Coups Armies Rampant

By DAVID AIKMAN

Military coups. Murder in the streets. National strangulation by chaos.

To most of those who live in the major democracies, a bare 30 or so countries around the globe, the desirability and benefits of the system seem so self-evident that the agonies often endured to bring it into being are easily forgotten. Last week upheavals in two very different countries brutally reminded the world that there is no inevitability to the progress of the democratic idea. In Burma a new military regime seized power, snuffing out the hopes of that country's population for a new dawn of political freedom after the 26-year nightmare of Ne Win's repressive dictatorship. In Haiti a cadre of sergeants took over the government from a cadre of generals who had themselves seized power from an inexperienced civilian government just months earlier. But the mutineers from the lower ranks at least called for democracy, a state of being unknown to Haitians for almost their entire history since they became independent from France in 1804.

Other than the accidental synchronicity of their respective coups, Burma and Haiti have virtually nothing in common culturally, socially or historically. What they do share is a constellation of evil circumstances that, taken together, offer a cautionary illustration of just how hard it is for backward and impoverished societies to grope their way from national repression to political and civic liberty. Both are desperately poor: Haiti's per capita income of $393 is the lowest in the western hemisphere, while Burma's $197 makes it one of the least developed nations in the world. Both have been ruled for decades by egotistical and paranoid men of exceptional crueltywho deliberately cut their people off from the mainstream of progress and change in the rest of the world.

Just how thriving is democracy in the world today? According to Freedom House, a New York-based nonprofit organization that publishes an annual study of comparative levels of world freedom, 58 of the world's 167 nations in 1987 could be considered "free," 58 "partly free" and 51 "unfree." The Comparative Survey of Freedom is certainly not infallible in its estimates, but its criteria of evaluation, in both the political and civil spheres, are consistent. It asks, for example, whether opposition political parties may organize and compete for power, whether the press is free, or whether the government ever loses a case in the courts.

By these and other measures, the past decade has seen significant gains in freedom, especially in the western hemisphere. In the late 1970s, only two countries in South America, Colombia and Venezuela, had freely elected governments. Today only two, Paraguay and Chile, do not.

But the gains are often fragile. The Philippines ousted its dictator Ferdinand Marcos in February 1986, the same month that Jean-Claude ("Baby Doc") Duvalier was forced into exile from Haiti, ending the dynasty that his father "Papa Doc" established in 1957. Since then the government of President Corazon Aquino has weathered four coup attempts. In theory, Panama is governed by a constitutionally elected President, but President Eric Arturo Delvalle discovered otherwise last February when he tried to fire General Manuel Noriega and found himself ousted instead. Next month Chileans will have an opportunity to vote in a national plebiscite for or against a continuation of the 15-year-old authoritarian regime of General Augusto Pinochet. A no vote could mark the beginning of a return to political democracy for Chile, but many Chileans fear that it would not be honored by General Pinochet or other senior military officials.

In many oppressed countries, those who yearn for democracy have no clear concept of what democracy is. What they do know is that their system has failed and their endurance and patience have been exhausted. "They know opportunities for the better have been squandered and that there is a key to success elsewhere," says Daniel Pipes, director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, a non-partisan think tank based in Philadelphia. "But it is not clear what that key is, except that it means drastic change."

In both Burma and Haiti last week, the key to a better life seemed as elusive as ever. Throughout Burma, troops loyal to the new military leader, General Saw Maung, Burma's fourth head of government in four months, bloodied demonstrators brave enough to continue protesting the resumption of military rule. In the days after the coup, the crack of rifles could be heard as soldiers fired from rooftops at people who had gathered outside the U.S. embassy. Many more were cut down at Sule Pagoda as thousands of people fled the onslaught, screaming when the soldiers lowered their rifles and fired bursts directly at bystanders and protesters. Ambulance drivers were shot at as they went to attend the wounded. "The soldiers will not respect even the doctors," said a medic at Rangoon General Hospital. His crew was kept away from Sule Pagoda for several hours as victims writhed in agony from their wounds.

Reported TIME's A. Lin Neumann: "Inside Rangoon General Hospital, patients lay screaming and dying in the corridors as ambulance drivers rushed through the wards with fresh casualties. Supplies were short, the doctors said, and the stock of some anesthetics was running out. One doctor feared he might soon have to perform surgery with only pain-killers. Drivers said they had picked up a very small percentage of the dead. They told of soldiers in many places taking the corpses for cremation.

On Monday night the soldiers drove in convoys through town, announcing over loudspeakers that no one would be killed if people did not tease them or try to injure them with jinglees, sharpened bicycle spokes fired from slingshots. "Don't believe them," said a man watching the soldiers rumble along. "They will kill when they get the order." An elderly Burmese woman watched the troops. She shook her head and said, "Ne Win? He is like a cross between Pol Pot and Ferdinand Marcos."

Burmese authorities claimed that 144 people were killed during the first three days, but the true death total probably surpassed 500. Horrified at the carnage, U.S. Ambassador Burton Levin called upon the Saw Maung regime to condemn the killing of protesters by its soldiers. The ambassadors of Great Britain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and West Germany remonstrated "in the strongest terms" with the Burmese government for its "defiance of respect for human rights."

The chief targets of the crackdown were the students and monks who have formed the backbone of the protests against military rule for the past several weeks. The army methodically sought out students whose names were on its lists. In the Rangoon suburb of North Okkalapa, soldiers went to the home of two students, made them come out and turn their backs, then shot them on the spot. Presumably similar atrocities took place elsewhere. At least 107 student leaders sought temporary asylum in southern Thailand. Others went underground and hinted at a more violent form of opposition. Said Min Ko Naing, a student leader in Rangoon: "We have stopped using our mouths to protest, and warn the group that calls itself the government to seek their last meal."

The military regime shrugged off the warning. Saw Maung presided over a nine-member Cabinet, in which he claimed the pivotal portfolios of Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and Defense Minister. Replying to a request by opposition leaders for a meeting, Saw Maung was noncommittal, though he did promise "free and fair general elections" and a speedy transition to nonmilitary rule "as soon as peace and tranquillity are restored."

Few Burmese were likely to believe him. For one thing, the new regime flatly ordered striking government employees to return to work by Oct. 3 or face dismissal, hardly the sign of an accommodating approach by the country's new rulers. For another, Saw Maung, 59, is a faithful follower of Ne Win, 78, who is strongly suspected of continuing to pull the strings behind the scenes ever since his resignation last July. The Burmese have not forgotten that Ne Win also promised elections, soon after he seized power in a 1962 coup, and that he never delivered on the commitment.

In Haiti no one was either making promises or asking for any from the new regime. At first, the coup caught many Haitians, including the main opposition groups, by surprise. But as mutinous troops arrested commander after commander, a strange civilian counterpart to the revolt began to take place in key state corporations. Top officials of the water, electricity and phone companies were told by their staffs that they were no longer in charge. The governor of the Central Bank, Onill Millet, was "fired" by his employees and thrown out of the building.

In the ritual of Haitian politics, what was happening was a dechoukage, a "rooting out" of Duvalierists. The military and civilian mutinies appear to have been provoked by the barbarism of an attack on worshipers at a Port- au-Prince church, St. Jean Bosco, three Sundays ago. The attack, which left 13 dead and 77 injured, was staged by the Tonton Macoutes, the vicious thugs who terrorized Haiti under the Duvaliers. Under Lieut. General Henri Namphy, leader of the just ousted regime, and particularly Port-au-Prince mayor Franck Romain, the Macoutes have enjoyed a comeback.

As the mutiny spread and crowds plundered his house last week, Romain sought refuge inside the embassy of the Dominican Republic. Others were not so lucky. Some Macoutes were stoned to death. Several who participated in the murder last year of former presidential candidate Yves Volel were seized by an enraged crowd, dragged to the St. Jean Bosco Church, savagely beaten, then set on fire. At least twelve Macoutes last week fell victim to the selective new dechoukage. Bowing to pressures from the junior officers, Haiti's new, self- declared President, Brigadier General Prosper Avril, replaced all the top military commanders.

Unlike the Burmese, most Haitians have been so numbed by generations of brutal tyranny that they have not been exposed to the concept of constitutional rule and limits on the arbitrariness of government. Anthony Downs, a Georgetown University political scientist, stresses the difficulty of sowing the seeds of democracy in a soil that has never grown that crop before. Says Downs: "People who have tried to start instant democracies have almost always failed."

Yet if Haiti's history offers little encouragement, Burma's experience offers at least a glimmer of hope. Rangoon enjoyed 14 years of democracy between the end of British colonial rule in 1948 and Ne Win's seizure of power in 1962. The key to the metamorphosis from angry revolt to ordered self-rule, explains Michael Novak of the American Enterprise Institute, is the acceptance of restraint. "It's not just a matter of going to the barricades," he says. "You must go from being a mob to being a people. From there, you must develop habits of self-organization." In both Burma and Haiti last week, the people were still at the barricades, waiting for the next moves of those who call themselves their leaders.

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira/Washington, Bernard Diederich/Port-au-Prince and William Stewart/Bangkok