Myanmar's Long Road to National Reconciliation (49 page)

The Internet has enabled the activist groups to re-energize and inform these less vocal groups from the Burmese diaspora so they become more aware of the real situation in Burma and of the manipulative tactics of the regime. It has enabled members of the Burmese diaspora to create an enduring common identity around many diverse groups, in spite of different degrees of detachment and attachment to the social movement and to the home country, and in spite of the varied reasons for their departure from Burma and their different experiences.

As the use of the Internet among the Burmese diaspora grows to maturity, the agenda of their Internet-based participatory politics has moved away from a focus on protest movement toward building a credible alternative to the military regime. As a result, the target of their Internet-based politics has become both external and internal, the external target being the military regime and the internal target being the pro-democracy opposition itself. Here, the role of the Internet lies in fostering new opportunities for civic engagement and contributing to governance processes within the pro-democracy opposition. Since basic freedoms and democratic rights have for several decades been denied to Burmese living in Burma, the Burmese pro-democracy opposition needs to build democratic political culture within its own movement. Although political parties had been established prior to the elections in 1990, all previous efforts to conduct representative politics had been undermined by severe repression and harsh restrictions imposed by successive regimes. The “stolen election” of 1990 did produce 485 elected representatives, of which
National League for Democracy candidates won 80 per cent. Since then, however, the military regime has closed virtually all channels of communication and meaningful advocacy between citizens and such representatives. Although the 1990 election results confirmed a strong national consensus that the military regime must go, consensus regarding how such transition could occur was less certain. Under these circumstances, the Internet provides an alternative channel for involvement in the opposition movement, at least for the Burmese exiles who have access to cyberspace.

To large extent, the Internet has transformed the mode of political participation for Burmese democrats in exile. Although many of their representative bodies, including the government in exile, have retained traditional hierarchical organizations, their one-dimensional ladder of participation has been effectively transformed into a more participatory and “poly-vocal” model through Internet-based civic engagement. Nye and Keohane have noted that the “opening of a public space for deliberation which interfaces with the actual decision-making process in the broadest way possible can significantly enhance input legitimacy”.
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Many representative bodies within the Burmese pro-democracy movement have stepped up their consultative processes inside the Burmese diaspora, and this enhances not only good governance within the pro-democracy opposition but also the building of a credible alternative to the regime, which can effectively influence international opinion toward supporting regime transformation in Burma, from tyranny to a participatory and pluralist democracy.

Within a brief period of time, since about 1995 when Burmese exiles and opposition groups were introduced to it, the Internet has become the mainstay of the information infrastructure for the Burmese exile movement. The Burmese government in exile, constituted by the elected members of parliament in exile, has set up a website (
www.ncgub.net
) in order to provide accurate information about Burma as well as about its policies and procedures for promoting democratization in the country. The use of the Internet by the government in exile has enormously improved the transparency and openness of its activities promoting democratization in Burma and has fostered its link with the grassroots of the movement.

The changing role of the Internet is also evident in the way that politically oriented messages are posted to the Usenet newsgroups such as soc.culture.burma. In the early years, the Usenet newsgroup’s messages
were mostly likely to express opposition to the SPDC, but in later years there has been an increasing number of messages targeted at strategies aimed by the pro-democracy opposition toward the SPDC, as well as allegations of power abuses.
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Although some exiled Burmese political leaders are allergic to open criticism,
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most opposition groups and their leaders are responsive to such messages, clarifying their positions and improving transparency and openness in the conduct of their activities. By 2002, as many as a dozen Burmese e-groups had been set up with the aid of freely-available list serve services, which conduct discussions aimed at waging cyber-activism against the military regime as well as at promoting internal democracy within the opposition movement.

Moderating forces have shaped the political role in exile of Burma’s ethnic minorities, whose members have migrated over many years to different parts of the world, due to repressive discrimination at home. Members of these groups have impressive and substantial achievements. Several different ethnic groups have attempted to create a virtual community that supposedly eliminates the distances that separate them in the real world. Dispersion from their homelands to countries all over the world has threatened efforts to retain cultural heritage and keep in touch with ancestral roots in Burma. Nowadays disparate members of ethnic groups can interact and develop strategy in Internet “chat rooms”, and the outcomes of these interactions seem to have mobilized greater sympathy and support around the world than the struggle of their predecessors fighting in the Burmese jungles. A dozen or so ethnic groups in Burma have set up discussion groups or forums focusing on a range of issues from cultural preservation to provision of humanitarian assistance to their kin back home. A few have set up websites that contain both information and organizational messages. Most focus on the role of ethnic nationalities in the process of democratization in Burma.
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In some circumstances the Internet can act to amplify an existing predisposition and radicalize the ethno-nationalistic claims of long-disenfranchized groups,
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but the cybernauts of Burmese ethnic groups have been moderate and very realistic in their consistent demand for a federal union in Burma.

The impact of all these efforts on the international stage is easily visible. The Burma agenda has moved higher up the foreign policy priorities of many Western democratic governments, thanks to a series of United Nations General Assembly resolutions and UN Human Rights Commission hearings on Burma. The governments of the United States and the European
Union have imposed sanctions regimes on the military junta since the late 1990s, and have increased the pressure of these mechanisms recently. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been mobilized to push for changes within Burma before Burma assumes the chairmanship of ASEAN in 2006. Emergency relief operations undertaken inside the country are now subject to strict standards of accountability, transparency, and fair delivery — essential steps towards linking relief to democratization. Most important of all, when the voice of domestic opposition has been effectively silenced by the regime, it is the leaders of the exile movement who provide an alternative vision and focus of authority for the desperate populations inside the country.

Among many legacies of military rule in Burma, the enormous damage inflicted on human capital over more than three decades poses the greatest challenge for any successful transition to democracy. During the Ne Win socialist era, discrimination against educated people and intellectuals was thorough-going: the main official motto of the Burma Socialist Programme Party was
“Lu-gaung Lu-Taw”
or “Preference for the loyal man over the efficient man”. Nepotism and favoritism continued under the new leadership of the military government that came to power in 1988, and the depletion of human capital continued unabated, as thousands of students, teachers, intellectuals, and professionals left Burma for neighbouring countries or Western nations in search of freedom from both poverty and fear. Worse still, those who stayed behind suffered further when the military regime closed down all institutions of higher education for many years in order to prevent students from organizing anti-regime protests.
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At the time of writing, the destruction of civil society, the liquidation of all participatory institutions, and the economic crisis have combined to make Burma’s problems extremely intractable and enormously difficult to resolve. While the political leaders, particularly Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy, may be able to consider sensible options for resolving the problems inside the country, their initiatives, however sound and sensible, still lack well-informed research on which to base their recommendations. Outside Burma there is no dearth of scholars who do high-quality research on Burma, but very few of these apply their
work to the demands articulated within the society. As a result, the link between “knowledge” and “power” is missing — a link that permits the transmission of policy-relevant information from a variety of sources to the ears and eyes of public leaders — and this hinders the capacity for advancing changes within the society. The growing popularity of the Internet among expatriate Burmese experts, who were originally drawn to it by political mobilization for cyber-activism, provides a bridge for connecting intellectuals and activists. Their joint efforts to prepare a number of policy-oriented studies on Burma’s myriad of challenges provide an instant intellectual platform for the pro-democracy movement to present alternative visions for Burma.

The importance of learning from others for the process of Burmese democratization reached its highest point in 1998 when Tun Myint, a Burmese PhD student at Indiana University, launched the
Maykha
list server, to promote educational and academic exchange between Burmese students studying abroad. He added another list server in 2001 for the Technical Advisory Network for Burma (TAN), a group of progressive scholars who volunteered to create a “virtual think-tank” for generating policy-relevant information and research critical to the democratic transition in Burma.
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These list servers undoubtedly enhanced the sharing of policy knowledge among Burmese experts who were dispersed around many academic campuses and international organizations, allowing them to build consensus on important policy issues and to present a collective input to the political leadership of the pro-democracy movement. Having more than just a behind-the-scenes role, these activists-cum-scholars have greater freedom to test new ideas and to engage in politically sensitive initiatives than the leadership of the pro-democracy movement, who cannot afford to undertake such essays before the terms of debate have been tested by comments from scholars and the diaspora.

The Internet provides flexibility and autonomy for scholars to address policy problems in a timely fashion as they arise. For instance, when Burma was hit with a banking crisis in early March 2003, a group of economists was able to exchange views and issue analyses within the days of initial news.
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In particular, the Internet enables the pro-democracy movement to tap a wide range of intellectual resources around the world regarding questions on particular problems and issues. Not only do Burmese scholars provide a distinctive service in raising the standard of debate and broadening the agenda, but they can present alternative
views, advocating new paths and policy shifts. Internet-based mass surveys and opinion polls have helped build consensus and public support on certain policy options and measures. In 2002, the British Broadcasting Corporation ran an opinion survey about sanctions against the military regime in Burma; an overwhelming number of respondents supported tougher sanctions despite the many anti-sanction arguments available to the audience.
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For the time being, the role of exiles in promoting democracy in Burma is limited to what can be achieved through the channel of the international community to exert pressure on the military regime. The Internet has equipped the Burmese diaspora to unite and organize in order to influence the policies of the international community towards Burma. However, it is still not possible for Burmese exiles to have a direct impact on creating a civic space or political liberalization inside the country, since the regime maintains strict control within Burma. Opportunities for direct action inside the country could emerge, as Burma’s military rulers are forced to integrate the economy with the ASEAN region that is now openly embracing free trade, visa-free travel, and e-commerce. Meanwhile, the Burmese diaspora has moved on from cyber-activism to knowledgesharing. It is to be presumed that Burmese exiles will play a major role in the country when the authoritarian regime finally opens up. On one hand, returned exiles can provide an effective resource for restoring the gaps in human capital during the process of reconstruction. On the other, active participation by exiles who have wide experience of the procedural mechanisms and functions of mature democracies will enhance good governance and accountability during the transition, and this in turn will help to consolidate the fragile process of democratization.

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   This evolutionary process is best described in the personal story of U Htun Aung Kyaw, the leader of the All Burma Student Democratic Front, who resettled at Cornell University and continued his fight against the military regime. See Michael Ryan, “He Fights Dictators with the Internet”,
Parade,
23 August 1998.