Hermit junta heads for the hills

Plenty of national governments have moved their country’s capital from a commercial centre out to the boonies, but no one has done it in quite the same demented style as Myanmar’s notorious military junta.

At precisely 6:37 a.m. on November 6, Myanmar’s leaders surprised the world, the country’s 54 million citizens and even the government’s own employees by loading up a fleet of trucks and moving all 32 government ministries 320 km north, from the bustling port city of Yangon to a vast, fortified compound in the small, remote city of Pyinmana, halfway between Yangon and the city of Mandalay.

With a population of only 100,000, Pyinmana is in an undeveloped part of the country, nestled in a mountainous area covered by dense forest.

The junta has named its new administrative nerve centre Nay Pyi Daw, or “resting place of the king.”

Amenities at the partially built compound are reportedly spartan, but do include military headquarters, ministry buildings, large meeting halls, residences, hotels, a hospital, an airport, underground bunkers, a hydroelectric plant and, yes, a golf course.

Foreign diplomats in Yangon were told that if they had urgent business with the relocated government, they could send it a fax — though no number was immediately available.

Officially, the junta has justified the move by noting that Pyinmana is more central and thus better located to serve the country’s needs.

Unofficially, the junta seems to have been spooked by the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, and has revealed that it had been secretly building the new capital over the past three years. The junta leaders are no strangers to jungle warfare, and the new compound would offer better defence against hostile forces.

The need for the precise timing of the move remains a mystery, but the junta is renowned for making major decisions based on astrology and “lucky numbers.”

(Past Myanmar governments have also been deeply superstitious, with the country having held its independence ceremony from the British, following astrological dictates, at exactly 4:20 a.m. on January 4, 1948.)

With the recent move, there was the expected grumbling among affected government employees, with some complaining about being forced to relocate without their families, and having been given little notice prior to moving day.

However, any government employees refusing to move are reportedly being threatened with charges of treason.

While Pyinmana is an obscure city to foreigners, its name does resonate with the people of Myanmar. When the Japanese empire occupied Myanmar (then Burma) during the Second World War, Pyinmana was the base of the resistance movement, the Burma Independence Army. This rebel army was led by General Aung San, father of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, who has remained under house arrest in Yangon for 10 almost-continuous years, and most of the last 15 years.

Suu Kyi is still the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which won 392 of the 485 seats in the last parliamentary elections, in 1990, compared to 10 for the current junta, which has been in power since 1962. The junta ignored these election results, clamped down on its opposition and has continued to rule with an iron fist.

Since 1990, Myanmar’s leaders have been squeezed by economic sanctions and battered by relentless criticism from the West over human rights abuses. Washington imposed a trade ban on Myanmar after Suu Kyi was detained again in May 2003.

Under the junta’s dismal rule, Myanmar has largely missed out on the economic growth that its neighbours Thailand, India and China have enjoyed.

In the mining sector, the only Western company with a major asset in Myanmar is Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines. The company has been active there since 1992 and is a 50/50 partner with the government at their Monywa copper project and its S&K mine in the west-central portion of the country.

Even a company as nimble and connected as Ivanhoe was caught off-guard by the government’s sudden decampment to Pyinmana.

Once a fairly prosperous country by Southeast Asian standards, Myanmar has been diminished to the point where its only significant exports are tropical wood and opium — indeed, Myanmar ranks as the world’s second largest producer of opium, after Afghanistan.

One of the regime’s few friends is its major trading partner, China, whose government actively defends it in the United Nations arena. Japan is also a benefactor, having thus far provided US$26 million in grant aid to Myanmar through UNICEF.

Earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice included Myanmar in her list of “outposts of tyranny,” along with Belarus, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Zimbabwe.

Also this year, Myanmar’s leaders condemned former Czech president Vaclav Havel and South Africa’s retired archbishop Desmond Tutu for demanding that the UN Security Council investigate widespread reports from Myanmar of forced labour, torture, opium production, child soldiers and mass rape.

The Myanmar government has similarly rejected a recent damning report on the state of its religious freedom, released by the U.S. State Department, saying the report is baseless and politically motivated.

The junta has spent the past decade making overtures towards democracy, indicating that it would consult its population to help it devise a “road map” to that end.

However, the junta’s consistent, non-democratic actions — such as the recent imprisonment of 14 more political opponents — suggest the world can only expect more gamesmanship and no real reforms from a democracy conference due to begin in Myanmar early in December, which the NLD is boycotting.