The Underground Revolution
By Khin Maung Soe

Cell #5, Room #7, Insein Prison November, 1975
It was a cold winter night and the moon was shining outside. But the moonlight couldn't enter our room because of the brick wall in front of our cell. The floor was damp from the dew. There were twenty-two rooms in cell #5. Each room in the cell was 9'x 7' and 13' high. A door with iron bars was the only way we got air and dim light. There were three in the room at a time. All of us were weak after four months of poor food. We ate only spoiled broken rice, rotten fish paste with worms and bad smelling soup. We didn't get any sunlight at all. Our skin had changed to a faint yellow color. Myo Thant coughed with a cold. Tun Aung Gyaw was getting thinner and thinner each day. I was tired all the time. We had to do something. I broke the silence at last: "We have to eat those underground fighters!"

There were a lot of rats (we called them "Underground Fighters" ) in our cell. Actually rats, like the cheroots, were luxuries in prison. You could trade rats easily for money, but they weren't easy to find since everybody wanted them. We were living in a prohibited area and only limited persons were allowed to come to see us. Security was very tight here as if we were VIPs. Ha! Ha!

They lived underneath our cells. Almost every room has entrances for rats. There was an entrance about five inches wide in the corner of our room. They didn't come out at daytime and there was no sign they were there. But when the whole prison went silent after nine o'clock, they appeared. They made noises while searching for food and when they fought among themselves. They didn't care about us and even ran over our feet. Sometimes they bit our nails. Some of them were huge, and would weigh about three pounds and some parts of their skin had no hair. They were old but very strong.

So, at the time, except for Gen. Ne Win and his loyalists, only those rats had freedom as their birth right in Burma. The difference was Gen. Ne Win and his followers were going abroad all the time, but those rats chose to stay inside the cells. The similarity was that Gen. Ne Win and his group could have had all the delicious food they wanted, and the rats could have all the rotten rice they wanted. But their fortunes were soon changed.

At first, there were arguments among us. Tun Aung said it was a cruel thing and he would feel guilty as a Buddhist. Myo Thant said, "They may have diseases." But when I explained that it was for our survival, Myo Thant supported me and in a democratic way, we, the majority, approved the plan.

As there were no more objections to my proposal, I made a secret bargain with the night shift warden. According to the agreement we had to hand him the rats every morning before his duty ended, and he would bring back a dish of fried rat in the evening.

So, from that night onwards, our "Underground Revolution" started. We cleaned a glazed earthen basin that was given to us for use as the toilet bowl. We made a string six feet long and found a stick of about six inches. We tied the string to the bottom of the stick and used it to prop up one side of the basin, near the rats' entrance. We threw some rice under the basin and pretended as if we had fallen asleep while holding the other end of string. It was almost midnight when our first prey appeared. As the rat crawled under the basin, I pulled the string and it fell over him. He tried hard to escape by pushing around from inside. I ran to the basin and pressed with my foot while Tun Aung tried to catch his tail. Then he pulled the rat from under the basin, little by little, until half of his body appeared. I was pressing the basin the whole time. Then Tun Aung broke the rats back by pulling up hard on his tail. We heard the sound of the spinal cord break, "Jook!" We got five that night and we had our "Grand Dinner" the next day. We released the news to the others and word of our revolution spread quickly. Believe me, there are not enough words to describe the taste of rat meat. It was fried with red pepper and ginger. The ribs were the best - very crispy. To be honest, it was the most delicious meat I have eaten in my life.

To the best of my knowledge, we successfully captured more than three hundred "Underground Fighters" in Insein prison. In this way, the rats supported us. We got our energy and courage back again. I might not be here today if I hadn't eaten those rats during my prison term. Some of our inmates died of malnutrition. Thank you, Mr. Rat.

Twenty-five years have passed, but I still remember them, especially when I have barbecue ribs. So the next time you eat barbecue ribs, please remember this: someone is chewing on a rat's ribs in a part of this wonderful world. Then, you'll be sympathetic to the political prisoners in Burma.

"Oh, how I can still smell those ribs with red pepper and ginger."

About the Author
Khin Maung Soe was born at Hmawbi Township in Rangoon Division on March 9, 1954.

He was detained after the student movements of December 1974, for U Thant - a former United Nations General Secretary, and June 1975, at Shwedagon pagoda while attending his second year in Workers' College(RASU).

He decided to avoid government jobs and earned a living as a trishaw driver for one and half years from 1977 to 78.

Then he became a photojournalist in 1978 and has about 80 cover photos and 100 articles in various Burmese magazines. He was a video producer and cameraman at T&T studios, where they produced the first news video magazine in Burma called "Monitor" in 1991 until he left Burma in Feb 27,1993.

He actively participated in the 1988 uprising and joined Aung San Suu Kyi. Later, he discovered that the Media is the best means to support democracy and human rights on earth.

Currently, he lives in the United State and works for Radio Free Asia (RFA) as a broadcaster. In the meantime, he is one of the founders of the Burmese Media Association.