Myanmar has been on the front page of most of the world's newspapers over the last few weeks as tens of thousands of Buddhist monks have attempted to stage peaceful protests against an oppressive military regime that has ruled the country for 45 years. Last month, the military cracked down on the monks, killing at least 10 and imprisoning as many as 1,000. That led to worldwide condemnation of the military junta, talk of harsher sanctions and, last weekend, protests in cities around the globe in support of the monks.
Myanmar, also known as Burma, is one of the world's most isolated nations -- a rugged land of rivers and temples where access to outside information is severely restricted and few Westerners ever visit. It's a place that seems to share little with Tooele County, but that's exactly why it has lessons to teach us, half a world away.
I spent a month in Myanmar 10 years ago and my first impression was of a country half a century behind the rest of Asia. The very wealthy drove big Studebaker-like cars, the middle class rode Chinese bicycles, and the poor shuffled down the side of the road or piled into ox-drawn carts. The streets of Yangon, then the capital city, were barely streets, and men in sarongs had to pilot their bicycles through hills of garbage and craters gouged out of the asphalt by the monsoon rains. Whole blocks of once-impressive colonial buildings were uninhabited, crumbling and coated with black mold. Rats the size of mongooses ran the streets with impunity.
I arrived just after another government crackdown in which the military had accused students of fomenting unrest and, as punishment, closed the country's only major university. One young taxi driver told me he had been a year away from becoming a doctor but would now never be allowed to return to school. Another man, an Indian café owner, told me the government routinely came to his home and forced him and his teenage son to become unpaid laborers on public works projects. A third man, a Muslim who sold dog-eared paperbacks he picked up from travelers, told me he was detained and interrogated almost weekly because of his association with foreigners.
Myanmar marked the only time in my life I have ever had a gun pointed at me. I was standing on a crowded train talking in English with a student when a soldier carrying an AK-47 overheard us. The train, like most of the country's still-functioning infrastructure, was built during the days of the British Raj, and years of neglect had caused it to move like a cocktail shaker -- two shakes forward, one shake back. This made the soldier stagger toward us, gripping his rifle tightly at waist level with the barrel aimed at my stomach. The soldier, who looked the same age as the student, delivered an angry lecture in Burmese at his countryman, all the while keeping the rifle trained on me. Once the speech was over, the student scattered to the back of the train. The soldier turned the rifle away slowly and walked up to the next car.
When I hear Americans talk of how big government is interfering in their lives, or business people complain of having to comply with some onerous regulation, I wonder if perhaps we shouldn't take a look around and feel a bit grateful. The United States has one of the cleanest, most transparent governments in the world. Anti-corruption organization Transparency International rates the United States as No. 20 in the world for clean governance. Myanmar, in comparison, is No. 179, second worst only to Somalia.
Our government can be bungling, wasteful, and occasionally corrupt, but it does not routinely round up its citizens as forced labor, threaten them at gunpoint for speaking a foreign language, or imprison thousands of them indefinitely for peaceful protests.
Myanmar teaches us that Americans are relatively privileged, and for that we should be grateful. But Myanmar also shames us with its courage. In one of the most impoverished nations on earth, monks who own nothing more than a robe are literally dying for the right to self-determination. Meanwhile, here in Tooele County, officials expect only around a third of all registered voters to show up at the polls for our general election on Nov. 2 -- an election that could remake the city councils of both Tooele and Grantsville and determine the direction and development of both towns for years to come.
Perhaps the greatest lesson Myanmar can teach us is that good government is worth fighting for and -- particularly for the privileged -- apathy should never carry the day.
jbarrus@tooeletranscript.com