Staying Alive

Three years ago in Rangoon I met an extraordinary man with an ordinary name. Once a physics student at Rangoon University, Jimmy had just been released from jail after 16 years for his role in the democracy uprising that began on Aug. 8, 1988. He had been tortured in jail and robbed of his youth. I asked him how he planned to use his freedom. "I will take a rest," he replied in rusty English. "Then I will continue to do my activity for democracy."

And he did. Last August Jimmy — real name Kyaw Min Yu — was arrested along with other members of the so-called 88 Generation Students for staging street protests against government price hikes. These protests inspired the mass demonstrations led by Burma's monks, which captured the world's imagination a month later. Jimmy is still in jail. His wife Nilar Thein, another die-hard democrat, is in hiding. Their infant daughter has effectively been orphaned by the regime.

This month millions of Burmese are solemnly commemorating the 20th anniversary of the 1988 protests. As Jimmy's story shows, the spirit of '88 has not been entirely extinguished. But Burma's dictators have proved far more resilient than its democrats. In the past year alone, the junta has survived two of its biggest challenges since 1988: last year's mass protests and the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which killed nearly 140,000 people when it slammed into the Irrawaddy delta region in May.

"There will be change," the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi once said, "because all the military have are guns." Perhaps that was true in 1988. Today, the generals have much more than guns. They have huge revenues from oil and gas, relations with powerful neighbors India and China, and the support — occasionally the censure — of fellow members of ASEAN. They have a large standing army that has struck cease-fires with most of the ethnic rebel armies ranged against it and set about annihilating the rest. In many ways — economically, militarily, politically, regionally — Burma's generals are better off than 20 years ago.

Not so the democrats. Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention. Her party, the National League for Democracy, is virtually extinct. Last September's protests radicalized a new generation of young Burmese democrats, but more than 100 people were killed and thousands arrested in the regime's crackdown. Many of the 88 Student Generation are behind bars. No wonder, then, that some Burmese democrats are now considering more violent forms of protest. Leading Burmese journalist Aung Zaw recently recalled conversations with a senior dissident and a monk. The dissident was seeking funds to plant bombs in the old capital of Rangoon, while the monk wanted to launch a missile at the new capital of Naypyidaw. It is a measure of their rage and desperation that many educated Burmese believe only force can dislodge the generals.

Today, Burma's plight receives immeasurably more international attention than it did 20 years ago. U.S. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush met with Burmese activists and visited refugees during their stopover in Thailand en route to the Beijing Olympics, while the U.N. has dispatched two special envoys to Rangoon this month. Yet ordinary Burmese have less faith than ever that global diplomacy will improve their lives. Last September's protests taught them there are limits to what the world is willing or able to do.

If a mixture of censure and selective sanctions aren't working, then all that's left is engagement. The Nargis relief effort could provide an opportunity for "a more open relationship" with the generals, the former British diplomat Derek Tonkin has argued, while the U.N.'s humanitarian chief John Holmes, who toured the Irrawaddy delta last month, spoke of a "positive door" opening to the regime. Let's hope they're right. Even its most implacable opponents recognize that the Burmese military is not just the problem, but also part of any solution. Suu Kyi — a soldier's daughter — has always said as much.

Protests during this anniversary month seem unlikely. But then Burma is a big country and hard to predict: both the 1988 uprising and last year's protests took Burma watchers by surprise. It's even tougher to read the country's secretive military rulers. The chief general, Than Shwe, is 75 years old and by some accounts ailing, but it would be naive to assume that his demise will fracture or enfeeble the military. Over the years, senior Burmese generals have either died (Ne Win in 2002) or been purged (Khin Nyunt in 2004), and each time the military has closed ranks and stayed intact. Still, future protests seem inevitable, so long as the junta refuses to tackle Burma's woes — poverty, inflation, disease — and the opposition continues to survive against appalling odds. Jimmy is one of 2,050 political prisoners in Burma today, says Amnesty International. If he were released tomorrow, nobody need ask him what he would do next. We already know. He will take a rest. Then he will continue to do his activity for democracy.