The Scourge of Burma - Part 4 on TheAsiaMag

Sydney Cabs (Photo Credit: Kyota)

Recently Asia's premier online magazine TheAsiaMag has published Part (4) of my six part series The Scourge of Burma on their site. Their title is Sydney: Fantastic Tales of a Former Burmese Boy Soldier (Part 1) and Sydney: Fantastic Tales of a Former Burmese Boy Soldier (Part 2).

Since then hundreds and hundreds of people have been accessing my blog through TheAsiaMag to read the whole series. But most could not find the original series as the title has been changed. For their convenience I have listed the original series with respective links to the articles.

The Scourge of Burma - Part 1
The Scourge of Burma - Part 2
The Scourge of Burma - Part 3
The Scourge of Burma - Part 4
The Scourge of Burma - Part 5
The Scourge of Burma - Part 6 

The book "The Scourge of Burma and Four Short Stories" is also available for online purchase through LULU Publishers from the United States.

Shooting An Elephant by George Orwell

(George Orwell (a) Eric Blair was a colonial police officer in British Burma.)

In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so.

When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.

All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. 

I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible.

With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.

One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant's doings.

Moulemin of Mon State in Burma.

It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone "must." It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of "must" is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours' journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody's bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.

The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes.

Winchester .44 Rifle.

Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of "Go away, child! Go away this instant!" and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man's dead body sprawling in the mud.

He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast's foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend's house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant.

The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant – I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary – and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you.

I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd's approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth.

A Burmese Elephant.

I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of "must" was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.

But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly.

And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib.

For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man's life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.

It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller.

But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn't be frightened in front of "natives"; and so, in general, he isn't frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.

Winchester Model 70 Elephant Rifle.

There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick – one never does when a shot goes home – but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old.

I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

George Orwell (1903-1950)

I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud. It was obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open – I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. 

The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.

In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to die. Burmans were bringing dahs (Burmese swords) and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.

Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

Colonel Thet Oo - Chapter 1

(This is a concise translation of Col Thet Oo (a) Thaung Wai Oo’s Autobiography.)

From a Civilian Life to a Soldier Life

It was during third week of April 1966 when I reported at the Army Recruitment Centre on Prome Road at Myenigone in Rangoon for the OTS (Officer training School). That day at about 3 in the afternoon twenty officer cadets including me, on an army Ford truck, left the Recruitment Battalion for the OTS in Hmawbee near Rangoon.

The training had already started and we were the late group of cadets for OTS Intake 36. When we reached OTS the time was almost 5 in the evening. The cadets in their crew-cuts, green singlets, and khaki shorts were falling in for the evening PT and they all loudly cheered at us coming into the compound.

The harsh drills had made their sun-burnt faces really dark and they all looked the same and I could not recognize any of my friends who were there already. The barracks, the cadets and instructors, and the flowering Padauk trees everywhere. I looked at the huge OTS campus blanketed by Paduak fragrances and immediately realized I was at the gate of a whole new world.

And that new world would change  my life forever!

Burma's Ho Chi Minh Trail (2)

(This is the direct translation of Chapter 5 of Major Ba Shin’s "Burma Before Anawrahta".)

Proto-Burmese Invasion into Burma in Mid 9^th Century

The original inhabitants of the place now called Middle Burma (Myanmar) were Pyus and in AD 832 their ancient nation Thayekhittayar was destroyed and their civilization uprooted by the Nansaws from Yunan in China.

The Mon nation Thuwanabummi (Yarmanya) in Lower Burma was also invaded by the Nansaws in AD 835 and over 2000 Mon were taken to Yunan as the prisoners. After the Nansaw invasions Burma had completely collapsed without a central administration and most of the country lay in ruins.

Demographically it could be safely assumed that by that time there were Thet in the region of Upper Burma where the Irrawaddy River meets Chindwin River, Karen in the Middle Sittaung Valley, ancient Mon in the Lower Sittaung Valley, Pyu in Middle and Southern Irrawaddy Valley, and the rest of the ancient Mon in Zawgyi and Panlaung Valleys (The Karen seemed to have cut of the ancient Mons into two groups).

In addition Palaung and Wa the Mon-Khmer tribes and Gadu the Thet tribe were also mixed with other tribes in Middle Irrawaddy Valley and the Zawgyi-Panlaung Valley.

Chance for the highlanders to move down into Burma 

There were no written historical evidences such as stone inscriptions from that period between 832 AD when the Pyu Nation was destroyed by the Nansaw and mid 11^th century when King Anawrahta ruled Pagan have been found yet. So what were the significant historical events during that period?

The existing society was collapsing. People were deeply divided. There were no unified forces to resist the foreign invasion and defend the land and that chaotic period was quickly becoming an opportune time for the stronger tribes from the highland to move in en masse or invade the fertile plain valley land of Burma.

People who speak Burmese and sub-Burmese Languages

Basing on the demographic distribution of the current people of Burma and the ancient stone inscriptions the people who had moved down from the Yunan Highland to the valley land of Middle Burma during that chaotic ruler-less period were the earlier Burmese. In other words it could be evidently stated that they were the members of the Tibeto-Burman tribes and they spoke either old Burmese or the sub-Burmese languages.

That statement could be strongly reinforced by the detailed study of the regions of Burma now occupied by the people who speak the languages belonging to the Burmese sub-family of the Tibeto-Burman family of languages.

Languages of Burmese sub-family

Linguistically at least 8 out of ten natives of Burma speak the languages of Burmese sub-family. Here are that languages of the Burmese sub-family.

1.      The Burmese language used by the majority.

2.      The Accented Burmese languages which have slight deviations in sound 

and pronunciation from mainstream Burmese language.

3.      The Earlier Burmese languages which are basically similar to both

Mainstream Burmese and other Accented Burmese languages.

Main Regions of Burmese Speakers

Mainstream Burmese (Burmese) is widely spoken in all over Burma. But the principal regions where Burmese is the only language are the districts namely Mandalay, Shwebo, Sagaing, Pakhoku, Myingyan, Kyaukse, and Meikhtila districts at the confluence of Irrawaddy and Chindwin Rivers in the middle Burma. These districts are the principal demographic region of Burmese speakers.

Farther from these districts the fewer the Burmese speakers. But the speakers of accented Burmese can be widely found at faraway places from these main districts and they appear to be the descendants of original Burmese speakers since long way back.

Speakers of Accented Burmese

The people, whose ancestors were originally from the middle Burma, now speaking a form of accented Burmese can be found in the Western Burma in Ramree and Sittwe Districts (Arakan Language), Hteelin and Saw regions in Pakhoku District (Yaw Language), along the Kaladan River of Southern Chin State (Chaungthar Language), and East Pakistan -now Bangaladesh- (Western Arakan Language and Northern Chaungthar Language).

In Southern Burma they can be found in Tavoy District (Tavoy Language), and Mergui District (Mergui Language).  These people speaking accented Burmese are strikingly similar in both culture and couture to the people from middle Burma.

The People Who Stayed Behind

In the western part of Shan Plateau east of Middle Burma there are people still widely speaking some form of accented Burmese languages. The Danus in the west, the Taungyoes in their east and the Inthars by the Inle Lake region belong to these groups.

Even though their places are not that far from the Irrawaddy Valley their accents, culture, practices, and couture are starkly different from the Valley Burmese. From that evidence it could be easily concluded that the ancestors of these people were not the people who had moved up from the Irrawaddy Valley but the people who had stayed behind when other were moving on down to the Valley of Middle Burma.

Where Did the Old Burmese Come From?

The question is if the Taungyoes, Danus, and Inthars are the stayed behind people of the original Burmese migration then where the old Burmese were coming from. And the obvious answer is the old Burmese or proto Burmese did come from the direction of Shan State.

The Original Burmese Speakers

Before that serious and potentially controversial statement is discussed further it should be appropriate to mention more about the people who speak the old Burmese or original Burmese language.

The Marus from Namtu region in Northern Shan State, the Azees (a) Zees along the Chinese border in the Kutkhine region in Northern Shan State, the Maingthas (a) Achans from Bamaw region in Burma and Hotah and Latha regions in Yunan, the Lashees from Sadon and Lawkhaw region in Kachin sate, the Marus from Lawkhaung and Htawgaw regions of Maykha Vally in Kachin State, and the Phoons around the first narrow of Irrawaddy on the border of Bamaw and Myitkyinar districts in Kachin State are the other ethnic groups who also speak the old Burmese language. The Marus and Lashees can be found in around Myitkyinar too.

Conclusion from the Demographic Distribution of Old Burmese

From the demographic distribution of ethnic groups speaking old Burmese or accented Burmese languages it could be wisely speculated that the old Burmese or the proto Burmese had migrated into Burma step by step from the North in Eastern Kachin Sate and Western Yunan to the South in Northern Shan State then to the Southern Shan State. From the Southern Shan State they migrated down into the Irrawaddy valley in the Middle Burma.

Why didn’t they go down between Chindwin and Irrawaddy Rivers?

The obvious question is the old Burmese could have forded the shallow Irrawaddy in Kachin State and moved down to the plain but they did not. Somehow they might have tried to cross Irrawaddy and move down south.

But during that time the valley lands between Irrawaddy and Chindwin were the Dagaung nation of Thets and the old Burmese were not able to go through them. So the first few waves were stopped by the first narrow of Irrawaddy and ended up as today Phoons.

Also because of difficult terrain the old Burmese couldn’t follow the Irrawaddy  through the Darpane and Shwelee river routes.

Into the Shan State

So the next migration waves bypassed the Thet’s Dagaung country from the east by following the Myitnge River route and temporarily ended up in Northern Shan State. From there they moved further down to the south into Yartsout and then southwestern Shan State.

Why didn’t they go down into the Sittaung Valley?

The obvious question is why they didn’t go down further south and move into the Sittaung Valley. The answer is by then the mass of Karens were already occupying the fertile Sittaung Valley. That route also is difficult because of rough terrain. As mentioned before the regions of today Moebyae and the Kayah State and northern Karen State were already the Karen strongholds by then and the Karens were even moving into the valley land west of Sittaung River. 

The easiest route with least obstacles

In those situations the easiest route for the migrating proto Burmese to travel further into the Irrawaddy Valley was through the northern part of southern Shan State where the obstacles were fewer and then into Kyaukse District which continued into the plain valley land of Irrawaddy River.  

From Yartsout and Pindaya into the Irrawaddy Valley

Moreover, basing on the linguistic evidence of accented Burmese speaking highlanders Danus and Taungyoes living along the South-western edge of Shan State the above conclusion - that the old Burmese had moved down onto the valley plain of Middle Burma through Yartsout and Pindaya regions the northern part of southern Shan State – appears to be obviously correct.

Are above just educated thoughts?

The statements above are just the conclusions according to linguistic comparisons and analysis based on the demography of the speakers of mainstream Burmese and various accented Burmese languages in Burma today. But there are many questions!

Are there any other historical evidence to support these statements and conclusion?

Are there any strong references proving the statement that the old Burmese or proto Burmese were originally from the Western Yunan and Northern Shan State in today China and Burma respectively?

If there are, the obvious question is are there any records or written evidence about these people who had lived in those lands during the 8^th and 9^th centuries?

If above questions can not be satisfactorily answered then the statement about the old Burmese moving down into middle Burma through Southwestern Shan State is just nothing more than an educated thought or just a dream.

There is no history without the historical evidence, and it would not be that easy to firmly state that the educated thoughts are the true history of a nation and its people.

Contemporary Chinese written evidence

Fortunately there are ample stories about these old Burmese originally living in Western Yunan and Northern Shan State during the 8^th and 9^th centuries from the contemporary Chinese history books and regional records.

(To be continued.)

Aung Moe and Amy: Sanctions' Collateral Damage (4)

Massive Insein Prison in Rangoon.

Justice is swift and brutal in a primitive place like Burma where humans have very few rights and criminals have no rights at all. Aung Moe thought he would be hanged soon without realizing that no one has ever been hanged in Burma since late 1988 when the army staged a coup and started more than 20 years long right-wing military dictatorship.

Although the courts in Burma are still regularly sentencing the criminals committing heinous crimes to death by hanging no one has ever been hanged for decades now. The junta had considered themselves a temporary caretaker Government so not an actual hanging has been allowed during their rule from 1988 till recent transfer of power to the present military-backed civilian Government in April 2011.

But young Aung Moe didn’t know that and he was mad enough not to wait till he is horribly hanged till death. Maybe he had read too many of Yan-aung Maung Maung’s articles about judicial hangings in popular crime magazines. So one night he decided to end his own life. And the stupid boy chose to hang himself.

A Double Hanging in Mandalay (1985)

(This edited translation is from former Warden Yan-aung Maung Maung’s autobiography.)

The criminals condemned by the courts were nearly shocked to death once they heard the sentencing judge or magistrate reading the death sentence to them in the court. Even the hardcore criminals who already considered themselves half-dead as they knew they were guilty of their heinous crimes couldn’t even smile while they were being sentenced to death by hanging.

So many people asked me this same question; do you have to let the condemned go if he or she wasn’t killed in one hanging?  That is just a myth. In every death warrant the words to be hanged till death is prominent and even if one rope doesn’t kill him for some reason the second rope is waiting for him.  No condemned one has ever come out alive from hanging in our prisons.

I have witnessed many hangings in the earlier part of my prison service. But in all those hangings I was just an insignificant participant as a junior prison officer since the hangings were personally overseen by the senior warden. Only in 1985 when I became a senior warden I did my hangings and I personally hanged seven men. I still remember two names from my only double hanging. Aung Mya and Than Myint.

Hangman Warden

In wars soldiers kill each other in the heat of a battle but the cold-blooded hanging in a prison is never like that. Hanging is judicially ending a person’s life by a legal procedure that exactly follows the prison hanging manual to the letter. That’s why it is called The Capital Punishment the biggest criminal punishment by law.

Back in Britain, I was told, the hangings were done by the professional hang-men not the prison officers like in Burma. When I was a junior officer I once asked the warden how he felt about hangings he had personally done before and this was his answer.

“I always felt like quitting my job whenever I had to do a hanging. It wasn’t that bad when the condemned was dragged onto the gallows and the drop-door lever was pulled. I just wanted to finish the job and get over with it.

Only after the corpse was taken outside and the whole business was over the bad feeling inside began. I had to take off the uniform and get rid of them as I could never wear the same uniform ever again. After the shower and new set of uniform on I immediately had two or more drinks, neat without ice or water. Only then my inside got warmed and I calmed down.

But I still had bad feelings whenever I looked at my own hands. It would take at least one or even two months to get back to my normal self by slowly talking myself that I was only doing my duty as a warden.”

And he was the only warden I knew who never let others do the dreadful job of putting the noose around the condemned’s neck and tightening it. Putting a noose around the prisoner neck was not that difficult but the important part is tightening the noose properly. The regulation one-inch Manila hemp rope used for hanging has a ring called Metal Eye on one end. That Metal Eye has to be directly beneath the left or right jaw so that when the prisoner dropped that would be just behind the ear and broke the neck. If the noose wasn’t tightened and placed properly the noose would rotate and come off together with the hood.

My Turn to Hang

There are a lot of works in hanging a prisoner. As a preparation for a hanging we had to order one inch diameter Manila hemp rope. Then a heavy weight was attached to one end of the rope and other end tied to a high beam and let the rope hang for two three days to take out the stretch and thus any tendency to coil.

We also had to weigh the prisoner and measure his height and his neck diameter. Only after that process the rope length (drop) had to be worked out by the exact formula from the prison hanging manual.

In Burma, a former British colony, the judicial hanging takes the form of measured or long drop hanging as practiced in Britain since 1874. The distance the condemned drops when the trapdoors open is calculated according to the weight, height, and physique of the condemned and is designed to break the neck and thus severed the spinal cord to make executions more humane than other forms of hanging.

Hanged in Iran?

 Hanging with little or no drop usually causes death by slow strangulation due to the weight of the body on the noose, causing it to tighten, so constricting the air passage. The condemned typically struggle and suffer for sometime, as long as half an hour in extreme cases, after suspension due to the physical pain caused by the noose tightening around the slowly stretching neck.    

In the British long drop hanging it takes less than a second for a person to reach the end of the drop after the trapdoor opens. The force produced by the person’s weight multiplied by the length of the fall and the gravity and the position of the noose causes virtually instant fracture-dislocation of the neck which leads to death.

Typically the fracture-dislocation occurs at C2 or C3 of the cervical vertebrae with about two inch gap and traverse separation of spinal cord at the same level causing instant deep unconsciousness and rapid death.

Once the rope was prepared my first task was to set the gallows. In all Burmese prisons the gallows are the copies of Alipore Gallows from the Calculatta’s Alipore Central Jail in India. It basically has two parts. The base is a large concrete hole in the ground covered by two large hinged trap doors linked by a mechanism to a lever. The top part consisting two posts and the cross beam is removable and normally disassembled and kept in a store room.

Alipor Gallows?

 So we opened the trap doors and brushed the rust off the lever and mechanism beneath the doors with kerosene first and later with the diesel oil. After that the posts and cross beam were taken out of the store room and then cleansed and polished with diesel oil. Once the gallows had been set up I had to fix a Sunday and ask the permissions from the divisional and township courts.

Once everything was ready for the hanging I began to read the files of two condemned men, Aung Mya and Than Myint. Like other hangman-wardens, knowing how ruthless and brutal the two criminals were would give me certain degree of comfort for me in doing the unpleasant work of hanging them.

Aung Mya and Than Myint: the Condemned

The two young men Aung Mya and Than Myint were childhood friends born and grew up in a small town in the Magwe Division of Middle Burma. Aung Mya’s father worked for a Government factory and Than Myint’s was a porter at the port. Their characters were totally opposite. Since very young age Aung Mya was a good boy and he always avoided trouble and fights.

But Than Myint was a bad boy and he was always looking for trouble and never refused a good fight. And he dominated and bullied Aung Mya all their lives. Weak Aung Mya was afraid of stronger Than Myint and followed him in whatever bad things Than Myint did. Two of them together became the bad boys of the town and eventually they were kicked out of the school at their year 8 and finally Than Myint ended up in Pa-khoke-ku prison doing 2 years for a robbery.

Without his dear friend Aung Mya became decent again after a year in monkhood at the local monastery and started working for the factory where his father also worked. His parents were happy but their happiness didn’t last too long as Than Myint was released and he came back town. By then Than Myint was behaving like a hardcore criminal as the ex-convicts usually do and Aung Mya tried real hard to avoid him in the town.

But one day he ran into Than Myint at the port and they ended up in a cheap liquor shop. Only after two or more glasses of local moonshine Aung Mya belatedly realized his old friend had a plan to take advantage of him. This was their conversation at the liquor shop and the beginning of their ways to the Mandalay Gallows I was now setting up for their double hanging.

“Aung Mya, don’t you know … that girl Pu-tu-ma likes you a lot?”

“Which Pu-tu-ma?”

“That Pu-tu-ma from the Pu-tu-tu-lay betelnut-shop at our port.”

“Oh, I ain’t interested!”

“But, I am!”

“If you are interested, why don’t you try yourself?”

“Yes I did, but she doesn’t like me and even insulted me. She told me to my face that I am an ex-convict without a job and she rather marries a beggar than me. So I asked her if she would consider you and she replied you are better than me since you have a steady job.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Ha, I can help it, just look at these……..”

Than Myint then pulled out two letters and a small photo from his shirt pocket. Photo was Pu-tu-ma’s and letters were the reply love letters to him from her. Back of her photo even bore the words With Love to Ko Aung Mya. Suddenly Aung Mya remembered the friendly behavior of that girl and felt bad for her.

“Than Myint, you shouldn’t trick a young girl like that!”

“You, an ex-monk, you don’t know shit about this cruel world. You think Pu-tu-ma is serious about you. No way, she has so many boyfriends. I’ll show you one day about that. My plan hasn’t finished yet.”

It was right. Than Myint’s evil plan wasn’t finished yet. The day that plan ended was the day all three of them ended their short lives, so to speak. That day Aung Mya and Than Myint half-drunk from local moonshine liquor patiently waited for Pu-tu-ma to show up alone at the deserted grounded-freighter abandoned on the riverbank. The girl thought she was seeing her lover Aung Mya alone.

They had sex while Than Myint hid and watched. After that Than Myint came out, showed her a knife, and violently raped her. She then grabbed the knife and cut his arm. In rage Than Myint held her tight and forced Aung Mya to stab her first then he finished her off by stabbing the hapless girl multiple times.

That was their hangable criminal case. The brutal rape and murder of a young innocent girl my daughter’s age. Now I had a very good reason to hang them both till death. And I won’t feel bad.

The Double Hanging

The day they were hung. The judges had arrived. The prison doctor was ready waiting to confirm the deaths. The junior warden and his troops had already taken positions at the rear of the gallows. All the electric lights were brightly on and the four kerosene pressure lamps for the emergency in case of power blackout were also burning.

Apart from the shue-shel noises from the pressure lamps everything was quite and noiseless.

British Hanging (1879)

I stood at the front of the base of the gallows and carefully observed my men doing their duties step by step. The guy who was assigned to pull the trapdoors lever was tightly holding the handle of the long lever in both hands and at the same time staring without even a wink at me for my final signal. He didn’t look anywhere else the whole time. 

Aung Mya and Than Myint were already on the gallows and forced to stand inside the two white circles on the trapdoors. Aung Mya on the right and Than Myint on the left. With huge white hoods on and in the white jail garb they looked like two white cocoons standing up. Their hands were already cuffed from behind since in their cells and the men were now tying their legs tight with ropes.

Once everything was ready one junior warden shouted an order and the troops of warden stood to attention. Nooses were already around the necks of Aung Mya and Than Myint and already tightened. So I asked them to say their last wish.

First appeared Aung Mya’s voice. Not loud and not clear just blurred.

“For every future life ….  not a bad friend like in this life ……….”

Even before Aung Mya finished his sentence Than Myint’s voice came out loud and clear.

“Shit, Aung Mya, you Bastard …….”

I pulled out a white handkerchief from my trousers’ side pocket as the prearranged signal and the man at the lever pulled the handle while grinding his teeth. Jaing, with the loud noise from the trapdoors hitting the concrete sidewalls of the gallows base the two white cocoons dropped and disappeared out of sight. Both ropes taut without oscillating and twisting.

Than Myint was still dominating and bullying Aung Mya till the last seconds just before their unnatural deaths.

                                            *************************

A Hanging by George Orwell (1931)

(George Orwell (a) Eric Blair was a colonial police officer in British Burma.)

George Orwell (1903-1950)

It was in Burma, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them brown silent men were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned men, due to be hanged within the next week or two.

One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a Hindu, a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a thick, sprouting moustache, absurdly too big for his body, rather like the moustache of a comic man on the films. Six tall Indian warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.

Aung Moe and Amy: Sanctions' Collateral Damage (3)

Aung Moe's Crime Scene?

Then in 2002 I read about Aung Moe in a popular Burmese crime magazine in a Burmese restaurant in Sydney’s inner west suburb of Strathfield. The short story described Aung Moe’s stabbing murder case as a crime of passion. He basically killed a foreign businessman from South Korea or Taiwan, I couldn’t recall now, in the fight following an altercation outside a karaoke bar in Rangoon’s notorious entertainment strip at the Theingyi Bazzar on the Signal Pagoda Road. 

The story shockingly added that a young Anglo-Burmese escort named Amy who was with the murdered businessman was also injured in the fight. As soon as I got back home from the restaurant I called my friend’s house in Rangoon’s Golden Valley. This was roughly what happened to Aung Moe and Amy, according to my friend.

Aung Moe and Amy: Sanctions' Collateral Damage (2)

By 1997 the writing was on the wall and most foreign business relying on the exports to the biggest market in the world USA were preparing for the worst and ready to get out of Burma. And the exodus of foreign companies especially of the West Bloc from Burma was started by the sudden withdrawal of Pepsi-Cola in May 1997.

Burma Boycott & Shocking Pressure on Pepsi-Cola

FBC's Pepsi Boycott.

It would be hard to explain the beginning of the economic sanctions against Burma without mentioning the particularly shocking case of Pepsi-Cola’s withdrawal from Burma in 1997. This edited extracts from Burma Boycott Quarterly; Summer 1997 by Reid Cooper is self explanatory about the enormous pressure being applied on the Pepsi back then to abandon its much profitable operation in Burma.

“On November 22, 1991, a Pepsi bottling plant in Rangoon formally opened. The plant was joint venture between Pepsi Co. and Thein Htun’s Pepsi-Cola Products Myanmar. Thein Htun had built his business carrier on being a representative for foreign firms in Burma, developing a reputation as a SLORC (military junta) businessman.