Unlikely resistance in Burma's Mandalay

By Eilene Kristalis
Mandalay, Burma

Par Par Lay (far right) has been missing since 25 September

Lu Maw waves a small black sign with white letters in front of the audience, in his cluttered front room that doubles as a theatre in Burma's second city of Mandalay.

"Par Par Lay, 25 September, taken away, in the nick, jailbird! His wife has been searching for him everywhere, we don't know where he is!"

Satisfied he has been able to make it clear that his elder brother, known as Par Par Lay, has been arrested, he continues his usual show.

The manic 58-year-old Lu Maw is one of the Moustache Brothers, a family of artists who follow a Burmese tradition known as A-Nyeint - a vaudeville mixture of slapstick, classical dance, sketches and stand-up comedy performed by travelling troupes.

The family is one of the few in Burma who dare to try to talk openly about what happened to their loved ones after the crackdown on anti-government protesters in September.

Moreover, they think that high-profile media attention will help them get their brother released sooner.

While the music tape plays and his wife dances, Lu Maw picks up a sign, pulls his long moustache and hastily talks on about Par Par Lay's disappearance.

"We have to bring him clothes and medicines. Tell the human rights organisations. We have to know if he is still alive or that he died," he says.

Military restraint

Like more than 10,000 people in Mandalay, Par Par Lay took part in the anti-government demonstrations led by Buddhist monks.

The Moustache Brothers poke fun at life under the military regime

Compared with Rangoon, where the army opened fire on monks and demonstrators alike, military leaders in Mandalay displayed some restraint.

Soldiers did not raid monasteries, perhaps partly because the head of a large monastic university was able to persuade thousands of demonstrating monks to withdraw peacefully to their compound.

In the other main teaching centre, the abbot told his 2,800 monks that they were free to go back to their villages. Now only 200 monks remain in the monastery, which is occupied by soldiers.

In the weeks following the crackdown, the hunt for activists in Mandalay was at least as fierce as in Rangoon.

Monks were arrested as they tried to board buses to go back to their villages, and members of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) were rounded up - whether or not they had been active.

One NLD member died during the interrogations. Of the hundreds arrested in Mandalay at least 300 are still in prison or work camps.

Enforced rally

Meanwhile, not far from Lu Maw's house, the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) - the civilian arm of the military junta that is often used as its hit-squad - held a different kind of show.

Thousands of people took part in anti-government protests in Burma

As elsewhere in Burma, a large rally was held to mark the end of a national convention that took more than 14 years to draft the principles to underpin a new constitution.

Every household in Mandalay was ordered to send one person to attend. If they stayed away they had to pay 3,000 kyat (£1.25; $2.50) - a day's wages for many.

"But anyone who can afford it, pays it," said a taxi driver who paid the fee himself to boycott the gathering.

Before daybreak thousands of people were brought to a sports stadium on ramshackle buses and trucks.

There were the thugs and ex-convicts who are sometimes recruited into the USDA, as well as the organisation's many compulsory members, such as government employees and high school students.

The stadium was so full that not everyone could fit in.

Under the watchful eyes of hundreds of fully armed soldiers and police, people milled around in the surrounding streets.

But no-one actually watched. Small groups of bored and embarrassed-looking teachers in their green sarongs and white blouses sought respite in the local teashops while the speeches droned on.

Declarations ignored

The proceedings ended with what was termed a protest march.

Cardboard signs were handed out with slogans like We Don't Accept Foreign Subjugation, We Oppose Unrest And Violence, BBC Lying, and VOA (Voice of America) Deceiving.

Some of the so-called demonstrators held the signs upside down, others back-to-front, or had simply thrown them in the mud along the road.

Opponents of the government risk being jailed

Defiance in Mandalay also surfaced in other ways.

Several government decrees have been put aside by the USDA.

It did not label the monks who had protested as "bogus monks", and it did not forbid the population "to give alms or invite the monks to their houses for ceremonies".

Some USDA wardens even withheld information from the intelligence services and protected people from being arrested.

The spirit of resistance in Mandalay, it seems, has not been crushed.

As one shopkeeper said: "If we stop now, we will get the government that we deserve."