General Khin Nyunt, the number three, revels in a personality cult, preening for the cameras - his multiple pictures dominate the grotesque parody of a press, which used to dub Suu Kyi a “genocidal prostitute” and “a foreigner's floozie”.

Suu Kyi's late husband, Oxford professor Michael Aris, died of cancer in 1999, shortly after Rangoon denied him a visa to see his wife one last time.
Near where he keeps his three living white elephants, Khin Nyunt has built his temple over a large natural rock he believes resembles an elephant, though to other Burmese it is just a rock.

Detached from reality, the military elite, brutalised after years in power, lives sumptuously in huge villas, while most Burmese exist just above the hunger line. Seen from a rattling night train, village homes are lit by candle-power only. The military chieftains fear democracy because they think it could mean tribunals - they have seen Slobodan Milosevic on trial at The Hague and, worse, Nicolae Ceausescu shot in Romania. Yet they remain a law unto themselves. Last week, four traffic policemen were arrested for daring to stop a car carrying a general's daughter.