A paranoid regime unveils its new capital

From the BBC news report on the new capital

The outside world has got its first glimpse of the secret capital Burma is building deep in the jungle according to a report in today’s .

In 2005, the ruling military junta announced that the capital was moving from Rangoon, to an area of malaria-infested jungle 250 miles inland. At the time it was still served by steam trains. Yesterday foreign journalists were finally allowed to see the new city, Naypyidaw, at the annual Armed Forces Day parade. And they also got a rare glimpse of the junta's elusive chief, General Than Shwe, the man who rules the destiny of millions of Burmese.

What they found was a planned city on a large scale. The parade ground where Than Shwe addressed the troops is huge, and overlooked by three 33-foot high statues of the country's most famous kings. According to reports, the city is spread out so that buildings are divided by huge empty spaces.

All the hotels are grouped together in a single area called the "hotel zone". Across an expanse of empty land, apartment blocks are being built for bureaucrats who are being forced to move to the new city, painted in incongruous pastel shades. In the "government zone", ministries are several miles apart from each other. Most bizarre of all is the "military zone", said by reporters who were in the city yesterday to be a fortress. The roads have been made extra wide so they can double as military runways. There are anti-aircraft guns and missile silos. It is in the midst of this security that General Than Shwe lives, now cut off from the rest of the country, as well as the outside world.

Nobody really knows why General Than Shwe decided to move the capital to Naypyidaw. The official version is that Rangoon had become too crowded and congested, but nobody believes that. Some in Burma say the move was prompted by the advice of the general's favourite astrologer. Burma's leader is notoriously superstitious, like the former dictator Ne Win, who had banknotes printed in absurd denominations because he insisted that they all be divisible by his lucky number, nine.

But others have suggested it may have had more to do with a burst of rhetoric against the junta from the US at the time. With the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sounding threatening, the junta may have looked west towards Iraq and decided to plan for the worst. Naypyidaw appears to be purpose-built to be easily defended - and is far harder to attack than coastal Rangoon.

An Indian journalist who managed to get inside Naypyidaw ahead of other foreigners last month, Siddharth Varadarajan, has another theory. The city, he wrote in Himal South Asian magazine, "will not fall to an urban upheaval easily. It has no city centre, no confined public space where even a crowd of several thousand people could make a visual - let alone political - impression. Naypyidaw... is the ultimate insurance against regime change, a masterpiece of urban planning designed to defeat any putative 'colour revolution' - not by tanks and water cannons, but by geometry and cartography."

Looking at Mr Varagajan’s photo’s of the new city Click here to see his photos) , I think he may have hit the nail on the head – a city purpose built to stifle dissent. The new capital is the folly of a brutal and paranoid regime whose acts are sadly largely ignored by the world.

Wikipedia article on the city

More photos from BBC News