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Showdowns

© Jason Gottlieb

At the end of a movie, there's always a showdown between the good guys and the bad. Epithets, then bullets, fly. When the dust settles, the good guys win, and the movie ends. In real life, though, the action never ends with the showdown, and one is often not quite sure who won. Sometimes the good guys are easy to spot, but often, it's not so easy.

Two recent showdowns in Asia last week underscore the point. In Myanmar, opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi spent six days in her car as a protest against her decade long house arrest. In Cambodia, Hun Sen, winner of last year's coup d'etat and this year's election, forced his opposition to consider joining with him in a coalition government. In both nations, tensions remain high, and like in a movie theater, the audience hasn't yet exhaled, expecting (at least) one more thrill before the closing credits.

Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Myanmar's founder, Aung San, who led the nation's fight for independence from the British in the 1940s. Although he was assassinated in 1947, Myanmar became independent the following year. Unfortunately, the nation, under harsh military rule since 1962, has never quite achieved Aung San's dreams of freedom.

In 1988, the military government agreed to an election, which Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party won handily. The government, however, refused to accept the election and invalidated it. Ten years ago, on August 8, 1988, the government began a crackdown that cost several thousand lives (probably -- exact figures are understandably vague, and the government claims the death toll was only a few dozen). The government reconstituted as the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), disallowed the new parliament to meet, and placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest.

SLORC has been trying to dress up its image. It changed its name to the only slightly less Orwellian "State Peace and Development Council" (SPDC), but has continued to rule Myanmar with all the skill and delicacy of Mike Tyson performing brain surgery. Foreign investment has been virtually cut off, the economy is terrible, and the government is more interested in ensuring that Aung San Suu Kyi stay in her house. Although she was technically released from house arrest in 1995, that release seems to have been more in word than in deed, emphasized by the cadre of military police guarding the house, officially for her protection, begging the question of what, exactly, she is being protected from.