Seven years ago the military government in Burma packed up and left Yangon and moved north 320 km to a brand spanking new capital, Naypyidaw. The name means “royal capital” or “abode of the kings” ostensibly celebrating ancient kings, but it seems a little ironic, named as it was by the Generals so long in power.
It was built in 3 years on the site of what once was just a field and by all accounts is quite grand, with huge elaborate government buildings, color-coded apartment blocks, mansions for the big guns (pardon the expression), swish air-con shopping malls (empty), a 20-lane boulevard (empty) and a huge golden pagoda to rival Shwedagon in Yangon. The story is that the decision to move the capital was announced without warning to the public in November 2005 at the same time several convoys of military trucks, battalions and government ministries were heading out of Yangon.
To go along with this modern new capital is, of course, a modern new road. The new highway stretches from Yangon to Naypyidaw and has since then continued north to Mandalay, 520 km in all. We saw its end in Mandalay; it was a surprising sight, very incongruous as it cut through areas of dirt roads and the tangle of poorly maintained roads on the outskirts of the city. This highway was wide and paved and even landscaped in places where boulevards divide the lanes leading towards the city. Little stumps of newly-planted, evenly spaced bougainvillea were drying out in the sun, some scorched brown, some with little patches of leaves and even some struggling along with small clumps of deep pink flowers. I appreciated the attempt, it will be a great sight if they survive, reminding me of the Singapore lush bougainvillea boulevard highway from the airport in to the city. For now, though, this particular highway is still bare, stark and pretty empty and looks very out of place.
Naypyidaw also has a new zoo and one day trucks backed up at the Yangon zoo and took off with half the animals to stock the new one. Now all during the military government the media has been very strictly censored, and publishers, editors and writers were routinely harassed, jailed and shut down. As a result, news passed through gossip in the tea houses and by reading between very well constructed lines. When the animals were taken away, following the move of the government and military, one newspaper headline read “The Animals Have Left Yangon!” Cheeky. (They didn’t get away with it, they were shut down, but may have been worth it for the laughs).
Moving capitals is not an unusual thing for Burma, there’s lots of precedence for this. Although Yangon was the capital since the British conquered in 1862, throughout recorded history rulers of Burma have routinely moved their capitals for one reason or another, along the way building huge monuments to themselves and to the Buddha, the bigger the better. In Bagan (old spelling Pagan) the ruling dynasty set the standard of monument building for all those following to try to emulate. There, 10,000 temples were built in a 40 square mile area in the plains of Pagan by the Irrawaddy river, over a period of only about 200 years – quite a feat, do the math. In these long ago days (11th-13th C) this would have taken a lot of manpower. Who do you suppose built these? Wars between rulers were not all about land, they were also very much about getting more people to do the work. By force, that would be slavery.
It is a fact that the Burmese military government of the past 60 years routinely used forced labor to build and maintain roads, bridges and railroads as well as to work in mines and logging and other activities, in enterprises owned not only by the authorities and military but by the cronies as well. Ethnic minorities in the troubled parts of the country are particularly vulnerable as they are conscripted by the military engaged in conflict with these groups. Villagers are used as porters, to construct and service military camps, build roads to transport troops into the war-torn areas, and to provide other services to the soldiers I won’t go in to. They are also vulnerable to routine forced relocation of entire villages and communities that was, and still is, common.
A year ago, after the elections and the beginnings of a hoped-for transition to democracy, the Burmese government signed an agreement with the International Labour Organization (ILO), agreeing to end forced labor by the year 2015. The ILO had for years been issuing report after report, along with any number of other UN agencies suggesting that the widespread and systematic use of forced labor in Burma could be called “crimes against humanity”. Call it whatever you want, the military government continued to do whatever they damned well pleased for decades, despite any international condemnation. But progress it is, even if this agreement to end this egregious activity is for 3 years hence. Although one could ask, and I do, what kind of cockamamie agreement is that? How about ending it now? Or yesterday?
When we were in Burma we flew up to Heho, the airport closest to Inle Lake in the western part of Shan State (where a plane full of tourists had crashed there a few weeks earlier). Before continuing on to visit Inle Lake, we instead traveled from the airport up to Pindaya to overnight there and visit the town and the nearby Buddha cave, a huge structure filled to the brim with gold Buddha statues. It wasn’t all that far, but the road was not that great and indeed was under construction in places, so the trip was slow (and the scenery was great). “They are building a new road from Heho to Pindaya”, our guide explained. Then, with a bit of a smirk, he added, “They’ve been building it for the past 10 years”.
In parts where we had to slow down for the road’s construction work, we had a real good look at the workers. They were mostly women in their long skirts and flip flops out under the hot sun, sifting stones in wide round bamboo trays, raking gravel, and worst of all, spreading steaming hot asphalt with hand tools. There was very little heavy equipment in sight, it appeared to be mostly hand labor. My picture, the first one, taken through the car window was the only image I had; mostly I just looked and wondered. This scene is echoed in so many other places and in some very questionable circumstances; the next image of a forced labor build from intercontinentalcry.org and the other an image from the building of the Naypyidaw highway from irriwaddy.org.
No wonder it’s taking 10 years to update this relatively small section of road. No doubt the road to Pindaya will eventually be fixed and finished, as it is now a tourist destination. In the eastern part of Shan State and other areas of long time conflict as well as rural areas in so much of the rest of the county, people there have been waiting forever for any kind of paved road at all. The new government has indicated a commitment to upgrade the roads infrastructure in these outer areas. Now they have to figure out how to do things differently.
I didn’t ask our guide how these women on the road to Pindaya came to be building roads or how much they earned doing such horrible work with such primitive equipment. I just watched silently. I was afraid to ask.
Like many things I saw in Burma, not too much has changed since those long ago days of rulers and conflicts and conquests and subsistence living in the countryside. Some days later, as we flew from Inle Lake back to Yangon I could see below me the new highway to the new capital cutting through the land, very straight, very modern, still very empty. I couldn’t help thinking about the contrast between this outward sign of modernization with the images of the women in flip flops sifting stones by hand.
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