Negotiating Identity Politics and Human Rights

Chapter 6 Minority Rights in Myanmar: Negotiating Identity Politics and Human Rights

Andrew Fagan*

1 The Rise and Fall of Myanmar’s Human Rights Star

What is happening in Myanmar and what lessons might it entail for our un- derstanding of and subsequent engagement with the reform process in that country?1 Until very recently, many within the global human rights community appeared to be generally confident and hopeful that Myanmar was on route to becoming a human rights-respecting democracy. For decades the country was, and with good cause, widely considered to be one of the most brutally repressive regimes on earth and was invariably included in many human rights organisations’ lists of worst offending states. After securing sovereign independence from British colonial rule in 1948, the country enjoyed only little more than a decade of civilian governance before it succumbed to a succession of increasingly brutal military dictatorships, beginning in 1962 when General Ne Win seized power and committed what was then formally known as “Burma” to the so-called “Burmese Way to Socialism”, which combined a largely state- dominated and nationalised market economy with wide-ranging and repressive restrictions on individual liberties. Ne Win resigned in 1988, triggering widespread pro-democracy protests, which led to multi-party elections being held in May 1990. In contrast to the manner in which many other weak but

* University of Essex. 1 Outside of the country, some continue to debate the appropriate naming of Myanmar/Bur- ma. Burma was the official designation from the country’s independence in 1948 until the passing of the Adaptation of Expressions Law in 1988, when the name was changed by the military regime to “Myanmar.” The purported motivation for the name change was to ensure that the non-Burman minority ethnic communities residing within the country would be better able to identify themselves as belonging to a unified nation if it was no longer exclu- sively associated with the dominant Burman ethnic community. Regardless of whether one accepts this explanation, one can only begin to understand the politics of the country if one is able to acknowledge the significance the vast majority of people living there attach to the labelling of identity. As a label, Myanmar constitutes an important example of this deeply complex engagement with identity. Thus, it is the term which I shall use throughout this chapter.

Minority Rights in Myanmar 241 authoritarian states responded to popular demands for greater rights and liberties, the Myanmar military’s (known locally as the Tatmadaw) response to the 1990 elections began arguably the most comprehensively repressive period in Myanmar’s modern history and attracted the outside world’s concerted at- tention. Confronted by the compelling victory of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (nld), the military nullified the election result and restored military rule. Thousands of protesters were murdered and a simi- lar number of activists were detained and imprisoned, including Suu Kyi who was sentenced to successive bouts of house arrest, spanning a period of twenty years from 1990 to 2010. Having briefly experimented with their own form of perestroika, the generals intensified their authoritarian rule over the country and systematically sought to crush all forms of dissent and criticism. Key elements of the international community responded with UN resolutions, the severing of diplomatic ties, and the gradual imposition of trade embargoes and sanctions, which, amongst other effects, served to further impoverish an already impoverished population. Various diaspora communities of dissidents and their supporters continued to protest and decry what was happening within the country and Aung San Suu Kyi was elevated to the status of a human rights icon underlined by her being awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991. However, given the ef- fectiveness of the military’s suppression of any forms of domestic opposition or criticism, few would have dared to hope that Myanmar’s status as an international pariah was likely to change in the foreseeable future. In 2003, the military regime unexpectedly declared that the country would embark upon a carefully ordered and concerted process of transitional reform towards the re-establishment of a civilian government. Officially desig- nated the “seven stage roadmap to democracy”, the generals plotted a course out of Myanmar’s international isolation and impending economic collapse.2 While slow to begin with, the reform process accelerated significantly from 2008, when a new constitution which includes an entire chapter (Chapter 8) on rights was established. Aung San Suu Kyi was released from her most re- cent bout of house arrest in 2010, quickly followed by the successive release of many thousands of other political prisoners. Reforms were introduced to enable the expansion of civil society and the establishment of notionally free media outlets. Formerly banned political parties and organisations were able

2 For a clear and detailed account of the most likely causes for Myanmar’s embarking upon its “road to democracy,” see Priscilla Clapp, Burma’s Long Road to Democracy (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2007).