“Burmese Generals Win Shooting Events in the 1988 Olympic Games”

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by David Law

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notes: General Ne Win and his subordinates are depicted here with “G” prefixes for two reasons. “G” with a low tone, not the high tone as in “Gee!”, is intended as an insult. The other reason is simply because their narrow, small, and stupid foreheads do not have enough room to write General or even Gen.

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Historically, back in July 1988, G. Ne Win made a public announcement that he was quitting and placing G. Sein Lwin as his successor. He then proceeded to give the orders for the infamous massacres of 8-8-88. This created such an uproar that Ne Win had to have him replaced with that so-called Dr. (some kind of Ph.D. = Phar Dhedaungzah, or prostitute beggar) Maung Maung, who was so useless and impotent for Ne Win’s purposes that later, on that other infamous 18 September SLORC takeover, G. Saw Maung, that Paw Kyaung (idiotic fool), presided over another horrific massacre. No doubt all the generals share joint responsibility, but Ne Win is the ultimate culprit. He is depicted with a gaung baung headdress to reflect his civilian status, but in reality, he remained a general and hence the ridiculous mismatch of the gaung baung and the military uniform.

In addition to these two murderous anniversaries, there were also earlier bloody times when Phone Maw was killed in March 1988, followed by more killings such as the Red Bridge Incident where many students were pulled into the Inya Lake and drowned, and other incidents where many demonstrators were cram-jammed into a police van and kept there the whole day in the hot sun until they all died. In Burma, the hot summer reaches temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit and inside an enclosed van this would be like Hell, much much higher than 100. (This is similar to the Gas Vans used in Nazi Germany where Jews were similarly crammed into vans and poison gas was released inside. In a book about Auschwitz, when such a van was opened to dispose of the dead bodies, it was noted that the bodies had been jammed so tight that even when the doors were opened, the bodies remained jampacked, rigidly standing.)

Later that year, there were other confrontations in Myenigone and in the Irrawaddy Division, in the town of Danubyu Daw Aung San Suu Kyi walked right toward soldiers who had raised their rifles and were preparing to fire. She almost got killed on that terrible day.

The purpose of this cartoon which I drew almost 2 decades ago was to draw attention to the generals for their murderous crimes. This is a good time to bring out this old cartoon. Later I shall follow up with an updated version to satirize the present crop of generals for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The one in 1988 was held in Seoul, South Korea.