Everything Is Broken by Emma Larkin Read Free Book Online Page A

leader. He is never interviewed by journalists and rarely appears in public. Even the sound of his voice is unknown to most people, as recordings are prohibited; if he makes a speech at a live gathering, it will later appear in written form in the newspapers or recited verbatim by a news anchor on television. But even these speeches are few and far between, and on the rare occasion when the senior general deigns to appear in public, the event is a carefully scripted affair.
    Than Shwe’s first appearance after Nargis began with an awkard posing at a relief camp in Dagon on the outskirts of Rangoon. The pictures were on the front page of the New Light of Myanmar the next day. Donations had been arranged in front of him like offerings at a pagoda; there were neatly stacked cooking pots, biscuits from China, bottles of orange soda, and platters of fresh fruit. Than Shwe walked along a row of blue tents, each one shaped like a house, complete with mock framed windows. The inhabitants of each tent stood to attention at the doorway, holding their hands together in front of their chests in a respectful position of prayer. “Senior General Than Shwe comforts storm victims,” claimed the captions, but Than Shwe clearly hadn’t memorized his lines or concentrated during the rehearsals, because his efforts at providing comfort looked most unconvincing. In one scene, a retinue of uniformed generals stood behind him looking on as he stretched out a stiff hand toward a baby. Most of the survivors appeared immobilized in his presence and stared straight ahead, as if they had been turned to stone.
    It was hard to know what had triggered this belated and clumsy attempt at public relations. It may have been that the Chinese government provided a helpful lesson after being widely praised in the international media for its fast and efficient work in assisting victims of the Sichuan earthquake that struck on May 12, shortly after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma. One week after the earthquake a three-day period of mourning was declared in China, and the flag was flown at half-mast in memory of the tens of thousands who had been killed. The very next day the Burmese government copied the gesture by lowering flags and announcing its own three days of mourning.
    I followed the Than Shwe Disaster Tour in the New Light of Myanmar as it unfolded across the delta throughout the rest of the week. At each stop Than Shwe provided what the newspaper referred to as “necessary guidance” for the government’s rehabilitation plans. He met the minister who had been put in charge of each delta township and inspected repair work conducted by selected companies known to be cronies of the regime. When Than Shwe arrived in Kunyangon, a township south of Rangoon, the minister for energy, Brigadier General Lun Thi, briefed him on the progress being made and listed the hospitals, schools, and government buildings already being repaired (courtesy of Asia World Co.). Farther along in the delta, at Pyapon, the senior general was briefed by the minister for hotels and tourism, Major General Soe Naing, and listened to similar tales of progress and reconstruction (courtesy of Dagon International Ltd. and Yuzana Co., among others). It didn’t matter where Than Shwe went in the delta, the script was always the same, and the model camps looked identical.
    As I read the papers each day, I found little in the repetitive coverage that looked like anything other than theatrical performance. Nothing about the senior general’s tour had the ring of truth. The tents in the camps were too well appointed and the survivors too well dressed. There was none of the deprivation I had seen in Chit Swe’s film, and I was quite sure that the route the general had traveled had been cleared of any remaining corpses or people begging along the roadside. This may go some way toward explaining Than Shwe’s extended absence after such a cataclysmic natural disaster. He couldn’t have gone to the