Civil Servants Briefed on Suu Kyi ‘Scandal’
By AUNG THET WINE
The Irrawaddy News
RANGOON — The Burmese military government has ordered its civil servants in Naypyidaw not to criticize the junta and not to get involved in anti-government demonstrations, according to sources close to government officials in Naypyidaw.
In May, at governmental monthly meetings in Burma’s remote capital, Naypyidaw, all ministry officials instructed department heads to tell their subordinates to obey the order. Otherwise, they were told they would be punished or forced to resign.
A deputy director who works at a government ministry in Naypyidaw and who didn’t want to be named said that department heads were instructed to read out an order to their staff and to inform them about the Aung San Suu Kyi “scandal.”
Naypyidaw sources said that the content of the statement that was read out to government employees went along the lines of: “... Suu Kyi had an affair with an Indian gardener while she lived in India. After moving to England, she lived with a Burmese man before she got married to Michael Aris. The British government paid the travel costs for her return trip to Burma.”
The statement also alleged that some members of her party, the National League for Democracy, didn’t like her.
With regard to the current trial of Suu Kyi, ministry heads were reportedly ordered to tell their staff that the government had warned her many times about creating political instability in the country. However, she hadn’t heeded the warnings and was, therefore, being held in detention.
The statement went on to say that the military junta planned to release her on May 27; however, she accepted an American citizen into her house and so she was charged in accordance with the law.
The internal statement also reportedly included a denial by the junta that it had anything to do with the Depayin Massacre in 2003 when dozens of NLD supporters were beaten to death.
Department heads were told to conclude the statement by telling staff that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate is a puppet of Western nations and that the West will put more pressure on Burma’s civil service if she is sentenced to jail. That is why, government employees were told, they should not become involved in the matter.
The ministry deputy director who wished to remain anonymous said that department heads were instructed to remind staff to concentrate on their own work and not get involved in the Suu Kyi trial. Otherwise, he said, they were told they would be fired.
The military government has also alerted the ministries for education, health, and science and technology to pass word down to the authorities at institutes, universities, colleges and state high schools that no demonstrations should be allowed to happen within their areas of responsibility, according to an associate professor at a Rangoon-based university.
The government also ordered educational authorities to prepare for more security guards within their grounds.
“The ministry officials told us if we found political campaign materials or discovered political activists at our universities, we had to inform the school authorities,” said the associate professor.
According to a source in Naypyidaw, some of the military officials in the capital are unsatisfied with the recent government charges against Suu Kyi. He said that even though the government was trying to restrict information being passed around the civil service, many government workers continue to talk about it.
Burmese pro-democracy icon Suu Kyi was last week brought before judges at Insein Special Court charged with violating the rules of her house arrest by allowing American intruder John William Yettaw to stay overnight at her Inya Lake home on May 3-5.
The trial is due to reconvene on Friday.
