COMMENT People power in waiting in
Myanmar By Aung Din
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has
stepped down. Could Myanmar's long serving
military dictator General Than Shwe be next?
The people of Egypt successfully toppled
Mubarak's authoritarian regime of 30 years in a
mere 18 days of peaceful demonstrations.
Emboldened by the success of the popular uprising
in Egypt, millions of people across the Middle
East and North Africa, including in Libya,
Algeria, Yemen, Bahrain, Iran, Oman and Jordan,
have taken to the streets in attempts to reform
their countries' political systems. The seeds of
democracy are spreading across the Arab World; the
fourth great wave of
democratization has begun in
earnest.
As international attention
focuses on the surprising momentum and magnitude
of the peoples' power movements across the Arab
World, many now wonder whether the trend will
spread to Asia and in particular if people of
Myanmar, also known as Burma, will once again rise
up against the dictatorial military regime that
under different leaders has ruled the Southeast
Asian country with an iron fist since 1962.
There are several similarities between
Egypt's recent and Myanmar's past uprisings. One
is the democratic contagion effect. The success of
Tunisia's popular uprising in January this year
inspired their neighbors in Egypt to follow suit.
Similarly, in 1988, empowered by the
popular uprising that overthrew then Philippine
dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986, the people of
Myanmar took to the streets in their millions to
bring down their own military dictator, General Ne
Win. Both revolts were sparked by state violence.
In Egypt the killing of 28-year-old Khaled Said by
corrupt police was a revolution ignition point; in
Myanmar the brutal killing of students by the
regime's riot police sparked the 1988 uprising.
At the same time, there are several stark
differences. In particular, Myanmar lacks an
independent media to check and balance the
regime's abuse of power. Unlike in Egypt, where
international media such as al-Jazeera and CNN
covered the events as they unfolded, the
military's brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters
in 1988 went largely unnoticed.
Social
media tools and comprehensive coverage by
international media collectively applied sustained
pressure on the Mubarak regime until cracked.
Citizen journalist coverage disseminated over the
Internet of the military's crackdown on the 2007
Buddhist monk-led uprising, known around the world
as the "Saffron" revolution, failed to yield the
same result.
Time and time again, the
people of Myanmar have expressed their desire to
live free from oppression and fear. And time and
time again, the United Nations has failed to
intervene to put an end to the Myanmar regime's
reign of terror. But concerned people now wonder
with the international support, including in the
United States, given to many of the Arab nation
revolts in the name of democracy whether the time
is right for another popular uprising in Myanmar.
New democratic tools There are
many reasons to believe the next time could be
different in Myanmar. As in many other countries,
social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, and
SMS text messaging could play an important role in
coordinating among organizers, bloggers, activists
and artists to recruit people to the streets in a
relatively short time.
Widely available
cell phones and digital cameras would help citizen
journalists to record unfolding events in the
country and report to the outside world via the
Internet, as they did in covering the 2007
"Saffron" revolution. That coverage would keep the
international community informed and mount
pressure on the regime when it inevitably struck
back through use of lethal force.
Not a
day goes by in Myanmar where the people do not
defy the regime. Tens of thousands of fallen
heroes, thousands of political prisoners, hundreds
of thousands of refugees, and millions of broken
families have already proved the people of
Myanmar's commitment towards and yearning for
democracy. They are up to date and inspired by the
developments in Egypt and the Arab World through
international radio broadcasts from the BBC, Voice
of America, Radio Free Asia and Democratic Voice
of Burma.
Some are already bidding to
launch a parallel peoples' power movement, as seen
over the recently created Facebook page entitled
"Just Do It against Military Dictatorship". The
page now has more than one thousand members inside
Myanmar who share information about revolutions in
the Arab World and encourage each other through
messages like "No dictator can resist a popular
movement, we know". There are an estimated 300,000
people who have regular access to the Internet in
Myanmar, which is tightly censored by the regime.
Myanmar's generals are experienced in
manipulating the international community.
In recent years, they have succeeded in
circumventing international denunciation by hiding
behind the protective powers of China, Russia, and
India - all of which aim to extract and exploit
energy and natural resources in Myanmar. They are
also able to utilize their membership in some
international organizations, such as the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the
Non-Aligned Movement, to render United Nations'
resolutions toothless and ineffective. Any attempt
by the United States to gain influence over
Myanmar's generals will only aid them in hedging
their bets between international powers. A direct
US intervention would likely undermine the
democracy movement, led by Nobel Peace Prize
laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
The United
Nations Human Rights Council recently decided to
form and dispatch a Commission of Inquiry to Libya
to investigate human rights violations. This move
is long overdue and came too late. Like General
Than Shwe of Myanmar, Muammar Gaddafi has
brutalized the Libyan people for decades. If the
UN had established such an investigative mechanism
earlier, it might have been able to stop the
killing of innocent civilians by the Libyan
military and its mercenaries.
Activists
have long advocated for the UN to set up a
commission of Inquiry into Myanmar's rights abuses
as a way to protect democracy activists and ethnic
minorities and prevent further killing. Such an
international effort would have warned Myanmar's
generals that, although they are fully protected
by their domestic legal system, they could be held
accountable in international courts for crimes
they have committed.
Record of
abuse The regime's abuses, meanwhile,
continue unabated. On February 28, 2011, nearly
84,000 ethnic people from Karen State in eastern
Myanmar sent an appeal letter to UN secretary
general Ban Ki-moon urging him to help stop human
rights violations in their areas.
These
civilians, aged 16 to 103, have been subjected to
abuses including forced labor, looting, extortion,
destruction of homes, villages, crops and fields,
forced relocation, extrajudicial killing, beating,
torture and the systematic rape of women and
children by the Myanmar army for decades. More
than 3,600 villages have been destroyed in eastern
Myanmar in the past 15 years, an average of four
every week.
Physicians for Human Rights,
an international non-governmental organization,
released a research paper on human-rights
violations in Myanmar's Chin State entitled "Life
Under the Junta". The report found 2,951 cases of
abuse by the military regime over a one year
period. Of the 621 household interviewed, 91.9%
reported cases of forced labor. Many were forced
to carry military supplies and ammunition, sweep
for landmines, and build roads and buildings.
Religious or ethnic persecution was reported by
14.1% of respondents, 5.9% reported arbitrary
arrest and detention, 4.8% reported cases of
disappearance, 3.8% reported instances of torture,
2.8% reported cases of rape, and 1% reported
outright murder.
These abuses - similar to
the ones cited by protesters now on the streets
across the Arab world - are well-known among the
Myanmar population. At the same time, the regime
continues to issue threats to pro-democracy leader
Suu Kyi, who was released from her last seven and
a half year detention three months ago, and her
recently banned party the National League for
Democracy (NLD).
An article published on
February 14 in the regime's mouthpiece New Light
of Myanmar stated that Suu Kyi and her party could
meet "tragic ends" for their support for economic
sanctions from abroad. Many speculate that a major
crackdown on pro-democracy activists and NLD
supporters will begin soon.
While voices
raised against Myanmar's military regime have been
quickly and brutally repressed in the past, with
the democratic momentum gathering across the Arab
world, things could turn out very differently the
next time the country's oppressed people rise up
and cry out for democracy.
Aung
Din served over four years in prison in
Myanmar as a political prisoner. He is now the
executive director of the Washington DC-based US
Campaign for Burma.
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