Myanmar’s Youth Envision A Very Different Nation
It has been a month since Myanmar’s Tatmadaw military staged a coup and arrested the head of its opposition party, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (DASSK). Demonstrations against the coup began immediately and have grown stronger on a daily basis, bringing daily operations on which the Tatmadaw depend to a near halt. The military response has been brutal including mass arrests and killings. This response has finally provoked a greater international cry of condemnation and threats of further action.
In the lives of nations, most citizens prefer civilian over military rule. So, in this case in Myanmar, we cheer for and demonstrate to bring DASSK back to fulfill her and her National League for Democracy Party’s hard-won election results of November 2020. Ultimately it was the peoples’ vote and restoring the winners to office is the first step towards restoring the country.
The in-country demonstrations under the banner “Civil Disobedience Movement” (CDM) were initially led by doctors followed by unions, students and government workers. There is genuine anger over DASSK’s removal and questions about her safety. DASSK has had almost no access to her lawyers, who themselves are kept out of the loop on the proceedings against her. Importantly, President Win Myint is also detained and both are facing fresh charges that, rather than casting these elected leaders in a bad light, serve to illuminate the illegitimacy of the Temporary Coup Regime. Australian economic advisor Sean Turnell has also been detained.
For now though, the regime appears to be marching in lockstep with its dictator du jour, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing. Many international steps (publicized and not) have economically isolated them. But while considering next steps, there’s an elephant in the room: To the outside world, DASSK was most recently seen as a booster for military assaults carried out under Min Aung Hlaing’s direction – ethnic cleansing and/or genocide - that resulted in a million Rohingya fleeing into exile and now trapped on an island off the coast of Bangladesh. This fact is raised when Burmese seek support from the outside world. After fielding such questions from new friends abroad, the younger generation of CDM has shown a stronger commitment to the message of civilian rule than purely to the elevation of DASSK, the star and heroine of Burma. The youth see that while pushing towards a true representative democracy, she has done little to deliver rights and protection to the ethnic minorities on the opposite borders of Myanmar.
Perhaps like youth the world over, their goals will be dismissed as idealistic and impractical. But much of the world, and growing numbers of older Burmese, agree with their position: Myanmar would be better served with a new constitution that not only puts the Tatmadaw firmly into civilian control and introduces international norms for civil rights, freedoms of the press and assembly and an independent judiciary, but also extends full rights to all ethnicities and nationalities and includes some form of justice for the terrorized Rohingya.
The ‘88 generation sacrificed much to restore DASSK to power and suffered through multiple waves of attacks and imprisonment at the hands of some of the same generals who have been sharing power with DASSK in the aftermath.
No one doubts the ability of DASSK to sweep any fair election, even while noting her metamorphosis from human rights activist to cold-hearted politician once in office. In the government DASSK set up, there has been less room than anticipated for her own progressive followers in the National League for Democracy (NLD). At times even Generation 88 has felt left by the wayside.
Under this backdrop an existential question arises for the Rohingya, whose voices have been amplified by journalists, politicians and human rights leaders. Why support DASSK now? For Rohingya, who could play a crucial diplomatic role within exile communities now calling for action against the February coup regime, why should they show up for a strictly pro-DASSK rally – neither Aung San Suu Kyi nor her NLD party have even acknowledged the Rohingya’s basic rights crucially their right to exist other than as a stateless people. They have lost their homes, mosques, villages and way of life.
The military’s confidence on this point rests on a bedrock of an historically challenged “Rohingya’s aren’t from here” racial sentiment which is not unique to the military or DASSK. It has been shared among the Burman majority and more strongly among older voters and Buddhist nationalists.
Worth noting, there are many Muslims in other parts of Myanmar and from places as far away as Yangon and the nation’s eastern border states. They are a potential bridge between the Rohingya and the Burman majority as well as between the CDM and the world at large. And for the most part there has been little tension between Yangon’s Muslims and Buddhists. The open night Muslim markets draw a diversity of people who praise Halal meat as being the freshest and cleanest.
In general, Myanmar saw far fewer human rights violations in the DASSK & NLD era than had been seen under the former 100% military governments going back to 1962. During DASSK’s political tenure, prisoners of conscience became largely a thing of the past. But DASSK expressed a desire to move on rather than to hold members of the military accountable for crimes that are still impacting the ethnic minorities, such as stolen farmlands.
The outside world’s faith in DASSK has been shaken by her approach to the Rohingya. This included an unforgivable UN speech in which she asked the world to not ask why the great majority of Rohingya were fleeing, but why a few of them were staying behind; the formation of investigative panels from which veteran U.S. diplomat Bill Richardson stepped away after concluding they were meant to be, in his words, “just a whitewash;” as well as a cynical strategy led by DASSK’s and the regime’s lawyers to ensure the events would be recorded as “ethnic cleansing” (which has no definition under international law) and not as “genocide” with its legal repercussions.
Despite the conundrum, much of the US activism for Myanmar going back to the 1990s was led by Muslim exiles. Muslims from Shan, Mon and Karen States are participating in rallies abroad, hoping to be joined by the Rohingya and understanding why they are staying away.
ASEAN faces its own conundrum. It was not designed to deal with this kind of situation. We may write more about this in the coming days.
Indonesia proposed to its ASEAN partners that they accept the coup regime at its word that there would be new elections within a year, and that ASEAN should react only if the elections fail to take place. This essentially ratified the coup – it “takes the bait” put out by the Temporary Coup Regime. The outcry against this, targeting Indonesian diplomats, was led by Burmese Muslims including some who delivered a written appeal to the consulate in Los Angeles. That caused an instantaneous back-peddle by Indonesia who dropped the idea. A day later, the regime began raiding homes and businesses in the Muslim quarter of Yangon.
This illustrates something the CDM and their international supporters are beginning to realize: the Rohingya and other Muslims can play a key role in the future of Myanmar and where it sits on the global stage.
In the past several days in Myanmar, large multi-faith anti-coup vigils have been held with substantial Muslim participation. In the international protests, there have been shifting emphases on things other than DASSK’s detention including boisterous chants of “Who Is Our President? U Win Myint!”
We all want DASSK out of house arrest, free of trumped-up charges and a troubled nation’s votes to be honored. So how do we honor these issues in such a way that the big questions are addressed, namely:
Burma is not alone in this one: how does a society excise and immunize itself against future bouts with powerful strains of racism like the feelings so many in the Burman majority have toward the Rohingya? What, if anything, can be done to “put in check” the racist monk Wirathu and deprogram his nationalist followers?
No question, Aung San Suu Kyi should be released immediately. The violence, warrantless home invasions, “midnight knock” disappearances, gangs of thugs and suppression of rights meted out by the regime must stop. But the needs of the Rohingya and other ethnic groups, the very structure of any future government, the Tatmadaw’s role therein, all present questions that will need answers for real progress in Myanmar.
