A Coup Plot Gone Awry, or a Burmese Comic Opera?

By SETH MYDANS
THE NEWYORK TIMES- July 8, 2002

YANGON, Myanmar — The objects presented as evidence of a coup plot seemed quite standard: uniforms, badges, berets, rubber truncheons and radios. But then there were the three little dolls representing the three top generals in the military government.Black magic, government officials said darkly as they displayed this booty to reporters — a trail that leads directly to the family of Myanmar's former leader, the superstitious strongman Gen. Ne Win.

General Ne Win is 91 and ailing, and so far nobody has pointed the finger directly at him. But his son-in-law and three playboy grandsons are on trial on charges of high treason, accused of plotting to overthrow the junta that succeeded him when he gave up formal leadership in 1988.The four men face the death penalty if convicted, and they are fighting for their lives in a large, half-empty courtroom where the rattle of a generator and the clatter of the court reporter's typewriter make the testimony almost inaudible.

"Upon interrogation," said Maj. Gen. Kyaw Win, deputy chief of military intelligence, the defendants admitted that government policies were hurting their businesses and that "they were unhappy as they are not enjoying the special privileges they had before."General Kyaw Win told reporters that the defendants had enlisted the help of two soothsayers and had tried to turn senior military officers against the junta to install a government more friendly to their family and its interests.

Everybody in Myanmar, the country formerly called Burma, knows about the Ne Win grandsons — rowdy young men in flashy cars who pick fights in nightclubs and trade on the influence of their family name.Their longtime impunity fed continuing rumors that the old man, secluded in his lakeside villa, still wielded at least some power behind the not-so-savory facade of the military government.

Their arrest seems to be a signal by the junta that nobody is telling it what to do, that even if the ruling generals' own sons and grandsons can throw their weight around unchallenged, General Ne Win's are no longer exempt.

The inner workings of Myanmar's leadership have always been obscure, particularly given its reliance on soothsayers, numerology and black magic.

General Ne Win helped speed his own downfall, for example, by suddenly declaring much of the Burmese currency worthless and replacing it with bank notes in denominations divisible by his lucky number, nine. Riots followed.

So people can only guess at the backstage motives and maneuvers that enrich the saga of the wayward grandsons. It seems possible that there was indeed an amateurish attempt at some form of coup, or at least some dangerous loose talk. Beyond that, though, the case is seen by many here either as the junta's declaration of independence from General Ne Win — and his ambitious daughter, Daw Sandar Win — or as a move to stamp out the last vestiges of their influence.

Three senior military commanders and the national police chief, all of whom are said to be close to General Ne Win's family, have been dismissed, although they have not been accused of complicity.The arrests came on March 7: the son-in-law, U Aye Zaw Win, 54, and his sons — U Aye Ne Win, 25, U Kyaw Ne Win, 23, and U Zwe Ne Win, 21.The night before, the security detail that surrounds General Ne Win's villa was abruptly replaced, officials said. The former dictator and Ms.Sandar Win, who is the young men's mother, were placed under guard.

"They are not under house arrest, but no one is allowed to go in or come out of the house, for security reasons," said General Kyaw Win, who is the government spokesman in the case. "We cannot allow family members to visit Ne Win."

More details emerged as testimony began in a one-story, one-room courthouse just outside the thick, moss-covered walls of Insein Prison, where General Ne Win and his successors have for decades locked away their political opponents.The defendants, in their white shirts, sarongs and handcuffs, arrive for the sessions in a small white ambulance, the grandsons looking surprisingly young and pale. They bow and take their seats on plastic chairs facing two stern judges in black robes and bright yellow traditional headwraps.

A section of seats reserved for family members is empty. General Ne Win and his wife have three children together, and each has three children from a previous marriage — for a total of exactly nine.

The coup plan, as described in court, involved kidnapping the three top generals on March 27, Armed Forces Day, when all would be sure to be in town. The generals were to have been taken to General Ne Win's home and held there until they agreed to reorganize themselves into a new, more amenable junta. Three weeks before that date, the grandsons and their father were arrested at a Chinese restaurant when a colonel they are said to have approached to be part of the plot tipped off security officials. With the prosecution's case complete, the defense now has the floor, pressing ahead in a trial whose verdict has surely been preordained.

Defense lawyers are making their case and the defendants themselves sometimes respond directly to questions from the judges.Point by point, the testimony of military witnesses is being disputed.Payments to soothsayers and military officers are being described as gratuities, not bribes.The three telltale dolls, says the eldest grandson, Mr. Aye Ne Win, were innocent gifts from a charitable organization that teaches handicrafts to poor women. Among its specialties, he said, is doll-making.