By Logan Scisco
Over the last two months the nation of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has been in the news as its people fight for democratic representation from a military junta known as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) who have ruled the country for the last forty-five years. In their forty-five year governance of the country the SPDC, which has gone through a large litany of name changes since it took power in 1962, has weakened the country’s economy to the point where the heroin trade thrives along the Thai and Chinese borders and the black market is one of the only ways people can secure commercial items. To add to these problems, the SPDC still has tensions with the various ethnic groups in Myanmar such as the Karen and the Wa which have led to human rights violations and military conflicts in the country’s frontier areas.
The SPDC maintains its position in the country through an intricate network of repression and fear. This network of military intelligence has been strengthened since 1990 when the military’s party received a drubbing by the National League for Democracy (NLD) in parliamentary elections, the first held in Myanmar since 1960. After losing this election, the military annulled the results and jailed opposition leaders.
However, there have been times when the international community has hoped to see change in Myanmar. One such incident occurred two months ago in September when protests emerged in the country after petrol prices were increased. The military junta quickly put down these protests but in the course of doing so several Buddhist monks, arguably the most influential people in Myanmar aside from the SPDC, were beaten. In response, the monks refused to accept alms from members of the SPDC thereby damaging their prospects of being reborn in a good position in the next life according to Buddhist doctrine. As the international community watched on CNN and other media outlets, the SPDC quickly struck back at protesters, killing and injuring media journalists, students, regular civilians, and Buddhist monks effectively crippling the movement for change. During their crippling of this movement the junta prevented people from having access to the Internet and silenced telecommunications throughout the country showing the variety of tools at the junta’s disposal to silence opposition movements in the country.
This topic brief will provide extempers with a brief overview of the history of Myanmar, an overview of the human rights abuses said to be occurring in the country, Myanmar’s relations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and the mechanisms utilized by the junta to hold on to power.
Historical Overview
The history of Myanmar can best be characterized as a series of troubled political transitions that served to exacerbate ethnic tensions among the country’s different ethnic groups. Myanmar historian Andrew Selth one coined the country as an “ethnic archipelago” and when looking at the demographics of the country one can see why. The SPDC currently recognizes 135 different national races with 2007 CIA World Factbook identifying the majority being ethnic Burmans (68%) and followed in number by Shans (9%), Karens (7%), Rakhines (4%), Chinese (3%), Indian (2%), and Mon (2%). These different ethnic groups were treated differently by different governmental systems established in Myanmar the creation of the territory under a Buddhist monarchy in 850.
The first government system Myanmar’s people ever knew of was a Burman monarchy that existed from 850-1824. This monarchy was established based on Buddhist principles and was dominated by the Burman majority. This monarchy enjoyed absolute power and ruled based on Buddhist principles enforced by an efficient royal bureaucracy. Many native Burmans accepted monarchial rule due to Buddhist natural law called dhamma which assigned Buddhists a role in life based on their conduct in past lives called kamma. Accepting this role, Burmans ignored political involvement and were willing to live under the rule of a Burman king. The ethnic minorities that lived in Burma enjoyed a great degree of autonomy under the rule of the Burman kings as long as they paid tribute to the monarchy and provided soldiers for the king’s army. However, the Burman kings and the Burman population often resented the uneducated and “backward” ways of minority groups which fostered tensions between the Burman population and ethnic minorities throughout the monarchial period.
In the early 1800s, Great Britain and France began expanding their colonial empires and the Burman kingdom’s vast territory and resources were sought after by the British government. In 1824, Britain launched the First Anglo-Burman War which was launched on the pretext of the Burman government making territorial encroachments along its border with British controlled India and attacking British subjects. The war culminated in the Treaty of Yandaboo in February 1826 with the British gaining coastal territory from the Burman kingdom, forced a large reparation payment from the Burman monarchy, and forcing the monarchy to renounce territorial claims along the border with British India. After the Burman monarchy was accused of obstructing trade by British merchants, the British launched the Second Anglo-Burman War from 1851-1852 which resulted in the British seizing Lower Burma and with it the agricultural heartland of the territory. This war also saw Burma lose the ability to make its own commercial policy.
The Third-Anglo Burman War in 1885 would seal the fate of the Burman monarchy with Britain using the Karen minority group to fight the monarchy and seize the rest of the country. The motivations of this seize is still subject to historical debate as one school believes that the Burman King Thibaw’s decision to try to make a commercial treaty with the French prompted Britain to intervene while another school holds that Britain’s “gentlemen capitalists” were involved. Either way, the British intervention in this war was swift and the monarchy was destroyed. However, insurgencies still plagued the British occupation of the territory until they were finally snuffed out in 1890.
After it controlled the country, the British integrated Burma into British India and set up the next form of government for the country: a colonial adminstration. Burma was given a royal governor and the territory was split into two halves: Ministerial Burma and the Frontier Areas. Ministerial Burma was made up of the old Burman kingdom and was made up of the interior of the country. Over time this part of Burma would have an elected parliament and receive a British education system. The Frontier Areas were predominately occupied by Shan, Arakan, Chin, and Kachin minority groups. In these areas, there was no elected parliament and the royal governor looked over these peoples financial and social issues although they retained their rights to have local rule. This division fostered ethic tensions due to Burmans becoming better educated than groups in the Frontier and also having more experience in political dealing. In addition, the British heavily recruited minorities such as the Karen to serve in the country’s army and bureaucracy and largely excluding Burmans who wanted to be a part of the royal administration. This too created ethnic tensions that persisted in the country until independence.
In 1920, nationalist movements in British Burma began to be led by university students who were outraged over the Rangoon University Act which would have mandated the use of the English language in university education and increased the amount of English content in the university curriculum. Over the next two decades student organizations sprung up throughout the country assisted by the rise of communist organizations and minority organizations such as the Karen National Association (KNA) which began arguing for a separate Karen state. By the eve of World War II there was a strict division in Burmese society: those who favored independence of British rule, mostly composed of Burmans, and those who favored remaining a part of the British commonwealth of nations, which was composed of minority groups.
Sensing problems in Burma, the British government began a crackdown in the country which prompted Communist Party Secretary General and famous student activist Aung San to flee to Japan in 1940 and request aid from the Japanese government. Aung San and his followers believed that the Japanese would help to liberate Burma and then grant self-determination to the country which would pave the way for Burma to be an independent state. Over the next year Aung San would lead his followers known as the “Thirty Comrades” into Japan to receive military training and on December 31, 1941 Aung San’s Burman Independence Army (BIA) assisted the Japanese in invading the country. The Japanese and BIA were initially successful in pushing back Allied forces but Burmans quickly realized that the Japanese government would simply create a puppet state in the country. As a result, by 1945 the BIA had redubbed itself the Burman National Army (BNA) and fought with Allied forces to kick the Japanese out of the country.
After World War II, much debate ensued in Britain as to how Burma would be treated. Conservative Party members argued that the country needed to be in a period of reconstruction for six years and that ethnic minorities would have the choice between being a part of the new independent Burman state or not. After all, minorities such as the Karen had fought for the Allies in hopes of being given an independent state. However, by 1947 British patience with allowing minorities to achieve independence within a newly crafted Burman state had fallen apart under the leadership of Clement Attlee, the Labor Party leader who had defeated Winston Churchill in 1946. Aung San was able to utilize his Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League (AFPFL) to win significant concessions from the British government such as being given power over the interim Executive Council that governed the country before 1948 parliamentary elections and was able to squash the idea of Burma being divided along ethnic lines. On December 10, 1947 the Burma Independence Bill was debated in the House of Commons and although Winston Churchill warned of bloodshed and chaos if the bill was passed his pleas were ignored as Burma became independent of the British Empire by a vote of 228-114. Unfortunately, Aung San was not able to see this moment as he was assassinated with five other Cabinet members earlier that year.
It is not surprising that from 1948-1960 parliamentary government failed in the newly independent Burma. The crafting 1947 constitution did not involve the Karens and other minority groups who thought they were receiving their own state by the British and that they did not need to participate. As a result, the constitution only allowed the Shan and Kachin peoples to have their own states while Chin, Man, Arakanese, and Karen minority groups were ignored. Also, the prime ministership of U Nu could not keep the country together as ethnic rebellions led by the Karen and political rebellions led by various Communist factions destabilized the national economy which saw its rice production plummet. Also, U Nu had a tendency to use the Public Order Act of 1947 to imprison political opponents and those who disagreed with his views which eroded rights in the country. Finally, U Nu had chilly relations with the military, who created a “caretaker government” from 1958-1960 to smooth out ethnic and economic problems, when after winning 1960 parliamentary elections he wanted to negotiate and grant states and autonomous privileges to minority groups.
In 1962, the military feared that U Nu was sending the country down a path of breakup among different ethnic groups and launched a mostly bloodless coup to depose him of power. The army Chief of Staff, Ne Win, took over the reigns of power and started steering Burma down the path of socialism outlined in his ideology The Burmese Way to Socialism. The military government Ne Win created was referred to as the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) and it wasted no time in nationalizing banks, banning imports and exports, and nationalizing oil and other industries. Almost overnight Burma became an autarky with Ne Win pursuing an ultimate objective of creating a unitary state that would be free of ethnic tensions. Historians still debate about the success of the BSPP in managing the nation’s economy and social systems but it is clear that an erosion of political rights occurred in 1974 when a new national constitution was adopted that declared the BSPP the only political party in the country and ensured free speech and press rights as long as they did not conflict with the party’s socialist platform.
BSPP rule when unchallenged to a significant degree outside of ethnic rebellions until September 1987 when Ne Win demonetized Burma’s currency leading to nearly eighty percent of the country’s money becoming worthless. Rumor has it that Ne Win’s astrologers told him that nine was his lucky number so his decree on the demonetization banned all money notes that were not divisible by nine. As people’s life savings became wiped out they became angry and slowly the country’s people came together to demand a return to multiparty democracy. Ne Win stepped down at a BSPP Congress in July 1988 only making the situation worse as his successors could not quell the demands for a democratic vote even after shooting and killing hundreds of demonstrators. Democratic leaders began to emerge with the most prominent one being Aung San Suu Kyi, Aung San’s daughter, who demanded an impartial vote and led the National League for Democracy.
The political turmoil in the country periodically ended when General Saw Maung seized power in September 1988 and declared that parliamentary elections would go forward in May 1990. This step allowed Japanese economic aid to return to the country after it was suspended following a student massacre in Rangoon a year earlier. Maung also renamed the country “Myanmar” instead of “Burma” believing that this name was ease ethnic tensions in the country became it would not imply that ethnic Burmans dominate the country although that is what occurs in practice.
Under Maung, the army rechristened itself as the National Unity Party (NUP) and contested the NLD for the country’s leadership in 1990. The run up to the vote was anything but fair as the military placed democratic leaders such as Ms. Kyi under house arrest, limited the press rights of opposition groups, controlled the electoral commission, international observers were banned from supervising the vote, and martial law was still in effect. Despite this, though, the NLD crushed the NUP at the polls by winning 392 of 485 contested seats.
Although General Maung said that he would cede power to the winner of the election the military, now known as the State Law, Order, and Restoration Council (SLORC), became scared of how the NLD would treat former junta leaders if they took over power. As a result of this so-called “Nuremberg syndrome” the military said that the election was only for a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution instead of being a parliamentary vote. When monks tried to protest by refusing alms to the military they were brutally beaten and the movement for a democratic Burma suddenly died. Furthermore, the military has now annulled the 1990 vote after NLD members walked out of an attempt to craft a new constitution in the 1990s when the military demanded they be given the right to make their own budget, have a quarter of the seats in any national parliament, and that the president has to have military experience. Interestingly enough, these provisions have recently been pushed through anyway by a 1,000 member constitutional commission today’s junta, now calling itself the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) since 1997, created to ensure their power for decades to come. Political analysts speculate that this constitution will be put up for a referendum next year but in light of recent political turmoil in the country that may not happen.
It is also worth noting that the military has silenced many of the ethnic minority groups that pushed for independence during the parliamentary years. The SPDC has cultivated good economic ties to its neighbors, a relationship that will be described below, and that has given it the money and influence to acquire more firepower to outgun their opposition. Also, the SPDC has granted a great deal of autonomy to warlords in certain areas of the country such as the Wa region of the Shan state where drug trafficking along the Myanmar-Chinese border continues to be a problem. It is worth noting for extempers that the ceasefires the junta has negotiated are unsteady as only small groups have turned their weapons over to the government and the government is growing more demanding of these rebel groups perhaps feeling that it is in a more powerful position than a decade ago.
Human Rights Abuses
Myanmar has long been accused of human rights abuses by the international community and by human rights advocacy groups such as Amnesty International. Most of these human rights abuses have been in conflict zones between Myanmar’s army and ethnic minority groups. There have been reports that Karens have been uprooted from their homes and forcibly relocated to other parts of the country so that the SPDC can utilize the timber and oil resources on the lands that they occupy. Furthermore, Myanmar’s troops have been accused of beating, torturing, raping, and executing peoples who are supporting rebellions in the country.
Political prisoners are also kept throughout the country with the most notable being Ms. Kyi. She has been placed under house arrest twice and has been under her second house arrest since 2003. However, Ms. Kyi lives in luxury compared to other political dissidents who are put in poor prisoners where violence and disease festers while other dissidents are indiscriminately killed. The only thing keeping Ms. Kyi from suffering these fates is that she is Aung San’s daughter and since the military establishment looks to Aung San as the source for its power position in the country it would be embarrassing for them to harm Ms. Kyi. Furthermore, Ms. Kyi is the face of the democratic opposition movement for the international community against the SPDC and if they were to harm her there would be significant backlash against them.
Economically there have also been human rights abuses that extempers should be made aware of. Although President Bill Clinton banned future American investment in Myanmar in April 1997 and President George W. Bush has stepped up sanctions on the country, current American companies operating in Myanmar have been allowed to stay there. One such company, oil giant Unocal, has been accused of assisting Myanmar’s government in abusing the country’s people. Unocal has been accused of uprooting ethnic villages where its projects were taking place and in using forces labor to construct the country’s oil infrastructure. Alarmed at these abuses, several states tried to take independent action. In the 1990s the state of Massachusetts led a disinvestment movement whereby public pension funds would withdraw funds from companies investing in Myanmar but these actions were thrown out when contested in the judicial system due to their interference with foreign policy making. Nevertheless, forced labor and pitiful wages are a fact of life in Myanmar and Western companies have been accused of being complicit in some of the actions taken by the SPDC. All of this led to the United Nations Global Compact in 1999 which drew up a set of principles for multinational corporations to follow when engaging in business projects around the globe. However, this Global Compact has been controversial between those who say that it unfairly interferes in business interests and those who believe that the Compact should be stricter.
ASEAN & Myanmar
In July 1997, with Laos and Cambodia, Myanmar was admitted into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ASEAN was created in 1963 with the goal of creating cooperation among countries in Southeast Asia in pursuing a net export growth strategy for the region. While the international community urged ASEAN not to admit Myanmar into its club due to its human rights abuses, ASEAN leaders shrugged off such criticisms believing that having “constructive engagement” with the military junta rather than economic sanctions is the way to bring about significant political change in the country. It is also worth noting that even if ASEAN wanted to take large action against Myanmar they most likely could not since the ASEAN Declaration, the founding document of the organization, has a principle of non-intervention whereby ASEAN is bound to respect the sovereignty of each member state. ASEAN members reinforced this doctrine in 1993 in the so-called Bangkok Declaration when they declared that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights could not be specifically applied to each state because there were differing political and social forces at work that necessitated the curtailing of some human rights.
Aside from principles of non-intervention, ASEAN would be in a sticky situation if it attempted to bring about change in Myanmar. When looking at the current membership of ASEAN it is hardly democratic. Brunei has an absolute monarchy, Laos and Vietnam are still Communist governments with little broad democratic participation, and Thailand still has a military government that toppled the Shinawatra government last year. Overall, having ASEAN interfere and encourage democratic government or more responsible government in Myanmar would lend itself to charges of ASEAN creating a double standard for Myanmar and everyone else. Also, it would frighten non-democratic states in the body that ASEAN could be stepping into their countries and dictating changes so the most likely scenario is that ASEAN will not be interfering.
ASEAN also has a significant economic reason for allowing Myanmar to stay in the body rather than expel it or force it to change. Myanmar is the largest exporter of teak wood in the world and has untapped oil and gas deposits that will net the country billions of dollars in the future. ASEAN wants to share in these profits and its members want to be on good terms with the SPDC. Furthermore, the Shinawatra government in Thailand secured fishing and mineral rights from the SPDC in return for political support. Overall, it appears that economic reasons are playing a major part in ASEAN’s decision making and that profits are being used to justify turning a blind eye to the repression occurring in the country.
There is also the element of a geopolitical calculation in ASEAN’s decision making: having Myanmar drift out of ASEAN’s influence and into the hands of India or China. After decades of conflict due to China aiding Communist militants in Myanmar, the two governments have joined forces with Myanmar supplying raw materials, energy, and a black market for Chinese goods in return for China providing Myanmar with diplomatic support and military hardware. It is worth noting that both countries at the turn of the 1990s faced big political demonstrations: Myanmar’s junta had theirs in Rangoon in 1988 while China had Tiananmen Square in 1989. This fight against political change has most likely motivated the two countries to work together. Not to be left out in the cold, India has also made overtures to Myanmar for mineral and oil/gas exploration rights and some in ASEAN fear that if Myanmar becomes a contested space between China and India it could plunge the entire region into chaos. Therefore, ASEAN is content to keep Myanmar in its organization so that it does not lose ground to an emerging China and/or India.
How the Junta Hangs On
Myanmar’s junta is a rather amazing governing body. It has withstood numerous leadership changes over the last forty-five years in defiance of predictions of its doom by international experts. However, economic control and fear are the main mechanisms that the SPDC has utilized so that it hangs on to power.
When the military controlled the government in the caretaker period from 1958-1960 it went to great lengths to gain control of economic activity. The military began running banks, trade services, retail outlets, construction businesses, hotels, and mineral industries. This was meant to lay the groundwork for the military’s eventual coup in 1962 and also served as a patronage network Myanmar’s soldiers benefit from today. If it was not for the support of the rank and file military Myanmar’s rulers could not hang on to power. Therefore, they ensure that soldiers are well treated and can acquire consumer goods and petrol quite cheaply. The government also turns a blind eye to soldiers who manage to benefit from the illicit drug trade in the frontier areas. Overall, veteran soldiers enjoy a health existence earning profits from Myanmar’s mineral, timber, and oil businesses.
The military also makes no apologies for its use of the national budget in order to enrich itself. The Economist in September 2005 revealed that 29% of Myanmar’s national budget goes to the military while only three percent of that budget goes to health care and eight percent goes to education. The military uses this large portion of its national budget to raise soldier salaries and buy more weapons that it believes will one day crush the ethnic rebellions for good that have plagued the country since 1948. With this budget allocated the way it is with little independent oversight it is not a surprise that the 2007 Index for Economic Freedom revealed that Myanmar ranks 155th out of 158 countries in terms of corruption according to figures released by Transparency International.
The SPDC also makes efficient use of its military intelligence (MI) network to spy on soldiers and squelch problems before they emerged. Top commanders are randomly rotated so that they do not establish power positions within areas of the country. Soldiers are also continually threatened with a loss of economic rights as national laws on illegal black market activity, which are never enforced, are there at the SPDC’s disposal if they need to prosecute soldiers who challenge the governing authorities. Furthermore, the military has a constant propaganda campaign among soldiers that if the NLD or any other democratic movement is allowed to take power they will be prosecuted for violating human rights much like Augusto Pinochet, the famed Chilean military dictator. Therefore, senior army personnel as well as regular soldiers are kept in a state of fear about their jobs, potential criminal prosecution, and their economic livelihoods if Myanmar’s status quo changes.
Cards:
“U.S. Official Says Myanmar Must Begin Meaningful Talks With Opposition Parties.” The International Herald Tribune. 8 November 2007. http://www.iht.com/bin/printfriendly.php?id=8258916.
WASHINGTON: A senior U.S. official urged Myanmar’s military government Thursday to begin meaningful talks with the opposition and pressed the country’s neighbors to increase pressure on the junta for a transition to democracy.
Scot Marciel, a deputy assistant secretary of state, reacted with caution to Myanmar’s announcement that it would allow detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to meet her party’s officials Friday, the first such meeting in more than three years.
Lintner, Bertil. “China No Sure Bet on Myanmar.” The Asia Times. 8 November 2007. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IK08Ae02.html.
BANGKOK – United Nations special envoy Ibrahim Gambari’s latest trip to Myanmar wholly failed to yield any results in pushing the ruling junta towards conciliation with the country’s democratic opposition. With the UN’s impotence, the international community will now look even more towards China to nudge the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) towards democratic change.
Higgins, Andrew. “How Buddhism Force for Political Activism.” The Wall Street Journal. 7 November 2007. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119437972421684255.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.
After evening prayers on Sept. 18, the abbot of a small monastery in Myanmar’s largest city convened the roughly 30 Buddhist monks in his charge. The bonds between secular and religious authority had broken, the abbot said. Then he gave the monks his blessing to take to the streets in protest.
Drew, Jill. “Diplomats Seek Ways to Handle Myanmar.” The Houston Chronicle. 27 October 2007. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/5250214.html.
BANGKOK, THAILAND – While activists focus on ratcheting up pressure on Myanmar’s military leaders to open a dialogue with the country’s pro-democracy activists, diplomatic consensus is eroding on what steps to take next.
Pro-democracy advocates had hoped that last month’s protests – led by monks who are revered in Myanmar – would galvanize world opinion and create enough outside pressure to force the junta’s leaders to the bargaining table.
Ross, Michael L. “Myanmar, the Latest Petro Bully.” The Los Angeles Times. 26 October 2007. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/commentary/la-oe-ross26oct26,0,4887993.story?coll=la-sunday-commentary.
Last Friday, President Bush announced new sanctions against Myanmar’s military government. But world oil prices — which hit record levels last week — may undercut their effect. Myanmar has recently gained admission to an elite club of states whose governments use their oil and natural gas to buy their way out of trouble. Call them the petro bullies.