Myanmar's Long Road to National Reconciliation (47 page)

The 1990 elections provided the most legitimate voice in support of democratic changes in Burma. Many observers have also suggested that the resounding victory of the National League for Democracy, the most vocal critic of the ruling military regime, also represented a referendumlike disapproval of military rule. The voice against the military regime was loud and clear; however, this voice has not yet shaken military rule. According to Freedom House and other human-rights institutions, Burma has remained one of the most repressive police states on earth. It is exceedingly dangerous to express in public one’s opinion about the state of the union inside the country, let alone criticize the military regime in power.

According to Freedom House, “Burma continues to be ruled by one of the world’s most repressive regimes. The junta rules by decree, controls the judiciary, suppresses nearly all basic rights, and commits human rights abuses with impunity.”
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As such, Burma has fallen into a deep crisis of “fear”, manifesting fear as twin phenomena: public fear against the regime’s persecution, and the regime’s fear against possible loss of power. Although it is not rare to find individual heroes who have come out in public to make their voice heard against the regime, it has been almost unthinkable for the rest of the crowd to join the hero, given the evident readiness of the regime to suppress such dissent. It is also unthinkable for the regime to tolerate open dissent, since it has seen, in 1988, how quickly a political dynasty can fall apart. With mutually-felt fear as a basic characteristic of the relationship between the regime and the public, there seems to be no room for an effective voice for change in the country.

The military regime continued to commit serious crimes and errors that needed to be criticized, and it required a long journey for the voice for change to reach the constituency. In this process, the underground networks inside Burma would compile the evidence of oppression inside the country, then deliver it outside the country to foreign media and broadcasting stations, from whence the information could be relayed back to the mass population inside the country. In this “inside-out” and “outside-in” channeling of voices for democracy, the role of exiles in interpreting and
articulating the original voice of dissidence became very critical. The role of exiles in articulating domestic dissidence was particularly important in the instances when the leading personalities of the domestic democracy movement were either in jail or under house arrest. However, such flow of information is not automatic in either direction. The actual contribution of those in exile in processing an effective voice for change in Burma can be understood only when the entire chain of activities employed by the Burmese exiles is thoroughly examined.

The role of diasporas in the perpetuation and resolution of their homeland conflicts is well recognized. For instance, the Jewish and Armenian diasporas are acknowledged to be the most effective of such groups in advocating their priorities within the US political system. Several possible factors come into play in determining the effectiveness of diaspora activism in influencing international opinion and the policies of foreign governments toward the diaspora home countries. First, the size of diaspora population in any particular country is an important factor. The Jewish diaspora in the US, which numbers about six million persons, can certainly influence US policy towards Israel and its involvement in the Middle East conflict.
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Second, the economic strength of the diaspora community and its control of monetary flows (remittances) into the home country can also be an important factor. For instance, the twenty million Indians who live and work overseas have a combined income of US$160 billion, which is equal to 35 per cent of their motherland’s gross domestic product. With that in mind, the Indian Government in 2003 rolled out the red carpet for its diaspora, hosting a lavish three-day conference in New Delhi.
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The Burmese diaspora, in contrast, lacks both the numbers and the financial resources to influence governments in either host countries or the home country to this extent. How, then, did this diaspora community come to influence the foreign policies of major Western powers towards Burma?

In order to answer this question, the definition of “diaspora”, particularly in the context of the international promotion of Burmese democracy, needs to be explained. According to Faist, a diaspora is a “transnational community” with the characteristic of “mobilization of
collective representations within (abstract) symbolic ties: religion, nationality, ethnicity”. Faist added another factor as being characteristic of the diaspora — many of its members are people who have undergone traumatic experiences and yearn to return to their lost homeland.
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Likewise, Tambiah found two different causes for the origin of diaspora communities. First, a diaspora could arise as the result of the voluntary migration of groups of peoples, mostly with useful occupational skills, searching for better economic opportunities and a higher standard of living elsewhere. Second, a diaspora could also arise as the result of the involuntary displacement of people fleeing from political turmoil and wars, or seeking refuge from natural disaster in their country.
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The exodus of the Burmese diaspora began when the military took power in 1962 and introduced an extreme form of socialism to the country. The Revolutionary Council under General Ne Win cut back Burma’s external ties; for instance, for the first seven years of this regime, the longest visa available for entry into Burma was for seventy-two hours.
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The result of this severe isolationist policy was a steady outflow of Burmese intellectuals and academics to Western countries, where many of them had been sent as scholarship students by the civilian government of U Nu in the late 1950s. Those who left Burma in the 1970s and early 1980s were permitted only a one-way departure from the country, and the Burmese socialist government refused to issue visas to returning émigrés.

A second wave of exodus resulted when the Burmese military regime adopted a policy of mounting a war of attrition against the ethnic resistance groups. As serious armed conflicts raged in the regions controlled by the Kachin, Shan, Karen, Karenni and Mon ethnic groups, thousands of refugees fled to neighbouring countries, from where they were able to resettle in third countries, mainly in the United States, countries of the European Union, and Australia.
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Another large wave of Burmese fled the country following the brutal suppression of popular uprisings in 1988. The majority of this group was young students who spearheaded the non-violent movement, and they fled with the dream of continuing their struggle from the border areas. This group continued to be the most politically active; the majority of them lived in exile in Thailand, although some resettled in the West. However, the lucky ones who were able to secure a final refuge in Western countries are indeed small in number. For instance, the total number of Burmese refugees and asylum-seekers granted lawful permanent
resident status by the United States in the last fifty years is only 1,344. Compare this with the figures for smaller Laos, with 202,813 nationals resettled in the US.
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The United States is by far the preferred destination for most Burmese émigrés and refugees, and its Burmese population is estimated to be around 50,000.
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Therefore, the total number of the Burmese diaspora living in all Western countries is estimated to be not more than a few hundred thousand.

With their small numbers, Burmese diaspora communities were not able to form and organize the necessary political interest groups to exert influence on their host countries to push for changes in Burma. Until the 1990s, there was no coordination of activities between communities even within countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, or Australia, let alone the organization of trans-national campaigns for Burma. In short, political opportunity structures through which members of the Burmese diaspora could organize effective campaigns on behalf of their brethren at home simply did not exist.

The information revolution changed this inherently weak political opportunity structure of the Burmese diaspora into one of the most vibrant transnational movements.

The process of evolution — from a passive and marginal diaspora community into an active and influential movement that was able to build a transnational Burmese exile network — involved several phases. Unlike the situation in some countries where the exit of groups going into exile was of itself a major factor for regime change in the home country, the number of Burmese who left the country had only a marginal impact on the military regime in Burma. In addition, the geo-strategic interests of Burma’s neighbours also acted as a major inhibitory factor against the exiles, effectively forming a sanctuary against spring-boarding anti-Rangoon activities from the border areas. As a result, many exiles had no choice but to resettle in third countries in order to survive the harsh conditions endured in their transit. Due to the strict requirements of destination countries, only a few thousands out of approximately 200,000 refugees were able to settle in countries such as the United States, the
European Union countries, Australia, and Canada. In that process, several groups of political exiles were dispersed among a number of countries, which left the exiles no option but to regroup and continue their struggle against the military regime at home. It was a huge challenge for the Burmese exiles just to maintain their network, let alone try to have an impact on promoting democratic changes at home.

In spite of these challenges, Burmese exiles seem to have overcome several obstacles and were able to maintain a few networks that mobilized international campaigns synergistically with emerging transnational movements focused on human rights and corporate responsibility. It began with the development of basic information infrastructure for the networks, and involved the gradual building of policy constituencies in the Western democracies.

The role that modern information technology plays through the various mass-communication channels of satellite television, free radio, and other media, in helping pro-democracy movements around the world — the “CNN effect” — is widely recognized. When one’s neighbours and the world are able to watch, the cost of repression for authoritarian regimes goes up.
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Many Burmese observers agreed that the year-long brutality of the 1988 crackdown on the pro-democracy movement might have been mitigated if the international media had been able to cover the protests.
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Without accurate and timely information, the worst kinds of human rights violations in Burma have gone unnoticed and without effective action in response from human rights organizations and international human rights mechanisms. For instance, Amnesty International published its first full report on Burma only in 1990, two years after the mass killings.
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The extent of what really happened in Burma was not fully known by the Burmese diaspora. At that time, only foreign broadcasting stations such as the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Voice of America (VOA), together with a few Thai newspapers, carried news about Burma regularly. However, many members of the Burmese diaspora living in Western countries were unable to tune into these radio stations or obtain newspapers from Bangkok.

Gathering credible data on human-rights violations in Burma as evidence to raise the level of international concern and to garner support for action to pressure the military regime to end its abuses was not only difficult but also time-consuming. This gap was in essence filled when a group of Burmese students, aided by Douglas Steele, an American volunteer who made his mark on the Internet with his pen name
Strider,
established BurmaNet in 1994 to post news and reports from Thailand and the border areas to some seven hundred subscribers across the world.
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It was Steele who perused an on-line usenet newsgroup called
soc.culture.thai
and realized that the Bangkok dailies’ in-depth news coverage of events and stories from Burma could be a goldmine for thousands of Burmese exiles and expatriates cut off completely from their homeland.
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BurmaNet was an instant hit for thousands of Burmese and friends who wanted to help Burma. Working with a team of Burmese student exiles in Thailand, Steele facilitated the collection of first-hand reports and information about the situation in Burma and disseminated them faster and more cheaply than any method that had previously been used by the Burmese exiles. BurmaNet also fostered links between Burmese activists and international human rights groups, who established transnational networks to work for the promotion of human rights in Burma. It allowed the Burmese activists to bypass the traditional filters of the news media and international NGOs and to disseminate daily reports of events and stories in Burma rather than awaiting sporadic coverage by regional and mainstream media. Indeed, several foreign broadcasting stations such as BBC, VOA, Radio Free Asia, and the Democratic Voice of Burma (that had been set up by the Burmese exile government) picked up BurmaNet news items and redirected them through their Burmese programmes to millions of listeners in Burma. Therefore, it also helped break the news blackout imposed by the military regime inside the country.