Myanmar Journal: A Night of Terrors
The following thread is being written by a vipassana meditator from the tradition of S.N. Goenka who is currently in Myanmar, who has played a pivotal role in the organization’s mission. For his safety, personal details have been obscured, but he has made it his desire that his observations be read by meditators everywhere.
The nights are some of the most psychologically difficult time of the day but for what I now describe I’ll limit myself to events of last night as it is representative of most nights.
Every evening at 8pm we have the banging of pots and pans followed by the singing of 2 or 3 songs and ends with shouts of protest slogans that you hear throughout the day. This routine began, as best I recall, from the very first night of the coup. And happens every night without fail.
I had my doubts about the value of this in the very beginning but I now believe it is one of the most valuable of actions we collectively undertake each day. (the banging of pots and pans is a traditional means by which people drive out evil forces). It keeps everyone in touch with one another and helps to develop unity and strength for the coming night and the following day. This routine typically lasts about 30 minutes. We have a tiny entry/balcony in front of our apartment and that is where we act this out each night. This ritual also resulted in the enactment of the first new law by the regime. In the law it explained that the banging of pots and bans was now outlawed because it could kill older people! Happily, no deaths have been reported although there have been numerous cases of headaches! The banging of pots and pans has also turned out to be one of our greatest ‘weapons’ as they are also used as an alarm when there is an emergency of some nature. Our quarter is composed almost entirely of 11 story concrete apartment buildings, separated by about 8” of space between buildings with a 46’ wide street running through the quarter. Essentially this creates deep caverns defined by the streets and when the pots and pans are banged the sound reverberates off the buildings and can be near deafening.
I should also mention that each quarter is protected by security personnel that previously patrolled the quarter from 8pm until 4 am (This has now changed somewhat and security is deployed or close at hand for the entire day. Our quarter is quite small and is covered by more than 150 security staff (composed entirely of men and some women that live in our quarter). Security communicates between themselves and other quarters via walkie talkies (the more secure I am told) and smart phones with walkie talkie apps. At night many security are outside of our quarter where they remain hidden and watch the streets. When police or soldiers come they are usually first picked up about ¼ of a mile away from our quarter. Wherever security is posted they are quite close to the arriving troop carriers because they easily relayed what they are wearing right down to the color of the slippers (shoes). Brave guys! The transport trucks usually contain soldiers, police and 5,000 Kyat people who are often times dropped off along the way where they will as a diversion to pull quarter security away or to later in the night create havoc of some sort such as starting fires.
So, last night sometime after 9 pm an alarm came out over the walkie talkie app that trucks were heading our way containing both soldiers and shoeless 5,000 kyat people. They stopped about 200 yards from our quarter to surveil the road for barricades and other obstacles such as nails that are placed in the road. When the all clear is given they arrive at the main road that borders our Quarter. And word goes out to sound the general alarm which is the banging of pots and pans. In all there are about 50 soldiers and all of the 5,000 kyat people have disembarked and will be watched and by security of neighboring Quarters. The alarm lasts only a few minutes and just serves to make sure that everyone is alert of the coming trouble.
Oddly, they are carrying extension ladders and we are later told that they are installing cctv cameras. For years now the main road has been equipped with cctv but these are largely controlled by individual quarters and can be turned on at off at the will of the residents. I doubt these will new cameras will be very effective because the lenses will be painted black within 24 hours.
After all of the soldiers get out of the trucks they walk along the main road and head to a nearby building where guards are posted 24/7. Quarter security begins to instruct all residents to turn off all of their lights and once that is done all streetlights are turned off. We still are able to do that because we still have control of the local administration office (which we took back once again several days ago) where all the switches are located. The leader of the soldiers is then conferring with 3 informers who are obviously explaining to them the various tactics we are using to barricade the roads some of which many of the residents are unaware of. Fortunately at one point they stepped under a street light and were able to get some good photographs and each of them were quickly identified as people from the area. Nothing will happen to them in the immediate future other than that they will be shunned and their photos and addresses will be posted to facebook.
The soldiers then start to cut open and empty the hundreds of sandbags used to block the roads. Nobody is too concerned because come morning residents will be back out there to fill new bags and once again block the roads. They have also torn down small structures on the sidewalk which are very small shops where small items are sold during the day.
(it is now 7:30 in the morning and the walkie talkies are broadcasting which is very unusual this earli in the morning. My wife is monitoring it and I’m just ignoring it so that I can hopefully get through this)
After slashing the sandbags and busting up the barricades all of the soldiers meet up at the top of our road, turn the corner and begin to head down our road. The alarm is given and the pots and pans are banged which makes communication between the soldiers difficult and honestly is rather frightening. They think better of it, turn around and get back into their trucks. We can hear through the walkie talkies that they have headed to another quarter a few blocks distant. Security next go up and down the streets of our Quarter shouting out the all clear signal and the streetlights are turned back on.
About one hour later they are headed back to our quarter this time with reinforcements and again they disembark at the top of our road. And again the pots and pans are sounded and once again people are told to close their lights. This time, however, the street lights are left on. They begin to deposit small plastic bags on many parts of the main road but at this time we have no idea what is inside of them. As they are doing that they spot a group of 6 or 7 of our security and in less than a second there are 8 or 9 soldiers running down our road chasing the fleeing security and when they are about 50 yards down our road the signal is given and all street lights are closed and everything turns pitch black. The soldiers just as quickly stop the chase and run like the devil out of our quarter and back to the main road. During the melee we heard the lead security guard who monitors all walkie talkie activity and coordinates response is heard to scream out but not over the walkie talkie. Everyone listening thought for sure he had been caught. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief several minutes later when he came back on the air. We were all so happy!!
30 minutes later after seeding the road with the small plastic bags they leave once again.
I haven’t enough time to continue with any details but for the next couple of hours the soldiers were surveilled but no further attempts were made to return to our quarter as we monitored walkie talkie traffic. It is all incredibly frightening and at the end of it most of the security gathered together to debrief as they usually do to discuss what they did right and what could be improved upon. They all then began clapping, I think not so much because they were pleased with their performance, but rather out of great relief. The stress for all of us is just so intense it is hard to imaging how security is able to do what they do.
This is a fairly typical night, some better and some worse and is one of the reasons we are all soooooo exhausted. This morning beginning at 9 am all residents will be going back out to fill sandbags, reestablish barriers and clean up at the main road.
Dote Ayae