This episode focuses on Myanmar’s slow journey towards democratization, which appeared to have been halted by the military coup in 2021. What is also discussed is the legacy of British colonial rule in which certain ethnic groups were favored over others, and the progress of international actions against the Myanmar military regime over the Rohingya genocide. Furthermore, the impact of the war in Ukraine is examined as something that may force the military back on the road towards democratization.
Guests featured in this episode:
Marzuki Darusman, an internationally recognized human rights lawyer and former Attorney General of Indonesia. Marzuki has participated in the work of UN committees on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, war crimes in Sri Lanka, human rights in North Korea, and most recently, he was the chair an independent Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar under the UN Human Rights Council following the Rohingya genocide in 2017.
GLOSSARY:
Who is the Aung San Suu Kyi?
(00:5:10 or p.2 in the transcript)
Aung San Suu Kyi, also calledDaw Aung San Suu Kyi, politician and opposition leader of Myanmar, daughter of Aung San, a martyred national hero of independent Burma and Khin Kyi a prominent Burmese diplomat, and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991. She held multiple governmental posts from 2016, including that of state counselor, which essentially made her the de facto leader of the country. She was sidelined in February 2021 when the military seized power.
Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old when her father, then the de facto prime minister of what would shortly become independent Burma, was assassinated. She studied and lived abroad and returned to Burma in 1988 to nurse her dying mother,leaving her family behind. There the mass slaughter of protesters against the brutal and unresponsive rule of military strongman U Ne Win led her to speak out against him and to begin a nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights.
In July 1989 Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest in Yangon and held her incommunicado. The military offered to free her if she agreed to leave Myanmar, but she refused to do so until the country was returned to civilian government and political prisoners were freed. The National League for Democracy (NLD), which Suu Kyi had cofounded in 1988, won more than 80 percent of the parliamentary seats that were contested in 1990, but the results of that election were ignored by the military government (in 2010 the military government formally annulled the results of the 1990 election).
After becoming state counselor she and her administration faced widespread international condemnation over the treatment of the Muslim Rohingya people of Myanmar’s Rakhine state. After some attacks by Rohingya militants on security installations in 2016 and 2017, the military and police embarked on a brutal campaign against the entire group, allegedly committing human rights abuses and causing a large percentage of the population to flee the country. Given Suu Kyi’s history as a champion of human rights and democracy, sharp criticism was directed at her in particular for initially seeming to ignore the crisis and, when she did address it, not denouncing the actions of the security forces or intervening. In protest of her inaction regarding the plight of the Rohingya, several organizations revoked human rights-related honours and awards previously bestowed upon her.
Although Suu Kyi’s reputation had suffered abroad, at home she and the NLD still retained a good amount of support. In the November 8, 2020, parliamentary elections, the NLD won a commanding majority of seats in both legislative chambers and was poised to form the next government.
The newly elected parliament was due to hold its first session on February 1, 2021, but, in the early hours of that day, the military seized power. Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders were detained by the military, which allowed Vice Pres. Myint Swe (a former general) to become acting president. Claiming that the unresolved election complaints were a threat to the country’s sovereignty, he invoked clauses 417 and 418 of the constitution, which provided for the military to declare a one-year state of emergency and take over administration of the government. Two days later the police announced that they had filed charges against Suu Kyi with regards to the presence of illegally imported walkie-talkie radios in her home. Source:
Who are the Bamar people?
(00:11:05 or p.3 in the transcript)
The term “Bamar” or “Burman” refers to the largest and culturally dominant ethnic group of Myanmar. The term “Burmese” refers to the language and culture of the Burmans, as well as to the other citizens of Myanmar. The Bamar migrated from SW China more than 3,000 years ago. The central plain formed by the Irrawaddy River and the Salween River is the traditional home of the Bamar. About 68% of the population of Myanmar is Burman (about 31 million), while the remaining population is divided into 5 main minority groups (Shan, Karen, Kachin, Arakanese, and Chin). There are also many small groups like the Lahu, Wa, Akha and Lisu. Almost all Bamar (more than 95%) are Buddhists. Source:
Who are the Rohingya people?
(00:13:02 or p.3 in the transcript)
The Rohingya people are an ethnic group from Myanmar, most live in Rakhine State on Myanmar’s western coast. Myanmar is a majority-Buddhist state, but the Rohingya people are primarily Muslim, though a small number are Hindu. The ethnic minority is considered “the most persecuted minority in the world” by the United Nations.
The story of that persecution has its roots in Britain’s colonization of Burma, and modern-day Myanmar’s refusal to recognize the existence of a people who have existed for thousands of years.
Today, the Rohingya are considered illegal immigrants by Myanmar, and are not recognized under the law. Rohingya people cannot access social services or education, and their movement outside of Rakhine State is closely restricted. Myanmar has also imposed strict regulations on birth control and marriage, only allowing Rohingya in some townships in Rakhine State to have two children and restricting the marriages of some Rohingya.
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S.R: Welcome to "Democracy in Question," the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world. I'm Shalini Randeria, Rector and President of the Central European University in Vienna, and Senior Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
It's my great pleasure to welcome today, Marzuki Darusman, an internationally recognized human rights lawyer and campaigner from Indonesia. He has served as Attorney General of Indonesia, but he has also worked in several UN committees. For example, against war crimes in Sri Lanka, on human rights in North Korea, and most recently, he was chair of an independent fact-finding mission on Myanmar under the UN Human Rights Council following the Rohingya genocide in 2017.
Today, when the Ukrainian war has almost monopolized our attention, I've invited Marzuki Darusman to remind us about the tragic significance of another ongoing political, military, and humanitarian crisis far away from the glare of international media. The people of Myanmar have faced this assault since the military coup on February 1, 2021, which marked the brutal end of a short-lived, hopeful period of democratization. While the Ukrainian nation stands united against an external Russian invasion, the citizens of Myanmar suffer under the oppression of their own military junta, supported by neighboring authoritarian regimes.
What are the historical origins of the Myanmar regime that has resorted to mass killings and forced displacement in order to suppress the democratic aspirations of its own citizens? How has the regime instrumentalized ethnic and religious differences? What are the prospects of regime change and of democratization in Myanmar? And has the international community done enough to further reconciliation and a peaceful transition to democracy in this small Southeast Asian country? Marzuki Darusman will address some of these questions in today's episode. Welcome, Marzuki. Thanks for joining me from Indonesia this morning.
M.D: Thank you, Professor Shalini, my pleasure.
S.R: So, the whole world is watching is a chant, if you remember, of the antiwar protesters during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, a slogan that since then has been invoked so often. Unfortunately, the world is not watching enough of what is going on in Myanmar. I would like to recall with you, Marzuki, some of the events that led up to that.
The Myanmar military deposed the democratically elected civilian government formed by the National League of Democracy, following a five-year democratic interlude, which many had hoped would signal a definitive break with the past. The military has now returned to rule by violent repression. Could you talk us through some of the history of democratic movements and aspirations in Myanmar, and try to trace for us the re-emergence of the military as the major power?
MD: Well, yeah, it may be useful to just look at where we are in terms of the trajectory at the moment. But then the broader picture is that trajectories may not do justice to the overall conditions in Myanmar. I would perhaps look at it as more of a metamorphosis, which goes back to the beginning of its independence 60 years ago when the nationalist movement declared the independence of Burma at that time.
Since then, Myanmar has always been under military rule, as a matter of historical default. But to be fair, the democracy process became an integral part of the evolution of military rule when the so-called concept of flourishing democracy was instituted by the junta, which led, of course, to a resurgence of development, but that then was meshed into the overall crisis worldwide and led to the uprising in 1988.
Around that time, also, Aung San Suu Kyi was visiting the country to look after her mother who was ailing at that moment. And so, these processes meshed into one another. And it led to a gradual opening of the country, where the signs of a democratic resurgence came out. But it was inevitable that the process had to be allowed to take its course until 2020, when the National League of Democracy, the party under Aung San Suu Kyi, won a landslide victory, which caused quite an alarmist anxiety within the junta, and led, of course, to the February coup of last year. And we now have one year from there on as the baseline moving forward.
S.R: So, Marzuki, if I take you back a little further down the road, I come from India. So, Burma then, Myanmar now, is not far away and we share, if you like, a common past, the two countries of British colonialism. The legacy in India that we are also seeing of British colonialism, or one of the legacies we are seeing is that of the British policy of divide and rule, pitting communities, be they ethnic or religious, against one another, and creating animosities, which then, of course, are projected backwards.
So, my question to you here would be, does the British colonial legacy of privileging certain ethnic or religious minorities, creating these kinds of internal divisions, which stoke then the resentment of some communities against others, in the Myanmar case, the resentment of the Bamar Buddhist majority, does that play a major role in the ideological justifications or the structural fault lines in the country? Because one of the things one hears from the regime is that there is a threat. There's a threat, the regime perceives, of ethnic and religious separatism and secessionism, and it is the only legitimate power that can keep the country together.
M.D: Well, yes, if you go back to history, of course, this is not specific to Myanmar. As you say, it's India, it's also other countries in the region, including my country, Indonesia. The arbitrary drawing of boundaries and lines did not quite coincide with the realities of the ethnic communities then. It was more of an economic and colonial expediency. And now, we have the crisscrossing of these borders that cut across whole communities of the same ethnic origin. And the dynamic plays out now, in terms of reclaiming areas and reclaiming legitimacies within a state, a unitary state that was born out of the struggle in World War 2.
And so, the baseline here is the recognition that this is a multi-ethnic country, but at the same time, the need for a settlement that would allow an ideology to emerge of nationhood, and that is now the primary challenge for the nation, for Burma or for Myanmar. And that, of course, plays also into the wider geopolitical context within the region, but also globally. So, it's a very complex condition there. But it was doing quite well in terms of its democratization up until 2020, when the military then all of a sudden, for whatever reason, took over and staged this failed coup.
S.R: So, let me pick up on two things, which you just alluded to, and ask you to talk about them a little more. One, the history of democratic movements and attempts at democratization. So, you mentioned the 1988 Uprising, as it was called, the ‘88 Uprising, but also, I recall the 2007 Saffron Revolution led by Buddhist monks and students, all of which have now been suppressed by murderous violence and totalitarian repression.
So, let's look at sort of, if you like, this back and forth between various attempts and partly successful attempts at democratization, and then ever-recurring backlashes, so that do you see the current attempt and after the coup, as the sort of last desperate attempt to hold on to power? Or can you discern other geopolitical larger constellations behind it as well?
M.D: Well, yes, that's a very crucial question to be posed, because that does go some way in explaining the behavior of the junta. The, let's say, governance of Aung San Suu Kyi may have led to some anxieties among the junta that it was going in a very specific direction, which they were somewhat worried. These are armed forces with a very nationalistic outlook. It started in 1948 led by Aung San, the father of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was of Bamar ethnic origin and therefore the armed forces then that led the independence movement was a Bamar-led independence movement. And that gave legitimacy in that sense to those of Bamar ethnic origin then taking the lead subsequently.
Now, the short story, of course, is that there may be some anxieties that the direction of the country was somewhat tilted towards China. And therefore, there was this situation where due to the NLD landslide victory, the junta feared that the military would be effectively displaced from the government. And therefore, on the eve of the first inaugural session of the parliament, on the basis of the election results, the Tatmadaw, this is the armed forces of the Myanmar, took that crucial act of taking over the government on the pretext that the elections were fraudulent, and from thereon, of course, it's now history. We're now saddled with the situation there where things seem to be at a stalemate. And that is now what defines the trajectory, a status quo between the democracy movement trying to restore democracy, and on the other side, the armed forces taking on the consequences of its act of unconstitutional takeover.
S.R: In your reports and speeches, Marzuki, you have made it unequivocally clear that we are dealing here with a genocidal campaign of ethnic clearance and cleansing against the Rohingya on the one hand, and you have also exposed the glaring issue of domestic impunity, and lack of accountability for the war crimes against humanity committed by the junta. The UN Security Council, however, failed to take any decisive action on this so far. Of course, there was Russian reluctance to lend support to such action, and probably this will be even stronger now, given its invasion of Ukraine. China's role needs to be looked at here as well, probably India's role too.
So, could you say something about the way in which your own fact-finding mission has brought up evidence, which so far has been ignored in the larger international context, but suddenly, we have had this week, the United States recognizing the fact that these are war crimes and genocide?
M.D: Two things may need to be clarified. One is that the fact-finding mission did come to a conclusion that genocidal actions took place, and that we came out recommending that the leadership of the military be brought to a trial in international courts. And that conclusion has been well-taken by the Human Rights Council in Geneva. And subsequent to the fact-finding mission, an international investigative mechanism for Myanmar was set up to collect further evidence.
So, the genocidal dimension continues to be the platform and the framework, which the Human Rights Council continues to address. It has, of course, lingered somewhat in the last period due to the fact that there is a missing element here, and that is the jurisdiction that needs to be set up so that prosecutions can be undertaken. So, the IIMM has now been able to amass substantive evidence, further evidence of genocidal actions, and that needs to be then brought to an internationally established court for further prosecutorial actions.
Now, that may have to go through the Security Council and that is where the veto power of China and Russia is crucial. And therefore, now we are faced with a choice of the Human Rights Council itself setting up a tribunal as a complementary mechanism to the IIMM so that prosecutions can then proceed. So, that's where we are at the moment. And, of course, alongside this particular track, there is the case that has been brought to the International Court of Justice by the Gambia on the basis of the Genocide Convention, and that is now proceeding. We will have a ruling on this in a few months. But the interim measures that the ICJ had come out with was that it directed the government of Myanmar, which was still under Aung San Suu Kyi at that point, to cease any actions that could be interpreted as genocidal against the Rohingya.
So, the sense that this was the track that was going to be pursued by the international community has been laid out. And lately, of course, the United States' announcement that finally, they came around to accepting that our findings, indeed, established genocidal actions, genocidal in the sense that this has to be proven in a court of law, whether or not genocide did legally took place.
S.R: Right, let me turn, Marzuki, to the internal dynamics away from the international law and lead the constellation, because I think two questions will then arise internally. So, even if depending on how the courts decide, ultimately, democratization will happen as a result of the internal forces being allowed to change the regime.
And the question here is, what kinds of democratic forces and their potential for resistance at the moment are you seeing? Do you see Aung San Suu Kyi playing a major role in this, despite her detention and house arrest? And do you see her and her party really accepting a more inclusive, a more decentralized state because her role has been rather questionable or her position has been rather questionable during the Rohingya crises in 2017, and subsequently, on the issue of the Rohingyas and their belonging as equal citizens in democratized Myanmar?
M.D: The Rohingyas are historic to the nation. They go back to generations of immigrants and people migrating across the region and this is a feature of Asia as a whole. It was relatively a very peaceful region as a whole, until, of course, in the latter part of the century. So, there's no dispute about that. Now, the fact that it came out the way it did in August 2017 that the Rohingyas were then in a mass exodus pushed out in such a way that it shook the whole nation to its fundamentals, was that genocidal actions had already been taking place over the past decades. And the association of Aung San Suu Kyi with the Bamar majority group led to her having to come out unacceptably, of course, on the wrong side of history, if you will, by denying the fact that these atrocities took place.
And so, what we have now is a situation where now, this, of course, may be likened to what is happening in Ukraine, that the Tatmadaw is now in full assault of its own people. And therefore, it is, in a way, an internal occupational force. That makes the democracy movement more than just a democracy movement, it is a movement to reclaim the country for the people. This force constitutes a whole range of ethnic armed organizations, civil disobedience movements, trade unions, the whole spectrum of Myanmar society, Bamar society, with the exception, perhaps, of the Bamar and the Buddhist groupings, but that has different implications to the dynamic. And we will, of course, be looking at what happens now in terms of a gradual acceptance of the equal rights of minorities in Myanmar.
S.R: So, if we look at the strategic coalitions and alliances, which you've just mentioned, students, trade unions, monks, ordinary citizens, the so-called Red Ribbon Movement about which you may want to also say something, do you think it can be channeled somehow into a more institutionalized form of political struggle towards democratization so that there would be a realistic chance of democratic transition? Because if I remember rightly, the junta has promised free elections next year.
M.D: The whole point now, I think, is to restore a political process within the country. And only if you have a political process, then can you start looking at institutionalization of processes. It is now in the midst of a militarized conflict of such proportions, that there is a stalemate where one side cannot overcome the other. And therefore, it may require the good offices of a third party, and I'm referring, of course, to the ASEAN, which has come to an agreement, which includes the concession, the conceding of the junta for the implementation of a five-point consensus that starts out with a cessation of violence.
Now, it is a hit-and-start kind of action that still has to be much more inclusive to also bring in all the other parties, which the five-point consensus alludes to, and that is the crux of the issue. How do we get all the parties around to dialogue and to come to terms with each other, so that a political process can then be undertaken towards an eventual settlement and resolution of the situation?
S.R: So, let me end by asking you what role you think usefully, the international community could play in furthering the political process of dialogue? Because the sanctions against Myanmar regime have been extremely weak, and the condemnations have been strong, but the words have not had much of an effect. Many countries continue to, and especially neighboring countries continue to maintain their ties with the government, trade with it, continue to support it in international fora, but even your American support has been lacking. Do you think the Ukraine war is likely to lead to stronger support for democratization all across the world, including in Myanmar?
M.D: That's a very good point because I think what has been advocated by the fact-finding mission, and this is a notion that has now been widely looked at, the role of the international community is to affect a cut in the arms delivery to the junta, a cut in the impunity of the junta, and a cut in the business involvement of the military in the Myanmar economy. This is the so-called "Three Cuts" strategy that needs to be implemented and this could be the primary role of the international community to affect. At the same time, the regional dimension needs to be brought into the picture, and that is where we are at the moment. It's absolutely slow, very incremental. But there are instances where sudden surges do happen, and it may have to start with very tentative steps for the moment.
But the situation in Ukraine, of course, has given greater clarity to what is happening in Myanmar. And therefore, just to mention an angle to this, the flow of arms may dry up, if you will. Because Russia and Ukraine, who are the main arms suppliers, may have to be somewhat looking into their own needs there in Europe. And therefore, the payment system, of course, is also an issue. How does Tatmadaw affect payments through a payment system that is not international, in that sense? So, there are so many angles to this that there is a sense that we are nearing a tipping point.
S.R: Marzuki, did I understand you to say correctly, it's not just the Russian government which has been supplying, selling arms to the Myanmar junta, but Ukraine is one of the suppliers of arms to the military regime as well?
M.D: That is correct. They have been supplying light armored vehicles, and the Ukrainian military industry is one of the foremost industries in the world. And therefore, it is a connection that has allowed the junta to prevail so far, because of the assured delivery of arms from both Russia and the Ukraine.
S.R: Thank you very, very much, Marzuki, for this wide-ranging interview going into historical depth, bringing in the geopolitical considerations and the entire international context, both of armed supplies but also of the international law mechanisms and tribunals, which could deal with the process of democratization in Myanmar. Thank you for being with me today.
Marzuki: Thank you. My pleasure, Professor.
S.R: So, let me summarize what we've learned today. The legitimacy of the Myanmar junta is contested internationally, but also internally by the majority of the country's population, who have responded to brutal military force with a whole array of protests, but these have led, at the moment, to a stalemate.
Urgent action is needed internationally to restore the political process and to break the current deadlock. Dialogue is needed to restore democracy, as we have heard. However, there is a long British colonial history of the fueling of ethnic divisions and the resentment of the Bamar Buddhist majority, which sees itself as the historical victims. Not unusual for the region of South Asia, but pertinent to the way the conflict in Myanmar is playing out at the moment.
It was a highly-militarized independence movement, nationalist, but also armed, which led the country to its independence. The international geopolitical constellation has also played a role in allowing the democracy movement to be thwarted and throttled by the use of brutal military violence against its own citizens. The UN fact-finding mission has gathered evidence of genocidal actions by the military and has recommended that it be brought to trial at an international level and an international forum. The United Nations Human Rights Council is addressing it, and the U.S. government has accepted these findings.
Some jurisdictional questions still remain to be resolved, but the International Court of Justice case is being heard. The case brought in by Gambia against the Myanmar military regime is being heard currently. The status of the Rohingyas is something which has changed in the internal deliberations within Myanmar. The Rohingyas are an integral part of the Myanmar nation, a part of the history of Asian migration across all current national borders, and their acceptance as an ethnic minority, an equal ethnic minority, will need maybe a law in order to allow minority protection across the board in the country.
The democracy movement in Myanmar is broad-based, and it is more than a democracy movement. It has become a movement now to reclaim the country by its own people. Paradoxically, the war in Ukraine may have a positive impact on democratization of Myanmar, because both Russia and Ukraine have been major suppliers of arms to the military junta in this faraway, tiny Southeast Asian country.
This was the fourth episode of Season 4 of "Democracy in Question." Thank you very much for listening to us and join us in two weeks' time for another conversation on the future of democracy. Please go back and listen to any episode you might have missed. And, of course, let your friends know about this podcast, if you're enjoying it. You can stay in touch with the CEU at www.ceu.edu, and the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch/democracy.