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Throwing Water at The Sun
B U R M A I N C O N T E X T :
The military dictatorship in Burma 9 is widely regarded as the world's worst human rights violators. While millions of Burmese voters & a handful of other states question the legitimacy of the Burmese military's claim to state power 10, the ruling State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) currently assumes the role of a government and carries out, however poorly, most of the functions of a state 11. The United Nations, who's General Assembly, Human Rights Commission & other major treaty bodies have issued increasingly critical resolutions and statements, strongly condemns Burma's non-adherence to internationally recognised human rights standards. In making their claims, international bodies, and individuals state cite Burma's restrictions of civil & political rights, gross economic mismanagement, the complicity of the Burmese military in illicit drug production & trafficking, the Burmese state's persecution of ethnic & religious minorities, and the military regime's vocal & active rejection of western liberal democratic ideals.
For the 11th consecutive year, the United Nations Human Rights Commission adopted a strongly-worded resolution on Burma, adopted without a vote (i.e. by consensus) on the 25th April 2002. The resolution called on Burma to develop a constructive dialogue with the United Nations system, including the human rights mechanisms, for the effective promotion and protection of human rights in the country, to which it had no yet adequately adhered 12. The resolution dealt with a range of issues ranging from protection of fundamental freedoms and civil and political rights to economic, social and cultural rights. In a rebuttal statement the following day, Burma's representative responded by stating,
"In short, it is regrettable that this year's draft resolution… has retracted from, rather than progressed over the last year's resolution. It is highly politicised, and it has been prepared with a political agenda. It is biased, imbalanced and unfair. Its negative tone and thrust are in a sharp contrast to the significant developments in Myanmar in the past one year, which are more substantive and numerous than at any other time before and to the fairly good reports by the Special Rapporteur…In view of the above, we should call into question the purpose and raison d'etre of this draft resolution on the situation of human rights in Myanmar" 13
The 2002 resolution and its drafting process is significant in that the statements made after adoption of the UN Commission on Human Rights resolution Burma indicated an interesting shift in the "balance of solidarity" amongst Asian governments over Burma. This shift also works to displace a previous and strongly held notion with ASEAN nations that human rights matters are the internal affairs of state parties and as such, not subject to interference from outside members. While China and Japan were more pointed in expressing their reservations about the harshness of the resolution, Malaysia, speaking on behalf ASEAN was almost complimentary. Mohammed Johar Ahmad Jazri of Malaysia said that the draft on Myanmar "had been crafted in an accurate, balanced and unbiased manner" 14. On the other hand, Australia, some weeks before, had broken rank with Europe and the United States in calling for a "watering down" of the original more strongly worded resolution 15.
No matter what side of an argument about the best way to bring human rights change to Burma you are on, the country is universally considered to be in deep economic, social and political crisis. It has been ruled by successive military regimes since 1962 16 and has the notorious status of being one of the world's least developed countries 17. It's large-scale and growing problems with ethnic insurgency and cross-border incursions into neighbouring states date back to pre-colonial times 18. Burmese refugees from most of the cultural and linguistic minority groups have been present along a range of Burma's borders with neighbouring countries from 1982 onwards 19. Its economic decline has been rapid but steady 20, and more than 4% of the Burmese population is thought to be HIV positive 21.
Figure 1: This caricature by a Burmese dissident cartoonist, Han Than Htun, clearly depicts the status of Burma within the family of nations at the end of the millenium.
Continued human rights violations against the democratic opposition movement led by Nobel Peace Laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi 22, like the arbitrary detention & ongoing harassment of political activists, the widespread use of forced labour, and the sexual violence inflicted by the military against women in ethnic minority areas, have drawn attention from the international community, particularly from Western nations who at the same time grapple with the influx of Burmese heroin onto domestic black markets. In this address to the 1997 ASEAN Regional Forum, the US President dubbed Burma a 'gangster' state. Numerous other references to Burma's status as 'rouge nation' or 'pariah state' have been made by a variety of Western nations and international civil-society organisations.
Such a view of Burma is problematic in that it deploys a realist conception of the state as fixed and unitary within the international system, and a particular set of fixed and unitary ideas about who & what is a 'well-behaved state'. It constructs Burma and the nations it interacts with in the international system as unitary actors, facing outside world as an integrated, unproblematic sovereign unit. However, Burma as nation-state is an "imagined political community" 23, neither fixed nor unitary, and constantly challenged & constructed from both from within & without. Conceiving the nation-state as imagined community finds space for and legitimises the voices of victims of state sanctioned abuse and repression- those people who states silence, imprison, torture and kill- who imagine themselves and their communities differently. In the case of Burma, these voices also make claims to human rights and call for the military regime to relinquish power and move towards the realisation of a democratic system of government.
It is in the contradictory approaches contained within the Burmese military's ideology that we are able to find a greater understanding of its engagement with international human rights norms. For example, the regime continually denies the occurrence of human rights violations and rejects international civil and political norms, yet the regime ratified (in 1997) and continues to engage with human rights ideas central to the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). The regime does not see CEDAW as being at odds with its otherwise anti-liberal democratic approach. How so? Some Burmese women's groups have suggested this is because in SPDC ideology, which is built around notions of militarism and male power, women and children's rights appear less threatening. It is to the regimes sources of power and ideology to which I will now turn.
The only current formal institution of power within the state in Burma is the military. The colonial-style institutions that existed in post- independence Burma were progressively dismantled after the 1962 military coup which barred parliamentary government, and the military has prevented the emergence of any independent centres of influence ever since. For example, even Sangha or Buddhist clergy organisations must be registered with the military, and remain under constant military surveillance and control. No separation of powers has existed under military rule in Burma since 1962 24, and state censorship of the media and independent publishing has been persistent and tyrannical 25. Some would argue that the lack of civil society institutions and organisations inside Burma has had a significant effect on the ability of the movement for change to make human rights norms and ideas meaningful in the local Burmese context 26.
As James (1996) suggests, taking a step back from the immediacy of human rights crises & transnational conflicts to "reflect comparatively, historically and theoretically" on the nation 27 exposes the problems of realist notions of state-hood and international relations. Doty argues, for example, that statecraft is more about the construction and reconstruction of state units rather than the relations between them- the process of assembling that which is inside and outside of nations, is a function of their "discursive authority and power, that is its ability to fix meaning" 28. Mindful of Doty's statement, the control exerted over freedom of expression and opinion in Burma, as well as the pouring of significant financial resources into the development and maintenance of the military-industrial complex, have been crucial to maintaining military power and control of the state in Burma.
A crucial element in the maintenance of military power & rule in Burma has been the Union Solidarity & Development Association (USDA). With 11 million members 29 the USDA is the only formal Burma-wide social organisation, but remains controlled & managed by the Minister for Home Affairs but is chaired by SPDC Chairman Than Shwe. Its prime function is to promote national unity and pride in the Burmese nation, and is a strategic space where military propaganda is deployed & circulated. The military-state returns membership and participation in the USDA with significantly subsidised consumer goods and some free education & business opportunities, as well as special training in SPDC ideology, military parading, tactics and the use of basic weapons. The USDA holds regular military-style rallies at which slogans such as the 'Three Main Causes'"- are shouted in unison by crowds. The three Tatmadaw (army) causes are: non-disintegration of the Union, non-disintegration of national solidarity, and perpetuity of sovereignty. These causes appear on large billboards in English (for a Western audience) and in Burmese (for an internal audience), and are reprinted daily in print media of all languages. Whole articles are devoted to arguments for & restatements of the causes. A recent excerpt from a lengthy newspaper article on national reconciliation reminds us that,
"(e)very citizen is to accept Our Three Main Causes of the Tatmadaw as (their) duties as well and are to be always working for them." 30.
Other illuminating military
propaganda includes the oft-seen billboard, "Tatmadaw
and the people, cooperate and crush all those harming the
union", and 'The People's Desire;
The People's Desire:
- Oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views
- Oppose those trying to jeopardise the stability of the state and the progress of the nation
- Oppose foreign nations interfering in internal affairs of the State
- Crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy
-SPDC Official Billboard, Rangoon
Biersteker & Weber contend that states' claims to sovereignty construct a social environment in which they can interact as an international society of states, while at the same time the mutual recognition of claims to sovereignty is an important element in the construction of states themselves 31. Then Prime Minister, U Nu noted, on Burma's decision to join the United Nations that '(w)hat was foremost in our minds was the expectation of the U.N. assistance when our country is subjected to aggression by a stronger power' 32. In the case of Burma, we can see how the norm of state sovereignty has been characterised as a basic rule of coexistence within the states system it conceives, which has been tactically deployed by the Burmese military in a variety of discursive spaces 33.
Before moving on, I must consider these tactics in a historical context. Burma has a long, troubled and well-documented history of conflict with colonising forces. From the Chinese invasion of Pagan in the 12th century, the British colonial invasion of the 18th century, the infiltration of the CIA-backed Chinese Kuomintang in the 1950s, and most, importantly, the post-independence 1948 rebellion by ethnic separatist groups which was backed by both American & British troops, as well as the Burmese Communist Party (BCP), this particular notion of Burmese state sovereignty has contributed to the development of Burmese nationalism as xenophobia toward foreign powers. However, since it's independence Burma has long celebrated its foreign policy of neutrality. Maung Maung described Burma's policy as 'positive neutrality' arguing that,
"Even in the desperate times when the internal unrest claimed the attention of the Union government it realized that a correct foreign policy of making friends abroad and no enemies, of non-alignment with the power blocs, and of contributing what it could to the cause of world peace was vital" 34.
In modern Burma, this notion of positive neutrality and commitment to peace combined with centralised military power can be evidenced in the renaming of the regime from the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) to the State Peace and Development Council.
Steinberg (2001) contends that a number of ideological foci have been used to legitimate successive Burmese governments throughout history- nationalism, Buddhist cosmology, socialism and militarism 35. He describes the historical development of state power in Burma as "authority emanated in concentric circles radiating from (a fixed) centre" 36, and identifies nationalism and the sovereignty as enduring elements in all quests for Burmese state legitimacy. This quest is central to understanding the repeated singling-out of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. She is the subject of many a USDA slogan, as well as volumes of military propaganda, which are geared to an internal audience and aimed at displacing the power she wields with Burmese people. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's power can be described as symbolic on two fronts, firstly as a visionary leader engaged in a political struggle, which is steeped in a Buddhist cosmology that people find relevant & easy to relate to. Secondly, as a symbol of her father, the revered architect of Burmese independence, Aung San. But what of her relevance as a woman? While Steinberg's analysis is useful, it does not go far enough. By way of extension, I would argue that at the core of the current regimes ideological foci is a particular construction of masculinity/ male power or, to use the Burmese term pone. I argue that it is only by adopting a gendered analysis of power in Burma that we are able to understand the ways in which the regime engages with Aung San Suu Kyi as a woman, and can explain for example, why the regime considers achieving implementation of CEDAW unproblematic.
USDA members are often encouraged to engage in public vilification of UK- educated Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, where she is claimed to be an 'axe-handle' or 'neo-colonialist'. This military strategy makes sense if we understand the salience of Suu Kyi as a gendered political symbol. Indeed, there have even been times when USDA, have attempted physical attacks on her motorcade 37. But attempts to discursively undermined her leadership suitability is linking to her marriage to a British citizen, the late Michael Aris. In this discourse, Britain is constructed as a despised country from which Aung San fought for independence from. The support that Suu Kyi and the opposition movement gains from the international community results in an ever hostile attitude from the military regime, who openly associates her with foreign influence. It deploys this same discourse against ethnic minorities by arguing that armed groups based along the border areas are external destructive elements colluding with foreign neo-colonial forces. Sometimes the military gets the conspiracy a little skewed. In a press conference, Suu Kyi and the NLD are accused of being supported by both US Central Intelligence Agency and the Burmese communist party 38.
However, it is not only the Burmese military that are complicit in this construction of Burmese politics. Tinzar Lwyn (1994) writes that, "(t)hough it is often stated that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is deeply Burmese her difference is constantly represented to belie such a notion. Regardless of the anecdotes told of her Burmeseness, Daw Aung Saun Suu Kyi is constructed by post-colonial discourses as an embodiment of Western ideals. There is created a corporeal hierarchy between her mind (her political philosophy), which is 'western' and her heart and body, which is Burmese. It is rendered safe for the West to entrust the 'democracy movement' to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi because she is not considered a threat to, but rather an extension of, the Western subject." 39
Steinberg gives an analysis of Burmese concepts of state/civil/military/religious power that are centred on two key Buddhist concepts of ana, or authority (both a positive and negative term), and awza, or influence (a positive term) 40. An individual has ana, or authority, because of deeds conducted in previous lives (not necessarily good deeds). On the other hand, an individual has awza because they possess the characteristics of power, influence and prestige, "among them, respectability, wisdom and knowledge, a degree of religiosity, a commanding presence and skill and ease in handling authority" 41. In the predominantly Buddhist context of Burmese politics, Steinberg argues that Aung San Suu Kyi has awza but not ana, and that the junta has ana but not awza. This makes it hard for public disagreement and protest to actions undertaken by the military amid claims that they are distributing benefits with goodwill, an important moral imperative in a Buddhist value system 42.