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People Power” Movements in Southeast Asia

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People Power” Movements in Southeast Asia Human Rights in Southeast Asia Series 1 34 BREAKING THE SILENCE WHEN RIGHTS ENCOUNTER REPRESSION: LESSONS from “PEOPLE POWER” MOVEMENTS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA Emily Hong Human rights scholars have examined how activists use persuasion, socialization, and pressure to gain leverage over much more powerful organizations and governments. Such pressure-based methods become less effective when dealing with governments, such as Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, that are less susceptible to normative pressures. Operating in a largely separate realm, scholars of nonviolent conflict have studied the dynamics of civil resistance through boycotts, strikes, and other methods of protest and non-cooperation. This paper argues that the most significant strides towards the realization of human rights in “tough” cases in Southeast Asia are a result not from activists shaming power holders into granting rights, but from the realization of the grassroots that they are both rights-holders and power-holders, who have the ability to undermine sources of opponent power in order to reach their goals. Drawing upon the examples of the People’s Power movement in the Philippines, East Timor’s independence movement, and Burma’s yet unfinished movement for democracy and ethnic rights, this paper explores the basic theories foundational to the study of nonviolent conflict including pillars of support, loyalty shifts, and the backfire of repression. It also discusses the strengths and weaknesses of human rights and nonviolent action approaches, and areas in which combining aspects of both approaches can offer insight. Finally, it explores three concrete areas which may offer profound implications for human rights activists in diverse struggles. When Rights Encounter Repression: Lessons from “People Power” movements in Southeast Asia 35 1. Human Rights at an Impasse: The Need for New Strategies and Tactics Within just the last few years, we have seen some momentous gains with regard to human rights in Southeast Asia—an ASEAN Charter which explicitly endorses human rights norms, a regional commission on human rights, and on a national level—governments in the region actively building national human rights institutions and loudly campaigning for seats on the UN Human Rights Council. These “wins” for human rights are a result of what have become the go-to tactics for human rights in most of the world—(1) advocating for policies and mechanisms that promote and protect human rights norms, (2) monitoring government compliance, and (3) “naming and shaming” governments when these rights are violated (Johnson, 2004: 7). We should not understate the victories that have been achieved through these strategies of persuasion and pressure. But, for human rights advocates around the world, it has become increasingly clear that such methods are not, in and of themselves, sufficient to solve the “tough cases” of human rights. For those of us working in Southeast Asia, we know this frustration first-hand. Here we are faced with some of the worst governmental perpetrators of human rights who, as members of a regional bloc that includes authoritarian regimes, one-party states, and repressive democracies, are also least susceptible to normative pressures based on the logic of human rights. In some cases, these governments may even “talk the talk” when it comes to human rights, but they are getting rather skilled at a sort of two-faced approach in which they rhetorically campaign for human rights on the one hand, and readily violate rights on the other. In other cases—such as the explicitly authoritarian Burmese junta— governments are hesitant to even employ the language of human rights, which makes it even more challenging to see results from these now conventional pressure tactics. Last year, a satirical news outlet called Not the Nation published a humorous article titled “Burmese Junta Overthrown by Online Petition.” At the time, I was working for the Burmese democracy movement in support of their international advocacy, and this article hit a bit too close to home. The article quoted Senior General Than Shwe at the imaginary press conference announcing his peaceful surrender of power due the pressure brought to bear by the mass signatures collected in the “strongly-worded petition.” Sometimes satire gets at truth better than the facts themselves. Letter-writing campaigns were, when first introduced, quite powerful; and sometimes they still prove to be a useful tactic. But over the years, governments have adapted to these tactics, rendering them less and less forceful. The question is, can we simply throw 36 Emily Hong our hands up and blame the seemingly insurmountable impasse on the tough conditions in the region—namely the undemocratic and unresponsive nature of governments? In this paper, I argue that the most significant strides towards the realization of human rights in “tough” cases in the region are a result not from activists shaming power holders into granting rights, but from the realization of the grassroots that they are both rights- holders and power-holders, who have the ability not only to mobilize the normative framework of human rights but to wield people power to undermine and sever sources of opponent power in order to reach their goals. If we shift our rights-based perspective to include a power-based perspective that emphasizes innovative strategic and tactical thinking, I believe we may be on our way to overcoming some of the substantial obstacles we face in this work. 2. The Rift between Human Rights and Nonviolent Action Human rights scholars, like their practitioner counterparts, also attribute change largely to persuasion, socialization and pressure. Political scientists, Keck and Sikkink, for example, who are known for their book on Transnational Activist Networks and the so-called “boomerang effect,” argue that a combination of changing norms and targeted pressure often causes states to modify their human rights practices (Keck and Sikkink, 1998). I am a believer in the power of ideas, but as I mentioned earlier, we seem to have reached the upper limit on what norms and conventional pressure alone can accomplish in the region. Operating in a largely separate realm, scholars of nonviolent conflict have studied the dynamics of civil resistance through boycotts, strikes, and other methods of protest and non-cooperation. They argue that such nonviolent struggles for human rights and democracy have achieved success not only through conversion (i.e. voluntary concessions on the part of the opponents), but more frequently through nonviolent coercion, or by forcing accommodation and even disintegration, on the basis of skillfully targeted noncooperation and defiance that has undermined the sources of prevailing power (Sharp, 2003). A study from Freedom House demonstrates that the power of nonviolent action goes beyond theory, and in fact, has been increasingly employed by people’s movements around the world. The study shows that out of 67 democratic transitions in the last three decades, nonviolent civil resistance played a crucial role in 50 (Freedom House, 2005). Several of these transitions have taken place in Southeast Asia. In this paper, I hope to demonstrate how scholars and practitioners of human rights would benefit from a serious examination of the literature on nonviolent conflict. In fact, in many ways, the strengths of each approach address the weakness of the other. Surprisingly, however, no scholars have yet brought these two strands of theory into conversation with one another in a systematic way. In consideration of the focus of this conference, I will begin with a brief explanation of what the theory of nonviolent action When Rights Encounter Repression: Lessons from “People Power” movements in Southeast Asia 37 brings to the table, and later discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and how we may consider bridging the divide. 3. Shifting our Thinking: From Rights Holders to Power Holders The first perspectival shift when moving from a human rights approach to a nonviolent action approach is an analysis of power. This is not to say that human rights activists don’t consider power—in fact we often talk about leverage in advocacy, and generally about “applying pressure,” but rarely do we see advocates discuss where this power comes from or with which tactics it can be applied most strategically. Ultimately, what human rights practitioners share in common is a distinct idea of people as rights-holders, but not necessarily as power-holders. For nonviolent action theorists, while ideas are important, they are made significant only when they leverage power. We may not always be able to change the heart of the oppressor, but we can certainly be more strategic in targeting their Achilles heel instead. The logic of nonviolent action assumes that people are stubborn—that they won’t give in unless they have to. Gene Sharp—who can probably be considered, without exaggeration, the “father” of the social scientific study of nonviolence—differed from his predecessors in one significant way. He approached nonviolent action not from a principled or moralistic perspective, as Gandhi did, but from a pragmatic viewpoint. This pragmatic perspective is perhaps the reason he is known as the “Machiavelli of nonviolence.” Sharp explicated a theory of power which has become emblematic of the nonviolent action approach. This theory of power shows how, contrary to conventional beliefs, political change often occurs more effectively through non-institutional and nonviolent means than through the barrel of a gun. In contrast to a monolithic view of state power that assumes power is imposed from above based on the threat of violence, Sharp’s ‘relational’ view of power suggests that the strength, even of dictatorships is dependent on sources of power in society, which in turn comes from the cooperation of institutions and people. Without people and the institutions through which they work, rulers cannot collect taxes, enforce laws, print money, or even direct traffic.
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