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Ne Win had promised a "Burmese Way to Socialism" -- a strange mix of Buddhism, socialism and isolationism -- but instead allowed a potentially robust economy to drift on a joyless ride down a Burmese road to ruin. Once Asia's premier rice exporter and a country rich in oil, grain, gems and timber, Burma slipped into abject impoverishment, thanks to haphazard central planning, mismanagement and an unbending policy of self-sufficiency. While resources were devoted to a four-decade struggle with tribal guerrilla armies around the country, annual per capita income sank from $670 in 1960 to $190 in 1987, according to the World Bank. The United Nations lists Burma among the least-developed countries on the globe.
Choked off at the center and fraying at the edges, Burma seemed primed for combustion. Harbingers of trouble had appeared in the form of occasional protests for almost a year, only to be quickly suppressed by security forces under the command of Sein Lwin, then the party's secretary-general. Ever strengthening tremors began two weeks ago, as larger and larger crowds, first of students, then of all manner of citizens, gathered at the Shwedagon Pagoda, the splendid golden shrine in North Rangoon, and the Sule Pagoda in the center of the city.
The first major quake struck early last week. In defiance of martial law, which Sein Lwin had decreed on Aug. 3, tens of thousands -- perhaps more than had gathered for any occasion since independence in 1948 -- flocked into the streets of the capital in response to a general strike called by students. Similar demonstrations occurred in at least 16 other cities. Soldiers from the army's 77th Brigade, which had been deployed in Rangoon several days earlier, stood quietly away from the marchers.
All that changed within a few hours. Last Monday evening the 77th Brigade was replaced by the 22nd Light Infantry, a battle-hardened division that was pulled from eastern Burma. Half an hour after, the new unit took up positions, its soldiers opened fire; an estimated four were killed by the first volleys. Through the following day, the shooting against unarmed ralliers continued. According to reports received by officials in Washington, the soldiers appeared to have orders to fire: "There were well-organized bodies of troops roaming the city, shooting at groups of demonstrators."
At one point, after security forces barged into Rangoon General Hospital, several doctors and nurses, having refused to hand over injured demonstrators, were shot by the soldiers. Radio Rangoon broadcast news of the decapitations of three policemen outside Rangoon and later reported that in the town of North Okkalapa, where two of the executions supposedly took place, 10,000 demonstrators had surrounded an army unit, causing more gunfire.
Because of the regime's control of the press and the restrictions on foreign journalists, reliable information was sparse. Even the whereabouts of Ne Win, the man who only a few weeks earlier had seemed so unassailable, were uncertain. Rumor had it that the 78-year-old was honeymooning with his 25- year-old wife -- his sixth -- at his magnificent villa on Inya Lake, about seven miles from Rangoon, protected by 700 soldiers.