Did Black Magic Play a Role in Suu Kyi Trial Verdict?

By THE IRRAWADDY

Reporters and some diplomats who followed the Aung San Suu Kyi trial and attended the final session are asking—and not only in jest— whether the ruling generals used voodoo or black magic to influence the verdict.

The trial was repeatedly adjourned until it was suddenly wrapped up in one morning session on August 11.

Burmese are asking themselves whether the superstitious Burmese military leaders chose to end the trial on August 11 on the advice of astrologers. And reporters and some diplomats who attended the final session appear to be considering the possibility, too.

The court proceedings had been scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. but got underway at 10:45 a.m., when John W Yettaw, who has been receiving medical treatment recently for a stroke, was led into the court wearing a blue and white long-sleeved shirt and off-white trousers.

Aung San Suu Kyi entered the court at 10:50 a.m.

Exactly at 11 a.m., the judges began reading out the case history of John W Yettaw and later turned to address the case of Suu Kyi. A local reporter who attended the session said some foreign diplomats with knowledge of the regime’s superstitious ways smiled at the timing and asked why the judgment appeared to have been delayed until 11 a.m.

Yadaya, Burma’s form of voodoo, is said to rule the lives of junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe and his family and to influence his policy decisions. He and other top generals, together with members of their families, are known to regularly consult astrologers.

In Burmese Buddhist tradition, there are “eleven fires”— greed, hatred, delusion, birth, aging, death, grief, lamentation, pain, sorrow and despair—which, in a spiritual context, are fueled by sentient attachment.


Some astrologers within Burma ask whether the generals are trying to prevent the “eleven fires” from befalling them by turning to yadaya.

Many observers inside and outside the country are amused to discern what appears to be the appearance of a new number—11—in the code of superstitions adopted by the generals.

In September 2008, the regime released 9,002 prisoners. Add the numerals together and what do you get? Eleven!

During the dictatorship of Gen Ne Win, the number 9 became the satanic mark of the regime. Even the national currency was altered to denominations of nine, with 45-kyat and 90-kyat notes, which suddenly and without warning replaced the existing currency.

When he was in power, one of his aides, Sein Lwin, who was president of Burma for two weeks during the turbulent summer of 1988, regularly consulted astrologers in an attempt to foresee the future.

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Tunnel Troops’ Families Look to Occult for Help

By THE IRRAWADDY

Astrologers and soothsayers in Burma are reportedly being consulted by an increasing number of people who haven’t heard for months from family members of the Burmese army’s Electrical and Mechanical Engineering section working on the regime’s tunnel construction projects.

Some are practicing yadaya, or magic rites, in the hope that family members involved in the projects return home soon and unscathed.

Superstitious Burmese commonly practice yadaya to ward off misfortune or to bring good luck.

Concern about the fate of officers and soldiers assigned to the tunnel projects has grown following publication of reports about the secret work.

Several photographs of a tunnel construction site were posted on news Web sites in recent weeks, including the Democratic Voice of Burma, Yale Global online and The Irrawaddy, and have subsequently been circulating widely in Burma. The photographs and video material came from a number of sources, including the Burmese military and Burmese activists.

Family members are reportedly worried that after the completion of the secret tunnel-construction project, the regime may not want the officers and soldiers involved to communicate with the public.

A well-connected Burmese editor based in Rangoon told The Irrawaddy that some of the projects are almost complete and at an “important stage.” He believed that the regime won’t allow soldiers and officers who belong to the engineering force to return home this time.

An astrologer who provided yadaya advice to some family members told The Irrawaddy that a group of female karaoke singers is often brought to Naypyidaw to entertain the officers and soldiers.

The astrologer said that his clients included some family members who had visited Naypyidaw to try and meet soldiers and officers from the engineering department.

“They have seen some tunnels near Naypyidaw and they also heard the sound of testing missiles that misfired,” he said. “They come and see me to get an advice of how to get out of the tunnel project.”

According to a MoU signed between Burma and North Korea in November 2008, Burma plans to build with North Korean technical assistance a military headquarters facility with a maze of underground tunnels around Naypyidaw, the country’s remote capital.

The government is also believed to be building underground silos to house anti-aircraft missiles, radar equipment and other military installations.

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Instant karma in Myanmar

By Sudha Ramachandran and Swe Win

BANGALORE (Asia Times)- The sudden collapse of an ancient temple last month - like most significant events in Myanmar - has been opened to a wide range of arcane interpretation. The state-run New Light of Myanmar newspaper blamed the demise of the 2,300-year-old Danok pagoda on inferior reconstruction. But others saw something much darker in its destruction.

The crumbling of the sacred site came as the ongoing trial of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was still prominent in international media - earning the famously xenophobic government criticism from around the globe. More important to the superstitious-minded, it came just week's after Daw Kyaing Kyaing - wife of Myanmar's junta supremo, Senior-General Than Shwe - had presided over a reconsecration ceremony at the temple.

Gold-domed Danok pagoda sits just outside Yangon, the former capital. It was damaged during Cyclone Nargis last year and had been recently renovated. The pagoda has collapsed at least three times before, but its recent fall has generated much talk; fingers are pointing to the highest ranks of the ruling government and its first family.

Many in Myanmar interpret that the accident portends the fall of the repressive military regime that has ruled for nearly half a century.

On May 30, the pagoda's bell-shaped stupa collapsed onto its northern prayer
hall. Three weeks earlier, Kyaing Kyaing, accompanied by a family entourage and the families of senior military officials, visited the pagoda reopening and placed a jewel-encrusted hti (sacred umbrella), a seinbudaw (diamond orb) and a hngetmyatnadaw (pennant-shaped vane) atop the pagoda during the ceremony.

Highly revered by Myanmar's Buddhists, Danok pagoda is "believed by the local populace to reject donations offered by bad people and to shake in repudiation", Ingrid Jordt, an expert on Myanmar and anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin, told Asia Times Online in an e-mail interview.

The pagoda didn't just shake this time, it totally caved in. The sacred umbrella fell and the diamond orb donated by Than Shwe's family was lost in the rubble. "The Danok pagoda rejected Than Shwe's offering," a Myanmar exile based in Delhi said.

Jordt says the event is significant. "It says that more inauspicious events are to come. It says that even the devas [good spirits] despise this regime and have removed their protective oversight of sacred places like Danok because of the regime's heavy sins. More importantly, it is a sign that Than Shwe's spiritual potency [based on previous meritorious acts] has been exhausted," wrote Jordt. "It is a sign that he has done so many evil things that he no longer has the ability to make merit any longer." It is seen, Jordt claims, as "a very bad sign for the regime".

A rattled junta responded swiftly. It ordered the media in Yangon not to report the Danok incident. A week later, it blamed the collapse on shoddy renovation work. But discussion, in Myanmar's streets or expatriate blogs, of what the pagoda collapse means is unlikely to be silenced easily.

Within a week of the devastation of Danok, an accident occurred at the Bawdi Ta Htaung monastery in Monywa, 136 kilometers north of Mandalay. Two senior monks who were inspecting a Buddha statue in the monastery - the 130-meter statue is Myanmar's tallest - were injured when the elevator they were in hurtled downwards, crashing into a stairway.

"Two bad incidents within a week of each other and that two in places of religious significance is a bad omen. It could mean trouble for the regime or even a natural catastrophe that will bring suffering to people," the exile said.

Astrological advice
Belief in superstition, numerology, astrology and the occult is deep and widespread in Myanmar. It is well known that the generals are influenced in their decisions by astrology and portents.

General Ne Win, who seized power in 1962, was guided in his decisions by a belief that the number nine was his lucky number. In September 1987, he introduced the 45 kyat and 90 kyat bank notes because they are divisible by nine and their digits add up to nine. An astrologer reportedly told him that he would live for 90 years if he did - he died aged 92. It is said that Ne Win used to walk backwards on bridges to ward off evil.

Than Shwe is also said to believe deeply in astrology and occult. His sudden decision in 2005 to shift Myanmar's capital from Yangon to the jungle redoubt Naypyidaw, meaning "royal palace", was apparently influenced by soothsayers.

Exiles claim he uses occult rituals to ward off bad luck before talks with pro-democracy leaders and foreign envoys. U Gawsita, one of the leading monks in the 2007 Saffron Revolution now living in the US, told Asia Times Online by phone that the regime has long been engaged in what he calls "astrology politics".

Reportedly on the advice of his astrologers, Than Shwe has resorted to a bewildering array of yadaya (rituals performed to avert impending misfortune) to counter any karmic misstep and to sustain his hold on power. He has installed a jade Buddha allegedly resembling his own appearance at the Shwedagon pagoda in Yangon. Buddha images donated by Than Shwe and his family have been installed across Myanmar in recent years.

Than Shwe's superstitions seem to have originated in his childhood. According to a relative of Kyaing Kyaing, Than Shwe has a birthmark which the astrologers in his native town interpreted it as the sign of a "future king".

According to the wife of a high-ranking Myanmar diplomat's wife, who declined to be identified, a 70-year-old nun named Dhammasi living in the northern part of Yangon is the principal adviser of Daw Kyaing Kyaing and Than Shwe on arcane matters.

"There was a scurry of visits to that nunnery by Than Shwe's family and former general Khin Nyunt's. The two families were vying with each other to get the most powerful occult advice from the nun," she told Asia Times Online. Khin Nyunt was the former intelligence chief and a highly influential figure in the regime’s top brass before he was deposed and put under house arrest in 2004.

The diplomat's wife said the aging nun is still visited by Than Shwe's wife: "Once we followed [Dhammasi] to upper Burma [Myanmar] in her search for lost Buddha images which she said she saw in her dreams and on the way our car was stuck in the mud. The nun took out her mobile phone which very few Burmese people could use at that time and she made a phone call to someone. Very soon, battalions of soldiers came out in trucks and pulled out our car."

She said soothsayers are often approached by the regime's top brass seeking promotions and to strengthen their positions. Astrologers and practitioners of the arcane often tend to be nuns, astrologers and even some corrupt Buddhist monks, according to a range of Myanmar citizens.

Still, many families in predominantly Buddhist Myanmar consult their favorite astrologers and spiritual advisers for an array of purposes: to successfully go abroad, to get promoted, to control an adulterous spouse, to pass an exam, or to have a successful interview.

Many perform yadayar to offset predictions of negative events. For example, throwing away a slipper means preventing the possibility of jail because the jail and the slipper represent the same planetary significance.

Also, every given name has a planet and some astrological significance. Sometimes, however, this becomes a simple play on words. To defuse tension in the aftermath of the 2007 protests, the government appointed a liaison officer to speak to Suu Kyi named Aung Kyi. "Aung" means success, and the thinking was he would win over "Kyi".

Numerology also plays a significant role in Myanmar. Using astrological calculations based on one's date of birth, numbers and calculations are inscribed on a sheet of metal. That metal is sometimes placed on an altar or a sacred part of a home to bring luck.

Aung San Suu Kyi seems to be a rare exception. According to a Myanmar woman who frequently met Suu Kyi before she was put under house arrest, the Noble Peace Laureate never showed an interest in astrology. Still, whenever people, including her party leaders, handed her papers of astrological advice, she never rejected them out of respect.

Others in Myanmar's opposition movement are hardly so skeptical. The famous jailed student leader Min Ko Naing changed to his current name - meaning "the one who triumphs the king" - from his original name Paw U Tun. U Gamira, a leader of the Saffron Revolution whose new name means "magic", was once called U Samdawbarsa. (The so-called "8888" student uprising of 1988, is also an allegedly auspicious digit.)

Dates in time
Myanmar's military rulers are not the only political leaders influenced by astrology or superstitions. In neighboring India, astrology rules the lives of ordinary people as well as powerful politicos. Tamil Nadu chief minister Muthuvel Karunanidhi, a self-professed "rationalist" and avowed follower of the iconoclastic Tamil leader "Periyar" E V Ramaswamy Naicker, has never been seen without a yellow shawl on his shoulder for the past 15 years. Many Indian politicians contest elections and file their nominations only after consulting their astrologers.

Former United States president Franklin D Roosevelt had an obsessions with unlucky numbers, specifically avoiding the number 13. Astrologers also reportedly influenced the scheduling of ex-president Ronald Reagan's appointments, including the time when important arms treaties with the Soviets were signed.

Myanmar's junta leaders, closed and paranoid at the best of times, are unlikely to have missed the fact that the pagoda collapsed on May 30, a date of great significance to the country's pro-democracy movement.

It was on that day in 2003 that the Depayin massacre took place. Thugs allegedly in the pay of the junta attacked the Suu Kyi's convoy and killed around 100 of her supporters. "For many in Myanmar, there is a link between Suu Kyi and Than Shwe's fall. The generals are unlikely to have missed the date of the pagoda collapse," said the Myanmar exile in India.

The significance of the pagoda collapse against the backdrop of recent events, specifically the high-profile trial and detention of Suu Kyi, may have made the junta extremely nervous.

According to Jordt, "The generals have in recent weeks enhanced surveillance of tea shops and restaurants in the major cities to ferret out any anti-regime talk. They have created stricter curfews for students in the various university towns. They have locked down the soldier's barracks so that their families cannot leave even to do business in the marketplace. The monks are not allowed to travel easily.

"In short, the regime is bracing for the worst."

Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.

Swe Win is a former political prisoner from Myanmar now working as a freelance reporter.

READ MORE---> Instant karma in Myanmar...

Many Burmese See Pagoda Collapse as an Omen for the Junta

By SETH MYDANS

BANGKOK (NYT)— It cannot have pleased Myanmar’s ruling family: the collapse of a 2,300-year-old gold-domed pagoda into a pile of timbers just three weeks after the wife of the junta’s top general had helped reconsecrate it with a diamond orb and a sacred golden umbrella.

There is no country in Asia more superstitious than Myanmar, and the collapse of the temple was widely seen as something more portentous than shoddy construction work.

It comes at a moment when the junta has put on trial the country’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, after an American intruder swam across a lake and spent a night at the villa where she has been under house arrest for most of the past 19 years.

After two weeks of testimony, the trial is on hold as the junta apparently tries to decide how to manage what seems to have been a major blunder, drawing condemnation from around the world.

The superstitious generals may be consulting astrologers as well as political tacticians as they decide how to proceed. That would not be unusual for many people in Myanmar.

Currency denominations and traffic rules have been changed in the past, the nation’s capital has been moved and the timing of events has been selected — even the dates of popular uprisings — with astrological dictates in mind.

“Astrology has as significant a role in policies, leadership and decision making in the feudal Naypyidaw as rational calculations, geopolitics and resource economics,” said Zarni, a Burmese exile analyst and researcher who goes by one name. He was referring to the country’s new capital, which was opened in 2005.

And so it seemed only natural to read a darker meaning into the temple collapse.

The Danok pagoda, on the outskirts of Myanmar’s main city, Yangon, was blessed May 7 in the presence of Daw Kyaing Kyaing, the wife of the country’s supreme leader, Senior Gen. Than Shwe. The event received major coverage in the government-controlled press.

In a solemn ceremony, the worshipers fixed the diamond orb to the top of the pagoda along with a pennant-shaped vane and sprinkled scented water onto the tiers of a holy umbrella, according to the government mouthpiece, The New Light of Myanmar.

Like the rest of the heavily censored press, the newspaper was silent, a week ago, when it all came crashing down. But word of mouth — and foreign radio broadcasts — spread fast in Myanmar.

“O.K., she thinks she is so great, but even the gods don’t like her, people believe like that,” a senior astrologer said on condition of anonymity because of the danger of speaking to the media.

The ceremony was part of a decades-long campaign by the senior general to legitimize military rule on a foundation of Buddhist fealty, dedicating and re-gilding temples, attending religious ceremonies and making donations to monks.

That campaign was undermined, and perhaps fatally discredited, in September 2007 when soldiers beat and shot protesting monks in the streets, invaded monasteries without removing their boots and imprisoned hundreds of monks.

“No matter how many pagodas they build, no matter how much charity they give to monks, it is still they who murdered the monks,” said Josef Silverstein, a Myanmar specialist and emeritus professor at Rutgers University, at the time of the protests.

So when the Danok pagoda suddenly collapsed last Saturday as workmen were completing its renovation — killing at least 20 people, according to émigré reports — many people saw it as the latest of a series of bad omens for the junta that included a devastating cyclone early last year.

Its sacred umbrella tumbled to the ground and its diamond orb was lost in the rubble, according to those reports.

“The fact that the umbrella did not stay was a sign that more bad things are to come, according to astrologers,” said Ingrid Jordt, an anthropology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and a specialist on Burma.

“It is also a sign that Than Shwe does not have the spiritual power any longer to be able to undertake or reap the benefit from good acts such as this,” she said in an e-mail message. “In a sense, the pagoda repudiated Than Shwe’s right to remain ruler.”

As laborers began trying to put the pagoda back together, local residents were quoted in émigré publications with vivid accounts of supernatural happenings.

“The temple collapsed about 3:10 p.m. while I was loading bricks on a platform around the pagoda,” a 24-year-old construction worker told The Irrawaddy, a magazine based in Thailand.

“The weather suddenly turned very dark,” he was quoted as saying. “Then we saw a bright red light rising from the northern end of the pagoda. Then, suddenly, the temple collapsed. I also heard a strange haunting voice coming from the direction of the light.”

Indeed, the Danok pagoda may have been a poor choice for the junta’s ruling family to seek religious affirmation.

According to The Irrawaddy: “Several elderly locals from Danok Model Village said that they believed that the pagoda never welcomed cruel or unkind donors, and always shook when such persons made offerings.”

READ MORE---> Many Burmese See Pagoda Collapse as an Omen for the Junta...

Site of Collapsed Pagoda Sealed Off

By SAW YAN NAING
The Irrawaddy News

Burmese authorities have banned the general public from entering the area of the collapsed Danok pagoda, local residents report.

People of Danok model village in Rangoon’s Dalla Township, where the pagoda is located, have also been warned not to talk about the accident. Local residents have been threatened with imprisonment if found talking to independent journalists.

In this photo taken on May 7, Danok pagoda is being renovated by Buddhist devotees and workers. (Photo: AP)

Burmese authorities have also banned reports in the media about the collapse of the ancient pagoda.

The 2,300 year-old pagoda, located in Danok model village in Rangoon’s Dalla township, collapsed last Saturday, killing at least 20 people and injuring about 150.

The wife of junta leader Than Shwe, members of their family and relatives of senior military officials had attended a ceremony at the pagoda on May 7, at which a sacred golden umbrella was hoisted to the top of the structure.

The association of Than Shwe’s wife, Kyiang Kyiang, and members of their family with the pagoda gave rise to a flood of speculation about the mystical significance of the accident.

The pagoda was being repaired at the time, however. The work was being carried out by the Shwe Than Lwin Company, owned by Burmese tycoon Kyaw Win.

No news about the collapsed pagoda has appeared in the official media, and one Rangoon journalist said a report written for her journal had been suppressed by the censorship board.

Local people, including family members of the victims, had been warned by the authorities not to talk to the press or even among themselves about the accident, said one resident. They were told they could face imprisonment of up to three years if they ignored the warning.

A man walks past the collapsed pagoda on May 31. (Photo: AP)

Fortune tellers were quick to find significance in the collapse of the pagoda, and elderly residents talked about the mystic powers the ancient structure was said to possess. Some said the pagoda shook when it disapproved of any visiting pilgrim. One local monk said the accident was a bad omen.

According to local lore, the pagoda was built by a Mon king. Its original name was said to be Dar Hnote, which means in Burmese “Take the knife back”—a reference to the site’s original use as a royal place of execution.

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New Year Oracle Holds Bad Omens

By ARKAR MOE
The Irrawaddy News

Happy Water Festival to godfather Than Shwe

Bad omens for Burma are being read into the traditional Thingyansar predictions published to coincide with the Burmese New Year.

The predictions say that Thargyarmin, king of the celestials, won’t be paying his customary visit to the earth this year—a bad omen for Burma and its people.

Burmese Buddhists believe that Thargyarmin pays an annual visit to earth to take note of good deeds and punish those who commit sin.

This year’s Thingyansar also directs attention to people born on Tuesday, saying they would be respected for their good deeds but that hasty decisions would be misunderstood.

Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was born on a Tuesday.

This year’s Thingyansar also predicts the end of feudalism in the world—and that is being interpreted as bad news for the regime, whose end is foreseen.

The Thingyansar is being produced this year by Burma’s Ministry of Culture, although unofficial, underground versions are also being circulated.

Official or unofficial, the Thingyansar sells like the proverbial hot cakes and plays an essential role in New Year festivities and the accompanying water festival.

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Numbers of the beast: the politics of superstition

By Joseph Alde

(DVB)–In many parts of the world it is easy to forget that a government - the apparatus that controls our economy and that has the power to send us to war or to jail - is, like any institution, at the mercy of human idiosyncrasies.

In Burma, however the idiosyncrasies of those ceaselessly in power are painfully present in decisive moments in the nation’s as well as individuals’ lives.

Often viewed as the light-hearted past time of housewives, astrology takes on a new meaning in Burma these days. Studying the imprisonment of political dissidents one may notice that an awful lot are sentenced to 65 years for a variety of benign actions. The choice of this number, a painfully long stint at the best of times, is done because the two numbers equal 11.

The prerogative for this number that crops up time and again as a sentence is pronounced is that, in Burmese numerological mythology, 11 is the number that vanquishes enemies. As simply sentencing them to a mere 11 years would not be enough, some have even had their sentencing delayed so it can occur at 11am/pm on 11 November; roll on 2011.

The brunt of such idiosyncrasy is not just borne by those questioning rule in their country. The site for the new capital Napyidaw, the latest ‘place of kings’ hidden deep in the Burmese jungle 350 miles north of the old capital, was chosen by astrologers.

The unfortunate new residents, mainly government workers, were forced to move from the old capital Rangoon at an astrologically opportune moment, one that unsurprisingly was not so auspicious in the construction world. The buildings they were to live and work in were not complete, meaning government officials were forced to shack up in unfinished shells of buildings. To relieve any worries however, the new capital will sport a new astrology museum.

Living or, even more worryingly, ruling on such a basis takes governing to unprecedented levels of incompetence. No example has been more potent than former Prime Minister Ne Win’s infamous dabbling in the Burmese currency soon after he rose to power following the 1962 coup. People watched as overnight he scrapped all banknotes that were not divisible by nine – Ne Win’s lucky number – and the country woke up to find that the majority of banknotes they had were useless.

Superstition and idiosyncrasy is not unfamiliar ground for dictators to tread. Indeed former Ugandan ruler Idi Amin would probably have gladly bathed in dolphin’s blood with Ne Win, as the latter was alleged to have done to reinvigorate his youth. His political leanings likewise can be viewed as somewhat malleable: fighting for fascists, against communism, all under the banner of socialism.

Violent psychosis

The current junta’s method for ensuring longevity is often the adherence to a belief system known as ‘yadaya’. It is expressed, amongst other things, by the forcing farmers to grow sunflowers despite there not being any viable market for them. They apparently ensure perpetuation of the regime and ward off any evil, likely to include opposition movements.

It is sad that Burma’s ‘non-interfering’ trade partners and arms dealers across the world don’t recognise that they are perpetuating a violent psychosis at the heart of the Burmese government.

But perhaps they do; perhaps the ambassadorial reports sent home tell of the Ouija board events at official functions, although it is unlikely that the recipients care. For nations looking to do business, whether it be selling arms or extracting resources, it is usually beneficial, economically, to have a delusional tyrant who can be bought off at the expense of his people.

But if one assumes that the prevalence of superstition amongst the military leaders of Burma is all bad news, think again. They are also said to possess similar weaknesses. The Lanna Action group exposed this when they encouraged women to send their underwear to Burmese foreign ministries abroad under the banner of ‘Panties for Peace’: the ruling junta suffer from an awkward superstitious belief that merely touching women’s garments will sap their powers.

Superstition is not unique to the military junta or Burma. Much of the world’s population possess similar beliefs but there are few whose use it in quite the same way. From Bush’s ‘God-sponsored’, bloodstained meddling in the Middle East, to Hitler’s eugenics, real lives are scarred by the fantasy worlds inhabited by leaders. The truth of the matter is that when the going gets weird, the weird need to get going, from office.

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