TheStar.com - Opinion: Burma grounds its jumping cats

TheStar.com - Opinion: Burma grounds its jumping cats
Burma grounds its jumping cats
Martin Regg Cohn

The cats don't jump for the monks anymore.

For years, it was the best show in town, certainly in Inle Lake. Now, like almost everything else in Burma, it's hard to know what happened, and why.

In the gloomy monastery of Nga Phe Kyaung, the monks lifted their own spirits – in between prayers – by training cats to jump. Word got out to tourists, the monastery made a name for itself, and the monks made a lot of money as alms.

On cue, the cats would leap through bamboo hoops one metre off the ground for the amusement of the praying monks and the paying customers. Buddha might smile upon the sight of felines levitating and foreigners lapping it up.

But as the saffron-robed monks improved their English, they started engaging with the tourists – those curious enough to ask questions about the grinding political situation in their country. And the generals who rule Burma would not have been amused.

Now, the monks and the cats have stopped their joint performances. Such are the ways of Burma that no one knows the real story.

And though this column is nominally about jumping cats – it being human nature to perk up at the mention of cuddly animals that perform tricks – it says a lot about Burma, its monks, its people, and the army generals who control it.

I first visited Inle Lake when profiling Aung San Suu Kyi, the charismatic opposition leader whom the army has kept under house arrest for most of the past 18 years, ever since she trounced them in democratic elections.

Suu Kyi is an icon for foreigners as she is for the Burmese themselves. By virtue of her charisma, discipline and sacrifice, "the Lady" (as the regime refers to her) has long attracted the attention of the outside world. More than any cat story.

But there is something about their fates – the cats' and the Lady's – that speaks volumes about how the military perceives threats. While her people are buffeted by natural disasters like this year's cyclone, and the man-made disaster of military misrule going back decades, Suu Kyi languishes in isolation.

And Burma's opposition is leaderless.

Under foreign pressure, the military junta suspended Suu Kyi's house arrest briefly in 2002. I flew to Rangoon for an interview at the dilapidated headquarters of her National League for Democracy, where the men from military intelligence are camped out across the street. But her days of freedom were numbered. Suu Kyi was soon back behind the security perimeter of her home, where she has remained a political prisoner ever since.

It was at Inle Lake that I tracked down someone who had known Suu Kyi in her student days. Later, I took a boat to the monastery – and befriended the abbot by trading cat stories. I described how mine had mastered an electromagnetic cat flap, acquiring seemingly magical powers with a tiny magnet on her collar that left all the other neighbourhood cats dumbfounded.

The abbot chortled at the tale and in return, passed on the secret of how the cats of Nga Phe Kyaung work their magic in mid-air. I cannot describe the training in detail, except to say that my cat is trained in the Burmese method – and is now carrying on their legacy.

The monks of the monastery ceased the cat performances several months ago, my sources tell me. Did the authorities find fault with them? Perhaps they were envious of the alms flow. Possibly they were disturbed by the emerging political dialogue (passed on by ubiquitous informants).

Or maybe they were not amused. This is the regime, after all, that arrested comedian U Maung Thura (a.k.a. the Tweezers) last summer for criticizing the government's relief effort during the devastating May cyclone. Last month, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Last year, the security forces went after the Moustache Brothers, a Mandalay-based comic troupe whose performers have been in and out of jail since I interviewed them in 2002.

That is the story of Burma: A tragicomic place where icons are invisible, comics go to jail, and jumping cats can be placed under house arrest in their monastery.

Martin Regg Cohn, a long-time foreign correspondent, is deputy editorial page editor. His column appears Tuesday.