Myanmar uprising was inevitable

In Myanmar, a cellphone costs $3,000 and a 10-year-old car more than $100,000.

Yet most people toil for a dollar a day or less.

Old women beg on betel-nut- stained sidewalks. The poor canvass neighborhoods, collecting trash for 4 cents a household.

A pilot for the state-owned airline once told me his salary was $8 a month. He survived by overloading the plane and charging for extra bags.

Nobody trusts the banks, there are no ATMs, and the black market thrives.

Citizens suffer regular blackouts while the ruling military regime — formally called the State Peace and Development Council, or SPDC — sells the country's vast natural-gas reserves to neighbors such as Thailand and China.

For years, Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has had one of the most mismanaged economies in the world. The generals won't listen to technocrats or academics. "SPDC stands for Stupid People Destroying the Country," a Yangon economics professor once told me.

It's no wonder that a decision to raise the price of fuel provoked the recent widespread demonstrations, which brought tens of thousands of people into the streets. The country has been a tinderbox for years.

Just two months ago, on my most recent visit to Yangon, a middle-aged professional complained of the deteriorating economic situation.

"We are waiting for a spark," she said.

She wondered why there hadn't been any protests after the government's previous decision to raise the price of fuel two years ago, arbitrarily and without explanation, by nine times. That's right. Nine times.

The answer, I think, is partly that the Burmese are incredibly patient people — humble, calm and gentle. They bow before monks, their parents, their teachers. They are also warm and generous hosts.

Their capacity to endure economic hardship and political repression has amazed me since I started working with them as a journalism trainer seven years ago.

They are spied upon, their phones are tapped, and their e-mail is tampered with. Many of my friends have been interrogated, tortured, imprisoned for acts as harmless as distributing pamphlets or writing poetry.

Once I met a group of writers in Mandalay and each matter-of-factly reeled off their stints in jail as if they were normal parts of a résumé — eight years, five years, a year and a half. "We have a saying," one of them said. "You're not a real journalist unless you've been to jail."

They all laughed at that.

But even telling a joke in Myanmar can be a crime. I once visited Par Par Lay, a famous comedian, who was sentenced with his colleagues — they call themselves "the Mustache Brothers" — to several years of hard labor. All for poking fun at the regime.

Now they are allowed to perform only for foreign tourists, in the ground floor of their home on a muddy street in Mandalay.

Despite these difficulties, many Burmese who have had a chance to leave Myanmar have opted instead to remain. They believe that pushing for change from within, one step at a time, is more effective than agitating from the outside.

There have been signs of progress, they say.

Myanmar now has a dynamic and thriving private media sector. Dozens of weekly newspapers (albeit heavily censored) have sprung up over the past couple of years.

Until the recent crackdown, many Burmese enjoyed affordable access to the Internet and knew as much about the war in Iraq as any American. The country's borders are porous, with thousands crossing back and forth to Thailand every day.

Tourism is also on the rise.

Myanmar is not as "isolated" as it's sometimes portrayed to be. Nor was the political scene entirely stagnant before the demonstrations.

The government had just wrapped up the so-called National Convention, a hand-picked group of delegates assigned to draft the principles for a new constitution. The process took 14 years, was boycotted by the opposition and dismissed as a charade.

But there was still a buzz in Yangon: The first step was finally finished, people were saying. There was talk about a referendum, and after that, yes, a possible election.

The last election, in 1990, was won overwhelmingly by Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League of Democracy. But the junta annulled the results, saying the country first needed a new constitution.

To the chagrin of democracy activists, the new constitution would guarantee the military a quarter of all seats in the legislature.

But pragmatists know there will be no transition to democracy unless the military is guaranteed a share of power.

The military has held on to the reins for 45 years and is the only institution with experience running the country.

It's also easy to forget that Myanmar is home to the world's longest-running civil war, a 60-year conflict with the Karen National Union. Without the military, some say, the country could become another Yugoslavia.

Given this background, it's no surprise the junta's crackdown came last week after 10 days of protests. It acted the way it always has, although perhaps not as brutally as it did after the 1988 uprisings, when up to 3,000 were killed.

I once asked one of Myanmar's most outspoken writers, Lu Du Daw Amar, why there hadn't been more uprisings against the military.

"The gun is everywhere," she said, raising her finger liked a cocked pistol.

"Everybody is afraid of the gun."

Jeff Hodson is a former Seattle Times reporter who regularly visits Myanmar.