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Burma has finally made the news. A country that was veiled in Buddhist mystique and shadows has had its doors thrown open by the imprisoned citizens who reside in its confines. Those prisoners are the citizens who have been forced to smile and speak a language that was not their own, instead a Newspeak that the military regime forced upon them. It is, as a citizen says in Emma Larkin's book, "Finding George Orwell in Burma", like a woman who has cancer and dresses up so she looks like she doesn't, but everyone knows she has cancer. The language the Burmese people have been forced to speak is like the falsetto uttered by an abused wife, one who charms everyone with her sparkling personality, so that the terror she suffers will not come to light. Finally she speaks out, and the violence erupts. But her voice is no longer silenced. This is the fate of the Burmese people, those who have been silenced since the doomed revolution of 1988. In "Finding George Orwell in Burma", American journalist Emma Larkin (a pseudonym) tells their stories, cracking the veneer of a charming Buddhist nation with pagodas and monks and discovering the oppression that lies behind the mask. Nothing seems wrong on the outside, it seems. Travel restrictions can lead the casual tourist to meander down proscribed roads that provide smiling rickshaw drivers and the ancient charm of Pagan. To such an extreme this can be, Larkin says, that the tourist leaves Burma and wonders what all the fuss those do-gooder human rights activists are making. Larkin remarks how Burma's Ministry of Information promotes brochures showing satellite dishes reigning benignly over students presiding over computers. How wonderful that looks, and look at all of the good news that is promoted in the newspapers. What a sunny country this is: there must be no problems. But if anyone who is aware of the 1988 demonstrations and how democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since the military government nullified elections, they know this is all a lie. The problem is that is until now, the lie seemed indestructible, almost more sinister than the secrecy of North Korea for the sunny disposition it paints over its internal horror. As an American journalist roaming in places where foreigners shouldn't be, and acting as a tourist to disguise her journalism from authorities who don't want the truth to be told, Larkin is risking her life just bringing this story to light. Written around the year 2002 or so, Larkin goes to this country to find the links between this secretive state and the literature of British author George Orwell. Orwell's literature, such as "1984" and "Animal Farm", has been seen as prescient for its commentary on totalitarianism. In the wake of the Cold War, it easily seemed for those who knew nothing about Orwell to be a social commentary about the Soviet Union. Larkin, who has visited the country of Burma over the years, believes that his literature has roots in his service as a British officer in Burma during the 1920's. She retraces the steps he took during his Royal service, trying to find the roots of tyranny that lurks under every surface that she encounters. She talks of the renaming of streets, towns (Rangoon to Yangon), and even the name of the country (Burma to Myanmar), and what it does to the spirit of the people to go to bed one day and wake up the next, finding nothing you knew exists anymore, as if the traces the past have been erased. In its wake, a new reality has been foisted on you, propaganda substituting for expression, and you are nothing more than a tool in the ruse, forced to either forget what you know is true or split from inside with secrets. The people who meet Larkin want to talk, a foreshadow to the spirit that is now being shown in the streets. These people are the ones who are splitting inside with secrets and looking for a way to get them out. Larkin, who speaks Burmese, seems a sympathetic receptacle for these stories. It is as though all that was being suppressed was not really done so, and are looking for any person who will bring their story to the outside so the insanity will stop. For if they talk to the wrong person in this atmosphere, publish the wrong sentiment, not walk the talk of propaganda while the abusive parent of the military junta is watching, they may be disappeared, arrested or killed. The fact that they are literate makes the smile all the more eerie, for Larkin paints people who are obviously aware that something better exists on the outside. Orwell, the author of "Burmese Days", is cited as a prophet by one of the people that Larkin encounters. They know the ruse that is being pulled over them, and yet feel powerless to do anything about it but smile and bury themselves in books, their only link to the outside. Larkin's prose is sparse and crisp, rendering a narrative voice that is chilling in its simplicity, given the subject she covers. The beauty of the surroundings she encounters lends an even more surreal cover for the darkness that covers this troubled nation. She doesn't cover the events of 1988 in depth, nor does she relay much of the circumstances surrounding the junta's displacement Aung San Suu Kyi. She does give a brief chronology of the revolution's events in the beginning of the book, as well as interviewing former political prisoners involved in the revolution who still reside in the country. Most of the history she relays has to do with what the British found and saw in this country that they colonized, especially through the eyes of George Orwell. But this also adds to the coldness of the beauty, because all those events that can be found in any nation with open communication remain silent in this nation. Orwell's characters seem to act as the voice of the Burmese people throughout the book, crying out to be able to speak, to break out, and to be free of the oppression that they must smile about. Larkin's book is not a political commentary, although it is clear that she hopes that the oppression she witnesses will break open and the trickle of expression she receives from the people she speaks to will turn into an overflow. The recent uprise of Buddhist monks, the brief outflow of electronic media pouring out of the Burma depicting a violent military junta, and the words of Burmese exiles on the outside lends some hope that what Larkin witnessed as a wish will become reality. Her courage in bringing the story of these oppressed people to print has rendered a book of brilliance and importance, reminding us that happy propaganda sometimes masks the most vile abuses. "No news" may be "good news", and if that is true, the junta have succeeded. The darkness of Larkin's work may be disturbing and dispel sunny notions that tourists to the country have experienced. But the ability to disseminate "bad news" is a symbol of a free press, and the more that the people of Burma are able to rally against their oppressor and speak their minds, the better the hope that they have as a people. (Also recommended for further reading is a book from the perspective of one of the students who participated in the 1988 Burmese revolution who now is a resident of Britain, "From the Land of Green Ghosts" by Pascal Khoo Thwe) |
