🇲🇲 The military, the people, the monks

A Myanmar reading list

February 17, 2021

Hello friends!

I keep reading a Tweet that says you’re supposed to do an introduction at the start of eVERY newsletter. I don’t think I’ve done one since we switched over to Substack? But there are a lot of new readers this week so let’s try it!

This is the weekly free read of Dari Mulut ke Mulut, a newsletter which looks across the Southeast Asia region. The freebie is usually the biggest story of the week and/or whatever I’m super interested in, while the premium newsletter covers each individual country. It’s written by me, formally a Jakarta-based freelance journalist and now begrudgingly Canberra-based newsletter writer, I guess? Will have to work on this intro a bit more. 

Sign up to the premium newsletter here for $6 a month or $60 for the year:

This newsletter is the first of a new offering which I will personally refer to as ‘Myanmar Wednesday.’ News as large as the coup in Myanmar doesn’t fit in the premium newsletter both in terms of sheer size as well as in the scope of what I’m trying to do with this project. Keeping Myanmar front and centre even as the world moves on to the next developments elsewhere is very, very important to me. 

It’s not exactly a ‘what happened this week in Myanmar’ style report — there are brilliant journalists all over the region doing that. Rather it’s ‘what has helped me make sense of it all this week’ type look at key issues, developments etc. 

The latest

Aung San Suu Kyi will remain under house arrest on those weird walkie talkie charges. She will also be charged for allegedly violating the Natural Disaster Law during last year’s election campaign period. The trial is underway but very secretive. 

I really liked this Al Jazeera explainer which is very handy for some background or to fill in gaps: 

(Please, don’t say anything to me about the ‘used to be known as Burma’ line. There’s also some comments on the closeness of the Tatmadaw and China that I’m not personally convinced of. Still!) 

The military must-read

I feel like everyone on earth has read this but if you haven’t yet done so. David Scott Mathieson looks at what the Tatmadaw really is and why it’s folly to make predictions of agenda. It’s truly a fantastic piece and required reading. 

Conventional wisdom held that a coup would be against the military’s interest, right up to the hours when the coup occurred. But conventional wisdom on predicting the behavior of Myanmar’s military has long been a fool’s errand.

The protest movement’s long legacy

This piece from Foreign Policy has answered a not-quite-formed question I’ve had about the protest movement itself and its place in history (as difficult as such things can be to assess as they unfurl):  

In Myanmar, the past is an asset to be harnessed. The students leading a new solidarity movement in the aftermath of the coup draw in part on the pro-democracy struggles of previous generations. Like those before it, their civil disobedience movement calls on citizens to reject military rule through collective action. But while Myanmar’s young organizers are troubled by the prospect of a return to the dark past, they appear confident that their movement will produce transformative results.

“We’ve done it for three decades; we will continue to the end,” a friend tells the writer of the FP piece, Courtney Wittekind. 

The lessons from the past have shaped the response in the almost-three weeks since the coup. Internet blackouts and strikes prompt trips to the bank and curtains over windows. None of this shows signs of abating. One movement that has been particularly emotive given Our Times is the strike of the medics, who have made the agonising decision to strike amid the country’s COVID-19 outbreak and vaccine roll-out.  

Which isn’t to say the pots and pans cacophony which has been the soundtrack of the fall-out is nothing short of remarkable. Writing for the Lowy Institute’s Interpreter, Phyu Phyu Oo says the banging of household objects which rings out across Myanmar at 8 pm has a long legacy in protest movements around the world for its inclusivity. 

This form of protest facilitates the broader participation of civilians during an ongoing pandemic, including women (in care roles at home), youth, aged and disabled, in their political opposition against the regime. Historically, pots and pans movements have encouraged women’s participation in politics. It was a prominent form of protest in Chile after the event called “March of empty pots” by Chilean women in 1971 protesting against the government for the scarcity of food. It spread across the region and is still today commonly used in political and social protests in Latin America.

This is particularly salient given women have made gains under the transition which will likely be rolled back under a junta. Phyu Phyu Oo points to data which shows an increasing trend of the participation of women in political life but this has an impact on everyday women too. One middle-aged mother says: “as a mum, in the deep down of my heart, I realised that the future of my daughter and the future of all young people in the country will be drawn back to dark.”

Buddhist nationalism

Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar is one of the harder aspects to get my head around. Reporting and the broader lack of understanding of Buddhism in the West make it harder to contextualise the concept. This piece from Foreign Policy is very insightful.

In a country with seven different ethnic groups each constituting more than 2 percent of the population, Buddhism has often been employed for nationalistic purposes. Buddhist monks were often important in this, both before and after independence. Buddhist monks are recorded to have taken part in both armed and passive resistance to British colonial rule as early as the 1880s. As the movement for independence grew in the 1940s, one of the most common slogans fused religion and nationality: “To be Burmese means to be Buddhist!” The same martial vision of the nation that fearfully excludes religious minorities has persisted since independence. 

The piece does note that this is not a blanket assessment and many monks are arguing the opposite. 

Anders Hardig and Tazreena Sajjad for the Conversation have a fantastic look at the history of Buddhist nationalism and its relation to the military. The pair note that 2011 was a divergent point in which anti-Islam rhetoric heightened and communal violence increased. This occurred as the transition saw restrictions on speech and assembly lifted. The piece says that during last year’s election while there are no formal links between the military-backed parties and Buddhist nationals, the latter were ‘courted’ by the former. Go and read this whole thing, it’s an excellent context.

Now, I am very much a dilettante here. Buddhist nationalism is novel after six years of ‘creeping Islamisation’ conversations. One thing I really want to know (and I’m hoping the brilliant Myanmar smarties who read this may hit reply) is what’s the deal with Wirathu. 

We spoke briefly last November when the firebrand monk turned himself into police in Yangon after a year on the run from sedition charges. He is no fan of the National League of Democracy and there’s no love lost between himself and Aung San Suu Kyi. He is, reportedly, fairly friendly with the Tatmadaw. His return prior to the election is, in retrospect, very curious to me. Do we know what he knew? Was it in anticipation of a military-aligned party win — surely very naive — or anticipation of what has since happened?  

Further reading

Unlike his predecessor, in many ways a recluse, the current commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, is a politician in waiting who has long had his eyes on the presidency. He’s as comfortable meeting foreign dignitaries as he is with new information technology.

The Tatmadaw’s ideology has also significantly evolved. While military officers in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s were indoctrinated in the ‘evils’ of democracy, they have since been taught that their duty is to help establish and protect what the constitution calls a new ‘discipline-flourishing multiparty democratic system’.

In the aftermath of the military takeover in 1988, I spent eight years in hiding to evade arrest and then 16 years in exile. I wasn’t allowed to return to Myanmar until 2013, after a previous military government announced a move toward democratization. I hope the protesters today soon realize what we learned then: Public pressure alone cannot lead to a genuine political transition. Without a sound strategy for achieving concrete goals, we will always end up, sooner or later, on the receiving end of repression and under some form of military rule.

On the streets, I have been running into dozens of 1988 activists — we look into one another’s eyes with sadness. Many of them have said to me things like, “We are back at square one” or, “We all have failed this new generation.” They also said they were protesting against our new dictators rather than for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi.

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