Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (2 page)

Myanmar’s currency
is the
kyat
, which not only fluctuates in value against other currencies, but also has multiple official exchange rates. Broadly, US$1 = 1,000
kyats.

Acronyms

Introduction

For nearly 25 years since a brief eruption of mass pro-democracy protests in the middle months of 1988, Myanmar has been governed by an entrenched military machine that centralizes power, enforces rigid control, projects an abrasive nationalism, wages war on its own people, commits widespread human rights abuse, fosters systemic corruption, enriches itself and its associates, and drastically curtails the life chances of the vast majority of its citizens. For more than a quarter-century before that, from 1962 to 1988, the country then known as Burma was ruled by an autocratic regime installed by military coup and dominated by a xenophobic and quixotic general who first sketched the pattern of harsh repression that continues to this day. For 18 months before that, from 1958 to 1960, the state had a fleeting experience of praetorian politics under a caretaker government led by the same top general. In six and a half decades since the collapse of British colonialism in 1948 there have been occasional brushes with democracy, including a tightly managed 2010 election designed to attach a flimsy civilian façade to an inflexible garrison state. Mostly, however, grinding authoritarianism with a stern martial stamp has been the daily reality in this Texas-sized Southeast Asian country of, currently, 55–60 million citizens.
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By and large, the record of military supremacy has been abysmal. Unlike other Asian despotisms, notably South Korea and Taiwan for three decades to the late 1980s and China and Vietnam today, the country has not witnessed an economic miracle under its oppressors.
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Rather, it has endured relative and even absolute decline, and a strategic state sandwiched between India and China and blessed with extensive natural resources and a wealth of additional advantages has seen its economy fall prey to predatory racketeering devised by leading generals and replicated by their friends and enemies. The social impacts of martial law have been mainly devastating, and with human security routinely at desperately low levels Myanmar today finds itself at the wrong end of most global rankings. As a result, the vibrancy, vigor and hope found in booming parts of the region are often attenuated or absent here. Furthermore, stretching across almost all of the period since independence, episodic and increasingly peripheral civil war has taken tens of thousands of lives and destroyed countless communities.
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Minority ethnic nationalities living chiefly in hill country surrounding Myanmar’s large central plain and intricate southern delta, and collectively making up about one third of the total population, have suffered in particular at the hands of generals determined to impose a narrow and constraining vision of national unity on the diverse population they command.
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Chased from their homes and forced off their land, millions are now internally displaced, living as border-zone refugees and migrants, or resettled in distant parts of a growing diaspora.

As the 2000s gave way to the 2010s, a measure of political renewal passed through the country when military rulers choreographed a step-by-step transition to “discipline-flourishing democracy.” An election of sorts was held in November 2010, parliament convened in January 2011, fresh executive positions were filled in February, and the junta created close to a quarter-century earlier was formally dissolved in March.
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Sealing this final move, paramount leader Senior General Than Shwe ceded power to a new civilian government headed by President Thein Sein. However, since every part of the 2011 polity was controlled by individuals from or close to the outgoing regime, and since Than Shwe himself remained a key figure behind the scenes, it was hard to see what had changed.
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Moreover, even after this flurry of institutional renovation critical issues long dominating national politics remained largely unaddressed. Some relate to the role of the democratic movement animated by opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, but also stretching beyond her influence as additional forces surface to contest austere military rule. Others concern a patchwork of ethnic nationality groups and their varying demands for autonomy. Still others focus on modernization strategies for a decrepit state, economy and society. At a time of both ongoing military rule and some structural reform, the pathways that might one day be threaded through this fractured political landscape are therefore anything but visible.
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Viewed from outside in an age of bracing and often unforeseen popular challenge to entrenched despotism in disparate parts of the world, the sense that real change must one day come to Myanmar nevertheless remains palpable. Indeed, in a post-Cold War era of humanitarian engagement driven by generic notions of global justice, this problematic state has for years looked to be a prime candidate for political reform, and the main task facing the rest of the world has long seemed crystal clear: helping to make it happen. Put very broadly, that is the line taken by this book. The core aim here is to identify practical ways for foreigners motivated by mandates of global justice to facilitate real institutional change inside the country and return it to the path of democracy and diversity envisaged at independence in 1948, pursued for most of the 14 years down to General Ne Win’s 1962 coup, glimpsed for several weeks in 1988 when large masses of people rose in revolt against authoritarianism, and present today in the hearts, minds and acts of many citizens.

At the same time, however, the book seeks to situate itself solidly in reality, acknowledging that colonialism had negative impacts on a subject people, that actually existing democracy for most of the long 1950s was fractious and fragile, that military control since the early 1960s has been powerfully and pervasively oppressive, that an adequate settlement between distinct ethnic communities remains a distant prospect, and that reform proposals floated by political leaders across the political spectrum are multiple and contradictory. Surveying the scene in 2006, Thant Myint-U, expatriate grandson of former United Nations Secretary-General U Thant, accepted that the country had become a “poster child” for “nightmarish twenty-first century ills.”
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In a lyrical account blending personal and national histories, the points he sought to stress though were that more needs to be said, that this is a far more complex state than most public discourse will allow, and that patient efforts to understand it must be made.

Still more importantly, the book recognizes that Myanmar’s future course can be set by nobody other than Myanmar citizens, and in examining potential roles for outsiders seeks above all to develop strategies that empower local people to realize their hopes for change. Returning to public life in November 2010 after many years of enforced silence through house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi had much to say to her compatriots and the wider world. However, her central message picked up on an argument made throughout her political career: that nothing can be achieved without active participation across society.
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When regular citizens are given a chance to speak, they too emphasize the need for foreigners to work with and through individuals currently living inside the country. Interviewed in 2008, a staff member from a local organization focusing on gender and women’s rights noted that “Many people talk of women as being victims but they have agency.”
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The point also applies to much global engagement with Myanmar. While outsiders are right to point to widespread suffering at the hands of an obdurate and rapacious military machine, they must also accept that people throughout the land are determined to shape their own destinies.

To the extent possible for an analysis written by a foreigner, and perhaps likely to be read mainly by foreigners, this book thus attempts first and foremost to get to grips with the many challenges confronting contemporary Myanmar. Only thereafter does it move to consider the demands of global justice, and the contribution outsiders prepared to acknowledge its mandates might make to domestic political reform. To this end, it focuses particularly on means by which indigenous preferences might be articulated, grassroots leadership enhanced, and the sphere of local politics expanded. Alongside a commitment to principled foreign engagement thus stands a dual insistence that outsiders willing to perform duties of global justice take a deep rather than surface interest in Myanmar, and never lose sight of local agency. On the rare but important occasions that listening projects are undertaken inside the country, they routinely transmit this kind of message. Asked in 2009 what he wanted from the international community, a middle-aged Kayah man gave this response: “Come and be in our place. Feel it and help us.”
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This modest injunction has major implications for all outsiders seeking to get involved with Myanmar, and must be fully heard, appropriately weighed and duly respected by any proponent of cross-border action informed by often abstract notions of justice. It stands as something of a direction marker for this book.