It's True: Burma's Generals Suddenly Shift Capital

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...icle325441.ece

The Independent

Burma's rulers take the road to Mandalay

The Burmese capital is being moved to a purpose-built
'command and control' centre deep in the jungle by the
country's secretive and brutal military junta.

Jan McGirk reports
Published: 08 November 2005
No one knows whether to blame it on the dire
predictions of a powerful Burmese soothsayer or recent
tough talk from Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of
State. But today, Rangoon, the capital of Burma, is
even more of a backwater than usual because the ruling
military junta has abruptly abandoned its British
colonial-era headquarters to head for a Burmese-style
Brasilia in the hills.

General Than Shwe, the country's most senior leader,
has shifted the capital from its dilapidated riverside
site to a purpose-built jungle "command and control
centre", located about 250 miles up-country in
Pyinmana. After months of government dithering,
speculation and denial, unmarried civil servants from
nine ministries were ordered on Friday to start
packing their bags. By Sunday, a great convoy of vans
was lumbering up the main road towards Mandalay and
away from the golden pagodas of old Rangoon.

In the erstwhile capital, residents are baffled by
this sudden exodus and wonder if foreign diplomats and
all their foreign currency may soon follow. Protective
spirals of razor wire and concrete security bunkers,
erected in front of Rangoon's foreign embassies
shortly after the 11 September attacks, were
inexplicably dismantled yesterday.

Not everything, however, has changed that radically:
roadblocks were still in place outside the lakeside
house of Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy icon and
imprisoned Nobel peace laureate.

The junta's secret dream scheme for a new command
centre far away from Rangoon was well under way even
before Ms Rice stood in front of the US Senate last
January and lumped Burma together with North Korea,
Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe and Belarus as "outposts of
tyranny."

Quietly, the sleepy trading centre of Pyinmana has
become the focus for a mania of construction. This
verdant town, where steam locomotives still arrive
pulling freight cars of sugar cane, was the stronghold
of the Japanese army during the Second World War, and
is guarded by jungle-clad hills. It was from here that
Ms Suu Kyi's heroic father, General Aung San, launched
the Burmese independence movement.

With very little fanfare, the town has been
refortified over the past three years by the Burmese
generals into a xenophobe's Xanadu. There are reports
that the new military complex now extends over 10
square kilometres and that the infantry is already in
place.

Immediately after the US-led war in Iraq, Burmese
exiles circulated rumours that the US would surely
back regime change in south Asia next. Any day, the
Burmese bush telegraph suggested, a fleet of warships,
nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers would sail up
the Irrawaddy and launch yet another invasion.

The generals, already smarting from tough US sanctions
on textile exports and the banning of all new
investment, have apparently been making serious
contingency plans, with anti-aircraft artillery and
missile silos in place. If all else fails, it seems
the pariah regime could wage a guerrilla war from the
surrounding jungle, adapting the techniques of the
ethnic forces with whom they finally have signed
ceasefire agreements.

Government hardliners were braced for reprisals from
Washington last week after Charm Tong, a 23-year-old
Shan human rights activist, met with President Bush
and described the systematic gang rape committed by
Burmese soldiers against ethnic women inside the
country.

But it is not only the worry of being branded war
criminals that fuels the junta's paranoia. Some
analysts see the hand of astrology in its decision to
relocate, especially because the move appears to have
been planned for a particularly auspicious date. Like
his predecessor, the dictator Ne Win, who once
insisted that every denomination of the country's
currency be divisible by his lucky number nine,
General Than Shwe is known to be extremely
superstitious. It was the recent proclamation of a
soothsayer that predicted Rangoon was on the verge of
"collapse". Informed sources say the leader concluded
the city "must be destroyed" to save the regime.

The new capital will be officially named "Yan Lon,"
which translates as "secure from strife;" a close
cousin to "Yan Gon", or "end of strife", the official
name for Rangoon.

In Rangoon, where rumours circulate quickly, the new
capital has been redubbed by local wags as "Escape
City". Just who is escaping whom is not clear. Land
has been confiscated from thousands of villagers who
were displaced to make way for the new capital. More
than 5,000 more will go by the start of next year. The
International Labour Organisation (ILO) has registered
complaints that labourers were made to construct camps
for army battalions and an air defence squadron.

"At least 14 villages had to provide 200 workers each
on a daily basis for the work," said an ILO report,
which the regime rejected as baseless. Shortly
afterwards, death threats were made against ILO
representatives in Rangoon, and Burma gave notice that
it would withdraw from the organisation.

There are said to be no proper primary schools in
Pyinmana, a city envisioned as a martial Milton
Keynes, so families have not been commanded to move
there yet. Forced labour reportedly has, however,
built government bureaucrats a stellar golf course,
next to escape tunnels, bunkers, a military hospital,
an airstrip and a mammoth hydroelectric plant to power
their mansions. A parliament building is rather a low
priority in the authoritarian scheme, at least until a
new constitution is formalised.

Funding for the new capital's infrastructure comes
from Chinese and Russian investors, plus
well-connected businessmen and arms dealers who can
conveniently launder their ill-gotten gains through
the massive government project. The country's most
competent electricians, plumbers and technicians have
assembled a grid which will be the envy of old
Rangoon, where power cuts are routine. Pyinmana is the
only place in Burma, other than the Wa Army's
collection of casinos and barracks at Pangsang, where
international telephone calls go through unhindered.

What's more, Burmese exiles in Thailand claim that the
new capital will be located conveniently close to a
secret spot in the western Shan Hills where Burma's
nuclear programme is being developed. Because it is
frequently shrouded by mists, Pyin Oo Lwin, just 42
miles east of Mandalay, will be difficult to monitor
by satellite.

Burma's Information Minister, Brigadier General Kyaw
Hsan, is declining to catalogue the reasons for the
government's precipitous move. Just last month,
General Maung Aye, the deputy leader, announced that
the move would be deferred until the new year. But the
wishes of General Than Shwe have obviously prevailed.

"The reason we are moving is because Pyinmana, which
is in the centre of Myanmar, is geographically and
strategically located for the development of the
country," Kyaw Hsan said, reading from a prepared
statement. "We have made arrangements to fulfil food,
shelter, education and health requirements for the
convenience of the government servants."

When reporters pushed him to comment on any defensive
military motives for relocation, the officer gave a
tight grin: "Has there been any declaration that the
US will attack?

"If you need to communicate on urgent matters, you can
send a fax to Pyinmana," the statement continued. "We
will send you the new numbers in due course, and you
will be informed of the date to start communicating
with us."

The move has understandably sent shock waves through
Rangoon. "I couldn't believe my ears when I first
heard about this project," one junior commerce
ministry official said to reporters over the weekend.
"We all were officially informed about this only on
Friday. We were shocked."

Political pundits say moving the capital miles away is
designed to further isolate Burma's democratic
opposition and limit the influence of Aung San Suu
Kyi, for whom last month marked 10 years under house
arrest. Campaigners in exile are pressing the United
Nations Security Council to demand the release of
Burma's most prominent dissident, the restoration of
democracy, and freedom for 1,100 political prisoners
locked up for years in the country's jails.

Ms Suu Kyi, who turned 60 this summer, has resisted
any compromise with the ruling junta for 16 years. Her
passionate calls for "Freedom from Fear" have echoed
around the world. The UN envoy, Razali Ismail, has
been banned from seeing her for the past 16 months and
any possibility of dialogue with the generals looks
increasingly remote. Meanwhile, the human rights
situation in Burma appears as abysmal as ever.

According to the latest report, submitted to the UN by
the former Czech president Vaclav Havel and the
retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu, more
than 70,000 child soldiers have been conscripted by
the regime for its fight against ethnic insurgents.
They serve alongside security forces who routinely
rape civilians, torture prisoners, and execute
citizens without trial. The junta censors and wiretaps
private communications and harasses the press.
Government-hired thugs disguised as monks intercepted
Ms Suu Kyi's convoy in May 2003, beat her and killed
scores of her political followers.

Mr Havel and Archbishop Tutu recommended that the UN
Security Council adopt a resolution compelling Burma
to implement democratic reforms. When the US attempted
to start a formal discussion of Ms Suu Kyi's release
in the UN security Council last year, Russia and China
refused to table the motion. China, by far Burma's
biggest trading partner and arms supplier, was
recently allowed to build its first military base on
the Indian Ocean on Burmese soil.

As part of a face-saving "road map to democracy", the
junta also has drawn up a new constitution which
effectively tightens its grip on power. It reserves
seats in the national and regional parliaments for the
army, and bars Ms Suu Kyi from ever becoming
president. The document was completed without any
input from the National League for Democracy (NLD),
her party, which has boycotted the convention.

Ms Suu Kyi was tending her ailing mother in Rangoon
when General Ne Win staged a coup in 1988 and the
military fired on student protesters, killing
thousands. After speaking out against the army's
excesses, she was taken at gunpoint and placed under
house arrest the following year. The NLD won a
landslide victory in the 1990 elections, but the
generals annulled the result. Ms Suu Kyi, kept
incommunicado by the junta at her family's run down
house in Rangoon, became an icon for the dispossessed
and a thorn in the junta's side.

Admirers, who fear that military spies might overhear
her name and must refer to her obliquely as "The
Lady", would throng to Ms Suu Kyi whenever she was
allowed to travel inside her country, from 1995 to
2000 and for a few months in 2002 and 2003. Her
passion for Burma meant she frequently sacrificed
contact with her two sons, who now live in Britain.

While she was locked away, her British husband, the
Oxford don Michael Aris, died of prostate cancer in
1999. Ms Suu Kyi made the painful decision not to
visit him on his deathbed at Oxford because she
suspected the generals would block her re-entry to her
country. And so, while her country changes around her,
Burma's indomitable "Titanium Orchid" remains in
Rangoon, a staunch advocate of democracy, while the
generals switch their lair and devise new ways to try
to retain their grip on power.

No one knows whether to blame it on the dire
predictions of a powerful Burmese soothsayer or recent
tough talk from Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of
State. But today, Rangoon, the capital of Burma, is
even more of a backwater than usual because the ruling
military junta has abruptly abandoned its British
colonial-era headquarters to head for a Burmese-style
Brasilia in the hills.

General Than Shwe, the country's most senior leader,
has shifted the capital from its dilapidated riverside
site to a purpose-built jungle "command and control
centre", located about 250 miles up-country in
Pyinmana. After months of government dithering,
speculation and denial, unmarried civil servants from
nine ministries were ordered on Friday to start
packing their bags. By Sunday, a great convoy of vans
was lumbering up the main road towards Mandalay and
away from the golden pagodas of old Rangoon.

In the erstwhile capital, residents are baffled by
this sudden exodus and wonder if foreign diplomats and
all their foreign currency may soon follow. Protective
spirals of razor wire and concrete security bunkers,
erected in front of Rangoon's foreign embassies
shortly after the 11 September attacks, were
inexplicably dismantled yesterday.

Not everything, however, has changed that radically:
roadblocks were still in place outside the lakeside
house of Aung San Suu Kyi, the democracy icon and
imprisoned Nobel peace laureate.

The junta's secret dream scheme for a new command
centre far away from Rangoon was well under way even
before Ms Rice stood in front of the US Senate last
January and lumped Burma together with North Korea,
Cuba, Iran, Zimbabwe and Belarus as "outposts of
tyranny."

Quietly, the sleepy trading centre of Pyinmana has
become the focus for a mania of construction. This
verdant town, where steam locomotives still arrive
pulling freight cars of sugar cane, was the stronghold
of the Japanese army during the Second World War, and
is guarded by jungle-clad hills. It was from here that
Ms Suu Kyi's heroic father, General Aung San, launched
the Burmese independence movement.

With very little fanfare, the town has been
refortified over the past three years by the Burmese
generals into a xenophobe's Xanadu. There are reports
that the new military complex now extends over 10
square kilometres and that the infantry is already in
place.

Immediately after the US-led war in Iraq, Burmese
exiles circulated rumours that the US would surely
back regime change in south Asia next. Any day, the
Burmese bush telegraph suggested, a fleet of warships,
nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers would sail up
the Irrawaddy and launch yet another invasion.

The generals, already smarting from tough US sanctions
on textile exports and the banning of all new
investment, have apparently been making serious
contingency plans, with anti-aircraft artillery and
missile silos in place. If all else fails, it seems
the pariah regime could wage a guerrilla war from the
surrounding jungle, adapting the techniques of the
ethnic forces with whom they finally have signed
ceasefire agreements.

Government hardliners were braced for reprisals from
Washington last week after Charm Tong, a 23-year-old
Shan human rights activist, met with President Bush
and described the systematic gang rape committed by
Burmese soldiers against ethnic women inside the
country.

But it is not only the worry of being branded war
criminals that fuels the junta's paranoia. Some
analysts see the hand of astrology in its decision to
relocate, especially because the move appears to have
been planned for a particularly auspicious date. Like
his predecessor, the dictator Ne Win, who once
insisted that every denomination of the country's
currency be divisible by his lucky number nine,
General Than Shwe is known to be extremely
superstitious. It was the recent proclamation of a
soothsayer that predicted Rangoon was on the verge of
"collapse". Informed sources say the leader concluded
the city "must be destroyed" to save the regime.

The new capital will be officially named "Yan Lon,"
which translates as "secure from strife;" a close
cousin to "Yan Gon", or "end of strife", the official
name for Rangoon.

In Rangoon, where rumours circulate quickly, the new
capital has been redubbed by local wags as "Escape
City". Just who is escaping whom is not clear. Land
has been confiscated from thousands of villagers who
were displaced to make way for the new capital. More
than 5,000 more will go by the start of next year. The
International Labour Organisation (ILO) has registered
complaints that labourers were made to construct camps
for army battalions and an air defence squadron.

"At least 14 villages had to provide 200 workers each
on a daily basis for the work," said an ILO report,
which the regime rejected as baseless. Shortly
afterwards, death threats were made against ILO
representatives in Rangoon, and Burma gave notice that
it would withdraw from the organisation.

There are said to be no proper primary schools in
Pyinmana, a city envisioned as a martial Milton
Keynes, so families have not been commanded to move
there yet. Forced labour reportedly has, however,
built government bureaucrats a stellar golf course,
next to escape tunnels, bunkers, a military hospital,
an airstrip and a mammoth hydroelectric plant to power
their mansions. A parliament building is rather a low
priority in the authoritarian scheme, at least until a
new constitution is formalised.

Funding for the new capital's infrastructure comes
from Chinese and Russian investors, plus
well-connected businessmen and arms dealers who can
conveniently launder their ill-gotten gains through
the massive government project. The country's most
competent electricians, plumbers and technicians have
assembled a grid which will be the envy of old
Rangoon, where power cuts are routine. Pyinmana is the
only place in Burma, other than the Wa Army's
collection of casinos and barracks at Pangsang, where
international telephone calls go through unhindered.
What's more, Burmese exiles in Thailand claim that the
new capital will be located conveniently close to a
secret spot in the western Shan Hills where Burma's
nuclear programme is being developed. Because it is
frequently shrouded by mists, Pyin Oo Lwin, just 42
miles east of Mandalay, will be difficult to monitor
by satellite.

Burma's Information Minister, Brigadier General Kyaw
Hsan, is declining to catalogue the reasons for the
government's precipitous move. Just last month,
General Maung Aye, the deputy leader, announced that
the move would be deferred until the new year. But the
wishes of General Than Shwe have obviously prevailed.

"The reason we are moving is because Pyinmana, which
is in the centre of Myanmar, is geographically and
strategically located for the development of the
country," Kyaw Hsan said, reading from a prepared
statement. "We have made arrangements to fulfil food,
shelter, education and health requirements for the
convenience of the government servants."

When reporters pushed him to comment on any defensive
military motives for relocation, the officer gave a
tight grin: "Has there been any declaration that the
US will attack?

"If you need to communicate on urgent matters, you can
send a fax to Pyinmana," the statement continued. "We
will send you the new numbers in due course, and you
will be informed of the date to start communicating
with us."

The move has understandably sent shock waves through
Rangoon. "I couldn't believe my ears when I first
heard about this project," one junior commerce
ministry official said to reporters over the weekend.
"We all were officially informed about this only on
Friday. We were shocked."

Political pundits say moving the capital miles away is
designed to further isolate Burma's democratic
opposition and limit the influence of Aung San Suu
Kyi, for whom last month marked 10 years under house
arrest. Campaigners in exile are pressing the United
Nations Security Council to demand the release of
Burma's most prominent dissident, the restoration of
democracy, and freedom for 1,100 political prisoners
locked up for years in the country's jails.

Ms Suu Kyi, who turned 60 this summer, has resisted
any compromise with the ruling junta for 16 years. Her
passionate calls for "Freedom from Fear" have echoed
around the world. The UN envoy, Razali Ismail, has
been banned from seeing her for the past 16 months and
any possibility of dialogue with the generals looks
increasingly remote. Meanwhile, the human rights
situation in Burma appears as abysmal as ever.

According to the latest report, submitted to the UN by
the former Czech president Vaclav Havel and the
retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu, more
than 70,000 child soldiers have been conscripted by
the regime for its fight against ethnic insurgents.
They serve alongside security forces who routinely
rape civilians, torture prisoners, and execute
citizens without trial. The junta censors and wiretaps
private communications and harasses the press.
Government-hired thugs disguised as monks intercepted
Ms Suu Kyi's convoy in May 2003, beat her and killed
scores of her political followers.

Mr Havel and Archbishop Tutu recommended that the UN
Security Council adopt a resolution compelling Burma
to implement democratic reforms. When the US attempted
to start a formal discussion of Ms Suu Kyi's release
in the UN security Council last year, Russia and China
refused to table the motion. China, by far Burma's
biggest trading partner and arms supplier, was
recently allowed to build its first military base on
the Indian Ocean on Burmese soil.

As part of a face-saving "road map to democracy", the
junta also has drawn up a new constitution which
effectively tightens its grip on power. It reserves
seats in the national and regional parliaments for the
army, and bars Ms Suu Kyi from ever becoming
president. The document was completed without any
input from the National League for Democracy (NLD),
her party, which has boycotted the convention.

Ms Suu Kyi was tending her ailing mother in Rangoon
when General Ne Win staged a coup in 1988 and the
military fired on student protesters, killing
thousands. After speaking out against the army's
excesses, she was taken at gunpoint and placed under
house arrest the following year. The NLD won a
landslide victory in the 1990 elections, but the
generals annulled the result. Ms Suu Kyi, kept
incommunicado by the junta at her family's run down
house in Rangoon, became an icon for the dispossessed
and a thorn in the junta's side.

Admirers, who fear that military spies might overhear
her name and must refer to her obliquely as "The
Lady", would throng to Ms Suu Kyi whenever she was
allowed to travel inside her country, from 1995 to
2000 and for a few months in 2002 and 2003. Her
passion for Burma meant she frequently sacrificed
contact with her two sons, who now live in Britain.

While she was locked away, her British husband, the
Oxford don Michael Aris, died of prostate cancer in
1999. Ms Suu Kyi made the painful decision not to
visit him on his deathbed at Oxford because she
suspected the generals would block her re-entry to her
country. And so, while her country changes around her,
Burma's indomitable "Titanium Orchid" remains in
Rangoon, a staunch advocate of democracy, while the
generals switch their lair and devise new ways to try
to retain their grip on power.





__________________________________
Yahoo! Mail - PC Magazine Editors' Choice 2005
http://mail.yahoo.com