Today’s New York Times report from Myanmar (or Burma, if you prefer) is in large measure the same old sad story of a country wracked by poverty and disease while its dictatorial elite has fun and makes money. The angle this time, at least in the lede, is the contrast between the ongoing rush for Myanmar’s natural gas reserves and the domestic penury of petrol and electricity. The article then opens onto a number of other topics; no scoops here, but a useful reminder of a situation that many have found easy to forget. It’s also a timely reminder, considering the imminent passage of the US-India nuclear deal, of the way great-power strategic considerations still trump more ethical goals; for all their differences in other areas, India and China are both big supporters of the Myanmar regime.
Also timely, considering our recent discussion of “citizen journalism” by means of camera-phone, is the article’s mention of video footage of the wedding of the Myanmar leader’s daughter that was smuggled out and posted by The Irrawaddy, a publication and website run largely by Burmese and based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Senior General Than Shwe has been the head guy in Myanmar for the past 14 years and apparently has given himself the airs of traditional Buddhist royalty, as several examples in the Times story attest. The wedding of his daughter Thandar Shwe to a mid-ranking government official involved a ceremony costing a reported $300,000 and, perhaps more egregiously, $50 million in houses and cars as gifts. Recently posted online, the video gives Burmese a specific target of outrage in the spirit of the great Bob Marley line, “Dem belly full but we hungry,” although how much it wil be seen within Myanmar is unclear.
I took a look at Irrawaddy.org and was extremely impressed by the coverage, analysis and professional values of the website; it can’t be all that easy reporting on a largely closed society and excavating the ties of its leadership with neighboring powers. Perhaps someone more versed on the subject can give more advanced commentary.
Meanwhile, watch the wedding video and what is striking is not so much the six fat ropes of diamonds that the bride wears, nor the train of her dress or the devoted attention of the dinner guests, but rather the sense of emptiness that the whole thing conveys. It seems to be held in an oversize function hall where the trappings of luxury have been grafted onto ultimately ordinary surroundings. The guests, the dinner tables, all look small and lonely and despite the lifting of bottles of Champagne it doesn’t seem like anyone (including the betrothed) is having much fun. The cheesy music only compounds the sense of tawdriness, even sadness, that suffuses the scene. Of course you don’t need to look as far as a paranoid dictatorship to find sensory evidence of the absolute, mind-numbing banality of power, but settings like this one display the phenomenon in its full, melancholy glory. The staging expresses the dialectic that binds the construction of power and spiritual decay, and supplies an updated, self-contained meaning to the term puppet regime.
