Preying on the Pagan Plain

...Less than a year later, troops in the capital were given six months advance pay...

...Although making ends meet consumes nearly all the energy of the Burmese, at times they have managed to mount concerted bids for reform...

...The government gave its first order to evacuate Pagan on April 4, 1990...

...Only government buildings remain, among them the Tourist Burma Office, renamed Myanmar Travel and Tours...

...High school students must travel elsewhere if they want to continue their education, something most cannot afford to do...

...The women told me they had never expected to use their education...

...To an American sitting at home and paying bills on the first of the month, this may not seem to be much of a dream, but for most Burmese, prosperity and democracy are identical twins...

...There were also several outdoor showers in which the town's sizable toad population gathered every night to relish the leftover tourist damp...

...The boom started with the first Buddhist King of Burma, Anawrahta, and ended when King Narathihapate refused to pay tribute to Kublai Khan, whose Mongol Army overran Pagan in retribution...

...does not permit its citizens to live in Yosemite...

...In 19841 spent three precious days in Pagan—out of the week a visitor was then permitted in Burma...

...Karen Swenson, a new NL contributor, is a journalist and poet who has written for the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal...

...I answered yes...

...The students continued to protest throughout the summer, enduring a series of BSPP chairmen loyal to Ne Win who attempted to suppress the democracy movement with arrests, torture, rape, and executions...

...A great deal of money has been spent to renovate the religious buildings, but the new brickwork is of abysmal quality...

...He studied it back and front for a few minutes and then said firmly as he handed itback, "My ambition is to own one some day...

...These unattractive features are a consequence of the displaced people's search for new livelihoods...

...Most of the few remaining lacquerware shops are operated by the state as well...

...The sisters hope the local authorities will allow their restaurant to stay in business and prosper, so that they can provide for their next generation...

...Myanmar is one of the few countries in Southeast Asia where most of the inhabitants, male and female, wear sarongs, called longyis...

...Many countries get democracy...

...Today it bustles with business in large part because most of the other hotels have been torn down...

...In the February 27 issue of the Working People's Daily, the official newspaper, an article stated: "We must take pride in being Myanmars...

...But this is not the first time that the government's callousness and ineptitude have dealt an economic blow to the people...

...Now the government has had to build small houses for caretakers to live nearby the prized tourist attractions and protect them from vandals...

...While this propaganda cry is meant to help SLORC keep order, it reflects the sincere convictions of those in command...

...Similarly, everyone must travel to work, yet even the closest towns are a long way for people who have at best bicycles or pony carts as vehicles...

...At the entrances peddlers push cheap wares, and ragged women holding babies plead for handouts...

...It has given no explanation for the removal of Pagan's residents...

...He suggested economic changes as well as a referendum on instituting a multiple party system, but neither transpired...

...In September 1987, for instance, 25,35 and 75 kyat notes were demonetized without compensation, thereby invalidating 80 per cent of thecurrency...

...Inside the temples the caretakers' children beg from visitors wandering the cool corridors...

...Only the military have money to send children to trade schools...

...Pagan was obviously prosperous...

...When by May 28 no one had left Pagan, the residents were told to decide where they would like to be resettled...

...When my country get democracy...

...First, the government is broke, having spent all of its foreign exchange to re-equip the Army, and is out to impress representatives of the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program with an up-todate national historic site...

...Pagan, though, was never a natural wonder...

...Pagan used to be a dusty, pleasant village where the inhabitants lived in the embraceof the ancient city walls and worshiped at ancestral temples...

...To their great surprise, they received their wish in May 1990...

...even the few that were co-opted by the state are close to empty...

...The townspeople used to care for the temples, removing sprouts of trees growing in the crevices of the bricks...

...Once they were gone, however, the town was bulldozed and planted in an effort to create a park-like setting on the arid plain...

...Once unnoticeable within the bamboo, wood and woven thatch structures of the town, the office sits like a shoe box on the open plain, surrounded by the wilted sticks of government planted trees and shrubs, many encircled by white painted stones...

...In addition, the supply of electricity is inadequate, and SLORC has only put up an elementary school...

...Saw Maung, another Ne Win puppet, quickly abolished all former governing institutions and established the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) as the sole ruling body...

...Myanmar's economy is dismal, and good, skilled jobs are available only to relatives of military personnel...

...Looking at the little trees dying in neat circles of stones, I recalled a conversation with a son of my landlord...

...Now we have to travel long way to our temples...

...In the evenings the restaurants were packed with travelers speaking a variety of European languages...

...Her latest collection of poems is A Sense of Direction...

...Thus SLORC might defend its depopulation scheme by claiming that, after all, the U.S...

...General Ne Win was known to keep Swiss bank accounts, yet in 1987 his nation was granted Least Developed Country status by the UN...

...The evacuation, in short, has reduced a prosperous community to the poverty line...

...An evicted resident, speaking in a low voice that evoked the fear he and his family had felt, told me soldiers came into Pagan and threatened to start shooting if people did not pack up and go...

...They replied that they were not interested in leaving and wanted the chance to argue their position before the authorities...

...Democracy is the magic word, the solution to all of Myanmar's problems...

...He opened it with a flick of his thumb to reveal an array of purported sapphires and rubies for sale...

...There are, I believe—and diplomats living in Rangoon agree—three reasons for the evictions...

...Shyly he asked, "Could I see it...

...Seven centuries later, there are 2,217 temples still standing on the plain, but last year the town of Pagan was eradicated as thoroughly by the military government of Myanmar (Burma's official name now) as the old capital was by the Mongols...

...Between 1057 and 1287 some 13,000 pagodas, shrines and other religious buildings were built on this expanse beside the Irrawaddy River...

...Second, SLORC is seeking to attract large numbers of tourists to Pagan and to profit from their spending...

...Today, a visitor must stay in one of the government-run hotels that are scattered over the area...

...In December 1988, SLORC made self-serving deals with Thai military leaders for lumber and fishing rights...

...The morning before leaving Pagan, I walked to the crossroads that had been the center of town and tried to picture my old guest house, which had stood near the Mahabodhi Temple...

...Just two privately owned restaurants are left along the road that stretches from the tourist office to the town of Nyaung U. I had lunch in one of them...

...Finally, and perhaps of greatest importance given the notorious xenophobia of theMyanmar government, it worried about the local population having too much contact with tourists and acquiring foreign ideas...

...In July General Ne Win, strongman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP), resigned as chairman...

...Mine, I remember, had square rooms of woven bamboo...

...Still, the Burmese pushed for elections...

...The student demonstrations, for example, began in March 1988 as a demand for free multiparty elections...

...They gave us 250 kyat, but it cost 450 kyat to mosquito-proof a house...

...We must heed SLORC Chairman Senior General Saw Maung's words not to let our motherland become the abode of mixed bloods devoured by alien cultures...

...Besides bearing the financial burden of moving, the people had to dig their own wells in New Pagan, where the sun beats down mercilessly because there are no trees...

...Diplomats in Rangoon report that members of the Army receive food at favorable prices, and as I traveled around Myanmar I noticed a decided contrast between the new concrete housing going up for soldiers and the woven bamboo homes of civilians...

...Young men and women could be seen leaving the shops following successful bargaining sessions loaded down with lacquerware and large many-jointed Burmese puppets...

...It considers the desire for freedom to criticize the government to be as un-Burmese as the desire for blue jeans...

...The two cheerful young sisters who run it both studied at the university in Rangoon until 1988, when violence between the government and students supported by the capital's residents resulted in the school's closing...

...One man approached me in the Shwezigon Pagoda proffering a velvet case...

...Outside there was a row of Western toilets without seats, their doors open to the road so that those strolling by could see how well equipped the lodgings were...

...Simple wood and bamboo homes embellished with banana plants and small gardens looked out from under the shade of arching trees...

...Since the vote, SLORC has kept her under house arrest and simply refused to transfer power to the NLD...

...The streets were then patrolled by cars with loudspeakers ordering families to dismantle their homes immediately and move them to New Pagan, about three miles to the south...

...Returning recently, I was unprepared for the shock of seeing virtually no evidence of the town's existence, despite having heard reports of its destruction...

...Architecturally similar to all Burmese towns, it was distinct in that it was lucky enough to be a tourist center filled with restaurants, small curio shops selling local handicrafts, and primitive guest houses...

...He inquired whether I had an American Express card...

...Seven years ago the plush government hotel in Pagan was relatively empty...

...In the case of the forced relocations from Rangoon, Saw Maung's regime gave as its reasons overcrowding and poor sanitation...

...I took it out and handed it to him...

...Four townspeople tried to arrange a meeting with officials, but were promptly taken into custody and sentenced to four months in Myingyan jail...

...Others I talked to were vociferous in their objections to the government's policies...

...The military views with alarm and disapproval the changes in dress and manners that have accompanied the acquisition of prosperity in such places as Singapore and Bangkok...

...Earlier, it had forced people in districts of Rangoon to relocate to satellite towns on the city's periphery...

...Over the last four years the economy has suffered abuse at the hands of the military, too...

...Instead, the Council found itself confronted by the overwhelming victory of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and its head, the extraordinarily charismatic Aung San Suu Kyi...

...One man burst intoalitanyofcomplaints in broken English: "My grandmother cried and cried every day after we left...

...it was the product of human labor, and the descendants of the original builders were still in residence...

...each had a single dangling lightbulb and a Japanese oscillating fan...

...On September 18 the Army commander, General Saw Maung, and his military cohorts seized control...

...A TRAVELER'S NOTEBOOK-1 Preying on the Pagan Plain By Karen Swenson Pagan About the time that an AngloSaxon monk with chilled fingers was writing out Beowulf in England, Burmese masons, stonecarvers and painters were constructing temples in the parched and searing heat of the Pagan Plain...

...Thanks to its repression of public opinion, SLORC had become so isolated from the people that it apparently believed it either would win the election or would be able to dominate a weak multiparty coalition...