For weeks, there has been speculation in Rangoon that the military junta has been preparing to put purged prime minister Gen Khin Nyunt on trial at notorious Insein prison. A June 11 foreign press report said he had been moved to the jail from house arrest. But the following day this was denied in a press conference by Home Affairs Minister Maj-Gen Maung Oo.

Since Khin Nyunt was removed last October, there have been two main theories: One is Khin Nyunt will be tried for corruption and insubordination. The other is the junta is not prepared to do so because there has been a secret agreement among top leaders that the original members of the junta will not be charged with crimes. Thus, it is unsure if the regime leaders have courage to take Khin Nyunt to the dock. It could open a Pandora’s Box.
 

Khin Nyunt is one of the remaining senior members of the former State Law and Order Restoration Council, which took power in 1988 after the military brutally crushed a pro-democracy uprising. In 1997, the SLORC changed its name to the State Peace and Development Council.
 

Many of Khin Nyunt’s former military intelligence men and associates are now serving long prison sentences after the agency was dismantled. The purge’s effects are still being felt in high places.
 

Some Burma watchers think Khin Nyunt did have a plan to seize power. The junta’s number three man, Gen Shwe Mann, told local businessmen in a speech last year that the disgraced general had disobeyed orders and asked his officers to collect information on other brass. It is known that Khin Nyunt kept dossiers on top officials.
 

It is also known that the ambitious Khin Nyunt, a favorite of late dictator Gen Ne Win, gathered enemies as he quickly rose to the top and expanded his power base. He ended up as number three in the junta and military advisor to paramount leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe. He started the Office of Strategic Studies in 1994 – helping to run everything from foreign policy, the economy and drug trafficking to ceasefire negotiations with ethnic minority insurgents – and stocked it with his intelligence officers.
 

And all the time his military intelligence agency acted as an “invisible government,” alarming other senior army officers.
 

He was also the regime’s acceptable face, traveling around Southeast Asia, where leaders saw him as a moderate in the regime. At home, he impressed international visitors and foreign journalists. But behind the scenes Khin Nyunt was far more cunning and manipulative than his more straight-forward, if tough-minded, colleagues.
 

Whether Khin Nyunt was truly pragmatic is still debated. There is no record that he was in any way democratic, or sympathized with the opposition. In fact, he and his military intelligence arrested numerous activists and opposition members, keeping them behind bars and maintaining Burma’s image as a police state. He was considered pro-China, and publicly expressed sympathy for the Chinese leadership after the brutal crushing of pro-democracy protests in Beijing in 1989.
 

Khin Nyunt gave his nod to the opening of a new newspaper, The Myanmar Times. But that wasn’t any move towards press freedom because he set up his own censorship board for the paper. It was an empty exercise to polish his image, because at the same time his military intelligence agents locked up prominent journalist Win Tin and others. Intelligence officers worked at the Press Scrutiny Board, and Burma continued to have one of the world’s most heavily censored press.
 

The general has also been wrongly labeled as the man who introduced the current seven-point road map to democracy, which has yet to start. In fact, the map was introduced in 1993, and Khin Nyunt just revived it in 2003. The road map’s aim anyway is to ensure the military remains in power in some fashion.
 

Khin Nyunt’s downfall had nothing to do with any policy dispute among military leaders. It is case of dog-eat-dog in Burma’s military regime.
 

Khin Nyunt, like many of his military colleagues, is deeply superstitious, and one tale is particularly alarming, and perhaps telling. He had his chief astrologer Bodaw Than Hla (arrested since October) use his own bath water to cook rice to feed his men. He apparently thought this would win their hearts and minds.
 
The general and his associates are therefore anything but innocent. They deserve justice, but the junta should explain why Khin Nyunt should be kept under house arrest, rather than brought to trial. Such a trial should prove popular with most Burmese. To Khin Nyunt, Insein prison is a familiar name, because he sent so many innocent people there to spend many years, or die. So it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to keep him there.

Bangkok: The political and economic stagnation that has marred Myanmar under military rule has been a “great tragedy” and pressure on the junta must continue if reform is to happen, former US secretary of state Colin Powell said Monday. 

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