Burmese junta keeps Myanmar's Shan in state of fear

KYAING TONG, Myanmar, Aug 30 (Reuters) At night, the gilded Buddha standing imperiously on a hill overlooking Kyaing Tong is one of the few spots of light in the inky blackness of eastern Myanmar's Shan hills.

But to the Shan, the former Burma's largest ethnic minority, the floodlit statue is no symbol of religious devotion.

It is a monument to their subjugation by the Burmese, leaders of the junta that has controlled Myanmar and its complex patchwork of 100 or more different ethnic groups for the last 45 years.

The Shan, many of whom are Christian, believe that when the Burmese military built the statue in 2000, they even stuffed it with bad luck charms to cast the evil eye on the town, a seat of distinct Shan culture in the heart of the ''Golden Triangle''.

''They say it's women's underwear, but I don't know for sure,'' one man said after a glance over his shoulder for Military Intelligence spies, the feared network that helped crush last week's protests in Yangon, 1,000 km (620 miles) to the southwest.

Elsewhere across the sleepy town of 30,000, the garrisons of soldiers, some with Nazi-style swastikas on their helmets, are merely the most obvious signs of the military occupation of Shan State, a forested plateau 1.5 times the size of Ireland.

Although 70 per cent of residents are Shan, all government officials and police are from the Burmese majority or other ethnic groups drafted in as part of a deliberate strategy of ''divide and rule''.

Ironically, the Shan, who have closer ethnic and linguistic links to Thailand than the rest of Myanmar, call themselves ''Tai'', meaning ''free''.

''Everybody in Myanmar is under arrest, although some are under more arrest than others,'' said one resident of Kyaing Tong, known as Keng Tung during the British colonial days that ended with Burma's independence in 1948.

The junta that seized power in 1962 changed the country's name to Myanmar in 1989.

Since the army tore down Kyaing Tong's teak-and-stucco Shan palace two years later to make way for a gloomy government hotel, stories have taken root about a golden age under the Shan chieftains, or Saophas, whose descendants now all live in exile.

''My grandfather and father were always talking about the old days, when you could leave your door open at night and nobody came in to steal,'' one man said, pulling a grainy black-and-white photograph of the destroyed palace from his wallet.

''LIKE THE CROW'' As the sun sets and darkness descends on a town that rarely has electricity, people huddle around ancient radio sets to tune in to Burmese-language broadcasts on the BBC or Radio Free Asia, funded by the US government.

The junta-controlled state media are disregarded.

''Myanmar radio is just pop singers and lies,'' one man said.

Years of living under an Orwellian dictatorship that shows no signs of growing old have cowed the country's 53 million people into a perpetual state of fear, particularly in the mountainous and rebellion-racked ethnic border regions.

''People here are like the crow -- always looking over their shoulders for signs of trouble,'' the man added.

Freedom of movement is non-existent under loathed internal security laws that force people to register with 'immigration' officials whenever they travel from one town to another.

The 150 km journey from Kyaing Tong to the Thai border, through jungle-clad hills still hiding various rebel militias and opium fields, has no fewer than 10 checkpoints.

In the rare instances of the government spending money on its people -- the health budget amounts to just a few dollars per person per year -- it fails to get the credit because distrust of its motives is so ingrained.

One Shan development agency that receives 10,000 dollars of junta cash a year to bring fresh water to remote hill-tribe villages has to disguise the source of the aid for it to be accepted.

''Every time the government does something, people always think it is to oppress them,'' said one Kyaing Tong resident who visits hill communities regularly.

WHAT HOPE LEFT? Millions from both the ethnic minorities and Burmese are voting with their feet and leaving a country regarded in the 1950s as one of the brightest prospects in Asia, but now one of its most desperate basket cases.

Besides long-term refugee camps in Thailand and Bangladesh for 150,000 people displaced by decades-long civil wars with ethnic rebels, including the Shan, millions more are working as migrants in Thailand or more affluent parts of southeast Asia.

Those who remain behind cling to faint hopes that a new constitution due in September as part of the junta's ''roadmap to democracy'' might bring minorities some minimal say in how they are governed.

The signs are not good.

In Kyaing Tong, the offices of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy have been deserted since 2005 when party leader Hkun Htun Oo was jailed for more than 100 years for sedition.

The Shan, Chin and Kachin also recall the last deal they struck with the Burmese -- the 1947 Panglong Agreement that was meant to guarantee minorities some form of representation.

''It only lasted for 10 years before the Burmese broke the promise,'' one man said. ''We all know the Panlong Agreement, but only in our hearts. It's too dangerous to do more than that.'' REUTERS SKB ND0926