An edition last week was led by an account of Secretary-1 opening a new university omitting

An edition last week was led by an account of “Secretary-1″ opening a new university, omitting to mention that it is part of an exercise in social engineering in which students are being relocated from the city to the countryside, where they can cause less trouble. Was it, one wonders, built by forced labour? Burmese, including children, are still commandeered into building roads and public projects in rural areas.Secretary-2 had met with “responsible personnel” from social organisations in a village to give them the “necessary instructions”, said another article. The State Peace and Development Council – newspeak for the military government – has been busy pursuing Myanmar’s four social objectives. These include the “uplift of the morale and morality of the entire nation” and increasing the “dynamism of patriotic spirit” – areas doubtless in need of a boost, given Burma’s broken-down economy, corruption, repression and huge opium trade. One suspects that even the Belarussian ex-Soviets living under Alexander Lukashenko, the totalitarian former collective-farm director, would giggle at this nonsense.There is nothing laughable about the newspaper’s attacks on Aung San Suu Kyi. It has been running a series of articles supposedly from a disillusioned party member who depicts her as an ambitious and impetuous fanatic and blames the 30 May violence on NLD youths armed with sticks and catapults, intent on political chaos.The 7 July edition ran a picture of Suu Kyi meeting the junta’s top man, General Than Shwe. The photograph was taken several years ago, when she was free and the two sides were trying to negotiate, but the caption merely said that she had “gotten a chance to have frank and open discussions” – as if these had just happened – but “could not make a peaceful transition to the nation’s future”.

No mention, of course, of the fact that her NLD won the 1990 election, but was barred from taking power.I meet another man, another admirer of the Lady Again, this is the gist. He favours tougher international sanctions against the government, acknowledging that in the short term this will make life harder for Burma’s 48 million people. I ask whether the military government will ever voluntarily cede power to Suu Kyi He seems doubtful He says the military men are afraid. He says they worry that one day they might have to answer for the 3,000 students their troops killed suppressing pro-democracy demonstrations in 1988. “I think she will be detained for a long time – at least a year.” I’m told that some Burmese dream of an American invasion, like Iraq.Some journalists who have slipped into Burma in recent years have chosen to smuggle out their notes and photographs. I decided on a different system – fake postcards to my wife, which might escape notice if my luggage was searched. These would act as a form of record, even though cast only in general terms.”Dear Mandy,” began my first, “Having a wonderful time Wish you were here.

Last night the phone in my hotel room suddenly rang at about 7pm. A man’s voice informed me that my package tour included dinner with a Cultural Show ‘The show starts now,’ it added. Something about his reproachful tone made clear that truancy was out of the question.It was held in a cavernous hall, with long tables set for 150 diners The place was almost empty. There was only one other guest, a chatty French-Canadian woman who the following day was to begin a three-month meditation course under the instruction of Buddhist monks For the next dozen weeks she will live in silence.

Her final night of conversation was spent watching a troupe of lavishly costumed dancers performing to the whistle and clatter of a seven-man Burmese band. The star was a po-faced girl in pink football shorts who had mastered the art of balancing on one foot on top of a milk bottle placed on a bar stool, while juggling a small wicker ball with the other foot.. I thought of the Intourist hotel, Moscow. circa 1980.Afterwards I went downstairs to the nightclub, optimistically called Hot Shots The latter species was nowhere to be seen. It, too, was more or less empty but for half a dozen hookers who looked about 16 (again, more echoes of the Soviets) They flocked around. I hoped they might talk – shedding a little light on their dark corner of this isolated world – but their minds were trained exclusively on the foreign currency in my pocket Lots of love, etc.”"The Burmese are too docile. They’ll accept anything.” I can tell you no more than that the speaker is a businessman from a neighbouring Asian country, trying to make money in Burma.