Associated PressA boy held the flag of the National League for Democracy Party at a rally in Myanmar on Sunday.YANGON, Myanmar — Until just recently, I would have said that if you didn’t want to risk getting arrested in Myanmar, you should stay away from that red and gold insignia with the fighting peacock.
But these days, here and in many parts of the country, the symbol of the National League for Democracy Party headed by the pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is everywhere. It’s on stickers and T-shirts and flags. It’s on motorcycles and dashboards and front doors. It’s even painted on the cheeks of young girls.
I came back to Myanmar earlier this month after four years of self-imposed exile abroad. From 1998 to 2005, I was imprisoned for breaking the Emergency Provisions Act by participating in an antigovernment student protest. During a raid on my house in Yangon, I was caught red-handed with a stack of subversive pamphlets, but the authorities didn’t find the peacock flag I had hidden under a statue of Buddha. Seeing that peacock out on the streets today signals a new degree of freedom here.
Since the military junta handed over power to a nominally civilian government last year, Myanmar has undertaken surprising reforms. Media censorship has been relaxed. Laws allowing workers to form labor unions and to strike have been passed. And now the entire country is gearing up for parliamentary by-elections on April 1. The N.L.D. is running for the first time since 1990, when it won by a landslide but was prevented from taking office.
But don’t get too hopeful too soon. Aung San Suu Kyi herself warned recently that military dictatorship might yet return one day. Despite greater tolerance for the opposition, Myanmar has yet to embark on large-scale liberalization. The current Constitution still grants the military a dominant role in politics. Repressive laws have not been abolished.
Yes, we can now have political arguments at roadside tea shops and openly commemorate anniversaries of military crackdowns, including the 1988 uprising, without fear of arrest. And yes, it is symbolically powerful that Aung San Suu Kyi is being allowed to campaign nationwide. But as a friend of mine quipped recently, while freedom may have come for her, it has not for the rest of us yet.
There still is no freedom for the farmers whose lands have been forcibly confiscated by the regime’s business cronies, or for ethnic minorities at the border areas, particularly the Kachin in northern Myanmar, who continue to clash with the military. Strikes can be held, but only with advance permission, and the authorities can deny authorization on the vague pretense of protecting state security.
A law recently passed by Parliament and signed by President Thein Sein instructs local officials to monitor the activities of foreigners and requires all of us Burmese to report to the local authorities any overnight guest. This is as it was under military rule.
Even the freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi herself has limits. The government censored a speech of hers that in part deplored the continued absence of the rule of law before allowing it to be broadcast on state-run television on March 14. N.L.D. candidates campaigning in the new capital Naypyidaw have reported being physically harassed by members of the ruling Union Solidarity and Development Party, which won a majority of seats in 2010 parliamentary elections widely criticized as fraudulent.
All of this points to one conclusion: the generals in civilian garb who lead Myanmar are following the Burmese proverb “htaung myin yar sont”: give away hundreds to get thousands in return.
The country’s rulers are calling for “disciplined democracy.” Emulating countries like Singapore, they want social and economic stability but not too vibrant an opposition. In exchange for foreign investment, an end to economic sanctions and improved relations with the outside world, they are willing to soften the organs of this police state. As long as the opposition’s activities don’t disrupt this nominally democratic system, all should be fine. But anyone who crosses that line quickly comes up against repressive laws that remain unchanged.
Earlier this month, a former political prisoner from Bogalay, a town in the Irrawaddy Delta near Yangon, took to the streets in a blue prison suit with iron shackles on his legs — he was protesting the continued detention of hundreds of political prisoners. He was promptly taken by the police to a mental hospital and detained for a week.
The fighting peacocks may be on view, but our freedoms are still fragile.
Swe Win is a journalist working for Irrawaddy Magazine under the pseudonym Ba Kaung.
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