For the past two centuries, the country’s natural beauty has been at odds with its brutal history and violent status quo.
The golden light will tempt you. As the sun rises over the plains of the ancient city of Bagan, it bathes in the more than 2,000 temples that dot the landscape in otherworldly tranquility. In these moments, the specter of the kingdom that once existed between the 9th and 13th centuries is more evident; now the troubles can be cast off more easily.
Myanmar has a lot of gold: it gleams on the skin of the diamond-topped Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, one of the oldest and holiest Buddhist temples in the country; it shines from countless Buddha statues and ancient relics in glass cases. But the sunrise over the Bagan plains is the most enchanting gold. Dawn in Burma reminds people of the humility needed to contemplate the present, evoking the glory of the past. In those fleeting moments, we answer why world travelers still listen to Myanmar’s siren song.
Recent history has not been in Myanmar’s favor. Burma, not officially known until 30 years ago, was colonized by the British in stages, the result of three different wars over 60 years. Things looked bleak for the Empire in November 1885, when the British sailed down the Irrawaddy and annexed what remained of the country. The political stalemate over Irish Home Rule has driven the economy into recession. Meanwhile, in India, the Indian National Congress was being formed with the goal of sending the British to pack.
Myanmar should be the answer to these questions. One of the best-selling books in the UK that year was Burma and the Burmese: The World’s Best Unopened Markets by the South African-born British explorer Archibald R. Colquhoun . Colquhoun sees annexation of Burma as the key to revitalizing British industry. British policymakers, hungry for a solution, agreed. They insisted that the Burmese king was a drunken tyrant with an evil wife. If the British had completed their colonization of Burma, they would have been liberators, offering relief to the beleaguered people. There are also jeweled Buddha statues to take away; jade, copper, coal mined; and cotton to be picked—all the wealth in the Queen’s coffers.
This is a British truth, born of convenience, far removed from the Burmese reality. The Third Anglo-Burmese War lasted only a few weeks. The British drive into Mandalay and Thibaw Min, 28, the 11th King of the Konbang Dynasty, is placed in an ox cart with his stoic queen by his side, crossing the streets to the ship that sent him into exile. 1 1886 In January, Myanmar officially became a province of British India. When the British entered this new territory, they brought with them thousands of Hindu, Muslim and Sikh officials from India, longtime colonial subjects, who were tasked with training Burma in a manner and manner suitable for their new positions people.
But, as the British will soon learn, the Burmese are a different kind of people. Unlike in India, where many princes and aristocrats easily surrendered to the British (and even put before them the flamboyant picture of Eastern fantasies), driven by the lure of promises of profit and hostility within the tribe, the Burmese resisted. They knew they couldn’t win, but they refused to surrender. Bowing to the empire meant losing Mandalay, the holiest city of Buddhist Buddhism in Myanmar, and centuries of court and monastic studies. But the British were more numerous and better armed, and within a decade they had the upper hand.
Today, the country still struggles with the humiliation of British conquest. Over the past fifty years, a violent past that no one can directly remember but that everyone can imagine has been revived through the same ruthless expulsion and destruction.
When the junta under General Ne Win first took power in 1962, the Burmese were forced to accept a brutal dictatorship in order to finally achieve a purely ex-colonial state — both a fantasy and a false romance. Their goal was to restore Buddhist culture, and a century of colonial conquest was covered. Hundreds of thousands of people who had no homeland other than Burma – descendants of Indian Muslims who arrived after colonization – came to be seen as illegal occupiers. The military government began nationalizing businesses, effectively deporting some 300,000 citizens. Streets and cities were renamed. A law was enacted in 1982 for many ethnic minorities, including the Rohingya Muslims – an ancient tribe of Arab traders, sailors and sailors who had lived in the country’s Rakhine province for generations before the British arrived. Descendants of immigrants – ineligible for full citizenship. Just as Burmese become British subjects by decree, Rohingya Muslims are also decreed as non-Burmese.
In August 2017, Myanmar launched a round of genocide, mass gang rape, and the burning and razing of hundreds of villages. Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have been driven from their homes by Myanmar’s military and Buddhist mobs despite the establishment last year of a nominally democratic government led by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The latest clashes began when security posts and an army base were attacked by Rohingya insurgents, killing 12 officers. This was apparently enough for the military to launch a massive genocide campaign. Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader but not in control of the military, has been criticized for her inaction during the crisis and her refusal to call it ethnic cleansing. This is the truth of Myanmar, and everyone from the military to government officials is holding on to it. Just as Britain’s lies fueled the brazen act of colonial plunder, Myanmar’s lies now cover up attempts to wipe out the hapless Rohingya, more than 10,000 of whom, according to the UN, began a “clean-up operation” following the August 2017 attacks 740,000 people fled to Bangladesh, with some 120,000 still internally displaced by conflict in 2012.
The grotesque details of the continuing annihilation of Myanmar’s most helpless are intertwined with a troubling dilemma of international complicity. Despite the genocide, some 3.5 million tourists flocked to the country in 2018, a slight increase from the previous year. Here’s a destination untouched by the overtourism that plagues Thailand or Bali. Here, one can see the ancient kingdom, socialize with the locals who sell fish and vegetables in the still-unchanged market, and take pictures with monks in maroon robes. Myanmar is less tainted by globalization than its neighbors; its slow pace is a respite.
Some of them were and still are. Myanmar’s product is unique – but accessing it also raises a conundrum. Does being a tourist here mean that one is contributing to the brutality of the Rohingya and other ethnic groups? Does enjoying Bagan’s golden dawn, lingering in Yangon’s tea shops, and visiting Mandalay’s markets mean people acquiesce to the human rights abuses the government is committing (and denying)?
The answer may lie in the country’s past, as in many other things in Myanmar. Myanmar’s isolation after the military takeover failed to prevent subsequent rounds of atrocities against Muslims and other minorities. The country’s ill-considered attempts to deal with colonial humiliation went unchecked and little was seen from the outside world.
In fact, one might argue that the cycle of deceit plaguing the country – the British believed they came to liberate, not conquer; the government’s insistence that there was no ethnic cleansing – could only be more Internet, a lot. Travel is often an intervention, sponsored not by other nations or humanitarian groups, but by ordinary people whose presence refutes the lies that fester in isolation. While ignoring Myanmar, we only promise it will get worse, never better. Staying away will not change the treatment of the Rohingya. Putting yourself in a country where you can’t escape the fear of others may end up being the best attack on its own version of the truth.
