UMW Regional GeogBlog

At Yangon's Shwe Dagon Pagoda

One of the great advantages of travel is that it helps travelers understand what’s going on in the countries they visit. One of the great pitfalls of travel, though, it that it can leave visitors under the impression that they know what’s going on, when in fact they don’t.

Take my recent visit to the Union of Myanmar (also called Burma), for example.

On the outskirts of Yangon

I have just left the country after spending five fascinating days in the former capital of Yangon (previously known as Rangoon; this country abounds in akas and previously known as’s.) I entered the country without any problems (a recently implement visa-on-arrival system was in effect at the airport, just as in Indonesia or Cambodia.) I found a city remarkably serene by East Asian standards, a built landscape that is unusually dated by comparison with its neighbors, and a country that is undoubtedly poor.  I saw a surprisingly orderly place, without the noise or chaotic traffic of Bangkok or Phnom Penh. Not only did I survive my wanderings around the streets, alleyways, and markets of central Yangon (alone and camera in hand,) I also felt very safe and I not discern any threats to my person or my property (nor did I see many police officers around.) In three days of walking and photographing, nobody challenged me, obstructed me, or prevented me from going anywhere.

In short, if I had known nothing at all about Myanmar before I came here, I might easily have concluded that this was a peaceful place populated by people facing challenges of poverty common to most developing countries, but otherwise going about the daily business without any unusual challenges.  I would have been terribly wrong.

According to just about any reputable entity concerned with human rights or governance, the government Burma is one of the most egregious violators of human rights in the world. It tops Freedom House’s 2010 list of  “worst of the worst,” the eight countries with the worst human rights records in the world. The Global Justice Center ranks Burma as one of the top two ‘red alert’ countries, second only to Sudan where risk of genocide is concerned; the United Nations has placed the country on a genocide watch list. A recent Harvard Law School report holds the country’s government responsible for “epidemic levels of forced labor in the 1990s, the recruitment of tens of thousands of child soldiers, widespread sexual violence, extrajudicial killings and torture, and more than a million displaced persons.”  Over 3,000 ethnic nationality villages have been demolished over the past twelve years – more than the number destroyed or damaged in Darfur. There are more than 2,100 political prisoners in the country, many convicted under a penal code that criminalizes free expression and peaceful demonstrations.

The government that is responsible for all of this is a secretive and xenophobic military junta that calls itself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC,) led by a shadowy general named Than Shwe, a man who is so paranoid that even his birthday is a secret. The SPDC is the latest in a series of military governments that dates back to 1962, when a coup led by General Ne Win overthrew a civilian government. The current junta came to power in 1988, and put its popularity to the test in general elections held in 1990.  The opposition National League for Democracy, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi won 80 percent of the vote. The junta ignored the election result, and Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for most of the time since then (She won the Nobel Prize in 1991.)

All the news that's fit to print. From a Yangon daily newspaper.

I saw precious little direct evidence of any of this during my brief visit. Not many police or military, no obvious video surveillance, certainly no signs of popular dissent of the kind that I saw in Bangkok a few weeks ago. Perhaps this is in itself testimony to the regime’s brutal effectiveness; maybe when police are nowhere to be seen they are actually everywhere. A small glimpse into this came when I was driven past the government offices where, hundreds of people were waiting, apparently to apply for passports. I lifted my camera to take a photograph, but my guide advised me not to. “Too many information people around here,” he said.

What I did notice, though, was that Yangon is a place that is a little odd.  The repressive nature of the Burma’s ruling junta may not be readily apparent, but that wackiness of the regime is.

Take, for example, the location of Burma’s capital. Until 2005, the capital was Yangon. Then, without warning, the government announced that it was moving to Naypidaw, a city built from scratch in a remote inland location nine hours drive from Yangon (along a purpose-built eight line highway which apparently carries very little traffic.)  It turned out that the new capital had been under construction secretly for some time, and the announcement was of a fait accompli. In this frequent power cuts and crumbling infrastructure, the new capital has landscaped traffic circles and a zoo with an air-conditioned penguin house. (Maybe I am wrong on the reasons for the capital’s location. See Richard’s comment below.)

It’s not unheard of for countries to move their capitals. Some former colonies have done so because the capital’s old location suited the interests of a former colonial power rather than those of the country itself, or because the government wanted to promote development in an undeveloped part of the country (Brasilia, Abuja, and Dodoma are some examples of new capitals.) Naypidaw’s location, though, seems to be a result of the paranoia, secrecy, and xenophobia of Burma’s governing generals. The remote location and inaccessibility of the capital are the reasons for its establishment; it’s away from coast (the generals are fixated on the idea of being invaded), away from the prying eyes of foreigners and enemies of the regime.  It’s not often that a city’s location is chosen for its inconvenient location, but this is Burma, and weird things happen here. (The capital’s location is so inconvenient that it provoked a rare public complaint from Burma’s only major ally, China.)

But the wackiness of the Burmese generals doesn’t end with their novel approach to regional planning. During the ride from Yangon International Airport – in a dilapidated Toyota Corolla taxi significantly older than most of my students – I noticed something unusual. Traffic in this country travels on the right hand side of the road, but with very few exceptions vehicles have their steering wheels on the right side. I asked my driver why this was the case. He replied, “Many foreigners ask that,” and said no more. This confirmed that my question was a reasonable one, but didn’t get me any closer to an answer. Two other taxi drivers later gave me identical responses.

I did some digging around, and managed to establish that the country switched from driving on the left, a legacy of British colonialism, in 1970 (Burma gained its independence in 1948.) The only explanation for this I been able to find (but not verify) is that the change was decreed by the notoriously superstitious military leader, General Ne Win, and was the result of a dream or a soothsayer’s advice. In most other countries this explanation would be absurd, but in Burma it is quite plausible.

Unoccupied old and new buildings. My guide tells me that the buildings in the background are unoccupied because the owners don't have "government permission" to fill them.

I found that arriving in Yangon was a bit like going back in time. My taxi didn’t seem unusually old by comparison with the rest of the vehicles on the road; most cars, trucks, and buses appeared to date back to the 1970s or before; evidence of much of the world’s uneasiness at doing business with this pariah state. A lot of the buildings, particularly in the central part of the city, seemed be of colonial vintage. There also weren’t many high-rise buildings (although the city has some 5 million residents.) I saw very few tourists, and hardly any westerners. No McDonalds or Starbucks; KFC may have made it to Urumqi in far-western China, but it hasn’t come to Yangon.

Or maybe it has, but it has left. An apologetic note in my hotel room asked me to “please be advised that credit cards under Master Card, American Express, Diners Club and JCB have ceased operations in Myanmar, until further notice.” I turned on my cell phone, and got a “no service available” message on the screen. AT&T encourages me to roam in Mali and Mayotte, but not in Myanmar. (The phone in my hotel room would let me call the U.S., though, for a cost of $7.99 per minute.)

My hotel did, however, offer wireless internet. The receptionist warned me that the connection might be slow, and also that I would not be able to access Yahoo mail or MSN. Nor, as it turned out, could I access lonelyplanet.com or the website of Amnesty International. Trying to reach any of these sites produced a red banner across my screen with the message “the access to requested URL has been denied.”  This remarkably honest message was presumably a result of internet censorship, and was another small clue to the repressive nature of the Burmese state. (In China, try accessing a blocked site and all you will get is a more obscure message telling you that the connection has been interrupted.) It was also a sign of the ineptitude of some of the regime’s efforts: the Amnesty’s site amnesty.org was blocked, but the organization’s British site, amnesty.org.uk, including its links to information on Burma, were not.

Access denied

After five days in Yangon, I headed for my flight to Bangkok. As I had done on my arrival, I traveled along the smoothly paved multi-lane road from the city center to Yangon International Airport.  During my various taxi rides in and around the city, I had discovered that this road was an aberration. Turn off this main road, or leave the city, and you’re in for a bone-rattling experience. And it is on the side roads that most Burmese people travel.

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For more photographs of Yangon and its environs, please visit my Picasa web album.