Remembering the Past In Honor of Unknown Heroes

Photos from the 1988 Uprising

Remembering and honoring those unknown heroes with unshakable faith in truth, justice and freedom...

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the Pro-democracy Uprising in 1988 in Myanmar, which gives us this opportunity to re-engage with our past 30 years ago in order to better understand our present-day concerns and challenges, and to imagine a better future for all of us here in this country.

So I would like to take this moment to revisit the past. While there are political figures and names everyone knows and stories of all kinds about the 1988 and subsequent political struggles in our country, lacking technology combined with oppressive rule of the BSPP means that the mass nationwide movement like that could not have happened without all those people who took part and without unnamed heroes who persisted risking everything they had.

This reminded me that three years ago, I had this opportunity to help a friend who was writing a book on stories of Myanmar women - one of them she chose to write about a former political prisoner, Noble Aye. Since my friend, the writer, does not speak Burmese, I helped interpreting the interview with Ma Noble. She is in her early 40s and had been imprisoned twice for a total of over 11 years - which means that she spent a quarter of her life in prison.

She said, "Being in prison is like living a life along someone else who decides how I live. If they want to frighten us (with the imprisonment and tortures), it does not work. By putting us in prison, they destroyed our lives, our families and our future. If l look at my family, I see only broken relations, anger, sadness, poverty that was very close to begging for survival. However, my political beliefs did not change and will not change, they can never be destroyed."

Those three hours conversation/interview with Ma Noble about her life shattered me a little and also shed some light on a few questions I had about the past. I learned about her life - her involvement in the 1996 and 1998 students demonstrations and 2007 protests; how she was always followed by the military intelligence (MI); how she was arrested, and interrogated; and her life in prison.  There were moments she was shaking and her eyes were filled with tears while telling her story. I was also quite overwhelmed with tears while listening to her story.

What is really inspiring is that even though her life, her future, her family had been destroyed, there was no trace of regret in her and she still firmly believed that we should never be treated that way, we should never be imprisoned for our belief or for doing what we believe is right or exposing the truth. Her first imprisonment was due to her involvement in distributing a book about the 1996 students' demonstration, and the second was due to her participation in 2007 protests.

In her own words, "The distribution of the book was a way of telling the truth, of informing the people, of making students' testimonies collected in asylum known to the people in Myanmar."

For me personally, I was a small kid in 1988 to understand what it was all about. Yet, there are a couple of things stuck in my mind - the sound of shooting guns on the street in front of our house and the scene that a big group of unarmed young people was followed by military tanks were both very terrifying and unsettling for a small kid. For others, their brother or sister went missing; their son or daughter never came home; their friend or lover was brutally shot and killed in front of their eyes.

Looking back the past that is not so long ago in terms of history is quite interesting because we get to learn stories and narrative accounts of many ordinary people who witnessed or even participated in the events are still alive to share their accounts of what happened during that time. By referring as ordinary people, I meant that those people are not the ones in power who write the history in their favor - who craft their own narrative of the past regardless of what really happened. As Orwell put it well in 1984,"Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future". This has led to two main, yet very different, narratives of this 8888 Uprising that have shaped the subsequent fate of our country.

One of the two is that people were provoked by underground and overground terrorists and by those influenced by modern-day colonial interests; people became lawless and unruly riots spread across the country; the country was deteriorating in many aspects; eventually, when the country was on the brink of collapsing, in September 1988, the Myanmar Army had to take this holy responsibility to save the country - "in order to bring a timely halt to deteriorating conditions on all facets of the country."

The other one is that economic frustrations and general resentment towards the one-party rule of the then ruling Burma Socialist Programme Party led to series of peaceful protests by students in 1988; then the protests spread across the nation and joined by people from all walks of life. The brutal crackdowns of police killed thousands of innocent peaceful protestors. The protests were also made it appear lawless by releasing criminals who would exercise atrocities such as public beheadings and robberies of all kinds including state-owned factories. In September 1988, the military violently broke up the protests, took power, and imposed martial law. Many protestors and political activists who were not killed during the uprising were arrested and put in prisons. Their families were under surveillance of MI.

These two differing or rather contradicting narratives have shaped our present and led to where we are today. The first version was obviously imposed in many ways - through series of state-own media,  state-sponsored films, songs etc. Anyone who questioned that version of the 8888 was either arrested or under watchful eyes of MI.

Sometimes, I wonder what if we believed the first version of the 88 and did never know the truth. It is very convenient to believe it because we grew up with state media, watching state-sponsored films and songs, being taught at the state schools. When I left for the U.S. in 2003 while the country was still under the military regime, I was very much afraid to talk about politics in my country when being asked by professors at my college in Colorado. I grew up learning that discussing politics meant risking yourself to be arrested or your family to get in trouble. So it was very possible for us to never really know the true story of the 88 and its subsequent events.

Prior to learning about Noble Aye's story, it made me wonder what made it possible to learn about the truth and also what made it possible to lead to where we are today - we are at least no longer under the military rule, even though the changes have not been satisfactory.

I felt grateful for the opportunity to learn about her story, more importantly, to learn the truth. Her story would also enlighten many people like me in our country who do not know about what it is like to be a political prisoner; what it is like being confined and losing all your freedom, and your life being destroyed just for your belief and for your action to preserve or expose the truth. I found it quite irresponsible of those people who say that our democratic transition was peaceful and harmless. Saying that disregards many families like Noble Aye's who suffered so much and were destroyed. There were also many families who never got to see their husbands, daughters or sons again.

People like Noble Aye are not famous nor popular but their strength and their unshakable faith in truth, justice and freedom, along with their persistent actions to live up to that faith, collectively challenged the imposed narrative, crafted by those in power, and eventually challenged their illegitimate rule over the country. It is because of their unseen struggles, and unheard but very strong and brave voices, we have been able to reach where we are today even though much is still needed to be done for a better and brighter future we all want to reach.

On Pursuit of Happiness vs. Pursuit of Meaning

The distinction between happiness and meaningfulness has a long history back to thousands of years in philosophy and religions. In short, a pursuit of happiness is seeking to live by pleasures, in other words, by taking things from outside to satisfy one’s senses. A pursuit of meaning, on the other hand, is seeking to live for something bigger than the ‘self’ - which could be our family, our work, or any other divine thing or Nature. 

I do not know enough philosophical references on happiness vs. meaning so I would like to express it using my own personal experience. I grew up in Monywa, a city in the middle of Myanmar. It is a relatively big city but compared to Yangon, it could be considered quite rural. On a funny note, a friend of mine asked me recently if I went to "ILBC" in Monywa since I studied in the U.S. and now fluent in English. Back in those days, there was no such private school in Monywa. I did not have any exposure to speaking or learning English besides the public school textbooks. 

I did not enjoy school much even though I did quite well - I was on one of the top 3 most of my years in basic education. The teachers or my classmates did not like it when I asked questions. I tried to understand and to make sense of what I read in textbooks but it was nearly impossible. I was in high school in Monywa, when I first learned about the education in the U.S. from an information section by Sayar U Tin Maung Than, who recently came back after studying at Harvard Kennedy School.

After I finished 10th grade exams, after series of arguments with my father who was against my desire to study abroad because I was a young girl, I left Monywa for Yangon to prepare myself to study abroad. I completely dropped going to the medical school in Mandalay. Long story short, I got into one of the private liberal arts in the U.S with a full scholarship for 4 yrs. My family was in no position to fund for my education otherwise.

And my plan was supposed to come back home after four years and to contribute something good to the society back home with the education I would get from the U.S. At least, that was what my parents wanted. For me, I just wanted to be outside of home to be free and independent, both intellectually and personally. 

The year I graduated from Colorado College, thinking back now, was a turning point - or rather I was at an intersection between pursuing a life for myself or a life for others. To be honest, I was quite lost. I did not even know clearly what I was trying to choose or what I wanted to do. So when you don’t know what you want or don’t know who you are, you become less in control of your life. You mostly get into the “default” setting, meaning you just try to follow a life as it has been prescribed by the society you are in.

To make it long story short, that default setting went on for another six years in New York. But the narrative I said in my head goes like this “people should be taking care of themselves. If you are doing good for yourself, you are “automatically’’ contributing good to the society.” I was completely just living for myself and myself alone. Well, I was not a bad or mean person - I still cared a lot for my friends but in a larger part, I believed that I should just live a “happy” life. I worked at a small company - even though work did not mean anything to me but I still worked very hard - there was a small part of me hidden inside that wanted to learn, grow and also help others around.

But I felt like I was working so that I could enjoy life. New York has endless stimulations to keep you busy. During that time, I went back to a graduate school for Accounting. Because after liberal arts education, I felt I needed to pick up some very specific skills to make use of myself at a work place. That was pretty much all my 20s.

So my 20s were spent pursuing a happy life and living for myself. Then when I hit 30, it hit me quite badly - I felt so bad that I had not done much and felt that I wasted most of my 20s. I needed urgently to find myself again and to be back in control of my life. And in one of the business classes I took in my last semester at the grad school, one thing got stuck in my mind, “in order to change something, you need to get back to the core.” After series of questioning myself and talking with my brother, to whom I’m most grateful for helping me through that existential crisis, I decided to move back to my home country. In order to find myself, I needed to get back to the core, where I started, and to be closer to my family and in my home country.

Since I have decided to pursue a meaningful life - to live for more than just for myself, I have been through two major processes - learning and giving. Personally, I have been learning rigorously about myself, about others and about things that I was very curious about- through asking questions to myself, reading, watching documentaries, listening to others, meditating. Professionally, I have committed myself to help and serve others around me, and to give back with the best of my abilities and skills I have.

This past four or five years have been a quite satisfying endeavor for me - it has not been easy at all like when I was just pursuing a happy life. There have been stresses and struggles involved but I feel now that I am a much happier person. 

I’ve recently realized that, besides learning and giving, there is another difficult step in the pursuit of meaning — a spiritual part — it is about love. I still do not quite understand what it really means to love. In general, I think we can learn to love by being more open to life, appreciating people and things, even little things, accepting and content with what we have.

To me as mentioned above, a meaningful life —a life of learning, giving and loving — is more enjoyable and satisfying. We have this capacity, intelligence and compassion to live for more than ourselves. Through this life long journey in pursuit of meaning, we may be able to expand ourselves intellectually, emotionally and spiritually.