OUR PCA PRESIDENT IN BURMA

March 24, 2000 -- This past February, while the Palisades was dealing with the fallout from ice storms, I was touring Burma with my mother and her friend, Priscilla Clapp, the US Chief of Mission to Burma.
It was an extraordinary experience.
Burma is a country the size of Texas located on the Southeast Asian peninsula between Thailand and India. It is a country filled with natural resources - fertile soil, a warm climate, plenty of water, timber, oil, natural gas and minerals, including the world's largest known supply of nephrite, better known as jade.
There are approximately 48 million people in Burma, most of whom are Burmese but many of whom are from other various ethnic groups or tribes such as the Shan, the Karen and the Pao.
Most Burmese are Buddhists, though a significant percentage of the population is Christian, Hindu, Muslim or Animist.
The country, however, is an outlaw nation. It is currently run by a group of military generals, known collectively as "the generals."
A British colony and then a constitutional democracy, the country was ruled from 1962 until 1988, by a military dictator, Ne Win. Ne Win was famous for creating the "Burmese Path to Socialism," otherwise known as the path to economic disaster, and for keeping Burma isolated.
In 1988, university students, along with dissatisfied members of the government bureaucracy, the business community and the military revolted against the government.
Ne Win resigned, elections were held in 1990 and, much to the surprise of everyone, the democratic party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by a woman named Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, won the election.
The military leadership, which had expected its party to win, immediately canceled the results of the election, put Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest in Rangoon, jailed thousands of duly elected officials and killed many students and political activists.
In 1991, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her continued commitment to nonviolent change.
Traveling with the Chief of Mission through a country that is ruled by a repressive military dictatorship was a new experience for me.
She warned us that rooms in the embassy residence were bugged, that we would be spied on and followed by people from the government and that we could expect that people, such as our guides, would be taken in for questioning after spending time with us.
The feeling that we were being watched certainly added an element of tension to the trip.
Because of our hostess, we met many interesting people.
Our second morning in Rangoon we had the honor of meeting with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who is a heroine to her people.
She is an impressive person, an intellectual who has dedicated her life to restoring democracy and economic prosperity to Burma. Everywhere we went, when people found out that we had met her, they wanted to know how she was doing because she is forbidden to leave Rangoon or speak in a public forum and they get no news of her.
We met other pro-democracy activists, many of whom had been jailed at least once as a result of their political activity.
One man we met had been so traumatized by his six years in jail that, even though he had been educated from high school on in the United States and England, he was unable to remember a word of English upon his release.
Burma is a lovely country with some extraordinary places to visit.
We went to the Shan country in the northeast and visited a farming village where people still plant their fields using a bullock and plow.
We stayed along the shores of a large shallow inland lake, called Inlay Lake, where the fishing villages, their thatched houses sitting on tall stilts in the lake, look much the same as they did a hundred years ago. The people grow crops on "floating islands" on the lake, which are staked in place with bamboo poles.
And we visited the magnificent ancient city of Pagan. Built along the banks of the Irrawaddy River by the Burmese kings between the 11th and 13th centuries, Pagan at its height contained some 4,000 Buddhist temples and stupas, all scattered along the plain that stretches out from the river. Today, over 2000 of these magnificent sandstone monuments remain.
Charming as Burma is, it is also a sad place.
In order to preserve their power, the generals have closed the universities to prevent the student protests.
They have banned e-mail and Internet communication.
The young people have nothing to aspire to and the country will be decades behind the rest of Southeast Asia should it ever come out of its present isolated state.
I certainly appreciate all that we have here in the United States, and in the Palisades, after spending time in Burma.
--Cary Ridder