Burma: New Face, Old Fist

Any hope that the surprise resignation of Burma’s military overlord, Ne Win, 78, would lead to reform was quickly extinguished last week. Three days after Ne Win stepped down, the Socialist Program Party, Burma’s sole legal political body, chose his protege, Sein Lwin, 64, as its new leader; the next day parliament named him the country’s President. A retired army general, Sein Lwin is the longtime head of the dread riot police, the Lon Htein, and one of Burma’s most feared men. He lived up to his nickname “the Butcher” when he ruthlessly suppressed student riots earlier this year.

While Sein Lwin is the new strongman, Rangoon may not have heard the last of Ne Win. Although he accepted some of the blame for the recent riots in & which more than 200 may have been killed, the wily dictator seemed to have no regrets about the brutal tactics used to crush the disturbances. “When the army shoots,” he said in his resignation speech, “it shoots to hit. It does not fire in the air to scare.”