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Throwing Water at The Sun
F O O T N O T E S & R E F E R E N C E S
Footnotes
1. The article by U Khin Maung, Ministry of Foreign Affairs entitled, "A glimpse of International Law' (The New Light of Myanmar, Thursday, 18 April, 2002) is one such example where the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and Myanmar's commitment to it is mentioned. [Back]
2. Thomas Risse & Kathryn Sikkink (1999); 'The socialisation of international human rights norms into domestic practices: introduction', in Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp & Kathryn Sikkink (Eds); The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1-38. [Back]
3. The military regime has endlessly denied the use of systematic and widespread rape of ethnic minority women in the ethnic insurgent areas, and the use of forced labour on state development and infrastructure projects. [Back]
4.The ratification of the Women's Convention in 1998 can be seen as a concession of this type, but which will be given more attention later. [Back]
5. Risse, Ropp & Sikkink (1999) Op. Cit p. 19. [Back]
6. The distinctively Burmese approach to Socialism was coined the Burmese Way to Socialism by the military propaganda makers in the early sixties. The term, "Burmese way" is then for my purposes a useful one to adopt in describing particular Burmese state policy approaches. For example, the 'Burmese Way to Democracy' is considered one more "disciplined" and "security conscious" than paths to democracy adopted in other countries of similar economic standing. [Back]
7. Richard Devetak (1996a); 'Critical theory' in Scott Burchill, Richard Devetak, Andrew Linklater, Matthew Paterson, Christian Reus-Smit & Jacqui True (1996); Theories of International Relations 2nd Edition, Palgrave, London. p.155. [Back]
8. This view is particularly reflected in moves by the Australian government to conduct a 'human rights training program' for civil servant in Burma in 2000. See AusAID website for more information http://www.ausaid.gov.au/. Leaders of the opposition movement have responded to the initiative as patronising & irrelevant. [Back]
9. In 1989, the military regime in Burma changed the name of the country to Myanmar, which is the spelling of the name of the country in Burmese script claiming it was a more neutral term. Because this change was imposed by what the opposition movement claimed was an illegitimate regime, they rejected the use of the term Myanmar to refer to Burma. In this paper I will use the term Burma to refer to the country and the term Myanmar will appear only in direct quotes taken from other material sources. [Back]
10. The 1990 state elections in Burma where never honoured by the military regime because it felt it could not transfer power to a civil institution amid a growing need to impose 'national unity'. [Back]
11. See David I Steinberg (2001); Burma: The State of Myanmar, Georgetown University Press, Washington, for a more detailed analysis. However, Steinberg does not offer readers deep theoretical insight. [Back]
12. United Nations E/Cn.4/2002/L.32 (Rev.) 24 April 2002, Commission On Human Rights, Fifty-Eighth Session, Agenda Item 9, 'Question Of The Violation Of Human Rights And Fundamental Freedoms In Any Part Of The World', draft resolution, 2002/The situation of human rights in Myanmar. [Back]
13. Unofficial transcript, Statement by His Excellency U Mya Than, Permanent Representative and Leader of the Myanmar Observer Delegation, To the fifty-eighth session of the Commission on Human Rights, Rebuttal to the draft resolution No. E/CN.4/2002/L.32 (Agenda Item 9), Geneva, 25 April 2002. [Back]
14. Quote found in draft transcript form at http://www.unhrc.ch. [Back]
15. Craig Skehan (2002); "Downer soft on Burma's hard men", in Sydney Morning Herald, April 11. [Back]
16. For a useful account of Burma under military rule since 1962, see Christina Fink (2001) Living Silence: Burma under Military Rule, Zed Books, London. [Back]
17. UNDP World Report 2000. [Back]
18. See Bertil Lintner (1996), Burma: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948, White Lotus Press, Bangkok. [Back]
19. The first of these refugees were the Karen who fled to Thailand in mid 1982. There is an estimated one million internally displaced people and refugees from Burma in and along the borders of Burma and Bangladesh, India and Thailand. [Back]
20. See Economic Intelligence Unit annual reports on Burma for more detailed information & analysis. [Back]
21. UN Aids Report on Burma, 2000. [Back]
22. Daw is a Burmese term of respect deployed by people when referring to a woman over a certain age. As Burmese people do not have family names, shortening of names. [Back]
23. Benedict Anderson (1991); Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin & Spread of Nationalism (revised Edition), Verso, London, p. 5. [Back]
24. See Andrew Huxley (1996); "The Last 50 years of Burmese Law: E Maung and Maung Maung", in LawAsia, 1998, p.9-20 available at Online Burma Library http://www.ibiblio.org./obl/index.html for an account of how the separation of legislative and judicial powers in Burma was eliminated. [Back]
25. Zunetta Liddell (1999); 'No Room to Move: Legal Constraints on Civil Society in Burma', in Burma Centre Netherlands (Ed); Strengthening Civil Society in Burma: Possibilities and Dilemmas for International NGO's, Silkworm Book, Thailand, pp. 54-68. [Back]
26. See Burma Centre Netherlands (Ed); Strengthening Civil Society in Burma: Possibilities and Dilemmas for International NGO's, Silkworm Book, Thailand, for a more detailed analysis. [Back]
27. Paul James (1996), Nation Formation: Toward a Theory of Abstract Community, Sage Publications, London, p.1. [Back]
28. Roxanne Lynn Doty (1996); 'Sovereignty and the nation: constructing the boundaries of national identity', in Thomas J. Biersteker & Cynthia Weber (Eds); State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge University Press, London, 1996, p. 121. [Back]
29. Figure quoted in Economic Intelligence Unit, Report on Burma, Third Quarter, 1999. [Back]
30. Working People Daily, February 22, 1991. The theme is constantly repeated in a wide variety of official/ military-controlled media and other propaganda documents posted on the regimes website. [Back]
31. See Thomas J. Biersteker & Cynthia Weber (Eds); State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge University Press, London, 1996. [Back]
32. Ibid. [Back]
33. This is clearly seen in the article by U Khin Maung, Ministry of Foreign Affairs entitled, "A glimpse of International Law' (The New Light of Myanmar, Thursday, 18 April, 2002) as well as the various responses to human rights violations the regime posts on it's website http://www.myanmar.com. See in particular, "Practising Universal Rules in the Protection of National Security and Interest", "Human Rights Issues and Democracy" where the primordial, collective human right of Burmese people is conceived as the right to national security. [Back]
34. Maung Maung (1958); Burma in the Family of Nations, Djambatan, Amsterdam, p. 146. [Back]
35. David I Steinberg (2001); Op. Cit., p.43. [Back]
36. Ibid. [Back]
37. The worst incident was recorded in 1996, and the international community sent strong messages of support for Suu Kyi to Rangoon. However, the regime said it could not control the growing hatred of Suu Kyi in the population, despite their propaganda machine being responsible for vilification of Suu Kyi. [Back]
38. This conspiracy is detailed in Myanmar Alin, 1st March 1998. This was the first time in a number of years that the military had handed down death sentences to civil society activists. [Back]
39. Tinzar Lwyn (1994); 'Stories of gender and ethnicity: discourses of colonialism and resistance in Burma', in The Australian Journal of Anthropology, Winter-Spring 5(1-2) p. 60. [Back]
40. Steinberg (2001) Op. Cit, p. 42. [Back]
41. Lucien Pye (1985); Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority, Belknap Press, Cambridge, p. 99. [Back]
42. Steinberg (2001) p.42. [Back]
43. Tim Dunne & Nicholas J. Wheeler (1999); 'Introduction', in, Dunne & Wheeler (Eds) Human Rights in Global Politics, Cambridge University Press, London, pp. 1-28. [Back]
44. Ken Booth (1999); 'Three Tyrannies', in Tim Dunne & Nicholas J. Wheeler (Eds), Human Rights in Global Politics, Cambridge University Press, London. pp. 31-70. [Back]
45. There have been, for example, recent UN Interventions in Cambodia, Rwanda, the Balkans, & East Timor. [Back]
46. See Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp & Kathryn Sikkink (Eds) (1999); The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, Cambridge University Press, London for a more lengthy discussion of the domestic impact of international human rights norms throughout the world. [Back]
47. Tim Dunne & Nicholas J. Wheeler (1999); 'Introduction', in, Dunne & Wheeler (Eds); Op. Cit, p.3. [Back]
48. Ketu Nila, 'Relying on Vague images seen from afar' (continued from 26-03-2002)', in Myanmar Alin, Wednesday 27th March 2002. The military regime tightly controls and censors all media inside Burma, often placing propaganda pieces in the press posing as opinion pieces from concerned Myanmar citizens. [Back]
49. Colin Gordon (ed) (1980), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 197-1977 by Michel Foucault, Pantheon Books, New York, see particularly chapter 5: Two Lectures where Foucault explains his methodological approach to the study of power and sovereignty. [Back]
50. Neo-liberalist influence on IR- give reference. [Back]
51. Chandra Mohanty (1988); 'Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses'; Feminist Review, 30, Autumn. [Back]
52. Edward Said (1978); Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, Penguin Books, New York. [Back]
53. Michael Aung-Thwin (2002); "Parochial Universalism, democracy jihad and the orientalist image of Burma: the new evangelism", in Pacific Affairs, Winter 2001/2002, Volume 74, pp. 483-506. [Back]
54. Ibid. [Back]
55. Ibid, p. 1. [Back]
56. Civil society is taken to refer to institutions and groupings that are autonomous of the state, but have a democratic influence on it. [Back]
57. Many argue that if civil society is strong and its citizens band together for good based on a sense of community, then this translates into the diffusion of centralised power of the state (definition borrowed from Steinberg). [Back]
58. David I Steinberg (2001); Op. Cit., p.121. [Back]
59. In Burmese, Dhammathat refers to civil laws governing marriage, property etc. [Back]
60. see Gustaf Houtman (1999); Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy, Monograph No. 33, Institute for the Study of Languages and Culture of Asia & Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan. [Back]
61. Gustaf Houtman (1999); "Remaking Myanmar and human origins: an account of the role of pagoda relics and museum fossils in SLORC-SPDC concepts of nation-building", in Anthropology Today, 15(4) August, pp. 13-19. [Back]
62. Interestingly, Houtman notes that the Burmese term for history, thamaing, literally translates as 'pagoda history'. [Back]
63. Aung San Suu Kyi (1995); 'Empowerment for a Culture of Peace & Development', in Freedom From Fear and other writings, Penguin Books, London, p. 264. [Back]
64. Bhikhu Parekh (1999); "Non-ethnocentric universalism", in Dunne & Wheeler (Eds), Op. Cit, p. 128-159. [Back]
65. Ibid p. 139. [Back]
66. Ken Booth (2000); "Three Tyrannies" in Dunne & Wheeler (Eds), Op. Cit, p. 31-70. [Back]
References
Anderson, Benedict (1991); Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin & Spread of Nationalism (revised Edition), Verso, London, p. 5.
Aung San Suu Kyi (1995); 'Empowerment for a Culture of Peace & Development', in Freedom From Fear and other writings, Penguin Books, London.
Aung-Thwin, Maureen (1991); The Myth of Equality, in Ms Magazine, July-August pp.18-21.
Aung-Thwin, Michael (2002); "Parochial Universalism, democracy jihad and the orientalist image of Burma: the new evangelism", in Pacific Affairs, Winter 2001/2002, Volume 74, pp. 483-506.
Biersteker, Thomas J. & Weber, Cynthia (Eds) (1996); State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge University Press, London.
Booth, Ken (1999); 'Three Tyrannies', in Tim Dunne & Nicholas J. Wheeler (Eds), Human Rights in Global Politics, Cambridge University Press, London. pp. 31-70.
Devetak, Richard (1996); 'Critical theory' in Scott Burchill, Richard Devetak, Andrew Linklater, Matthew Paterson, Christian Reus-Smit & Jacqui True (1996); Theories of International Relations 2nd Edition, Palgrave, London. p.155.
Doty, Roxanne Lynn (1996); 'Sovereignty and the nation: constructing the boundaries of national identity', in Thomas J. Biersteker & Cynthia Weber (Eds); State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge University Press, London, 1996.
Dunne, Tim & Wheeler, Nicholas J. (1999); 'Introduction', in, Dunne & Wheeler (Eds) Human Rights in Global Politics, Cambridge University Press, London, pp. 1-28.
Fink, Christina (2001); Living Silence: Burma under Military Rule, Zed Books, London.
Gordon, Colin (ed) (1980); Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews & Other Writings 197-1977 by Michel Foucault, Pantheon Books, New York,
Houtman, Gustaf (1999a); Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy, Monograph No. 33, Institute for the Study of Languages and Culture of Asia & Africa, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Japan.
Houtman, Gustaf (1999b); "Remaking Myanmar and human origins: an account of the role of pagoda relics and museum fossils in SLORC-SPDC nation-building", in Anthropology Today, 15(4) August, pp. 13-19.
Huxley, Andrew (1996); "The Last 50 years of Burmese Law: E Maung and Maung Maung", in LawAsia, 1998, p.9-
James, Paul (1996); Nation Formation: Toward a Theory of Abstract Community, Sage Publications, London, p.1.
Ketu Nila, 'Relying on Vague images seen from afar' (continued from 26-03-2002)', in Myanmar Alin, Wednesday 27th March 2002.
Liddell, Zunetta (1999); 'No Room to Move:
Legal Constraints on Civil Society in Burma', in Burma Centre
Netherlands (Ed); Strengthening Civil Society in Burma: Possibilities
and Dilemmas for International NGO's, Silkworm Book, Thailand,
pp.
54-68.
Lintner, Bertil (1996); Burma: Opium and Insurgency Since 1948, White Lotus Press, Bangkok.
Maung Maung (1958); Burma in the Family of Nations, Djambatan, Amsterdam, p. 146.
Mohanty, Chandra (1988); 'Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses'; Feminist Review, 30, Autumn.
Parekh, Bhikhu (1999); "Non-ethnocentric universalism" in Dunne & Wheeler (Eds)
Pye, Lucien (1985); Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority, Belknap Press, Cambridge, p. 99.
Risse, Thomas, Ropp, Stephen C. & Sikkink, Kathryn (Eds) (1999); The Power of Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change, Cambridge University Press, London
Said, Edward (1978); Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient, Penguin Books, New York.
Steinberg, David I. (2001); Burma: The State of Myanmar, Georgetown University Press, Washington.
Tinzar Lwyn (1994); 'Stories of gender and ethnicity: discourses of colonialism and resistance in Burma', in The Australian Journal of Anthropology, Winter-Spring 5(1-2) p. 60.
U Mya Than, Permanent Representative and Leader of the Myanmar Observer Delegation, To the fifty-eighth session of the Commission on Human Rights, Rebuttal to the draft resolution No. E/CN.4/2002/L.32 (Agenda Item 9), Geneva, 25 April 2002.
UNAids (2000); World Report.
UNDP (2000); World Report,
United Nations, E/Cn.4/2002/L.32 (Rev.) 24 April 2002, Commission On Human Rights, Fifty-Eighth Session, Agenda Item 9, 'Question Of The Violation Of Human Rights And Fundamental Freedoms In Any Part Of The World', draft resolution, 2002/The situation of human rights in Myanmar.