Who is chewing up Myanmar or Burma?

Despite being in power for over half a century, Myanmar's military, both its despotic leadership and institutional instruments, namely the Tatmadaw, or armed forces, remains an enigma. It is the black hole of understanding in the literature, research and reporting produced about a country that suddenly finds itself in the limelight after decades of international isolation. 

The world is well-acquainted with opposition leader and pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi - her political beliefs, her inspiring personal tale, and her pedigree as the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero, General Aung San. Even her aesthetic tastes are well-publicized, as are the abuses and acts of persecution she has endured at the hands of the military.

And yet the world knows surprisingly little about the country's dictatorship, despite its decades of repressive military rule and the exceedingly negative impact it has had on Myanmar's society, culture, economy, politics, and foreign relations. This is not surprising since dictatorships typically thrive on secrecy about their modus operandi and the resultant confusion among the oppressed. 

Myanmar's military dictatorship, now under the guise of President Thein Sein's "democratic" administration, is no exception. In contrast, iconic dissidents such as Suu Kyi and opposition movements can only sustain their relevance and popular support by making their views and strategies accessible to their friends and supporters, as well as opponents and detractors. Systems of political repression strive to paralyze the domestic public and its international supporters, while liberation struggles seek to mobilize both. 

Myanmar's military rulers, despite their often-reported ignorance, are far better informed about the world than they are given credit for. Still, the West continues to deliberate about what will help to nudge them out of darkness. The military despots may feign strategic ignorance, but it would be a mistake to underestimate their knowledge of the geopolitical space their country occupies. 

As a Burmese saying goes, "the ruler has 1,000 ears". According to Kyaw Thet, former professor of international relations and history at Rangoon University, former dictator General Ne Win sent one of his personal assistants to fetch a copy of Kyaw Thet's doctoral thesis, which examined Sino-Burmese relations. In Kyaw Thet's words, "(of all people) the General was the only one who showed a genuine interest in my thesis." 

The current aging despot Senior General Than Shwe, a former instructor at the now defunct Central School of Political Science at Chawtwingone, leader of the previous ruling junta and current behind-the-scenes mastermind of the country's supposed transition to democracy, is known among the staff of the Myanmar's foreign and defense ministries to have a keen interest in strategic ideas about international relations. 

Before the relocation of the old capital Yangon to the purpose-built new military capital at Naypyidaw in November 2005, Than Shwe was known to have surprised the staff at the National Defense University, the country's highest-level staff college for upwardly mobile military officers, by attending class discussions and listening to seminars. 

Over this half-century, successive military rulers have adopted a successful strategy of keeping their inner circles and the institution of military as little understood or "readable" as possible, by friends and foes alike. 

Even Beijing, the regime's most important international supporter and business partner, was left in the dark about the regime's plan to relocate the entire administrative capital to Naypyidaw, an effective military fortress complete with North Korean-designed underground bunkers and escape tunnels. Regardless of the Chinese leadership's reported irritation, the military typically takes enormous pride in keeping its internal affairs and modus operandi secretive, unpredictable and under-studied. 

An illustrative motto "Reveal little, listen, look and gather all you can" is posted on the door of former Military Intelligence Unit Number 7 on Yangon's Halpin Road sums up the military's strategic stance on informational and institutional secrecy. Notably, it is considered treason for rank and file members to communicate with foreigners without prior authorization. Those who are officially assigned to liaise with foreign visitors of all national backgrounds are highly trained and unlikely to leak any meaningful revelations. 

During the first military dictatorship of General Ne Win (1962-88), in the mid-1970s the regime relaxed these restrictions to a degree by allowing some of its top commanders to mingle with Western diplomats and military attaches. Declassified US embassy cables from that period by its diplomatic intelligence unit in Yangon indicate that ex-Brigadier Thaung Dan, former Air Force Deputy Chief of Staff and a graduate of the Japanese Military Academy in the 1940's, would make personal requests to US embassy staff to get certain books, such as Dr Ba Maw's Breakthrough in Burma, at a time they were banned by the regime. 

Former Defense Minister ex-General Tin Oo (now the 82-year-old vice-chair of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party) was even allowed to play tennis with Western diplomats by the mid-1970s. Restrictions on such contacts with foreign diplomats were tightened again after the end of Ne Win's rule. Headquartered in the remote new capital Naypyidaw, despite all the pretensions of liberalizing the country, the military is increasingly inaccessible to the West. 

Over the past five decades, only two foreign scholars have been granted limited access to the army archives at the Ministry of Defense. They are Robert H Taylor and Mary Callahan, political scientists who respectively authored The State in Myanmar (1987) and Making Enemies: War and State Building in Burma (2003). 

After a serious vetting process by military intelligence and blessings from the highest level of authority, both Ne Win's and Than Shwe's regimes officially allowed these Americans into the country as researchers, Taylor in the early 1970s and 1980s and Callahan a decade later. Even then, no archival materials dated after March 2, 1962, the date of Ne Win's military coup, were made accessible to either researcher. 

The limited knowledge of Myanmar's military dictatorship and the military as their institutional base of power is the intended outcome of a deliberate strategy of information and data control. The resultant ignorance about the generals and their world, and the generals' studied display of ignorance about the outside world, has served the dictatorship well. The generals have apparently taken Sun Tsu's advice, "confuse your enemies", to heart as official policy. 

Notional nationalism

On the eve of Myanmar's 1988 popular uprisings, a decorated soldier with the rank of major remarked candidly to this writer that the Tatmadaw which he served had morphed from a once venerable nationalist institution into the country's largest mafia, soaked in corruption and rotten to its core, with all the manifest characteristics of a criminal network. 

Sitting in his office in a military compound and looking deeply dismayed, the officer mocked the long-cherished popular notion of "soldiers as ultimate patriots." "We call ourselves patriots and nationalists. All we do is steal from the people and rob them of their future. This whole army stinks," he said. "My wife has to suck up the wife of my boss. The guy below me licks my boots and I have to do the same with my superiors. If I want to climb the career ladder I have to pay my commanding officer. This chain of bribery and corruption is pervasive." 

His final solemn words of advice: "So don't come back here [to Myanmar, then known as Burma]. Find greener pastures and settle there." 

The overwhelming majority of foreign writers, experts and diplomats usually find Myanmar's military dictatorship morally repugnant and show varying degrees of disdain towards its ruling generals. And yet many of them would not hesitate to use the term "nationalist" to describe the motivations of military personnel. What moved a decorated soldier to speak unequivocally ill of his "surrogate parents", the army, while many scholars and journalists who have never met a flesh-and-blood Myanmar soldier and/or set foot in a military compound refer to the very same institution as "nationalistic"? 

"Soldiers' surrogate parents" is a special term the Ministry of Defense Directorate of Psychological Warfare has coined and promulgated among the military's rank and file. It is deployed specifically to remind them that their primary allegiance is to the armed forces, which to the Tatmadaw is coterminous with the sovereign Myanmar nation-state. 

Upon hearing speculation about possible reforms that would arise from the formation of a new cabinet and new parliament in April 2010, a former junior general who was forced to retire and is now resident in Yangon remarked to a foreign visitor that the new generation of rising military officers would be more "interested in getting to the buffet table than launching genuine reforms to address the concerns of public welfare". 

That was in early 2010, two decades after my officer friend described the military, his employer, as a "national mafia". And yet one often hears policy-makers and the popular press make reference to the country's military rulers and the military institution as fiercely "nationalistic", as if this presumed patriotism explains and justifies the generals' behavior, policies and practices. 

So what lies within the regime's "nationalism" and why does it qualify as genuine? Do "national level mafias" have ideologies that can be glorified as nationalism in the most elemental sense of advancing the interests and agenda of one's own "(presumably) mono-ethnic nation" within and without its recognized territorial confines? 

Since its inception as a revolutionary armed force in 1942, Myanmar's military has witnessed a regressive evolution. At the outset, the military was generally a popular nationalist institution, which helped restore a sense of national pride among the dominant Burmese, or Bama, majority. 

Ethnic Burmese had been barred by British colonial rulers from carrying knives bigger than pencil sharpeners, while at the same time the British recruited large numbers of exclusively non-Burmese ethnic groups into its local imperial army, organizing them in ethnic-based battalions such as the Chin Rifles, Kachin Rifles, and so on. 

While nationalism was used to mobilize support for the armed forces in the period immediately after independence was achieved in 1948, by 1962 the armed forces were blowing up nationalist symbols such as Rangoon University's student union building and indiscriminately killing unarmed students on the same campus in the name of national security. 

At the second party Congress in 1968, San Yu, who was second in command of Ne Win's Revolutionary Council government, officially declared that that the newly established Burma Socialist Program Party (BSPP) and its nucleus of military officers considered both politically active students and Buddhist monks as "enemies of the state." 

The regime's bloody crackdown, including raids on hundreds of monasteries and indiscriminate shooting and killing of students and monks, during the 2007 Saffron Revolt (of the saffron-color-robed monks) is only the best known and most recent event in a long-running tension between these two groups and the military-dominated state. 

The same military regime, fronted by President Thein Sein, internally discriminates against military officers of Christian faith, denies Muslim Rohingyas the right to nationality resulting in systematic abuse and exploitation, loots local ethnic Karen villages, scavenges from rural populations, and condones the rape of ethnic minority women and girls by military personnel in the country's eastern war zones. 

The Tatmadaw also jails and tortures the political opposition, auctions off without accountability irreplaceable natural assets such as rivers, forests, minerals, and natural gas, confiscates thousands of acres of virgin lands from minorities for the development of mono-crop agro-business with no compensation to the latter, forcibly relocates hundreds of villages in conflict zones, and uses innocent villagers and prison convicts alike as "human mine-sweepers" and porters during military operations. 

As recently as March 2010, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Burma, Tomas Quintana, repeated his official calls to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva to establish a UN-led Commission of Inquiry to investigate alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the military-ruled country, a call that has been backed by several previous Special Rapporteurs and Harvard University Law School's International Human Rights Clinic. 

The historic lack of accountability in the armed forces has fostered Myanmar's contemporary mafia state. During his address at the annual conference of the Commanding Officers of the Defense Services on September 9, 1957, U Nu, Myanmar's first prime minister (and the last democratically elected one before the coup of 1962), spoke these prophetic words: 

There are generally two different types of armies: a truly national people's army, and a pocket army for the powers that be ... The primary task of a truly national people's army is to protect the lives and property of the people," said U Nu. "Thus in countries which have truly national people's armies, the people do not go about in fear of the army. A pocket army's primary task is to protect the lives, property, status and vested interests of the party or the individuals who are exploiting the pocket army. (As such), the people have no regard or respect for the army, but only a great loathing and fear. Whatever the nomenclature, "a national mafia" or "pocket army", today's Tatmadaw is without doubt as widely feared as it is loathed among Myanmar's people. The military's regressive evolution in terms of its institutional ethos, culture, and practices have created its current mafia-like nature. A mafia mindset has infected the beliefs and attitudes of those who lead, manage and man this omnipresent organization, the self-proclaimed guardian of the national interest in Myanmar's supposed new democracy. 

MYANMAR'S BLACK HOLE: Part 2

Fascist roots, rewritten histories

One of the best known historical facts about Myanmar's armed forces is that it was originally the product of fascist Japan's military strategy to recruit, train and arm local nationalist elements in Asia against British and Allied forces during World War II. 

Subbas Chandra Bose of the Congress Party and Aung San of the Burma Freedom Bloc, the respective founders of the Indian Independence Army (IIA) and the Burma Independence Army (BIA), both rose to prominence under Japan's strategic patronage. While Tokyo's efforts at using the IIA as its local proxy to repel the British out of the Indian sub-continent ultimately failed, Japan's sway over the nationalists they trained and armed to become the nucleus of the BIA was successful but short-lived in the country then known as Burma. 

It was only three years, from 1942-45, before the Burmese turned against the Japanese. Upon entering and replacing British colonial rule with its own military occupation, Tokyo reneged on its promise to grant independence in exchange for local assistance to its war effort under the fascist banner of "Asia for Asians". 

The original Burmese admiration for Japan as the most dominant non-European global power was based primarily on its military victory in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905. But 40 years after its victory over Tsarist Russia, Japan had not only lost its political and military independence to the United States but also its standing in the eyes of the Burmese. 

Despite the special psychological ties with its former Burmese military proxies, which some Japanese veterans maintained decades after World War II ended, Japan's influence over the Myanmar military was minimal after the humiliation of its "total surrender" to the United States and Allied Forces in August 1945. 

Even if Japanese veterans aspired to revive old military ties, it would have been inconceivable under Japan's US-imposed constitution, which barred Tokyo from maintaining its own national armed forces. Instead, Burmese nationalists, both civilians and their military comrades, looked to the new victors, namely the US, as a source of support and new great power inspiration. 

The Cold War indelibly shaped Myanmar's military as a standing armed organization, as did developments outside the military's institutional boundaries. These included relations and competition with other constitutive elements of the new modern state, including political parties, business and commercial elites, autonomy or independence-minded ethnic minority groups, and an armed communist resistance movement. 

While the civilian democratic government of U Nu was a prominent player in the then newly hatched Non-Aligned Movement, military leaders such as Brigadier Maung Maung, a personal staff officer assigned to Aung San during the Japanese occupation period, were developing ties with and seeking support from the US and, to a lesser extent, the UK. They sought outside assistance specifically for the military's expansion, qualitative upgrades of its weaponry, and the build-up of a human resource base of cadets and officers. 

As powerful head of the Directorate of Military Training (DMT), Maung Maung was hugely influential in shaping a new generation of military officers as he presided over the founding of both the military's most prestigious Defense Services Academy (DSA) and most advanced staff college, the National Defense College (NDC), in the mid-1950s. Many members of the faculty in these institutions were drawn from Burmese graduates of Britain's Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and the US's Staff and Command Colleges. 

The fact that the military, then under the leadership of commanders and directors who received their training from the Japanese, made a conscious decision to model the military's command structures, its human resource development and intelligence training on the United States' military discounts explanations of the institution's current unseemly conduct on its original links to fascist Japan. 

For its part, the US more or less embraced mildly socialist, nationalist civilian politicians such as U Nu, Ba Swe and Kyaw Nyein - all of whom were staunchly anti-Communist and lead efforts to squash underground and above-ground communist movements. Even if senior military leaders such as Ne Win felt the need to strike a balance in its external relations by maintaining cordial ties with both eastern and western bloc countries and their militaries, the rank and file officers of the military have long been pro-US. 

According to a Voice of America interview in April 2011 with former General Tin Oo, defense minister under Ne Win in the mid-1970's and later co-founder of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party, many officers were unhappy with Ne Win's decision to reject out of political concerns the US's offer of sophisticated fighter-bombers stored at US Air Force bases in Thailand for a mere US$1 million per plane after the US ended its military involvement in Vietnam. 

Forgotten legacy

In addition to this near complete break from its Japanese fascist roots, the military also moved away from the fragile legacy of its founder and national independence hero, Aung San. In particular, the military totally abandoned Aung San's commitment to keep the military under the control of civilian politicians and political revolutionary leadership. 

As evidenced by the re-naming of the national holiday "Resistance Day", in reference to resistance against Japan's fascist military occupation from 1942-45, to "Armed Forces Day", the military has over the past 50 years made concerted efforts to rewrite its own institutional history, as well as that of the country's nationalist movement. 

It continues to portray itself incorrectly as the sole vanguard of the country's liberation struggle against first British imperialism and later Japanese fascist military rule. The revolutionary leadership which led the well-timed armed resistance against Japan's military occupation in the hot season of 1945 arose from Burmese Communists such as Thakhin Soe and Thakhin Than Tun, as well as from the then head of the Burma Defense Army, Aung San. 

Aung San himself cut his political teeth as a Marxist-influenced student agitator at Rangoon University and was one of the five founding members of colonial Burma's first communist cell. Under these men's leadership, local resistance commands were formed along the communist resistance model, according to which military commanders were answerable to the political commissars attached to their commands. 

Shortly after the end of World War II, Lord Louis Mountbatten invited Aung San and a group of nationalist leaders including prominent communist leaders such as Than Tun and Thein Pe to Kandy, Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was previously known), where Mountbatten was headquartered as the supreme commander of the Allied Forces in Southeast Asia. They met to discuss inter alia the future of the Japanese-trained army under Aung San's military leadership. 

As the British had restored colonial rule over Burma post-World War II, Aung San was presented with a choice between staying on as the uniformed head of the soon-to-be-downsized Burmese nationalist army, or relinquishing his military post and becoming a national, civilian politician. 

Under the British proposal, only a certain number of qualified Burmese officers would be given "direct commission" in a significantly downsized military, with their old ranks transferred automatically into the newly restructured military along the British model of a professional armed forces. 

Aung San's communist rivals pressured him to stay on as head of the new Burma Army so that political leadership of the post-World War II popular nationalist movement - and conceivably the power to shape the future course of post-colonial Burma - would no longer be in his hands. Against their advice, Aung San chose the civilian politician role, giving up official military titles and ties with the newly restructured Burma Army. 

Instead, he handed over command of the military to Colonel Letyar, his close comrade and long-time friend from his Rangoon University student agitator days. Following this arrangement, Aung San was no longer officially the "General", but the Burmese public continued to address and refer to him as "Bogyoke", or Commander in Chief, until his assassination on July 19, 1947. 

Despite the official uses of hagiographic tales of Aung San by his close personal aides and comrades-in-arms, there have been no known attempts to restore his legacy of keeping the military as a professional organization accountable to a civilian democratic leadership during the past half-century of authoritarian and unaccountable military rule. 

Aung San's British-involved assassination was tragic not only for the country's ethnic relations but also because early attempts by this remarkable nationalist revolutionary to professionalize the military in the soon-to-be independent British colony were buried with his remains in 1945. 

At the time, his daughter Suu Kyi was barely two years old. Relying on her secondary knowledge of her father's political legacy, including his short-lived and little known efforts to keep the military a professional force under civilian control, she is now advocating from her weak position in the political opposition for the reform of the military along more professional and honorable lines. It is a reform call that has fallen on deaf ears for the past 22 years since she first asked the question "Whose military is the Tatmadaw?", whereby she stated specifically that the army of her father should be the people's national army. 

The generals were not the only ones who felt the need to keep the military at a healthy distance from the country's necessarily messy democratic politics during the decade that immediately followed independence in 1948. Armed rebellions by both Burmese communist parties and non-Burmese ethno-nationalist organizations such as the Karen National Defense Organization inadvertently ensured that the military's political influence, including over civilian leadership selections, remained vital throughout the parliamentary period spanning January 1948 to March 1962. 

As the Cold War raged on, the intellectual and ideological climate in the US and Western Bloc was such that academics and policy-makers portrayed anti-communist soldiers in the newly independent countries of the "Third World" as "bureaucratic modernizers" and "efficient nation-builders" vis-a-vis "incompetent" "quarrelsome" and "argumentative" civilian politicians within their necessarily messy parliamentary and political contexts. 

In Burma, the West was known to be concerned about the ability of prime minister U Nu to keep the country safe from insurgent communists at a time when Washington's main preoccupation was to prevent communist "dominos" from tumbling across Southeast Asia. 

Thus when the Burmese military sought active US support for its institution-building efforts, including the training of military personnel in various areas including intelligence gathering operations, Washington was a willing partner. The US Central Intelligence Agency and other allied agencies in Taiwan and Israel helped to train officials in the dark arts of espionage and domestic surveillance. 

The US Pentagon, meanwhile, brought Burmese officers to US command and staff colleges for further training under the US International Military Exchange Program during the Cold War. During the administration of Jimmy Carter, arguably the most pro-human rights of all US presidents, Washington provided the Burmese military with civilian dual-use aircraft, including Bell helicopters, ostensibly to combat opium production. The craft were promptly refitted upon delivery with weapons systems that were duly used against communist and ethnic armed resistance groups. 

When Ne Win ended Burma's 12-year-old experiment in parliamentary democracy in a March 1962 coup, the event was not deemed headline news by the Western media. Four years later - after Ne Win locked up over 100 democrats, judges, journalists and other prominent Burmese deemed a threat to military rule, US president Lyndon Johnson hosted an official welcome dinner to the visiting Ne Win and Madam Ne Win at the White House. 

Towards the later phase of Ne Win's military rule, British banks, insurance companies and other commercial interests maintained their Burma-based businesses as usual. At Buckingham Palace, the Burmese general was even a welcome guest of Queen Elizabeth, who sipped tea with him and even thought the general to be a "nice chap", according to Derek Tonkin, former Burma desk officer at Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office and retired British ambassador to Thailand. 

The West's pursuit of strategic symbiosis with Ne Win's coup-installed regime was then viewed as a useful bulwark against the spread of communism. But Western support abetted the militarization of Burmese society, a legacy of military rule that survived subsequent Western-led sanctions and will inevitably be strengthened by the West's latest round of unconditional diplomatic and strategic engagement initiatives.

MYANMAR'S BLACK HOLE: Part 3

A class above, the heaven-born

Military-controlled regimes in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, have gone through various incarnations since General Ne Win's initial military takeover of 1962. With a favorable ideological climate, intellectual and academic justification, political and diplomatic recognition, and strong Western material support, the stage was set for Ne Win's military, the Tatmadaw, to tread its chosen path without accountability - a course it has maintained to the present. 

With ties to and assistance from the US military and West Germany's state-owned arms manufacturer Fritz Werner, for decades the military has engaged in what might be termed "selective professionalization". The Tatmadaw upgraded its organizational and technical capacities, but when it came to professionalizing its relations with civilian institutions vital to forging a modern political state out of a myriad of multi-ethnic communities, it shunned democratic civilian leadership. 

Some 60 years ago generals, brigadiers, colonels, and commanding officers felt disdainful towards "inefficient" and "talkative" democratic politicians. During the country's parliamentary democracy period immediately following independence (1948-58), a young captain would typically assume "attention" position upon entering the office of a civilian township administrative officer. If a military officer violated the general civil law of the land, he would be liable for prosecution at a court of law in the politically independent judiciary. 

Today, Myanmar's military class feels that they are a cut above the rest of society, the Burmese equivalent of the "heaven-born". The military now plays judge, jury and prosecutor within the legal system which it doesn't observe itself. Constitutionally, the military is governed by its own set of laws, norms and regulations. These take precedent over any other legal frameworks and no military personnel, past and present, may be prosecuted for deeds which they have engaged in while discharging their duties. 

In short, civil laws do not apply to military personnel. For its part, the Burmese public has come to despise the once honorable military, both its leadership and institutional power base. The public knows that the military as an institution has become a class in and of itself. From their formative years as cadets in the country's defense academies, two successive generations of officer corps, numbering in the thousands, have been subject to an intense and sustained indoctrination process designed to make them think, feel and act as a distinct nationalist class. It thinks and acts as if it were the natural ruler of the people. 

The most important of all officers' training schools is the Defense Services Academy (DSA) at Pyin Oo Lwin (formerly May Myo, British colonial era summer station) whose alumni now occupy virtually all important positions in the military, including the most powerful Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces as well as other civilian organs of the state, such as the cabinet and the various line ministries which it runs. 

Since the DSA's inception at the then newly built Bahtoo military town in Shan State in 1955, it has undergone significant changes, both quantitatively and qualitatively. It has been massively expanded in terms of the number of graduates it produces in a single batch. Its original motto for the officer-cadets was circumspect, professional and modest: "Future Victorious Warriors for the Country". Today the DSA instills in thousands of young cadets between the ages of 16 and 21 a new ethos, with a stated aim of training "The Future Ruling Elites of the Nation". 

In the early years, the academic curriculum was developed and managed by civilian academics in various arts and science fields, with the aim of instilling due respect for the civilian public, modesty, love of truth, fairness, honor, and national duty in graduating soldiers. The military curriculum was developed by Burmese graduates of Britain's Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst and US staff and command colleges. 

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there were no more than 50 officer cadets graduating annually from the DSA. Upon graduation they would be assigned to three different branches of the Armed Forces (Infantry, Navy and Air Force). Towards the end of the first military dictatorship of General Ne Win in 1988, about 120 officer cadets graduated in a single in-take. The military was 125,000-strong in 1988, while the country's population was estimated to be about 26 million. 

By 2011, its graduating class was somewhere between 2,000 - 3,000. In 2010, the country's military was estimated to be nearly half-a-million strong, making it Southeast Asia's largest military after Vietnam. The total population of the country doubled in the two decades since the collapse of Ne Win's rule in 1988 (and that of the Beijing-backed insurgent Burmese Communist Party a year later), while the country's armed forces grew 400%. 

In 2011, 24% of the country's national budget was reportedly earmarked for the military, compared with 4% for education and 1.3% for health services. In addition, bypassing its own military-controlled Parliament, the military leadership declared the establishment of the extra-legal, supra-Constitutional National Defense Fund (NDF). An unspecified amount of state funds is stored at the NDF, which authorizes the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces as the only state official with access to its resources. It is effectively unanswerable to any organization or individual. 

Cost of the coffin

The Burmese problem is not simply the country's successive ruling cliques of generals aggrandizing themselves at the expense of the public. Those Burmese who grew up hearing the hope-filled speculation that things would get better once Ne Win's reign was over are no longer fooled by this once-the-old-guards-are-gone buzz. As the Burmese saying goes, "Once you have been dead you know the cost of the coffin." 

The old generation of nationalist soldiers, including Ne Win, left intact a process of distinct class formation with recognizably feudal features - minus the old cultural and customary constraints of the Indic moral guidelines for conduct of rulers. Nearly 70 years since its founding by Aung San, the Tatmadaw officer corps, and the soldiering class as a whole, have come to view themselves as a cut above the predominantly agrarian masses. This ruling military class has effectively set the political clock back to the country's feudal past. 

Naypyidaw has belatedly jumped on the global bandwagon of free marketization and privatization, though with distinct Burmese characteristics. Under the banner of privatization, public assets (land, forests, immovable infrastructure such as office buildings, power industries) are being divided among the families of senior and junior generals, as well as their cronies who, inter alia, serve as the generals' portfolio managers. 

With all these signs of bountiful state-sponsored cronyism, the country's soldiering class has taken an increasingly kleptocratic turn, a throw-back to the old feudal days in which the monarch and his men "ate" the kingdom in terms of land, labor, and natural resources. The Burmese have a wonderfully descriptive term for this type of phenomenon: "Hungry hounds stumbling on a pagoda feast." 

Ne Win and his men deliberately set in motion the revolutionary process of class formation, revolutionary in the sense that the military that was originally created by, of, and for the people no longer sees itself as part of the people. It is now a class of the "heaven-born", entitled to rule, not simply govern, the country in accord with the needs, concerns and interests of senior and junior generals. 

All these men began their military careers as cadets or other ranks pledging before every meal the mantra, "We pledge our allegiance to the country that feeds us." As a class, they have failed to uphold this cardinal pledge, acting instead with blind obedience to frequent and indiscriminate "shoot to kill" orders against various segments of society - monks or Muslims, Bama or Karen, farmers or laborers, young or old. 

The military has drifted away from a sense of gratitude to the country and honor to serve the people towards institutional/class allegiance and personal loyalty towards the chief. It is telling that when some ex-military officers who publish their biographies (ex-Brigadier General Tin Swe and ex-Lieutenant General Gen Tun Kyi, for instance) describe not the people but the armed forces as their "surrogate parents". 

This is a fundamental regression with dire national consequences, as the military as an institution and the soldiering class no longer serves or defends the people from any enemy, including unscrupulous military leaders. In the process, the Tatmadaw has established its own economic base and interests, fostered a distinct class consciousness informed by their own sense of superiority vis-a-vis the rest of society, and wrote its own radical revisionist history where the military is the sole national liberator and guardian of the nation. 

Military re-feudalization

Since 1988, a re-feudalization of the country's military class and political culture distinguishes the present phase of class formation from Ne Win's previous socialist revolutionary military rule. The process has paradoxically removed any cultural or traditional constraints on governmental conduct, including the once conditioned belief in honor as a warrior, as well as the Indic code and notions of the "righteous ruler", who is said to possess, among other things, compassion, wisdom, integrity, sacrifice, and fairness. 

It has led to the creation of a crony capitalist economy via a pool of its own economic agents, better known as "cronies"; class consolidation and reproduction through a combined policy of setting aside a high percentage of admission slots in military academies exclusively for the army-bred, and of careful screening of family backgrounds of officers and their spouses, especially for influential posts within the military; and, last but not least, the widespread practice of active participation of the wives of military officers in intra-military and political affairs, including the hiring and firing of deputies for their husbands and managing the flow of bribes and business deals.

Some of the more superficial acts of re-feudalization of the military and the state include former junta leader Senior General Than Shwe's and his family's well-known royal pretensions, whereby family members are known to address one another using the arcane language of the long-gone feudal courts and which today is spoken only in the Burmese theatre. 

Than Shwe built a brand new capital, Naypyidaw, and named it and all its residential quarters and streets auspicious-sounding old royal names selected from Buddhist Jartaka tales. At Naypyidaw, Than Shwe required comically obsequious gestures and demeanors from all subordinate members of the bureaucracy, military and society. For instance, subordinates, their spouses and families are required to get down on their knees, even in informal gatherings, and abide by the royal protocol of subordinates speaking only when spoken to in the presence of their military superiors. 

During the 2008 Cyclone Nargis disaster, victims were instructed by military officials to greet Than Shwe and other generals during their propaganda journeys to the storm-ravaged Irrawaddy Delta, as if they were Boddhiisattva, or would-be-Buddhas. Military-led re-feudalization has gone to comic extremes, as the scenes of Burmese citizens kowtowing to these military men of vainglory becomes more and more commonplace. 

To paraphrase the late Ernest Gellner, a Cambridge anthropologist and noted author of "Nationalism", in feudal societies it is power that generates wealth, not the other way round. Economically, Than Shwe whetted, and subsequently unleashed, the economic appetites of other senior and junior officers. 

As a point of departure from Ne Win's military regime, which pushed out a large number of alien commercial and technical elements from the economy (for instance, 300,000 Indians) with its catastrophic economic nationalization scheme, Than Shwe and his deputies have strategically chosen to build and expand the military's economic and commercial base. In so doing, they have resorted to nepotistic practices which involve patronizing only the army-bred, ex-military officers and business-minded civilians who have unquestioningly embraced the primacy of the military class. 

The best known case is Tay Za, Myanmar's wealthiest and most influential tycoon with close personal ties to Than Shwe's family, who also serves as the military's principal arms-dealer. A son of a former deputy of Brigadier Maung Maung, who was the chief architect of the military's institutional developments including the establishment of military and defense academies in the immediate post-independence years, Tay Za was himself a cadet at the DSA in the early 1980s. 

He was expelled from the academy for violating the then strict code of conduct for cadets. Aung Thet Mann and Toe Nay Mann, the two sons of Thura Shwe Mann, until recently the regime's third-ranking general and now Speaker of the military's newly established parliament, have also joined the country's top 10 most influential and richest "businessmen". 

The famous tycoon Zaygaba Khin Shwe, a close friend of former prime minister General Khin Nyunt, who headed the powerful military intelligence until his demise in a 2004 purge, also served with the Army Engineering Corps during Ne Win's rule. Khin Shwe is now a member of the military-controlled parliament representing the regime's Union Solidarity and Development Party, while his daughter is married to one of Shwe Mann's sons. 

President Thein Sein, for his part, is known to hold major shares in Skynet, the country’s most popular TV network. The company is fronted by ethnic Kokant businessman Shwe Than Lwin Kyaw Win, a nephew of the late drug lord Lo Sing Han. Than Shwe’s family owns Myawaddy TV, the sole TV network established exclusively for the armed forces personnel and their families. 

There are lesser known cronies who are army-bred and thus army-backed, (for instance, Hla Maung Shwe of the Myanmar Peace Center and Myanmar Egress, a local nongovernmental organization which the regime has used as its "civil society" proxy. It is, without a doubt that these men, and many others like them, owe their personal fortunes to military rule and the generals . 

Hijacked nation

In exchange for their entrepreneurial services to this growing military class, of which they have long been an integral part, the ruling junta has allowed the nouveau riche to exploit the country and its resources. Recently, Yuzana Htay Myint, another in-house businessman, has been permitted to take over 100,000 acres in the ancestral land of the Kachin minority in the northern most part of Myanmar. It was originally designated by the regime as a national wildlife sanctuary. 

In his otherwise insightful analysis titled "The Future of Tatmadaw's Political Role in Myanmar: Prospects and Problems," Maung Aung Myo, an army-bred former lecturer at Myanmar's National Defence College, observed that the Tatmadaw has been "hijacked by a small group of generals" for their own personal aggrandizement. Upon closer examination, it is really a case of intra-class symbiosis where juniors and seniors divide their ill-gotten gains at the expense of the citizenry. If anything has been hijacked, it is the country and its future that has been stolen away by its own soldiers. 

In feudal systems of the country's bygone eras, all the king's men served at the monarch's pleasure, and they rose and fell, lived and died, precariously. This scenario has been re-enacted in Than Shwe's Myanmar and in Ne Win's Burma, as the country was then known. Whimsically, these despots carried out large scale purges, for instance, the purge of military intelligence under the directorship of Brigadier Tin Oo in 1983 and the ousting of Khin Nyunt and the dissolution of the entire Directorate of the Defense Services Intelligence in 2004. 

Consequently, military officers, as well as other ranks, have opted to optimize their administrative and political authorities by translating them quickly into riches through bribery, big and small, while in office. To get rich quick was indeed glorious for Deng's China post-Chairman Mao Zedong. But in Than Shwe's Myanmar, "eating" as much of the country as fast as possible may not be glorious, not at least in the eyes of the traditional pious Buddhist population, but it has become the wisest and most strategic course of action for virtually all military officers who are clever enough to recognize that theirs is a class kleptocracy. Only the naive remain moral in this new thoroughly feudalized military class. 

Since the early 1990s, the Ministry of Defense has taken over state-owned enterprises and re-established them as "private" businesses owned solely by the Tatmadaw. The military now has its hand in virtually every economic pie, ranging from poultry farms, small factories, real estate, tourism, transportation, construction, rental of regimental facilities, shipping, power, banking, export and import, agriculture, energy and mining. Virtually no business entity of commercial significance can operate without being linked to the military, institutionally or to individual commanders, thereby bringing the entire economy under the Tatmadaw's effective control. 

Unlike Ne Win's socialist military government, the current regime does not alienate commercial elites. Instead, the generals have made local entrepreneurs work for military rule through an evolving economic and political symbiosis. In this new arrangement, which harks back to the old monarchical days of commercial and trade monopolies, the military has learned to patronize the economic class for its own benefit. 

Than Shwe has effectively leveraged the twin pervasive elements of greed and anxiety about the soldiering class's future, encompassing both the officer corps and emerging crony capitalists. Internationally, Than Shwe knows well how to dangle the possibility of economic liberalization before foreign investors and venture capitalists who view Myanmar primarily as "the world's last economic frontier". Western governments and corporations have tripped over themselves in recent bidding for telecommunications and other infrastructure and resource-related concessions. 

Only time will tell whether the forces of the free market will overpower Myanmar's ruling soldiering class. Unlike the military in Indonesia, the Philippines and Turkey, Myanmar's military is marching backward along feudal lines. The Tatmadaw is consolidating its class hold on society, economy and polity, while at the same time trumpeting "democracy and free market", which they know resonates well in Western ears. 

During the formative years of post-independence, the pro-capitalist West had looked at Myanmar's regressive evolution only through the self-serving lens of the Cold War and thus hailed soldiers as "modernizers". Western concerns then were the containment of anti-market Maoist and Soviet influences. Sixty three years later, post-Cold War Western governments and their affiliated interests are now bent on overlooking not only the military’s war crimes against ethnic minorities, but also the general's attempts to build a military apartheid, wherein the military and its commercial, technocratic and ethnic proxies rule over the bulk of the population as a class above, as the heaven-born. 

Maung Zarni (www.maungzarni.net) is a Visiting Fellow at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit at the London School of Economics. A former admit to Myanmar's Military Officers' Training Corp (1980), he hails from an extended military family. He has worked with three separate heads of the military's intelligence service from 2004-8 as an initiator of Track II negotiations.

By Jared Ferrie

Reuters

February 11, 2015

Yangon -- Myanmar's president has approved a law allowing a referendum on changes to the constitution, lawmakers said on Wednesday, a move that could eventually lift what amounts to a ban on opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from the presidency.

President Thein Sein's government has come under domestic and international pressure to reform Myanmar's political system, which is stacked in favour of the military, before a general election this year.

Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party have been pushing for changes to the constitution, which the military drafted.

One clause bars Suu Kyi from becoming president because her two sons are British citizens, a chapter U.S. President Barack Obama said made "no sense". Suu Kyi's late husband was British.

The NLD also says that the constitution grants too much political power to the military, which ruled Myanmar in brutal fashion from 1962-2011.

"Now that the law has been enacted, the Election Commission is soon expected to name a suitable date for the referendum in May," Thein Nyunt, a lower house lawmaker from the New National Democratic Force, told Reuters by telephone.

Upper house representative Aye Maung, a member of the Arakan National Party, also said the president had approved the law. 

Although some lawmakers are pushing for a referendum to take place in a matter of months, others believe that the law's enactment alone does not ensure such a vote will take place this year.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. State Department said it was aware of efforts by the government of Myanmar, which is also know as Burma, to hold a referendum, but it remained unclear whether this would occur and what subjects it would cover.

"We believe constitutional reform should reflect the will of the people in Burma (Myanmar) while respecting the right of all people living in Burma to participate in the country’s democratic process," Jen Psaki told a regular news briefing.

"We certainly hope that the reforms under consideration facilitate credible, transparent and inclusive elections that allow the people ... to pick the national and local leaders of their choice and stress the right of ethnic minorities ... and increase civilian control of the military, including by removing the military’s veto power over constitutional amendments."

Richard Horsey, a Yangon-based independent political analyst, said the cost and logistics make an referendum unlikely in the coming months, but it could be held at the same time as the general election.

He also said that it was not yet clear if such a referendum would focus on the contested articles.

"It is not clear which sections of the constitution would go to referendum; that would need to be decided," Horsey said.

CLAUSES UNDER FIRE 

The NLD submitted a petition with nearly five million signatures last year calling for changes to a clause that requires more than 75 percent house support to amend the charter. 

Critics say the 2008 constitution grants what amounts to a veto for the military, which has a 25 percent quota of legislative seats for unelected servicemen.

The issue of a vote on the charter has already sparked controversy, with nationalists, among them Buddhist monks, angered at a Feb. 2 decision by parliament to grant holders of temporary identification cards, known as white cards, the right to vote in a referendum should one take place, possibly paving the way to allow them ballots in the general election. 

About 300 people rallied in Yangon on Wednesday to demand the revocation of the right of white-card holders to vote in the plebiscite, arguing many were illegal aliens.

Shortly after the protest, the government announced it would revoke the white cards on May 31. It is unclear what that would mean for the millions of people who hold them.

Roughly two-thirds of the white-card holders are Rohingya Muslims, who are widely resented in the Buddhist majority nation, where many people consider them illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. 

Though few Rohingyas are full citizens, some were permitted to vote in a referendum on the 2008 constitution. 

Rohingyas live in apartheid-like conditions in Western Rakhine state and have borne the brunt of sectarian violence that has killed hundreds in the past two and a half years. 

"They are foreigners," said Buddhist monk U Kavinda. "It's completely senseless to grant these aliens the right to vote. We can't tolerate this."

(Writing by Martin Petty and Simon Webb; Additional reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Robert Birsel, Raissa Kasolowsky and Meredith Mazzilli)

By AFP

February 11, 2015

Myanmar Wednesday said identity cards for people without full citizenship, including Muslim Rohingya, will expire within weeks, snatching away voting rights handed to them just a day earlier after nationalist protests at the move.

The Rohingya along with hundreds of thousands of people in mainly ethnic minority border areas, who hold the documents ostensibly as part of a process of applying for citizenship, will see their ID cards expire at the end of March, according to a statement from the office of President Thein Sein late Wednesday.

"Those who are holding temporary identity cards must give back the expired registration documents,” the statement said, in a move that effectively overrides a clause giving them the right to vote in a constitutional referendum in a bill enacted with presidential approval on Tuesday.

The dramatic about-face comes after dozens of protesters gathered in the commercial hub Yangon Wednesday to call on the government not to allow people without full citizenship to vote in the proposed referendum.

The issue has ignited indignation among some Buddhists in restive Rakhine state, where around half a million Rohingya Muslims are estimated to hold white cards.

"If those given the right to vote don't pay respect Myanmar's flag, then we will have a failure of sovereignty," said Nyi Nyi Maung, a Rakhine Buddhist who had joined monks and other protesters in Yangon.

In a statement on Facebook, president's office director Zaw Htay said as of the end of March, white cards would be "illegal", meaning that holder's voting rights were "automatically cancelled".

Violence between Buddhists and Muslims tore through Rakhine in 2012, leaving more than 200 dead and 140,000 trapped in makeshift displacement camps, mainly stateless Rohingya.

The unrest sparked outbreaks of religious violence across the Buddhist-majority country, overshadowing its democratic transition and coinciding with the rising prominence of nationalist monks.

- Right to vote -

The mooted referendum would be triggered by proposals for major charter amendments approved by parliament, although no such plans have yet been announced.

Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition is expected to win landmark elections in October or November this year, if they are free and fair. Legislators will choose a new president after the poll.

The Nobel laureate has campaigned to change the constitution, which sets aside a quarter of parliamentary seats for the military.

It also bars her from becoming president because of a clause excluding those with foreign close family members from top office. Her late husband and two sons are British.

White card holders were able to vote in the 2010 elections, a move seen as benefiting the army-backed party in the much-criticised vote, which ushered in the country's quasi-civilian government.

Rohingya MP Shwe Maung, whose constituency lies in isolated northern Rakhine, said some 1.5 million people in Myanmar were thought to hold some level of temporary citizenship.

Most of these people are in the many ethnic minority border regions, and around 500,000 are Rohingya.

"This is important because it is the right of a citizen to vote," he told AFP, adding that the issue had become controversial only after the 2012 violence.

Many of Myanmar's roughly 1.3 million Rohingya are stateless and subject to a tangle of restrictions that affect everything from their ability to travel and work to the permitted size of their families.

Referred to by the government as "Bengali", they are largely seen as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even if many can trace their ancestry in the country back for generations.

The United Nations in December urged Myanmar to grant the Rohingya access to citizenship.

The issue was at the heart of protests against UN special rapporteur on Myanmar Yanghee Lee which saw the country's most high-profile nationalist monk label her a "whore" in a tirade that drew international condemnation.

By Associated Press

February 11, 2015

Yangon, Myanmar -- Myanmar's president declared Wednesday that a system of temporary identification cards for people seeking citizenship will become invalid at the end of March, negating an earlier decision that would have allowed card holders to vote in an upcoming constitutional referendum.

The announcement of President Thein Sein's action came just hours after hundreds of people demonstrated in Yangon, Myanmar's biggest city, against allowing non-citizens bearing the cards, including many members of the Rohingya ethnic minority, to participate in the referendum.

Most Muslim Rohingya are not citizens, and prejudice against them is high in the predominantly Buddhist nation. Communal tensions have led to violence in recent years which left at least 280 people dead and 140,000 homeless, mostly Muslims confined to squalid camps in the western state of Rakhine.

Most of those protesting Wednesday were Rakhine Buddhists, and the crowd of about 300 included at least 70 Buddhist monks.

Thein Sein's move came as a surprise and details remained unclear, along with the reason for the sudden decision. Presidential office director Maj. Zaw Htay said on Facebook that the announcement "automatically annuls the right" of temporary ID card holders to vote.

Parliament had only recently approved the right of the card holders to vote. It had originally opposed it, but reversed itself after an appeal from Thein Sein. Those rejecting the measure included the opposition National League for Democracy party of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

The government has been under pressure from Western nations and rights groups over its treatment of Rohingya, and Thein Sein may have been trying to appease those critics with his original position.

However, domestic opposition to the policy appeared strong. Rohingya are generally regarded as illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh, even though many have lived in Myanmar for generations.

The temporary identification cards, popularly called "white cards," were created by the former military regime for the 2010 elections in which it relinquished power to a nominally civilian government, though under heavy army influence. An army-backed political party won seats in areas with sizable numbers of white card holders.

White card bearers are technically in the process of applying for citizenship. In addition to Rohingya, they include members of ethnic minorities such as the Kokang and Wa, and people of Chinese and Indian descent.

By Aman Ullah

RB Analysis

February 11, 2015

On February 2, 2015, the Burmese Parliament approved a referendum, which is called 2015 Referendum Law. This law automatically enfranchises hundreds of thousands of white card holders, who live in Burma but successive Burmese regime denied to give them full citizenship rights.

A referendum is expected to be held in mid-2015, when the public will be asked to approve amendments to Burma’s military-drafted charter. A constitutional review committee has recommended a total of 95 revisions, though they have yet to be approved by Parliament or the president.

These white card holders’ vaguely-defined legal status was being abused by the USDP and government for political gains during voting. They created this policy since 2008 when the country had a referendum.

About 700,000 of them belong to the Rohingya Muslim in northern Arakan State. The Rohingya Muslims of Arakan have a more than 1300 years old tradition, culture, history and civilization of their own expressed in their shrines, cemeteries, sanctuaries, social and cultural institutions found scattered even today in every nock and corner of the land. By preserving their own heritages from the impact of Buddhist environments, they formed their own society with a consolidated population in Arakan well before the Burmese invasions of Arakan in 1784.

Jacques Leider, in his article, ‘Between Revolt and Normality: Arakan after Burmese Conquest’ mentioned that, “we admit of a total population of Arakan of circa 250,000 in the time of (the Burmese) conquest, the country steadily lost up to 50% of its population. English observers estimated the Arakanese population at about 100,000 at the time of the British conquest.”

According to the British government document on the cultures and inhabitants of Arakan by the Secret and Political Department, Fort William dated 26th April 1826, “The population of Arracan and its dependencies Ramree, Cheduba & Sandaway does not at present exceed 100,00 souls, may be classed as -- Mughs six tenths, - Mussalman three tenths, - Burmese one tenth, Total 100,000 Souls--.” As to Mr. Paton, Sub Commissioner of Arakan, who submitted this report from Akyab, “The extent of the Population has been tolerably well ascertained, proved a census taken by Mr. Robertson, and myself, and may be considered as approximating very nearly to the truth.”

That’s means that among the 100,000 souls; Mughs 60,000, Muslims 30,000 and Burmese 10,000. So in the date of conquest of Arakan by the British, there remained thirty-thousand Muslims and these thirty thousand Muslims were living there from before, now their descendants and successors have increased leaps and bounds.

No one in British Burma would dispute that there was a group of “Arakan Muslims” who could indeed trace their roots back to the 17th Century and even earlier and who were quite distinct from the Chittagonians and Bengali immigrants to Arakan. 

According to the censuses of both 1921 and 1931, it has clearly mentioned that, ‘There was a Muslim community in Arakan, particularly in Akyab District, who prefers to call themselves Arakan-Mahomadens and were quite distinct from the Chittgonians and Bengali immigrants to Arakan.’ ‘According to Baxter report of 1940, paragraph 7, “This Arakanese Muslim community settled so long in Akyab District had for all intents and purposes to be regarded as an indigenous race.”

Indigenous peoples were the descendants of those peoples that inhabited a territory prior to colonization or formation of the present state. Hence, these Muslims of Arakan, who identify themselves as Rohingya, are for all intents and purposes to be regarded as an indigenous race and are also a racial group who had settled in Arakan/Union of Burma as their permanent home from a period anterior to 1823 A. D. (1185 B.E.). 

The Rohingya is not simply a self-referential group identity, but an official group and ethnic identity recognized by the post-independence state. In the early years of Myanmar’s independence, the Rohingya were recognized as a legitimate ethnic group that deserved a homeland in Burma

Thus, during the colonial rule the British recognized the separate identity of the Rohingyas and declared north Arakan as the Muslim Region. Again there are instances that Prime Minister U Nu, Prime Minister U Ba Swe, other ministers and high- ranking civil and military official, stated that the Rohingyas people like the Shan, Kachin, Karen, Kaya, Mon and Rakhine. They have the same rights and privileges as the other nationals of Burma regardless of their religious beliefs or ethnic background.

Being one of the indigenous races and bona fide citizens of Burma, the Rohingyas were enfranchised in all the national and local elections of Burma: - during the later colonial period (1935-1948), during the democratic period (1948-1962), during the BSPP regime (1962-1988), 1990 multi-party election held by SLORC and 2010 General Election held by SPDC. Their representatives were in the Legislative Assembly, in the Constituent Assembly and in the Parliament. As members of the new Parliament, their representatives took the oath of allegiance to the Union of Burma on the 4thJanuary 1948. Their representatives were appointed as cabinet ministers and parliamentary secretaries. 

Legislative Assembly Election of 1936

The first and only election held under the Government of Burma Act 1935 that took place in November 1936. Before 1937, Burma was a province of British Indian Empire. In 1937 Burma was separated from India under the British Administration. A new constitution came into effect. Under its provisions the people of Burma were given a bigger role to play in the running of their country.

Under the 1935 Act there were 132 seats in the House of Representatives, 91 of the seats were general non-communal seats and the remaining 41 being reserved for communal and special interest groups of which 12 were reserved for Karen (of Ministerial Burma), 8 for Indians, 2 for Anglo-Burmans, and 3 for Europeans. But, according to Martin Smith, ‘there was no separate representation for the Mons of Lower Burma; the question of seats of the Southern Chin, the Arakanese Muslims including Kamans and Myedus, the Zerbadis from the mixed Burma Muslims union. The single exception has been North Arakan, where Muslims from distinct majority constituency in several districts along the Bangladesh border.’ {Martin Smith, Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity 1999} Thus, the Rohingya Muslims of Akyab district North constituency, a non-communal rural constituency, were recognize as children of the soil and in the first time taken as eligible to vote or to stand for election on the ground of their being one of the indigenous communities of Burma. Mr. Ghani Markin returned on the votes of those Rohingyas as a Member of Legislative Assembly.

Constituent Assembly election of 1947

The second election was held under the Aung San-Atlee Agreement that was signed on 27 January 1947. According to that agreement, which said, ‘in order to decide on the future of Burma a Constituent Assembly shall be elected within four months instead of Legislature under the Act of 1935. For this purpose the electoral machinery of 1935 Act will be used. Election will take place in April 1947 for the general non-communal, the Karen and the Anglo-Burman constituencies as constituted under the Act of 1935, and each constituency two member shall be returned. Any Burma nationals defined in the ‘Annex A’  of the Agreement registered in a general constituency other than one of those mentioned above shall be placed on the register of a general non-communal constituency.’

According to ‘Annex A’ of the Agreement, ‘A Burma National is defined for the purpose of eligibility to vote and to stand as a candidate at the forth coming election as British subject or the subject of an Indian State who was born in Burma and reside there for a total period not less than eight years in the ten years immediately preceding either 1st January, 1942 or 1st January 1947’.

Immediately before the last election, the Muslims of Akyab district North constituency were recognized as children of the soil and first taken as eligible to vote or to stand for election on the ground of their being one of the indigenous races of Burma, but when the Aung San - Atlee Agreement was out, the government misunderstood the position and it was notified that unless they declared themselves as Burma nationals, they would not be eligible to vote or to stand for election to the constituent Assembly.

According to Mr. Sultan Ahmed, who became later a member of Constituent Assembly, ‘It is not understood how they can be treated under clause (IV) section II of the Constitution. By so doing about 95% of the population residing in this constituency, at a stroke of the pen, become foreigners, which action they strongly felt as unjust and uncalled for.’

The Muslims of that constituencies made strong protest against this decision on the ground of their being one of the indigenous races of Burma. The government withheld the first decision and allowed the Muslims to vote or stand for elections held in March 1947. Mr. Sultan Ahmed and Mr. Abdul Gaffar returned on the votes of this Muslims as members of the constituent Assembly. They continued in their office, representing the Akyab district North constituency till Burmese independence and took the oath of allegiance to the Union of Burma on the 4th January 1948 as members of the new parliament of the Union of Burma.

‘This decision and action of the government conclusively proved that these Muslims as a whole or in-groups are accepted as one of the indigenous races of Burma. And in this connection, it may be pointed out that the Akyab district North constituency is non-communal rural constituency and these Muslims of Arakan belong to this constituency’ remarked Mr. Sultan Ahemd.

Parliamentary Elections during 1948-1962

Since the holding of the constituent Assembly till 1962 military took over, three general elections were held for both Chambers of the Parliament in 1952, 1956 and 1960 respectively. The Rohingyas had enjoyed the right to vote and the right to be elected as children of the soil in all the elections. In 1952, Mr. Sultan Ahmed, Daw Aye Nyunt (a) Zohora Begam, Mr. Abul Bashar and U Poe Khine (a) Nasir Uddin were elected as members of the Chamber of Deputies and Mr. Abdul Gaffer was elected as a member of the Chamber of Nationalities. In 1956, Mr. Sultan Ahmed, Mr. Abul Khair, Mr. Abul Bahsar and Mr. Ezahar Mian were elected as the members of the Chamber of Deputies and Mr. Abdul Gaffer remained as a member of the Chamber of Nationalities. A by-election was held for the Buthidaung North Constituency in 1957 as the election of Mr. Ezahar Main was challenged and the verdict was given against him. Mr. Sultan Mahmood was elected and he was inducted in the cabinet of U Nu as a Minister of Health. In 1960, Mr. Rashid Ahmed, Mr. Abul Khair, Mr. Abul Bahsar and Mr. Sultan Mahmood were elected as members of the Chamber of Deputies while Mr. Abdus Suban was elected as a member of the Chamber of Nationalities.

General Election during 1962- 1988 in BSPP Regime 

During the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) rule, four general elections for the People’s assembly and People’s Council at different levels were held in 1974, 1978, 1982 and 1986 respectively. These elections had been held on the basis of the 1974 Constitution.

Under the 1974 Constitution and 1973 Election Law, ‘citizens born of parents both of whom are Union nationals and citizens born of parents both of whom are Union citizens, have the right to be elected people’s representatives to the People’s Assembly or People’s Council at different levels. Persons who are not citizens of the Union of Burma have no right to vote.’

According to the 1974 Constitution, ‘citizens are those who are born of the parents whom are nationals of the Socialist Republic of Union of the Burma and who are vested with citizenship according to existing laws on the date of this constitution comes into force.’ 

Former Minister for Mines Dr. Nyi Nyi and Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Minister U Win Ko had to resign from the position of the members of cabinet and People’s Assembly, as they could not fulfill the requirement of the said law.

The Rohingyas had enjoyed the right to vote and the right to be elected as people’s representatives to the Organ of State power at different levels. No Rohingya who had either been elected or who had applied for the nomination had neither been challenged nor barred from participation or asked to resign after being elected.

Multi-Party Election of 1990

SLORC held multi-party general election in May 1990. The Rohingya were not only allowed to vote but also, in their exercise of franchise, elected four Rohingya members of Parliament. U Chit Lwin (a) Ebrahim, Mr. Fazal Ahmed, U Kyaw Min (a) Shomshul Anwarul Haque, and U Tin Maung (a) Nur Ahmed have been elected as members of the Parliament.

Under the1989 election law ‘all citizens, associate citizens and naturalized citizens are permitted to vote, but only the citizens are allowed to stand for election. No foreign residents were allowed to vote.’ Thus, allowing taking part in the national elections must be upheld as a measure of recognition for the Rohingyas as full citizens.

In fact the Rohingyas were not only permitted to vote but also to form their own political parties during the May 1990 election. Two parties were formed the Students and Youth League for Mayu Development and the National Democratic and Human Rights (NDPHR). The NDPHR won all four seats in Maung Daw and Buthidaung constituencies, and in each constituency votes for the two parties counted for 80 per cent of the total votes cast. Moreover, the turnout in both constituencies equaled the national average, at 70 per cent of eligible voters. The NDPHR also fielded candidates in four other constituencies; Kyuk Taw-1, Minbya-1, Mrauk U -2 and Sittwe -2, and they gained an average of 17 per cent of the votes while the Government- backed National Unity Party got only 13 per cent. 

Although the name of Rohingya was not permitted to use in the party title, the NDPHR was allowed to produce a booklet in Burmese called ‘Arakan and the Rohingya people: a short History’ on August 31, 1991. According to the NDPHR sources, the permission to print this booklet was rescinded two months later. 

General Election held by SPDC in 2010

A general election was held in Burma (Myanmar) on 7 November 2010, in accordance with the new constitution. This constitution was approved in a referendum held in May 2008, which was held in the midst of Cyclone Nargis.

Since 2008, Brig-Gen Phone Swe, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, was assigned for the assessment of North Arakan situation and to organize the peoples residing there for the constitutional referendum. Brig-Gen Phone Swe managed over whelming support from Rohingyas 2008 constitutional referendum to the satisfaction of the junta. They want the same support and cooperation from Rohingyas at the coming 2010 election with joining Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) a political affiliate of SPDC.

Brig-Gen Phone Swe, with constant contacting Rohingyas communities of both Rangoon and North Arakan, tried to study the ground reality, perception and mind set of entire Rohingya community of Arakan for two years. After convincing with over whelming support at the referendum from these peoples and managed to take a pro-Rohingya policy by the Junta. Not only Phone Swe, other high ranking SPDC officials also made frequent visits to this area and gave various kinds of promises to the Rohingya people.

In this regard, General (Retd) Thein Sein, the then Prime Minister, accompanied by 12 ministers, a high power delegation was arrived in Buthidaung Township on 16 March 2010. There the Prime Minister held a meeting on that day where local government officers, USDA members, and Rakhine and Rhingya civil society’s members were attended. In this meeting the Prime Minister told that, “Rohingya living in Arakan State are citizens of Burma…Rohingya and government can work together for the betterment of Burmese people and development of the country….Rohingyas have been staying here and shall stay here no need to go anywhere. .. Rohingyas are majority in North Arakan and shall have legitimate rights to vote and to be elected.” 

Convincing the promises of the Prime Minister, most of the Rohingya peoples of North Arakan decided to join USDA and participate to the forth coming election. A total of 37 political parties contested in this election, which included two Rohingya political parties also contested - - National Democratic Party for Development (NDPD) and National Democratic and Peace Party (NDPP). Some independent Rohingya candidates also contested in the election.

Out 33 Rohingya contested in the polls, 21 contested with NDPD ticket, 6 with USDP ticket, 3 with NDPP ticket and 3 independent candidates. U Htay Win (a) Zahidur Rahman with USDP ticket was elected for the Nationalities Parliament. U Aung Zaw Win (a) Zakir Hussain and U Shwe Maung (a) Abdu Razak both with USDP tickets were elected for the People’s Parliament. U Aung Myo Myint (a) Jahan Gir with USDP ticket, U Aung Myint (a) Zahiddullah and U Bashir Ahmed both with UNDP tickets were elected for the State Parliament. The Rohingyas of North Arakan were overwhelmingly gone to vote with average turnover of more than 90%.

In spite of the Rohingyas, being one of indigenous races of Burma, had enfranchised in all the national elections of Burma from later colonial period to present Then Sein regime, today they are knowingly and deliberately being branded as aliens. The government vehemently denies the existence of a Rohingya ethnicity, referring to the group, even in official documents, as “Bengali.” This stems from a pervasive belief that all Rohingya are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh.

However, The USDP needs the votes of these people in upcoming referendum and election then they approved this Referendum Law of 2015 that allows white card holders to take part in a future referendum on amendments to the constitution. 

Parliament’s recent decision, which was proposed by President Thein Sein, reconfirms the USDP’s intention to again grant the group voting rights.

The constitutional referendum has yet to be scheduled, but parliament's decision also strengthens the chances that white card holders will be able to cast ballots in general elections later this year.

The prospect of the Rohingya being allowed to vote has alarmed nationalist monks and politicians who have threatened to hold mass protests next week to pressure parliament to reverse its decision.

Arakanese lawmakers and a group of opposition parties, including Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), are asking Burma’s Constitutional Tribunal to overturn a recent parliamentary decision to grant so-called white card holders the right to vote in a planned constitutional referendum.

Arakanese politicians are fiercely opposed to any legal recognition of the Muslim minority in northern Arakan State. They fear the Referendum Law will also allow the group the rights to vote in the general elections, scheduled for early November. Withholding Rohingya voting rights would boost the power of the Arakanese politicians, which otherwise dominate the state.

But, why did Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) opposing this decision. They knew that, the citizenship issue was a settled issue and the Muslims of Arakan who identify themselves Rohingya are citizens by birth. As they, their parents and their grandparents were born and bred in Burma and most of them were indigenous, under the sub clauses (i), (ii) and (iii) of Article 11, of 1947 Constitution of Union of Burma. These are fundamental rights of a citizen and the 1947 constitution provided safeguard for fundamental rights. Under this constitution, the people of Burma irrespective of ‘birth, religion, sex or race’ equally enjoyed all the citizenships rights including right to express, right to assemble, right to associations and unions, settle in any part of the Union, to acquire property and to follow any occupation, trade, business or profession.

I agree cent percent with Mr. Tha Aye, who accused protest organizers of attempting to create instability and disrupt democratic reforms and said that, they are comprised of racist politicians and ultranationalists. I do not think that NLD is such party. It is a party to which all people of the country have faith on it. Everybody believes that it has vision, it has justice and it will honor all the rights of the people. It never tries to abuse the fundamental rights of any community. 

Our earnest request to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other all the leaders of NLD, please do not oppose for the sake of opposition or opposing. Rohingyas never be illegal immigrants rather they are emigrants from Burma who are illegally staying in deferent parts of the world.

By Wa Lone

Myanmar Times

February 10, 2015

A Myanmar-based United Nations official has criticised a recent Ministry of Foreign Affairs statement that said the UN special rapporteur on human rights had created “discord” during her latest visit.

The statement, which was published in state-run newspapers on February 4, accused Yanghee Lee of “interfering on issues which fall within state sovereignty and domestic jurisdiction”, including the use of the term Rohingya and four draft “protection of religion” laws.

A senior UN official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak about Ms Lee’s mandate, questioned why the government was singling out the rapporteur for criticism.

He noted that the government had not issued similar statements condemning foreign leaders, such as President Barack Obama, who had also spoken out about the poor treatment of the Rohingya.

“The government doesn’t dare to criticise the United States, for example. They just attack the UN because we have more limited avenues for responding,” he said.

He said the government also failed to respond to derogatory remarks made about Ms Lee, including those by U Wirathu.

“Some Rakhine leaders even used very rude words in their meeting with the UN rapporteur [in January],” he said.

The statement was issued almost three weeks after Ms Lee left Myanmar on January 16, following a 10-day visit to the country during which she met government officials, parliamentarians, religious and community leaders, civil society representatives, victims of human rights violations and members of the international community.

At her final press conference she emphasised the need to focus on addressing urgent humanitarian and human rights needs throughout Rakhine State. She also downplayed the importance of the Rohingya versus Bengali debate.

“Without wanting to invalidate either perspective, I would like to suggest that this fixation on which word to use has paralysed progress on important issues,” she said.

The ministry’s statement, however, saw it otherwise.

On the use of Rohingya, it said that “using this controversial terminology will only pose a barrier on the road to resolving this important issue. Use of such term by the United Nations would certainly draw strong resentments of the people of Myanmar making the government’s efforts more difficult in addressing the issue.”

It called on Ms Lee to “fulfil her mandate in a professional and prudent manner. Her visit should leave the country and people of Myanmar with discord, distrust and incitement,” it said.

U Zaw Htay, the director of the President’s Office, wrote on his Facebook page that the “Myanmar government always criticises Ms Lee’s mandate. No special rapporteur got a visa under the Tatmadaw government.”

While he refused to clarify his comment, he appeared to be suggesting that Ms Lee should appreciate the government’s generosity in granting her a visa, in contrast to its predecessor.

U Sai Nyunt Lwin, secretary of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, said the statement might have been issued to “comfort” the Rakhine people.

Ms Lee will submit her report to the UN Human Rights Council on the situation in Myanmar in March.

By Nirmal Ghosh

The Straits Times

Feb 10, 2015

Sittwe is a huddle of ancient, sagging wooden houses, stained colonial bungalows and tall, old trees full of big fruit bats and noisy crows.

It has a crowded bazaar.

It is also where the borderless sprawl of the Kaladan River meets the roiling waters of the Bay of Bengal.

There are only a few hotels for the trickle of tourists passing through, mostly fresh from nearby Ngapali beach, and on the way to the ancient Arakanese ruins of Mrauk-U.

Below a long promenade on the bay, young locals gather in the evenings for beer and football on the beach.

It is a carefree scene, but it belies the weight of a history of conflicts between the majority Rakhine Buddhists and the minority Rohingya Muslims in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine, of which Sittwe is the capital.

Some of the worst hostilities took place in 2012 in and around Sittwe, where the Rakhine Buddhists attacked the Rohingya, killing as many as 200 and driving up to 140,000 out of their communities and into camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs).

Long discriminated against in Myanmar, the Rohingya have left - in a steady trickle and sometimes in waves - overland and by sea every sailing season between October and April, down the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea, for South-east Asia.

There may be up to one million Rohingya in Myanmar.

But more than one million live elsewhere as migrants or refugees, often in abject poverty and mostly in Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia and Malaysia.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar, Ms Yanghee Lee, said after a visit to the state last month: "Issues in Rakhine State have international implications which are of concern to all (UN) member states.

"Human rights violations… are encouraging people smuggling and generating large numbers of asylum seekers, often leading to tragic suffering and loss of life." In Sittwe, the places of worship and the IDP camps tell the story of the most recent conflicts.

Buddhist pagodas dot the town and the surrounding landscape.

Downtown, there are Hindu temples, churches and mosques, but some of the mosques are no longer being used.

Just a few hours outside the city, Ms Fatima Mohamed lives in a hut in an IDP camp after her house in town was burned down in 2012.

The 64-year-old Rohingya Muslim widow with four children finds it hard to smile.

Supplies are short.

The family depends almost entirely on food aid. Just collecting sticks and coating them with cow dung to make slow-burning firewood for cooking takes all day.

There is no running water and electricity.

With little access to proper education for the children, and formerly cordial relations with the Rakhine Buddhists in shreds, the family's future is at best uncertain and, at worst, bleak. Rakhine Buddhists account for about 60 per cent of the 3.2 million people in the state bordering Bangladesh.

Muslims, including the Rohingya, comprise about 30 per cent. The remaining 10 per cent consist of Chin people, who are Buddhist, Christian or animist, and other minorities like the Kaman, who are also Muslim.

The Rohingya, who originally came from the former East Bengal, or today's Bangladesh, to the west, have settled in the Rakhine area for generations. But the Rakhine Buddhistshave a visceral fear of losing their lands and their state to the Rohingya, whom they refer to as "Bengalis".

The Rohingya's plight today is a legacy of the conflicts and migrations of history, and the largely arbitrary designation of nation states by British colonialists when they left in the 1940s.

Rakhine State, formerly known as Arakan, is a land of rugged mountains, fertile alluvial plains, vast mud flats and endless beaches.

It is easy to see why this area has been a magnet for people, overland and especially by sea along the great curve of the Bay of Bengal.

In his 2013 book Crossing The Bay Of Bengal, University of London professor Sunil S. Amrith writes that of the nearly 30 million people who left India's shores between 1840 and 1940, all but two million travelled back and forth between the Indian sub-continent and just three destinations - Ceylon (today's Sri Lanka), Burma (Myanmar) and Malaya (the Malaysian peninsula). Massive migrations have been a constant feature of the coast.

As people moved to and fro, the Arakanese identity (of today's Rakhine people) rubbed against the ethnic Burmese identity to the east and the Bengali identity to the west. Buddhist and Islamic values also came up against each other, starting with the Mughal conquest of Bengal in the 16th century, and the rise of the Buddhist Arakan kingdom between the 15th and 17th centuries.

Arakan "has long been a frontier between Muslim and Buddhist Asia, and the politics of religion continues to heavily influence the popular consciousness", the International Crisis Group said in a report last October on Rakhine State.

The region's colonisation by the British in the mid-1800s and its subsequent independence with the arbitrary drawing of boundaries - based on imperfect data and little ground information - deepened political, ethnic and religious frictions. The border between East Pakistan - later Bangladesh - and Arakan was a frontier where "whole communities found themselves trapped on the 'wrong' side", Prof Amrith writes. Arakanese stranded in East Pakistan were fearful of mass killings.

Muslims stranded in Arakan feared the same.

Violence flared in Myanmar in 1970 and again in the 1990s, sending well over 200,000 Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, where they still live in wretched conditions.

The fallout of history is exacerbated by the competing historical narratives of the Buddhist Rakhine and the Muslim Rohingya.

Yangon-based Dr Jacques Leider, an expert on the region's history, said in a telephone interview that a common historical narrative that is usually a binding factor even in the most diverse of countries is absent among the Buddhists and Muslims of Rakhine. "Each community claims (the land) for itself," he said.

What's in a name?

A senior Myanmar government official told The Straits Times on condition of anonymity: "We see the people not as Rakhines or Rohingya or Bengalis, but as human beings."

He added: "Ideally, in the future, we can even get rid of the ethnic identities. Why not be just Myanmar (people) instead of Kachin, Karen, Chin, Rakhine?"

But it is a rare and even idealistic notion for now, unlikely to find traction among the wider Myanmar public and minorities who have fought for their identities and their lands for decades.

And Myanmar is only in a calibrated experiment with democracy. In an election year, with general polls due this year, extreme politics can exacerbate underlying fault lines.

For many Rohingya Muslims in the IDP camps, the human smugglers that wait in boats on the bay are the only prospect for a better life.

Unwanted in Bangladesh and Rakhine State, migration is their only path to a future.

nirmal@sph.com.sg

Driven to desperation

Issues in Rakhine State have international implications which are of concern to all (UN) member states. Human rights violations… are encouraging people smuggling and generating large numbers of asylum seekers, often leading to tragic suffering and loss of life.

- MS YANGHEE LEE, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Myanmar

By Lawi Weng

By Voice of America

February 7, 2015

Myanmar, also known as Burma, has slammed a visiting U.N. official for using the term "Rohingya" to refer to a beleaguered ethnic minority group the government does not officially recognize.

During a visit last month in Myanmar, U.N. human rights investigator Yang Hee Lee said the mostly Muslim Rohingya suffer from discrimination. She also criticized proposed interfaith bills that critics say could escalate conflict between religious groups.

Presidential spokesman Ye Htut told VOA's Burmese service the government finds use of the term Rohingya "unacceptable." He added the remarks are counterproductive and incomplete. 

"With regard to the four bills proposed in the parliament, the decisions will be made after the MPs have discussed, and with addition of the people’s discussions. Thus, we say that such remarks given in advanced are unacceptable. I also point out that [she] was not able to highlight the work we have done to solve land problems," said Ye Htut.

The majority Buddhist country, also known as Burma, does not recognize the existence of the Rohingya ethnicity. Government officials, and many locals, instead view Rohingya as illegal migrants from Bangladesh and refer to them as "Bengalis."

The mostly Muslim Rohingya are denied citizenship and other basic rights in Myanmar and have been the victims of violence by Buddhist extremists in recent years.

Sectarian unrest killed up to 280 people and displaced 140,000 others in June, 2012. Since then, tens of thousands of Rohingya have been forced to stay in filthy, overcrowded, prison-like camps in western Rakhine state.

Lee last month visited Rakhine, where she was met by protesters who were angry over what they perceive as U.N. bias in favor of the Rohingya.

The U.N. General Assembly late last year passed a resolution urging the group to be granted full citizenship, equal rights, freedom of movement, and allowed to self-identify as Rohingya.

The Myanmar government has rejected the demands for citizenship, but has expressed a willingness to consider citizenship for those who will identify as Bengali.

Burma's 1982 citizenship law says members of any officially-recognized minority must be able to prove their ancestors lived in Burma before the British invaded Rakhine in 1823.

The British occupation of Rakhine prompted a large migration of Muslims into the area from neighboring Chittagong, then part of British-ruled India and now located in modern-day Bangladesh.

Many of Burma's hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims say their ancestors have lived in Burma for generations. But the impoverished minority group lacks the documentation to prove it.

This report was produced in collaboration with the VOA Burmese service.

A Buddhist monk prays at the Sule Pagoda in Yangon. The pagoda was the gathering point for protesters during the 2007 monk-led saffron revolution against the former military dictatorship. Photograph: Jennifer Duggan

By Jennifer Duggan

The Irish Times

February 7, 2015

Social media and free expression may be working against Muslim 4% of population

Burmese political blogger Nay Phone Latt was jailed for sharing news online about the monk-led saffron revolution in 2007 against the country’s brutal military dictatorship. Released under an amnesty for political prisoners three years ago, he is involved in another kind of revolution, one against hate speech targeting Muslims that is becoming more and more prevalent in Burmese society.

The internet in Burma was once among the most restricted in the world but, since the lifting of censorship, people can now access whatever they want. Internet availability is still scarce but, with telecommunications infrastructure developing at a fast pace, many use the internet via mobile phones. Social media, especially Facebook, has become a popular way to discuss politics and share views and opinions, something not possible before. However, not only has it led to greater political debate, it has also lead to an outpouring of hateful and racist sentiment towards Muslims who make up about 4 per cent of the population.

“Now everything is open, and most people are using Facebook and social media,” says Nay Phone Latt. “But not only is there free speech but there is also hate speech spreading through social media.”

From a modest building in a quiet leafy Rangoon neighbourhood, he and his civil society group Myanmar ICT Development Organisation, in collaboration with other activist groups, operates a campaign to counteract hate speech online. Called Panzagar (flower speech), their slogan is “not to spread hatred among our society; be careful of your speech”.

The campaign symbol is a flower in a mouth and they encourage supporters to take a selfie with a flower and post it to their Facebook page.The campaign also reaches out to people not online through posters and DVDs in remote areas.

Sectarian violence

Religious tensions have been rising in Burma in recent years, since the outbreak of sectarian violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state in the west of the country. More than 240 people have been killed and 150,000 are displaced and living in camps as a result of the violence. The tensions have spread to other areas in Burma, with rioting and violence in Mandalay in July last year and in Meiktila in central Burma in March 2013.

Anti-Muslim sentiment has spread, spearheaded by an extremist Buddhist group known as 969 and led by controversial monk Ashin Wirathu. The group claims it is protecting the country from Islamisation and calls on Buddhists to boycott Muslim businesses. Social media has played a role in stoking violence. The riots in Mandalay broke out after unverified rumours circulated on Facebook that a Buddhist woman had been raped by a Muslim man.

Islamic extremism

Wai Wai Nu, a political activist and member of the Rohingya Muslim minority, said that despite claims by some monks, there is no history of Islamic extremism in Burma. “Muslim people in Burma, whether they are Rohingya or others, they are peaceful people. They have no history of violence or attack,” she said.

The government has been accused of not taking enough action to quell the tensions. Towards the end of last year, controversial legislation, known as the protection of race and religion laws, was submitted for parliamentary debate. The legislation was proposed by another extremist Buddhist group known as the Mabatha and, while it was tempered by a parliamentary committee, the current draft still includes some restrictions on interfaith marriage, religious conversion and population control.

Rangoon, a multicultural city where members of different religions have lived side by side for many years, has not seen any religious violence. However, anti-Muslim sentiment is apparent and tensions have increased.

“If you are Muslim, Buddhists won’t rent houses or apartments to you and don’t buy or sell from you. This is because of the Mabatha – their religious speech spreads around the whole country. Their campaign is widespread,” says Wai Wai Nu.

Buddhist neighbours

In the Tamwe township, a Buddhist and Muslim neighbourhood border each other. While there have been no incidents, there have been some tensions, particularly when violence has broken out in other areas.

In the Muslim Ma U Gone Lan Kyal neighbourhood, three men were drinking tea at an outdoor cafe; reluctant to give their names, they say while they do not have any issues with Buddhist neighbours, monks from the 969 group “come into the neighbourhood and shout” using racist swear words.

Than Than Nu owns a gold shop in the Buddhist Kyauk Myaung neighbourhood. She moved a year ago from a nearby predominantly Muslim neighbourhood because she was worried about growing tensions.

After the riots in Meiktila, she says, there were “some kind of tensions” and she saw men gathering with “weapons”. “In that area, there were only a few Buddhists and we have children so we were afraid that if something happened it is not good for us.”

Military provocation

Many observers suspect hardliners within the government and the former military regime to be playing a role in inflaming the religious and ethnic divisions.

“We don’t know exactly who is behind the violence and the anti-Muslim movement but some critics say some people from the USDP [Union Solidarity and Development Party] and the former military government are involved,” said Kyaw Zwa Moe, managing editor of the Irrawaddy magazine.

It is thought the tensions may be exploited in the run-up to an election expected this year, the first since Burma’s transition from a military dictatorship. “If some politicians want to play with it, to destabilise and to disrupt, it would be so easy to use the tensions to disrupt the political situation,” he said. This article was supported by a grant from the Simon Cumbers Media Fund.