This is a six part New Mandala series. Readers are warned that some of the content in this series is graphic and there is occasional coarse language. Part 1 and Part 2 were published in recent weeks.
December 1989 and it was the last Saturday before Christmas when they found Jason’s body in the bathtub inside a cheap motel room in Sydney.
According to the local tabloid he booked into the motel on Parramatta Road the night before, injected himself with heroin, filled the tub to the rim, got in, and cut both wrists with a disposable razor blade. When the motel people found him the water was all blood red and he was stone cold dead.
Jason was a 22-year-old Australian of English descent originally from the small country town of Wagga Wagga, about 700 kilometres south-west of Sydney. He was my former workmate and my only dear friend in the whole of Australia. He was not that tall, but broad, pale, and skinny, with slight curls of blonde hair on his head.
With a dimple on his left cheek he had an almost innocent look when he smiled but he frequently showed his disturbed-side when he was annoyed or angry. He came from a broken family and sometimes he jokingly claimed he was abused both physically and sexually.
We were working together as lowly servicemen for the service center of a major European car-dealership in a posh north shore suburb of Sydney. Every weekday from 8 am to 4 pm we put the expensive cars up on the hydraulic-hoists, changed the oils and replaced the filters, re-inflated and re-balanced the wheels, rotated the tyres, replaced the worn brake-pads, and washed and polished the cars as the final touch after other mechanics had done the tune-ups and other jobs on the cars. It was an easy job and money was not that bad. At least three hundred bucks a week went in the pocket with regular overtimes. That was a bit more than the minimum wage back then.
Provisional Mechanic
Since the day I landed in Sydney I knew things were going to be tough as the whole country was in a severe recession. For nearly three months I tried to find a proper engineering job through the newspapers’ job advertisements.
I had no money and I was basically surviving on the fortnightly dole of 240 dollars and it was only just enough to pay the rent. So I decided to take any job and one day I went to the local CES (Commonwealth Employment Services) office and asked for an interview. It turned out to be my lucky day.
The middle-aged female government official quickly read my resume and, after referring her thick handbook of Educational Qualifications, simply said my mechanical engineering degree from Burma was not acknowledged in Australia as a degree.
According to the Australian government my 6 year degree was only equivalent to a 2 year technical high school diploma. I was bloody lucky the same bloody government issued me a permanent resident visa as a skilled migrant based on the same bloody degree from Burma.
She then looked into her computer and said there were some jobs for a mechanical minded person and she asked if I could work on cars as I claimed to be a mechanical engineer. I said yes and she then called the company and then wrote down the address for me to go for an interview and wished me good luck.
I went there and the workshop manger liked me and gave me the serviceman job straight away. But here in overly-regulated Australia, where even the disgruntled taxi drivers are forced to wear a uniform by a draconian law, anyone working on cars in any capacity needs an appropriate license.
So the manager sent me to the MVRIC (Motor Vehicle Repair Industry Council) office and they issued me the Provisional Mechanic Licence for a year with an attached condition that I must pass a certain mechanic test to gain a real mechanic’s license. That’s how I got my first job in Australia. I was a provisional mechanic cum serviceman.
Sydney then was very different from the Sydney now. The rate of immigration was not that high and there were not that many Asians or Middle Eastern people in Sydney, unlike today. The inner western suburb of Ashfield where I lived back then was still a white suburb, not yet the second Chinatown of Sydney.
I was the only Asian in our big workshop and there were a couple of Lebanese servicemen who were always derogatorily called “camel drivers”. Most people could not pronounce my first name and whenever they saw me eating rice they accused me of eating worms and pretended to spew all over me in the lunch room.
Heroin Addict
From the beginning Jason was always nice to me and he explained things about Australians and taught me the useful slang like “Fair-Dinkum” and “Faggot” and “Fuck-Off”. I helped him to write the service sheets as he was basically illiterate and didn’t even know how to spell mechanic related words like “Diesel Engine” and “Reciprocating”.
Whenever I wrote some words down for him he always cheerfully said I was a good speller. But I could still sense the basic disbelief in his pale blue eyes that an Asian immigrant could write better English than him as a true blue Aussie. But he always came to me instead of others as if he didn’t want the Aussie mob to know he had difficulties in the writing department.
He drove a beat-up Datsun 120 Y and regularly gave me a lift to the Town Hall Station in the city on his way to Kings Cross, the notorious red light district of Sydney. I had no car for almost six months as I needed to get a driver’s license first.
At first I didn’t know the purpose of his frequent trips to the Cross. He sometimes went there once or twice a week especially on our pay-day, Thursdays. Then one afternoon after work he asked me to come along to the Cross as he wanted me to buy 10 dollars worth of gas for his car after his business there as he was short of cash. I agreed and we drove to the Cross first.
He turned left into the Victoria Street from the main Darlinghurst Road and then turned right into a small laneway by the rear of the train station and stopped the car by a small black door. He jumped out, pushed open the black door which led to a dark stair case, and quickly disappeared inside. After a few minutes he rushed back out, jumped back into the car, and we sped away.
On the way to the Servo by the Woolloomooloo Wharf he suddenly asked me if I’ve ever been to the notorious Golden Triangle. He knew I was from Burma but he never mentioned anything even remotely related to heroin before. But that afternoon he confessed his stupid addiction and all the problems he was having then. He even showed me the small foiled-packet of dirty heroin he’d just bought from the Cross.
Two hundred dollars worth of shit but just enough for only four hits he said. It was so dirty looking it looked more like a lump of brown palm-sugar powder than the fluffy white powder I heard about so many times back home. They cut the heroin with some powder and made it look so dirty he said. “You spend all your pay on this shit, what you live on for the rest of the week?”, I asked. He said that he didn’t eat that much and lived in a tiny hostel room. His answer depressed me. That’s why he was so skinny and always dreamy, I guessed.
Once I knew his desperate situation I tried to avoid him in the workshop and stopped accepting the rides as I really hated addicts. And he immediately noticed my disgust. But he still came to me often as if he badly needed a friend. Then one day he got into real shitty trouble at the workshop.
Five Dollar Theft
It was just before lunch time. I was working on a sports car on the hoist and Jason was washing a finished sedan in the wash-bay. I saw the workshop manager talking to him and then saw two heavy-set men rush out of the manager’s office at the front and run towards them standing just outside the wash-bay at the back of our long workshop.
The two were plain clothes policemen as I could see the guns on their belts as they ran. They started searching the pockets of Jason’s overall and appeared to find something. The two detectives then led Jason back into the office and later they put him into the back of a police paddy wagon and took him away. We were shocked but I simply assumed it might be a drug-related arrest. It was not, as I found out later in the lunch room.
The workshop manager came in and told us the whole pathetic story. Small money and some valuables like expensive sunglasses had been reported missing from the serviced vehicles far too many times and finally the management had decided to call the police. The cops then did a thorough job planting a five dollar note a few times in the cars and checking the notes after a mechanic or serviceman had done a job on the car. And they found the notes always missing after Jason had been in the car but not with anyone else.
So today they planted a marked fiver in the glove box of that sedan and watched and checked as the car had progressed through various mechanics and servicemen including me. After Jason had done his work, the manager checked it again and found the note missing. So he signaled the waiting detectives and they searched Jason’s overall pockets and found the marked five-dollar note.
They charged him with theft and put him in the Silverwater remand jail. He had no one and also no money to post the bail. After more than six months his case came to court and the sympathetic magistrate sentenced him to six months exact for stealing a fiver from the car, and he was immediately released as he had been inside that long.
While he was languishing in the Silverwater jail I tried to look for him in the Cross once as I didn’t know he was still in jail and I was missing him. There I ran into another addict, a pretty young girl with curly blonde hair and pale blue eyes, just like Jason.
Addict Prostitute
It was about 9 on a Saturday evening and the Cross was getting busier and rowdier as the night got older. All the loud touts in ill-fitting black suits right in front of the bright-neon-lit strip clubs were working at their aggressive best to lure the wandering blokes like me into their over priced strip joints.
I was just sauntering aimlessly on the kerbs of Darlinghurst Road vaguely hoping to see Jason among the crowd when I saw the cops trying to subdue a couple of young disorderly drunks near the Subway Station.
As I stood there holding a stubby of Foster’s in one hand and watching the cops and the drunks, the aggressive copper woman with an extendable truncheon in one hand rudely ordered me to move on. Instead of moving on I just backed away a couple of steps just to please her. And there I stepped on the feet of a young woman. Sorry, I turned round and apologised and there she was. A pretty Aussie girl smiling at me.
She might have been only 19 or even 18, with her short blonde curls and pale blue eyes she immediately reminded me of Jason. No worries, she said. “What she whispered after surprised me though. Are you looking for good time, big boy?” “Not really, why do you ask?”
“It will cost you 70 bucks, I have a place nearby”, she said. She astounded me. She was pretty and tall and curvy but too skinny for my liking and I wasn’t really after the paid sex. But I was slightly drunk and I was suddenly horny and I had never had sex with a white woman before.
She had tight jeans and a white T-shirt with no bra underneath. And I could see her nipples through at close-up and they made me excited. I had only 50 bucks, so I tried to haggle. “Fine, just follow me”, she said and turned round and walked towards the Station entrance.
Reluctantly, I followed her into the Station. She didn’t go down to the trains but took the way-out to the rear exit and headed for the same lane way where Jason once bought his heroin packet. She then walked up to the same black door and pushed open the door. I was alarmed but I still followed her onto the dimly lit staircase.
She stopped at the landing and asked me to give 20 bucks to the old man standing guard in the dark there. “For the room, mate”, she said. I doled out a twenty note and she continued upstairs. She turned left into the corridor and pushed open the first door. The tiny windowless room was well lit, and a double bed nearly filled the room and the linen was dirty.
She took off the T-shirt and asked me for the fifty. I handed her the note and she immediately left the room topless with her perky round breasts exposed. Take off your clothes, she said on the way out. I took off sneakers and my jeans and underpants but kept the flannel on. It took her more than half an hour to come back in and the long wait made me anxious and worried.
She smiled wearily at me and immediately lay on her back on the dirty bed dangling her legs from the edge. Her eyes were well closed when she told me to take off her jeans and do whatever I liked. I almost undid the top buttons of her jeans. But I saw the needle marks on the inside of her left forearm. There were so many and the last and most recent one still had a drop of blood oozing. It disgusted me.
Here I was with my dick hanging out and she was almost asleep with a dreamy look on her pale young face. She just had a hit of heroin and my fifty dollars was just enough for the shit. She was now drifting on the heroin-induced clouds and letting a complete stranger do whatever he wanted to her. She was selling her young body dirt cheap to any John or Jamal or Jiang on the dangerous streets of the Cross so that she could just inject that 50 bucks worth of dirty shit originated from the jungles of my Burma into her veins every single day.
Disgusted, I put my jeans and sneakers back on and left the room.
A week later, on Friday, just-released Jason showed up at the workshop to pick up his last pay envelope. He came into the lunchroom and chatted to us for a while before the manager came in and asked him to leave and never to come back. On his way out he jokingly yelled back to our good-byes. “Me a fag now with HIV, I got raped inside!” And we laughed.
That night he booked into the motel on Parramatta Road and the next day he was found dead.
Very sad story. Not like any of the romaticised views of heroin addiction such as from Lou Reed or Pulp Fiction. Look forward to the next installment
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I don’t know Benny, Hla Oo is still here – there’s a certain charm to it. And that’s what those romanticised stories amount to: Tales of survival.
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Hla Oo,
You are Danticat and Proust put together with an undertone of Kerouac. This is brilliant. When is your book coming out and what are going to call it?
Regards,
ZML
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1) Thanks Benny.
Even after more than 20 years I still feel sad whenever I remember my mate Jason.
2) Dear Frog,
Sorry, I don’t really get what you said “Hla Oo is still here – there’s a certain charm to it” as my English comprehension is not really up to the standard of a real native speaker yet.
Can you please enlighten me?
3) Wow, ZML, you blow me away, thanks.
I read most of Jack Kerouac’s books. The one I like best is “The Dharma Bums”, but I’d never heard of Danticat before. I vaguely knew Proust. I read the translations of a couple of Albert Camus’s books though.
Hopefully, The Scourge of Burma will be discovered and put into a book form. Maybe the ANU Press if there is such a thing.
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Hla Oo, I mean that rather than it being a depressing story, what you’ve written is uplifting because you’re still here to write it down. Tragedy and trauma are usually good, cathartic things for other people to digest.
ANU has an e-press. http://epress.anu.edu.au/editorial.html
Good luck being the ‘next’ whomever!
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Hi Hla Oo,
This is a good set of events that you presented here and i enjoyed reading it. The death of that boy in the start of your story and that of Jason had few common threads including both bad boys (kind of), both died in isolation and of course heroin. No matter what color of this powder may be, it brings death and destruction of oneself and associated families.
Burma is consider to be producer of approx. 70% of heroin consumed anywhere in this world and Burmese Junta is known to support this production.
I believe your ecperience from past as a soldier and as a student from repressed Burma could be explosive and an interesting read.
Hope to read your book soon.
Cheers
AP
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AP,
Countless Burmese boys were dying of heroin overdoses well before young Australian men and women started dying in the lane ways of the Cross in Sydney.
Like opium as a legacy of British Empire, heroin is the long lasting legacy of America’s Vietnam War. CIA, with the help of White Chinese KMT remnants on the Burma-Thai border, introduced the large scale production of heroin to supply the drugs to their GIs in Vietnam.
The returning GIs brought back their heroin habits home and an enormous market was created on the streets of every countries of the developed world. A large scale industry was born and Burma as a failed-state is just satisfying that insatiable global demand.
At the beginning only the ethnic rebels were involved in the heroin industry. But gradually individual army units started benefiting from the heroin trade as my old company did by allowing the traffickers to use our train carriage.
Eventually the rouge and powerful elements of Burmese army started cooperating with the drug lords like Khun Sa and Lau Sit Han as the economic sanctions and international isolation has forced Burmese generals into a tight corner where the heroin trade is the only way to arm the large army and fight the long civil war.
Pepsi and Unocal and other large foreign businesses were forced to withdraw from Burma and the textile export industry was snuffed out in its infancy so Burmese were forced to flood USA and others with her only viable commodity left, the heroin.
The heroin scourge will continue unless the international community does the about turn and reengage with Burma.
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Hla Oo,
Thanks for info. You are right that industrial production of all these crops were introduced by foreign elements, however local tribes have been using opium as pain killer since ages. Developed countries as well known to take undue advantage of under developed countries to support their interest. Cultivation of blue in India in past by British government and exploitation of Papua New Guinea by BHP are a few examples.
As far as reengaging Burma is concerned, I do not think it will be possible till characters like Than Shwe, Tay Za and other by-products of military junta or any other elements influenced by corruption remain in power. Any insurgency from super powers will also be futile as major financial interests lie in China who supports Burma and it could turn explosive due to support of North Korea. I guess, Burma needs to unite and throw away military junta on its own.
I am eagerly waiting for you next chapter.
Regards
AP
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“economic sanctions and international isolation has forced Burmese generals into a tight corner where the heroin trade is the only way to arm the large army and fight the long civil war.
Pepsi and Unocal and other large foreign businesses were forced to withdraw from Burma and the textile export industry was snuffed out in its infancy so Burmese were forced to flood USA and others with her only viable commodity left, the heroin.”
This rationalisation is in reality more relevant to the insurgent armies than to the Tatmadaw which can’t possibly hide behind that excuse. It doesn’t stand up to scrutiny chronologically (not the first time Hla Oo has shown this tendency to be fast and loose with facts), since the sanctions did not happen until several years after the collapse of the CPB in 1989 and Khin Nyunt’s subsequent ceasefire deals with its mutinous ethnic contingents.
Everyone became involved in the heroin trade for funds more readily generated than by other means, including the CIA during the Vietnam War. Funds to procure arms and munitions in the case of ethnic armies, even their Communist leaders who were initially very anti-drugs relented when Chinese aid dried up. Funds to feather their nests in the case of junta officers who did a roaring trade in partnership with the KMT remnants.
Hla Oo’s disingenuous linking of the sanctions and the narcostate activities smacks of spinning a junta apologist line.
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Moe Aung
You are absolutely right. Nobody can hide behind any possible excuse for dealing with poison like heroin.
I also agree with you that Hla Oo has provided a very soft approach in justifying use of this trade by military junta. Without going into slandering, I would suspect that he may have some personal legacy reasons like support from military a general (as mentioned in Chapter-1). But we have to wait and see his stand.
Since 1962 Burma has been ruled by inefficient superstitious and paranoid generals who used numerology and astrology to drive their policies. I trust everyone know about this fact, so I would not delve into details. You have to also understand that most of these generals do not know anything except for war as they were brought up fighting wars and think that military as well as heavy handed approaches are only solutions for everything. Greed adds fuel to this. Most of the income generated in or by Burma lines up these military generals’ pockets. The face that Than Shwe’s bunkers have been found lined up with billion dollars and his daughter’s wedding are few examples of this. His grandson made a right (although cocky) statement in Singapore that “We control all resources of Burma and no one can touch us”. And all this is happening while Burma is considered to be one of the poorest countries in world. Than Shwe from ruling party and Tay Za from business side control all resources in Burma. And of course, trading of heroin is one of the aspects of whole story. Many companies and countries will and do take advantage of whole situation. Than Shwe did not even let international aide to land in Burma after cyclone in Irrawaddy. Go figure.
We have to understand the root cause of civil war. Please excuse my limited knowledge, however I believe that this was is due to policies of genocide and ethnic cleansing policies of military junta and democratic system worked effectively from 1948 to 1961. We should not forget that Ang San Suu Kyi is still the only elected leader so far.
Please join me to that Burmese people get enough strength to them and some sense to poor soldiers to throw away this military junta and bring peace and prosperity to this beautiful and resourceful country.
God bless all.
AP
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Moe Aung,
There in my series and my comments I was claiming from my own experiences that the Burmese Army is in running drugs and here you are labeling me A Junta Apologist.
Wow, what the hell is going on?
You definitely have a serious grudge against me or it is just a pure hatred against another fellow Burmese who dare to speak his own bloody mind without fear.
I hope you still remember your bitter attacks on me after my U Thant Uprising article here on New Mandala in 2008. You even searched and pointed out Henry Soe Win’s U Thant Uprising article to prove that I was fast and loose with facts.
I know Ko Soe Win very well as he is living here in Australia and also his company used to buy machinery from our company. He posted my U Thant article on his web list server D4B (Democracy for Burma) recently and even told me that my article is the most detailed and practical account of events during that uprising among a few writings about that uprising.
We are now writing a book together to record the actual events of the U Thant Uprising as a sad part of the history of Burma for posterity.
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Hla Oo
Nothing personal. Whilst I actually enjoy reading your accounts tremendously, and I’d say you fulfill a great need for true stories to be told about our country’s post-independence and recent past, a fictionalised account seems more your forte than a factual one. Embellishment can be acceptable up to a point, but playing fast and loose with facts in aid of spinning a line in the Burmese military’s favour on a regular basis would appear to indicate a barely disguised agenda notwithstanding your anti-regime rhetoric. The cynic would say you could well be a deliberate plant on their payroll in the wake of the 1988 uprising like they infiltrated the ranks of students who fled to the border and beyond.
AP
“Please join me to that Burmese people get enough strength to them and some sense to poor soldiers to throw away this military junta and bring peace and prosperity to this beautiful and resourceful country.”
I have argued in a number of threads on the NM and news articles in The Irrawaddy in favour of regime change by our own efforts inside the country. This People Power movement must encompass the Burman majority and the ethnic minorities in a unified struggle to overthrow the military dictatorship in its current and future incarnations – the real scourge of Burma.
The NLD has been boxed into a corner as we speak, and it’s do or die now. It will be banned and outlawed by the unjust and undemocratic election laws, not just ASSK and other political prisoners barred from participation, if it refuses to capitulate. Even if it decides to field a proxy made up of those among the leadership who wish to contest the polls (an amicable split taking a leaf out of the KIO’s book, allowing the main party to stand firm on the Shwegondaing Declaration of last April), it will face a ban nonetheless.
Or it can make a united stand and organise a mass boycott that will more than likely lead to a brutal crackdown. It must therefore prepare for a recurrent worst case scenario, and get everyone on side – urban workers, rural farmers, students, monks, small and middling businessmen, and civil servants including the police, in a show of solidarity and organised mass action. It must prepare for a general strike. It must win over the Tatmadaw rank and file to help level the playing field. It must have the courage of its conviction to fight to the bitter end, and prepare for an uprising.
Outside help in the form of funds and arms is more than welcome both before and especially after a parallel government is declared which will enable the international community to recognise and assist immediiately. If state violence is legitimate, so is armed resistance. The NLD must not remain hamstrung by its nonsenical Western liberal dove commitment to non-violence.
Fear of civil war is utter hogwash when we’ve had it going on for six decades already. The minorities have borne the brunt, and the Burman’s turn, although it also started soon after independence in 1948 when the Communists were driven underground, a fate now awaiting the NLD, only became full blown with urban unrest and bloody crackdowns. Whither the NLD?
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“Fear of civil war is utter hogwash when we’ve had it going on for six decades already. The minorities have borne the brunt, and the Burman’s turn, ……. ”
I dare you to go back Burma and give someone a chance to shoot you in the guts with a 7.62 mm caliber G3 so that you know the fear of civil war is not utter hogwash but flesh and blood real.
Inlet wound is so small but the exit wound is so big one can put his whole fist inside the jagged wound and it will normally take about half-a-day of ultimate suffering till you die. And you wouldn’t even dare to cry while your are slowly dying as it could hurt you more.
Believe me, Moe Aung, I ‘d seen with my own eyes many tens of young men and boys, both ethnics and Burmans, dying that way.
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Hla Oo
I shall leave the technical aspects of killing and maiming to the expert. Yes, explain that to the schoolboy in green and the monk in saffron so they won’t dare protest or rise up again. To the generals they may be communist or bogus respectively, and any notion of fairness and freedom deserves to be nipped in the bud. And they had already been assured that ‘when the army shoots it aims to hit’.
I wish your generals would give us the people a break so violence would never have to enter the equation. The reality however is that horrific state violence has been meted out by the same oufit (a change of cast but the same old performance ad infinitum ad nauseum since independence) to all and sundry, Burman as well as ethnic, with no let up, there just is no alternative. We must make sure the sacrifice this time will not be in vain. The people have no choice but to pick up the gauntlet.
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Gents,
I believe we are getting into an argument which will not lead us anywhere. There is a fine line between fact and fiction. A good combination of both can make a good story or sensationalised news. However, you would agree with me that this type of story/news would be relevant to some other avenue instead of this website.
Hla Oo – I believe that you have good thoughts for your country and liberation of your country from military dictatorship. However, Moe Aung is right that your story and various postings have not shown this. You have made some really sharp and good comments for Thai postings, but not for Burma. So may be you can reflect this in your next chapters and present us a clear understanding of your views regarding military dictatorship in Burma. I trust whole world knows about situation and upcoming sham of election in Burma.
Also, the gory details of killing would only sensationalise and try to hide facts.
You also mentioned that you are writing a book regarding your experience in Burma. You can present your feelings as well as facts about military oppression in Burma. This will help people to see the real picture from people who were affected by this. Please do not let your past as a soldier or other connections with military generals (Chapter-1) cloud the reality.
You can also donate some of your income from this book to the welfare of people of Burma (not Generals of Burma).
God bless all.
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Dear AP, thanks for your comments.
Concerning your comment about whether my writings are suitable or not for the New Mandala is not your or my decision to make as that responsibility is solely in the hands of our good professors Andrew and Nicholas.
I am not writing this series chapter by chapter. The whole thing is written and already with NM and they are releasing it part by part.
In my humble opinion, in this propaganda war about Burma, there is the Generals own New Light of Myanmar on one extreme and the likes of Sorrow and NED funded Irrawaddy on the opposite extreme.
Our ANU funded New Mandala is right in the middle and that is the reason they let me write, I reckoned. I am a tax-paying Burma-born Australian and I am entitled to air my view about my birth country on this truly Australian web site.
Please also allow me to repeat the comment of Mr Nick Nostitz.
“Your unique view would and could add much to the usually sickeningly one-sided and polemic Burma debate. For me, your posts here have been most enlightening and educating.”
http://www.newmandala.org/2010/01/06/china-and-the-wa/
Based on your comments I now assume that you are obviously on the Irrawaddy’s side. So just throw mud on me, mate, I don’t really care if the shit stick or not. Just please do not patronize me!
My only concern is that you know about my race and my background and my nationality but I do not know yours. That makes this fight unfairly one-sided.
Yours respectfully,
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Hla Oo,
I did not criticised anyone’s (including your’s) writing. I said – “A good combination of both can make a good story or sensationalised news. However, you would agree with me that this type of story/news would be relevant to some other avenue instead of this website.”
I totally agree with you that as a resident of this country you can enjoy the liberty of freedom of free speech. It is also true that polarised views will never result in open debate. I am glad that you can enjoy all these liberties and freedom in democratic Australia.
Now, let me ask this question to you. Do you think similar freedom should be available to Burmese people as well? Or, they should be shot at or put in the prison for expressing their views? Do you support freedom of your past country? Do you condone military rule and dictatorship in Burma? Do you agree that Ang San Suu Kyi is the elected leader of Burma? Should your birth country have democracy?
These are some of the hard facts that I asked you to consider while writing about your birth country. As much as your past soldier life or your past of being able to kill someone (Chapter-1) could be glorious for you, you can not ignore the pain and suffering of people of your birth country.
On a lighter side. Why you have to provide references from other readers to prove how good is your writing? I think proof is in the pudding and everyone has different taste buds :).
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Sorry AP, this is my position about Burma.
1) No more civil war.
2) Lifting of all the economic sanctions.
2) Democratic political system similar to Australia with initial involvement of the military with the condition that army will go back to the barracks in a fixed period, say 10 years.
3) I do not accept ASSK as the elected leader of Burma.
I am now writing a political essay about my reason for not accepting
ASSK and also blaming her father General Aung San for all our sufferings since the British left Burma in the hands of his cronies, U Nu and Ne Win.
The essay title is “Burma in Limbo – Aung San, his army, and his daughter.” It is a radical manifesto.
My grand father fought against British. My father fought against both British and Japanese and the in the civil war. I did fight in the civil war too. The only reason my son is not fighting in this bloody civil war now is he was born an Australian.
Three generations of us put our lives on the line and shed blood and tears for Burma. For what? Nothing it seems. But I still have a huge emotional attachment to Burma and that’s why I am writing for the New Mandala.
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Hla Oo
Surprise, surprise. Thanks for nailing your colours to the mast. And thanks AP for getting Hla Oo aka Harry Oo “or […]” to fess up eventually.
“not accepting ASSK and also blaming her father General Aung San for all our sufferings since the British left Burma in the hands of his cronies, U Nu and Ne Win”
A very loyal “ex”- Tatmadaw man faithfully peddling the junta line in his own words. So much for authentic, no axe to grind, fact-based, unbiased contributions to NM. So much smothering love for the people of Burma.
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Moe Aung,
It seems you have a love-hate feelings towards me. One comment you were happily appraising my writings and the next post immediately crucifying me for what I genuinely believe in.
This has been going on too long for more than two years on the NM and it is starting to get under my skin.
Are you Daw Moe Aung or Sai Moe Aung or Salai Moe Aung or Lawan Moe Aung ……?
I don’t think you are a Burmese man you trying to portray yourself as such.
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Gents,
I am not the moderator of this site, but I think we are out of line with these personal remarks. I trust this is a site to share or discus our thoughts (sometimes controversial) and anonymity gives us that benefit. Lets refrain ourselves from such personal postings.
Now going back to Hla Oo’s comments. I am glad that you support democracy for Burma. However, I am against lifting sanctions against Burma till military junta leaves power and country has complete democracy. My personal belief is that all military generals should be investigated against their breach of human rights and accumulation of their wealth. Leaving these lunatics in charge for any longer will be a mistake the international as well as Burmese communities can not afford to make.
I think not accepting ASSK as elected leader shows flaws in your understanding of democracy. This could also be due to your legacy as army family which may give you only one aspect of overall picture. Let me remind you that in democracy the elections are held independently (without influence from forceful factors like military). In last elections held ASSK was the leader the party that won the election as per democratic approach. However, military generals humiliated with this did not return the power back to the democratic system.
It will be interesting to read your essay about ASSK and her father. I would also like to see how you relate Ne Win with Aung San. Apart from the fact that both of them fought similar wars, there is a major gap between ideologies.
Keenly awating your next essay – “Burma in Limbo – Aung San, his army, and his daughter.”
Cheers
AP
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AP,
You are not a Burmese. Probably an Australian with a deep interest in Burma and her long-suffering people.
But I sincerely believe you are a Scholar and a Gentleman.
Thanks for your valuable comments as they made me understand myself more.
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Hla Oo
Does it matter what my gender or ethnicity is or if I am not born and bred Burmese which I am? Does it not only reflect on your own prejudices?
Is it so strange that I enjoy the stories but smell a rat from the beginning with your ‘eye witness’ account of U Thant’s funeral? A ripping yarn is still a ripping yarn, and that’s what Burmese kids grow up with. They do realise it’s all made up.
And yes, I do look forward to ‘your take’ on our national hero and father of the Tatmadaw and independence Aung San , and his heroic daughter leading the ‘second struggle for independence’ as she has phrased it, this time from the living hell of military yoke. How you lot try to pass the buck to and discredit those who can’t defend themselves and those still being persecuted and incarcerated. How you are set to annihilate or drive the NLD underground as they did with the others, Burman and ethnic alike, from the time of independence. How you started the civil war and carried on, all the time blaming everyone but yourselves and portraying yourselves as the great heroes picking up the mantle of Aung San. How you now try to disown and distance yourselves from him and your godfather Ne Win in order to build up your own unenviable image. Have you lot looked at yourselves in the mirror lately? And how do you people sleep at night?
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