingare of other faiths. The country has abundant natural resources,including petroleum, natural gas, timber, tin, coal, and preciousgems.
In the sixth century the Mon settled in the Irrawaddy River deltain Lower Burma, as well as in Thailand and Cambodia. Severalcenturies later, when the indigenous Pyus had been vanquished bythe Yunnans (from China), the Burmans descended into centralBurma from the eastern Himalayan region, bringing the Burmansinto direct contact with the Mon. For hundreds of years the tworaces fought many wars with each other, carting off captives to beused as slaves in the construction of Buddhist temples and in cultivatingrice.
In 1044 the Burman king Anawratha established control overmuch of the country and vanquished the Mon. Anawratha establishedhis capital at Pagan, the "city of a thousand temples," whichwas the seat of his dynasty until the invasion of Kublai Khan in1287. Thereafter the country vacillated between chaos and the kingdomsof the Shan in the north (who were closely related to theSiamese) and the Mon in the south. In the sixteenth century theTaongoo dynasty firmly reestablished Burman control over theShan and Mon.
The Mon rose up again in the eighteenth century but werecrushed by the armies of Alaungpaya in 1758. Alaungpayaexpanded his kingdom to include the present-day Indian territoriesof Assam and Manipur and areas in present-day Thailand as well.His son, Hsinbyushin, completely destroyed the ancient Thai capitalof Ayuthaya and drove the Thai to Krung Thep (present-dayBangkok). Hsinbyushin also conquered Rakhine, the border regionbetween Burma and India.
In 1824 the Burmese and the British began to spar over the bordersof Assam, Rakhine, and other areas. Two years later the Britishforced the Burmese to cede Rakhine (cutting off Burma's coastline along the Bay of Bengal) and the coastal region of Taninthayi alongthe Thai border.
Excerpted from The Future of Peace: On the Front Lines with the World's Great Peacemakers by Scott Hunt All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
