Myanmar - Burma's long road back

Six months have made a world of difference to this isolated country that is now starting to welcome overtures from the West.

Lu Maw emerges from a dark lane-way leading to his home in Burma's northern city of Mandalay, ignoring three chain-smoking government spies lurking in shadows.

''No time. Come with me. The show starts soon,'' he says, referring to a live performance that Burmese are banned from seeing.

Lu Maw, the frontman for the Moustache Brothers comedy troupe, leads a small group of foreign journalists 200metres along the street to a tent where dozens of people are pushing to buy posters, calendars, coffee mugs, key rings and other souvenirs of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Only four months ago anyone in Burma displaying a photograph of Suu Kyi, known affectionately across the country as ''the lady,'' would have been arrested and possibly jailed.

But momentous change appears to be underway in south-east Asia's second-largest country, with a population of 59 million mostly impoverished people that borders China, Laos, Thailand, Bangladesh and India.

In front of a fund-raising tent for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, supporters chant ''Suu Kyi, Suu Kyi'', and surge forward to enthusiastically shake hands with the foreign journalists.

Thirty minutes later Lu Maw is warming up an audience of tourists sitting on plastic chairs in his family's garage.

''Why don't the people of Burma go to the dentist when they have a toothache?'' Lu Maw asks.

''Because they can't open their mouths!''

Every night Lu Maw, 62, his brother Par Par Lay, 64 and cousin Lu Zaw, 59, perform slapstick comedy and satire that is sharply critical of Burma's former military rulers who jailed them in 1996 for telling a joke during a function at Suu Kyi's home.

When most of the audience has gone, Lu Maw sits cross-legged on the concrete floor and predicts that Suu Kyi will one day be Burma's president.

But he remains wary of the civilian government made up of former generals that has overseen a raft of changes that appears to signal a willingness to end their brutal rule. ''New bottle, old wine,'' Lu Maw says.

Like hundreds of other released political prisoners the Moustache Brothers have become celebrities in the country where dissent had been brutally suppressed since a military coup in 1962.

Among 651 prisoners released last week were democracy activists, senior monks, ethnic leaders and even a former prime minister.

Crowds lined the roads to greet Min Ko Naing, the leader of a failed 1988 pro-democracy uprising, as he made the 550-kilometre journey from the jail in Thayet, in Burma's north, to the former capital Rangoon.

People shouted ''good health'' and ''long live Min Ko Naing'' and showered him with flowers as he was escorted by dozens of motor cyclists, their horns blaring.

Min Ko Naing, 49, does not have the star status of Suu Kyi, the 66-year-old daughter of Burma's independence hero Aung San, who spent 15 years under house arrest. But Min Ko Naing and dozens of others activists freed in recent amnesties will, like Suu Kyi, be key players in the country's future.

Some are likely to challenge Burma's ageing and superstitious leaders whose disastrous socialist dictatorship took the resource-rich country from being the ''rice bowl'' of Asia and the shining jewel of the British empire into one of the poorest nations on earth.

Min Ko Naing told supporters outside the prison that he would continue their struggle and asked for their support.

''We were involved since 1988 because we wanted to help wipe away your tears but we ourselves had to cry when we saw the atrocities,'' he said.

Even before many of the prisoners had arrived home the United States had announced it was normalising relations with Burma and would soon appoint an ambassador to the country after an absence of two decades.

Australia also has announced it will begin relaxing some financial and travel restrictions on serving and former government officials.

While the momentum for change will be difficult to reverse, reports have emerged of friction between moderates, such as the President, Thein Sein, implementing the reforms and military hardliners opposed to them.

But Shwe Mann, a former general who is considered one of the most powerful men in the government, insists there is ''no other way'' but to embrace democracy.

''It's very difficult to say how long it will take to become a democratic system,'' Shwe Mann said this week. ''We cannot say the timetable exactly but we will quickly try our best to achieve our goals.''

Suu Kyi, who will contest an April byelection to enter parliament, acknowledges the military still wields enormous power and warns reforms are not unstoppable. But locals say Burma is a different place to six months ago as new freedoms take root, including new labour laws and the easing of media censorship.

Newspapers feature once-taboo news of the democracy movement and Suu Kyi. Websites such as CNN and the BBC, once denounced as ''sowing hatred among the people'' and ''killer broadcasts designed to cause trouble'' have been unblocked.

Young Burmese sit hunched over flickering screens in tiny internet shops watching YouTube and foreign news for the first time. Politics, once whispered for fear of imprisonment, is now discussed openly.

Generals living in luxurious mansions still drive around Rangoon in Land Cruisers with tinted windows but the city's rubbish is now collected regularly. But it is early days. Many parts of Burma seem suspended in time. Its stock exchange has no computers and even chairs appear to be in short supply as traders sit cross-legged on the pavement outside, juggling mobile phones.

In over-booked hotels, executives from around the world huddle in meetings with Burmese contacts planning for investment opportunities they hope will arise - possibly this year - when the US and European Union lift economic sanctions imposed in 1988. But potential investors will have to overcome many difficulties.

The red tape is stifling and laws weak or non-existent. Roads, ports and other infrastructure are collapsing after years of neglect, requiring multibillion-dollar upgrades.

Already the price of dilapidated colonial-era buildings in Rangoon has soared.

In Mandalay, the second-biggest city, motorcyclists queue around the block for petrol while people cram into ageing and overcrowded buses.

The city portrayed as an Eastern paradise in Rudyard Kipling's poem On the Road to Mandalay has been reshaped into a bustling satellite of China where Chinese immigrants, mostly from Yunnan province, dominate upper Burma's economy.

Residents say anti-Chinese sentiment is growing as China invests more in dams, roads and pipelines. A six-lane Chinese-built highway between Rangoon and Mandalay is the called the ''Great China Road''.

Deep divisions exist among Burma's myriad ethnic groups and the powerful armed forces who for decades have been given extra privileges. While an average worker earns the equivalent of $70 a month, the starting salary for a school leaver entering the army is $300 with board and lodging included.

The military has built new hospitals for its soldiers across the country while medical care for millions of other people is poor or non-existent.

Near the former British hill station of Kalaw in central Burma teenage girls earn the equivalent of $3 a day filling road potholes by hand while soldiers roar past in new vehicles.

An estimated one-quarter of Burma's national budget, or about $US2 billion, ($1.9 billion) is allocated to maintain more than 400,000 troops and another undisclosed fund is designated for ''defence against enemies'' although the country has no external threats and has not fought a foreign war since the 19th century.

But there is no doubt big changes are underway in the corridors of power.

In the sprawling, surreal new capital Naypyidaw, built from scratch in the middle of nowhere in 2005, bureaucrats in previously secretive government departments have begun regularly meetings foreign diplomats and representatives of United Nations agencies and international aid groups.

For the first time high-level government officials are acknowledging huge problems across the country.

For example, Burma has one of the world's smallest budgets for health and education spending. A new constitution has given regional administrations increased powers, allowing them to improve access to long-neglected communities.

Australian Brian Agland, 63, who has lived in Burma since 2007, says there is an unprecedented buzz of excitement in the country. ''You can feel it with the Burmese staff you work with,'' Agland, the country director for Care International, says. ''Everyone here is amazed at the pace this is happening at all levels of government,'' he says.

Agland says government officials are now reaching out to international agencies to help better deliver services.

Burmese are standing up for their rights for the first time in 50 years. The government was forced to back down on a proposed steep rise in electricity charges after an angry public response. And last September the government suspended construction of a $US3.6 billion Chinese-backed hydroelectric dam in a rare concession to environmental activists.

But Agland says areas outside the cities, where 70 per cent of people live, remain deprived of access to adequate government services including health and education. Vast areas in so-called ''black'' conflict areas remain closed to outsiders despite tentative ceasefire agreements reached between the government and armed ethnic groups that have been waging guerilla wars for decades.

Agland says villagers in these areas are among the world's most disadvantaged people.

One of the consequences of the reforms and high-profile visits by world leaders including the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is an anticipated invasion of foreign tourists eager to see a country where until recently they were unwelcome.

Indeed Burma has been nominated by The New York Times as one of the top three hottest tourist destinations of this year after Suu Kyi reversed her boycott of private tourism.

Up to 1 million tourists are expected to visit this year, a three-fold increase from last year, placing enormous strain on infrastructure and facilities.

Domestic flights across the country are fully booked weeks in advance to foreigners, leaving locals to travel long journeys on antiquated buses and trains.

In rural areas bullock carts and tourist buses vie for space on narrow potholed roads.

Intrepid Travel in Melbourne last week took its first organised trip to Burma since it suspended operations there in 2006. The company vetted hotels, transport and other services it uses to ensure money flows into local economies and poor ethnic communities in remote areas.

In Hingagone village in the mountains of central Shan State, which Intrepid is supporting, village chief Aung serves green tea in tiny cups as he complains that for years government officials have promised to provide services for his people but never have.

Villagers live hand to mouth, growing mostly oranges and tea in a corner of the notorious ''Golden Triangle'' where opium buyers offer 12 times more money for the sap of opium plants than other crops.

But Aung says village chiefs have banned opium growing and use. ''People who use opium are sent out of the village … it makes people lazy,'' he says. People's lives are improving mainly because foreign tourists are buying fruit and food in the village.

Respected Shan State political leader Tommy Aung Ezdani, 67, a former political prisoner, says it will not be easy for the government, which he calls ''big brother'', to give up its iron-fist rule and vested interests.

''We can't forget what has happened but we can forgive,'' says Ezdani, who heads a non-government organisation called Rural Development Society that provides services in remote villages.

He says it will be also difficult for some ethnic groups to reach compromise with the government, especially those who have seen their women raped, youths dragged into forced labour and villages looted and burned over many years.

But he says unless all sides are flexible the country will not unite in peace.

Ezdani's father, a well-known doctor, was friendly with Suu Kyi's mother, who was a nurse.

Ezdani and Suu Kyi played together as children and he remembers her as a ''real little tom boy''.

''I admire her a lot but, for the sake of the union, she must win the military to her side,'' says Ezdani, who was a pro-democracy candidate in 1990 elections which Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won in a landslide victory the military refused to accept.

Suu Kyi is expected to easily win a seat in Burma's 440-seat parliament at the April byelection, which her supporters believe will prove to be a springboard for her to eventually lead the country. ''She will have to speak diplomatically and keep a low profile … big brother will fight back ruthlessly if cornered,'' Ezdani says.

Lindsay Murdoch

The Sydney Morning Herald

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