Deep in jungle, generals feel safe in new capital: No cellphones, no Net

All of this suits Myanmar’s paranoid military leaders just fine.

Welcome to Naypyitaw, the new capital of Myanmar, where the ruling junta can feel safe in a denuded area nestled among mountain jungle, aloof from the demands for democracy that are popping up elsewhere in the country.

The capital’s move from Yangon to Naypyitaw began in 2005 and was hastily completed last year, as civil servants were loaded onto trucks and taken 250 miles to the north.

Foreign journalists, invited by the Government for a rare visit to the “Seat of Kings” this year found a city struggling to come alive despite a claimed population of almost 1 million.

Military VIPs fly into the city’s bare-bones airport. Ordinary people, however, must endure a jostling 8-to-10-hour drive from Yangon on a pitted two-lane highway also used by oxcarts. A poorly marked turnoff gives way to an eight-lane concrete highway, the likes of which are not seen elsewhere in impoverished Myanmar.

An architectural wonder it is not.The city hall is imposing yet odd, a vaguely Soviet totalitarian-style building with peaked Burmese roofs. The city has 1,200 new four-story apartment blocks, but their cookie-cutter nature and wide spacing is closer to a soulless suburban development than the bustling city life that most residents were used to in Yangon. Many workers were unhappy when first forced to move. It’s hot — the temperature can top 100 degrees. Prices of everyday goods are high. Many spouses and children were left behind because of their jobs and schools.

Yangon’s vibrant culture is a dim memory. To compensate, residents here get 10 television stations, six more than in Yangon, although most are government channels.

Rent is free for civil servants’ quarters in both cities, but in Naypyitaw the apartments are bigger. Water and electricity are also free here and the city enjoys a 24-hour supply of electricity, a rarity outside of military bases.

“Living conditions here are better,” said a senior clerk from the state mining corporation, who asked not to be quoted by name. “I lived in a small wooden house (in Yangon), but here my apartment has three bedrooms, with electricity and water.”

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