Death Grip

Despite international calls for reform, the ever-defiant SPDC maintains control over Myanmar with an Orwellian hand. Secrecy and paranoia abound, while rubbing elbows with Asia’s powerhouse nations keeps the regime in charge.

The leaders' quirks may not manifest themselves the same way (Kim is a Hollywood junkie, while Than Shwe has a tendency to make national decisions based on astrological charts). But like Kim, Than Shwe's rule has been marked by totalitarian oppression, confounding public declarations and a capacity to rile the international community.

SPDC Chairman Than Shwe

Than Shwe is the chairman of the ruling military junta in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma. Billed as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the group is known for being as proud as it is merciless. Ruling Myanmar through fear and military might, the SPDC stifles democracy and kills opposition figures, intent on only one thing: staying in power.

Despite heavy international pressure for reform, that hold on power today is firm, thanks in part to some powerful allies.

Since the SPDC assumed control in 1988, Myanmar has received over $2 billion worth of weapons from China. The regime also has forged close military ties with Russia and is broadening economic ties with India and other nations in the region.

The regime came into power amid a violent crackdown against pro-democracy protesters. The then-ruling socialist regime had precipitated total economic failure in Burma, and the Burmese people took to the streets of the capital Rangoon (now Yangon) to protest for change.

The Burmese military used the chaos to depose the socialist regime and silence the political demonstrators, killing thousands, to become Myanmar's ruling party. The new ruling junta called itself the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), changing the name to the SPDC in 1997 — ostensibly indicating democratic sympathies that never materialized.

Myanmar did hold elections in 1990, in which the National League for Democracy, led by Myanmar's legendary voice of democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, won in a landslide.

But Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma's independence hero, Aung San, was never allowed to lead. The SPDC refused to recognize the results and put her and hundreds of other political activists under arrest. Many of them, including Suu Kyi, have spent the majority of their lives in detention since then.

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi

To maintain control after their takeover as Myanmar's ruling party, Than Shwe and the SPDC have made a series of increasingly xenophobic moves in the name of the Burmese people.

"They thought ... that they needed more flavoring of Burma from a Burman point of view," Josef Silverstein, professor emeritus at Rutgers University and author of several books on Myanmar, explains. This included changing the country's name from Burma to Myanmar, reflecting the Burman pronunciation of the name over the British interpretation.

Silverstein says changes like this reflect the SPDC's belief that the final Burman royal dynasty before British rule, the Konbaung, was "the true spirit ... of the traditions of Burma, and they have a mission to pass them on to future generations."

This narrowly-focused view of Burmese nationalism leaves Myanmar's ethnic minorities — about 30 percent of the population — to fend for themselves as refugees, or to live under constant threat of state action.

The regime expects total commitment from all of Myanmar, including ethnic minorities, in its efforts to isolate the country. This was demonstrated in a 2003 message from Than Shwe in commemoration of "Peasant's Day."

The message read in part: "The entire mass of national races including the peasants will have to harmoniously strive for emergence of a peaceful, modern and developed nation."

Those who don't follow the chairman's words to "harmoniously strive" for a unified Myanmar can expect swift and painful retribution. Suu Kyi's current incarceration came after the SPDC used thugs to attack her convoy in 2003, leaving at least 70 dead. Human Rights Watch reported in May that the Burmese army began "its largest offensive in the western and northern parts of the Karen state," looting and burning homes while planting anti-personnel land mines in civilian areas "to terrorize the local population." Over 1,000 political prisoners remain detained without judicial recourse. Summary executions continue to be reported and in March Yangon officials beat a former political prisoner to death in public.

This flagrant abuse of human rights has led 34 countries to support a

Myanmar's natural resources, including stores of natural gas, and convenient location next to the Bay of Bengal have bought the SPDC favor with China, a country with veto power on the UN Security Council.

Silverstein says China has a vested interest in making the Burmese military an ally and is granting its neighbor favors in the process. Armed with such leverage, the regime has been able to maintain that the international community should stay out of Burmese affairs.

Diplomats have little room to maneuver, and though the U.S. is leading the charge against Myanmar at the U.N., a State Department official would not give specific details about progress on introducing a resolution. 

The media-savvy regime is conscious of international scorn. The state-censored newspaper, the Myanmar Times, touts the country's good standing in the world, proclaiming Myanmar has been "dutiful in launching democratic revolution." In reality, the regime's "road map" to democracy is dismissed almost universally as a sham.

While evidence of reform has been almost nonexistent, evidence of paranoia run amok is readily available. In November 2005, the SPDC announced it was moving the capital from Yangon to Pyinmana, in remote central Myanmar. Theories for the move abound, but Silverstein says some speculate the superstitious Than Shwe got a bad astrological reading (many in Myanmar heed the advice of fortune tellers and the country even has a government-sanctioned Astrology Research Bureau).

Silverstein also notes that the junta perhaps began to believe its own rumor about a possible U.S. invasion, moving the capital as a defensive measure.

Until the international community can act, the Burmese people continue to watch Than Shwe and the SPDC for clues about the country's future. The news magazine Irrawaddy, operated by Burmese exiles in Thailand, has even set up an online feature called "Than Shwe Watch" to "follow his movements, his decisions, statements" in hopes of yielding "clues about the future course of Burma."

With a secretive and strategically adept regime like the SPDC, tracking Than Shwe's every move may be the only chance to ascertain what lies ahead.

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