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Myanmar’s civil disobedience movement is built on decades of struggle

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The usually busy, crowded places and roads of Yangon are seen empty at rush hour as people of participate in a nationwide demonstration called

In Brief

Two months after Myanmar’s coup, the country's civil disobedience movement is awe-inspiring in its resilience against vicious military crackdowns. According to Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, as of 28 March, 459 people have been killed and 2559 arrested, charged or sentenced. Despite this heavy price, the civil disobedience movement's effectiveness is unprecedented. But its unity is not solely due to the current crisis, widespread hatred for the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw) or the advent of digital technologies.

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The success of today’s civil disobedience movement comes from decades of behind-the-scenes activism to build a multi-ethnic civil society and an independent media under military dictatorship — well before the democratisation process began just over a decade ago. The expertise and infrastructure built by media veterans covering earlier crackdowns, including ethnic nationality media and the forging of international alliances, is the base upon which the current flow of accurate information and analysis depends. This work is rarely acknowledged in international media accounts of the current situation, which often focus on the newest technologies.

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter are instrumental in allowing the people of Myanmar to coordinate and communicate with each other and the outside world. Digital technologies and social media provide foreign journalists immediate access to accurate information and more nuanced updates from Myanmar analysts than they themselves would be able to make. Social media sites are key ‘weapons’ in Myanmar’s current struggle, facilitating strategies such as the Social Punishment campaign that shames and ostracises family members and supporters of the Tatmadaw.

Facebook responded to the crisis with a ban on all military-linked accounts. But even Facebook’s reaction is the result of years of work by local civil society organisations to push the company to address the dangerous spread of misinformation. This was especially acute during the attacks on the country’s Muslim Rohingyas.

Massive protests in 1988 and the crackdown that followed caused thousands of dissident students to flee to the country’s border areas, where exile media were first established. While the movement was never solely ethnic majority Burman in its make-up, this was the first time many Burman students met ethnic ‘insurgents’. Many ethnic minority peoples in the border areas had also never before met Burmans who were not soldiers they needed to fear. Key alliances were forged and strengthened over the ensuing decades.

Echoes of this same realisation have emerged in the 2021 post-coup period. Rohingya and other ethnic nationality groups quickly joined protests against the coup, despite a long struggle for recognition by the National League for Democracy (NLD) for their own suffering at the hands of the Tatmadaw. On social media, young protestors began to recognise and publicly apologise for their previous lack of empathy for the suffering of these minority groups. These sentiments have gone viral. The divide-and-rule strategy used in 1988 is today being challenged on a much broader scale.

When Myanmar’s much-celebrated political opening began in 2011, its exiled media moved cautiously to return. But these media and independent media inside the country had already been pushing for decades for greater freedom of expression. That historical knowledge is playing a vital role in the current conflict, as older generations share their experiences of previous crackdowns, repressive rule and imprisonment. The tactics used by today’s protestors and dissident hackers are direct descendants of the post-1988 underground communication system.

Media and civil society groups led by 1988 generation leaders of all ethnicities were among the first to publicly raise concerns about the NLD’s governing strategies. Many were bitterly disappointed and angered that crackdowns on media and other groups were worse under the NLD than under its predecessor, the military-backed Thein Sein government. A few expressed outrage at the NLD’s silence over the military’s inhumane treatment of the Rohingya, and over-simplified coverage of the issue by international journalists.

While the coup does provide a clear common enemy in the Tatmadaw, the insights gained prior to this tumultuous period will undoubtedly have an impact beyond the current crisis. Groups such as Progressive Voice, Athan, the All Burma Federation of Student Unions, Action Committee for Democracy Development and Generation Wave will continue this anti-authoritarian, anti-militarisation critique regardless of the outcome of the current crisis.

Gen Z activists appear the most energetic and resilient in the face of direct attacks, but they are drawing from and supported by a long history of networking and capacity-building that makes this movement for democratisation a game-changer. The civil disobedience movement’s multi-ethnic and international alliances are also merging with transnational protest movements. Young activists from Myanmar, Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan and other Asian countries, dubbed the Milk Tea Alliance, are posing a direct challenge to regional authoritarianism.

Still, this is not a Twitter or Facebook revolution. This is what democracy movements look like in the digital age, built upon a historical foundation of struggle. This may not be your parent’s revolution, but it is an extension of it, as some children of 1988 generation activists make clear. This collective historical wisdom is the foundation of Myanmar’s resilient civil disobedience movement today. Continued support for civil society, including independent media, is the best hope for democratic change.

Lisa Brooten is Associate Professor of Radio, Television and Digital Media at Southern Illinois University, co-editor of Myanmar Media in Transition: Legacies, Challenges and Change (ISEAS, 2019) and a 2021 Fulbright ASEAN Research Fellow.

4 responses to “Myanmar’s civil disobedience movement is built on decades of struggle”

  1. Thanks for such an informative analysis. This puts the efforts by those opposed to the coup in a much broader and deeper context. I wish mainstream media in the USA were reporting this.

    Can the author write something about what the international community can do to help these brave people?

    • Thank you for your comment and question. (Sorry that I did not see these comments until just now)

      What is being called for by the CRPH (the parallel government of elected parliamentary members) includes many actions the international community can do — lobby our governments for targeted sanctions and an arms embargo against the Burmese military, and support calls for targeted commercial boycotts and sanctions against those countries supporting the military regime, such as China and Russia. They also call on us to challenge the concept of “non-interference” by neighboring countries, specifically by ASEAN, when a history of targeted engagement by ASEAN against violence much less severe than the current violence in Myanmar has been effective in the past, and would provide ASEAN now with the credibility it sorely lacks as a result of its inaction.

      But also VITAL is continued direct support for those people resisting the military regime on the ground, including civil society groups and independent media. There are many good groups doing this work — there are ways to support independent media by going directly to their websites and Facebook pages.

  2. While I acknowledge how social media can currently provide strategic platforms of communication, modified as required to maintain a degree of confidentiality I fail to perceive an empirical continuity link to pre-1988 ethnic liberation movements. What is significant is that the General Strike Council on 28/03 have urged 16 ethnic armed organisations to protect coup protestors and move against the Tatmadaw. In suppressing democracy the Tatmadaw may emerge as a catalyst for the break-up of Myanmar by their brutal aggression against civil action. This is in parallel to the CDM realising that international support my be limited to ‘concerns and words’, by stating that ‘No one will help us…we must fight on our own’.

    • Thank you for your comment and question. While I agree that the EAOs and state-level maneuvering is vital, and as you note, there are moves by the EAOs to protect coup protestors, and more recently to discuss the possibility of a federal army. And of course, the moves of the Tatmadaw are central to what is playing out, leading possibly and unfortunately toward talk of a civil war in the country. However, while all of this is important, this remains the focus of the majority of the analyses I read, which misses the agency of ordinary people, and remains blind to the unity that exists at that level. There is a need to look beyond these levels of analysis. My point here is NOT that social media is the primary game-changer. I instead wish to challenge the focus on social media, which is a tool only, albeit an important one. My point is that one key yet overlooked reason that the CDM is strong at the grassroots level has more to do with the work of civil society efforts, including independent media, over the past three decades. There IS a quite strong “empirical link” between the 1988 and current movements, specifically in the lessons learned, the infrastructures of support that have been built, and the current work that is now possible as a result. Confining our analysis only to the state and military levels — and to a focus on technological tools — means we miss a key component of the current struggle. This is a missing link in much of the work of political scientists and analysts, and one reason for many people’s surprise at the resilience of the CDM. Even if in the short run, the military “wins,” under what scenario will they be able to sustain the repression of a population that sees them as entirely without legitimacy? And how can confining our analysis to the Tatmadaw and the EAOs, and even the CRPH, explain the shift in mindset now occurring among the young generation in the country, which is challenging long held assumptions about ethnic “others”? Analyses that remain at the state level are arguing that this is only temporary and as a result of the need for a common “enemy,” and will disappear after the coup. But this analysis underestimates the agency of ordinary people and civil society efforts, and overstates the impact of state-level negotiations that have frustrated everyone for decades (i.e. the national peace process as a great example).

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