7th July-Never Go Bye

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Kanbawza Win

With President Barrack Obama, the first African American at the helm of world affairs, I
used to hum an old favourite Negro song
“Gone are the days when my heart is young and gay
Gone are my friends from the University (substituting Cotton fields) away
I hear a gentle voice calling Old Ba Win (substituting black Joe)”
Those were the days of the happiest aspect of my life when I was just a fresher at the Rangoon
University, which in Burmese we say (wuUoDvmjruGef;om ) literally translated will be a serine

paradise island of learning. But that was in 1962 when just barely four months ago when the
Tatmadaw (a) Burmese military ogre makes it present felt on 2nd March under the first
dictatorship General Ne Win, who took power, killing my childhood friend Sao Myi Myi Thaike
(son of Saw Shwe Thaike, brother of Eugene and Harn Yawnghwe).
At that time I was a young boy residing in Taungoo Hall and no nothing about politics
but I sense that life is not going to be an easy one. I clearly recollect of how after a hard study in
our hostel, we used got hungry about midnight or so and often goes to U Chit shop in the
compound to eat. I was rather upset when the law was enforced on the hostel that we could not
go out after 9 PM, which later became the embryo of the 7th July incident. At that time I did not
know that the order came from the Revolutionary Council itself to provoke the students to
confrontation so that they can find a pretext to crack down on the students and closed the
University which they construe as a hot bed for dissidents.
Those were the days when only students from the States and Divisions were eligible for
hostels and so it was the hostellers that first take up the cudgel against these unjust laws. There
was a peaceful demonstration in the University campus on the evening of 5th July, it gathered
momentum the next day and suddenly the security personals show up and fired the tear gas to the
peaceful students. If it is a hand thrown tear gas it would have no harm, but it was shot from an
ejector and one of the projectile hit the groin of Sai Yi Leik, one of my bosom friends from
Taunggyi, who has to be hospitalized. This action provoked the entire student body that now
came out en-mass and shouted slogans in the campus. The next day 7th July the army
commanded by Brigadier Sein Lwin surrounded the University. They were posted round Waing
Gale and Hle Htan Waing Gyi a Burmese name for round about traffic but did not come into the
campus. Some student from Mandalay Hall facing the University Student’s Union were teasing
the soldiers, while those near the students make friends with the soldiers saying that we are
making a peaceful protest. But Ne Win and the Junta has already made the fatal decision to wipe
out the students dissidents once and for all. Suddenly without any warning butcher Sein Lwin
gave the signal and the solders start shooting at us at the point blank range. Those in front were
cut down while some soldiers took aim at the students on Mandalay Hall and shoot them
indiscriminately like birds, one after another falling down from the verandas of the hostel. Kyaw
Lin, the younger brother of Kyaw Min, was hit and yells for his brother who came and helps him
as another bullet hit him right in the chest and the two brothers died instantly in each other’s
arms. I had learnt something in the UTC (University Training Corps) and lay flat but my
roommate Saw Eh Doh ran and was hit on the head with his brains sprinkling on my body. These
were some of the horrific scenes still in my eyes and the next day we woke up to a very big
explosion only to discover that the Student’s Union was blown up with the student’s hardliners
who refused to leave the buildings. The body count by a passerby put the tool as 137 but the
Junta say that the causalities were only seven.
Since then, military dictatorship in Burma has closed the universities off and on until
1988 revolution when all the university education was closed down for nearly a decade. The
prolonged closure of Universities has affected the future of almost all the young people of
Burma. Now we clearly know that successive military Juntas deliberately targeted the University
education, the future brain of the country as only then they can control the country. Now it is
over half a century that these men in uniform are in power and with the new flawed election with
an equally dubious constitution, they will continue to rule the country in different guise. The date
10/10/10 has been chosen, to be consistent with the paranoid generals' fixation on numerology
and superstition, but Nobel Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will be still imprisoned, and the
NLD has been denied with unjust laws. It is foreseeable that the Junta will "win" the election and
reinforce their power and the tyrant will be even more removed from reality and continues to
spread the misery as far and wide as possible. But each act of brutality girds, the people will to
resist them with the 7th July spirit.
 What, the people of Burma could not comprehend is why the civilized world acquiesce to
the crassness of the Generals. Lamentably the world did not know that the Jean is out of the
bottle on that 7th July and is going to threaten the entire world with nuclear weapons. Earlier this
month, U.S. and UN intelligence officials announced that they believed Burma was importing
North Korean nuclear weapons technology. This clearly indicates that some sort of nuclear
weapons is going on as North Korea will trade whatever it has be it ballistic missiles, nuclear
weapons tech, infantry weapons and such to whoever can pay. The low level war with ethnic
nationalities, and those opposed to the military dictatorship, continues rarely appeared in the
international media. Several attacks by the Burmese army on civilian population go unreported.
So do the air force bombings of rebel camps or villages suspected of being bases. Army patrols
and abuse of ethnic nationalities, rarely makes the news. Occasionally, ethnic refugees fleeting to
Thailand will report new atrocities. But there's nothing new about the bad behaviour of the
troop’s rape, robbery and general destruction in the ethnic areas. It's been going on for half a
century. The civilized world led by the West look on with folded arms because the world's most
brutal regimes, is also amongst the least well understood.
In terms of trade and communications, the country is as closed as North Korea and
nearly as isolated as Afghanistan under Taliban rule. The Junta has the worst images in the world
and has very few friends, and even its powerful regional allies of China and India keep a safe
public distance so as not to catch any of the generals' political cooties. The civilized world
doesn’t care; the rhetoric of R2P has become RIP. However, the 7th July spirits will lives on as
generations of brave activists risk their lives every day to move information in and out of the
country, hoping to give global audiences a glimpse of the horrifying truth behind the veil, which
is an indication of asking for help to overthrow the regime.
No doubt, the opposition have their own failings, mistakes, short comings, the trial and
error method, in unifying themselves is still quite a distance as even the ethnic communities of
Northern Alliance (different sections of Wa, Kachin) still has to be worked out with the Southern
Alliance (Karen, Mon, Karenni, and Shan) drawing in the Western groups (Arakan and Chin)
before they were able to find a common ground with the pro democratic groups of inside the
country and in Diaspora. But the most important aspect is the encouragement from the
international community who will give us marginal material support to overthrow the Junta.
Until and unless we manage to find a nixes of these tripod to work together there is little or no
hope to overthrow the Burmese Junta.
The Burmese military Jean even though out of the bottle is still not as mighty as it looks,
for its nuclear arsenal is still primitive. But the obsession and the intent are clear and there is
every possibility that it can get stronger day by day, if the world cannot nib it in the bud. Will the
international community wake up to this clarion call and supply the much needed resources to
the ethno-democratic forces to fight the Junta and end the scenario?
The people of Burma has realized that cannot look to America or EU, as their rhetoric
and their talk seldom match their walk simply because Burma has no major oil resources.
President Obama’s promise of “Peace and security of the world without nuclear weapons.”
does not seem to apply to Burma as he is bent of engaging the Junta. The people of Burma may
have to look to our ASEAN neighbors who can implement things, if they want to see this part of
Southeast Asia a more peaceful and nuclear free zone and take a turn in dealing with the pro
democratic ethnic movement rather than the Junta. Will their Constructive Engagement Policy
be so pragmatic to switch to Realistic Engagement Policy and create a better world to discover
whether Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the ethnics will ever let ASEAN down in the international
arena? Will the genuine democratic countries of Philippines and Thailand together with
Indonesia and Singapore of the core ASEAN take the lead? Up to this day they still does not
have not vision that it is far better to deal with the legally and democratically elected government
that will act responsibly rather than deal with the dictators for a short term economic gain and be
more like an EU.
Once this is scientifically and systematically pursued and armed the ethno-democratic
forces we are quite confident that every single people of Burma will be willing to make a
supreme sacrifice for the country and for their younger generations. The emblem of the fighting
peacock still flies high as it cut across the ethnic nationalities, different strata, spheres, ideologies
and classes for the 7th July spirit is that even though our heads are bloody yet we are unbowed.
Dictators may come and dictators may go but the 7th July will go on forever.