Burmese Military Research Articles

What Makes Their Relations Tick?

India and Myanmar have not always enjoyed a comfortable relation with each other ever since their independence from colonial rule. When the Burmese military suppresses the voice of civil rights movements within its sovereign territory, India, as its democratic neighbour, voices concern through verbal actions and nothing more and when non-state actors from the Northeast Indian states act against established Indian authorities on Indian soil, New Delhi talks tough with Myanmar, such that insurgents from Northeast India seeks asylum in Myanmar, and when India accuses Myanmar of such accusations and misunderstandings tend to occur, where both countries blame each other for their problems, not to mention the maelstrom of problems related to drug flow, illegal human migration, and illegal trade that occurs between the porous borders of both these sovereign Asian countries. Amidst such problems and misconceptions in their relations of the past and also the present, what are the factors that keep a thaw in their relations?

Local partners and social engagement strategies: Explaining public responses to Chinese investment in Myanmar

In developing countries hosting Chinese-financed infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), some projects gain public support while others encounter opposition. This article seeks to provide an explanation for these different reactions, testing in particular the extent to which the differences stem from the nature of the investment coalitions, including the local partners that Chinese companies choose to work with, and the social engagement strategies that are adopted. Based on 2 survey experiments conducted among the general public and elite college students in Myanmar, the article concludes that Chinese firms, regardless of whether they are state-owned or privately owned, gain the most support when they partner with independent companies with no links to the Burmese military and when they engage directly with the local community. In addition, public reaction is colored by political affiliation, as supporters of the National League for Democracy and groups with access to non-state media were the most critical of projects involving military-linked companies. Overall, this article debunks the myth that Chinese-financed projects can be treated in a monolithic way and has significant implications for BRI. As the BRI aims to promote high-quality development in host states, projects need to be built through inclusive investment coalitions and companies should be encouraged to engage directly with local communities.

Conservation for self-determination: Salween Peace Park as an Indigenous Karen conservation initiative

States have long used protected areas to consolidate control over Indigenous Peoples’ territories, undermining community-based governance and access to resources. Despite this history, Indigenous Peoples around the world are increasingly designating their own protected areas to defend ancestral territories and assert self-determination. This paper examines Indigenous conservation politics in the Salween Peace Park in Kawthoolei, an autonomous territory of the Karen (Sino-Tibetan language-speaking peoples living primarily in Burma and along the Thai-Burma border). Local villagers and the Karen National Union envision the park as a grassroots initiative for peace in an area that has suffered decades of armed conflict between the Burmese military and the Karen movement for self-determination. Using the Salween Peace Park as a case study, we engage Indigenous scholarship on politics of recognition, resurgence, and refusal. We explore intersections and tensions between these political strategies, highlighting ways that Indigenous protected areas mobilize different forms of power to advance self-determination.

Behavior Logic of Burmese Army Taking over Power in 2021——Based on Cost-Benefit Analysis

Since Myanmar started the process of transforming its political system, the country has progressively developed a political structure of dual power centers (Diarchy), with the NLD and the military taking turns holding the reins of power. Both sides are engaged in what might be described as a a military-political game, and fight without breaking. However, on February 1, 2021, when the new federal parliament of Myanmar conducted its first meeting, the Myanmar military decided to take over the rule, and the country entered a one-year state of emergency, known as the "February 1" Incident. As a result of this action by Myanmar’s military, a political environment that was stable has been disrupted. The causes are discussed in academic circles. There are objective reasons that the development and changes of political environment at home and abroad have greatly reduced the political space of the Burmese army, and there are subjective reasons that Min Onlai’s personal political ambition or his fear of war crimes trial after retirement should not be underestimated. This instance of political power seizure has been researched by scholars. there is no dearth of explanatory power, yet there are still some flaws. Therefore, this paper based on a cost-benefit analysis conducted from the viewpoint of the Burmese military, that the cost of taking over the regime is less than its benefit. Therefore, when the net income is positive, there is a high probability of taking over the regime.

The Union Election Commission of Myanmar 2010–2020

AbstractThe 2008 Constitution of the Union of Myanmar establishes the framework for a ‘discipline-flourishing’ constitutional democracy in which the Tatmadaw, the Burmese military, retains a significant degree of power. Under this Constitution, the Union Election Commission (UEC) is vested with significant authority to supervise elections, regulate political parties and electoral campaigns, register voters, suspend elections, and to make conclusive determinations in electoral disputes. Between 2010 and 2020, the UEC oversaw three consecutive general elections and three by-elections. Following a term under the former military leadership, the country's major democratic opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won a resounding victory in the 2015 elections. In the years that followed, civilian-military relations were a source of tension, as the NLD attempted to reform the executive and legislative roles for the military guaranteed by the Constitution. These tensions became in particular tangible during the 2020 elections, which the NLD again won in a landslide victory. The military alleged the election was marred by fraud while the UEC rejected this allegation. On 1 February 2021, hours before the new parliament was to convene, the Tatmadaw staged a coup d’état. This article reviews the UEC in its constitutional and political context. It identifies its institutional features, significant points in its brief history, and the impact of UEC leadership as a contributing factor in fostering confidence in the electoral process.

Social Impact of COVID-19 on Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh and India’s Policy Stand: An Analytical Study

Aims: The Paper will explore about the COVID- 19 social challenges confronted by the Rohingya refugees in Cox’s Bazar of Bangladesh and will also discuss the role of India in providing medical assistance to Rohingyas in Bangladesh and further will explain a set of policy recommendations designed to improve the life chances of the Rohingya community both now and in the future.
 Study Design: Descriptive Study.
 Methodology: A detailed and related Review of literature of the previous work has been collected in order to extract the information about the vulnerable conditions of Rohingyas refugees in Bangladesh amid novel coronavirus. The paper is based on qualitative research design and the data has been collected from official reports, documents, newspaper, journal articles, books based on Rohingyas refugees in Bangladesh.
 Results: The COVID-19 pandemic represents a grave social threat to the Rohingya refugees in the camps of Bangladesh. Having fled decades of persecution by the Burmese military, the majority of Rohingya currently live in densely populated refugee camps in Bangladesh. Most are denied access to the internet, mobile phones, humanitarian aid, and sanitary conditions and living in congested camps—all of which heighten the risk of infection and contamination. Currently in 2021, Government of India and International Organization are providing COVID- 19 vaccines and medical assistance to Rohingyas in Bangladesh.
 Conclusion: Despite facing social impact from COVID- 19, Government of India are taking imperative steps, both to protect the Rohingya from widespread infection and to create the conditions whereby future tragedy can be preempted.

Military Coup in Burma Draws International Condemnation and Pressure

On February 1, 2021, the military in Burma overthrew the democratically elected government, declared a one-year state of emergency, and installed Senior General Min Aung Hlaing as the head of government. Since the coup, the military has cracked down on protestors, killing over 800 people and detaining many more. Numerous countries and international organizations, including the United States and the United Nations, have condemned the coup and ensuing violence and called for the restoration of a democratic government. The United States and other countries have also imposed rigorous sanctions on the Burmese military, its officials and affiliated corporations, and social media companies have imposed content restrictions to prevent the spread of pro-military propaganda.

An alternative perspective for acquisitions of amber from Myanmar including recommendations of the United Nations Human Rights Council

Recent publications have been actively recommending strong embargos on Burmese amber trade and research. Although the motivation of these actions seeks to prevent armed groups from obtaining capital via amber trade, which in the views of the authors helps further fueling the armed conflict, here, I demonstrate that this claim is not accurate. In this analysis, I prove that these preventative actions undertaken by the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology and echoed by others do not resolve the situation in Burma, but on the contrary, aggravate the problem by negatively affecting the Burmese miners. My analysis is congruent with other independent analyses of the Burmese Amber trade. In line with the recommendation of the United Nations, and as an alternative approach, it is possible to support the amber economy that is in opposition to the Burmese military and help the Burmese scientific community to increase their capability and knowledge to engage in a niche market that is largely not accessible to unethical players. This would lead to a sourcing of research material that fulfills the demand of the international scientific community for ethical standards.

How state-run media shape perceptions: an analysis of the projection of the Rohingya in the Global New Light of Myanmar

ABSTRACT Under the authority of the Burmese military, the Rohingya have long been subjected to discrimination and segregation in systemic attacks linked to their identity. In 2017, the Burmese security forces launched a series of attacks resulting in nearly a million Rohingya refugees fleeing to camps in Bangladesh. What causes the other people in Myanmar to turn a blind eye towards the dire situation of the Rohingya? Using very similar rhetorical devices to those seen in Central Europe in connection to refugees, influential Burmese monks and army officers spread hateful, exclusionary images and commentaries on social media representing Islam as a threat to Buddhism, ‘traditional values’ and national security. While the vast majority of international media criticize the Burmese government for its actions and present the Rohingya as a persecuted minority, the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar depicts them as a homogenous group of perpetrators threatening national peace and stability. Through the textual analysis of the outputs of this state-run media outlet, light is shed on the ways in which the situation in Rakhine State has been mis-framed by the state.

Denial of the Rohingya Genocide: Problematising Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the Rule of Law in Postcolonial Myanmar

As the world condemns the genocide, Myanmar and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s government denied it and refused to accept it and argued that it sanctioned under the rule of law. This paper problematises these questions:, What is the rule of law in Myanmar? And why do they deny it? This study is qualitative in which pages of transcripts of speeches perused to find themes, settings, and meanings attributed to problematising Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the rule of law in post-colonial Myanmar. These speeches delivered in public from 2016-2018. In analysing her speeches, the paper uses Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. On the part of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, it found that problematising her actions and silence over the Rohingya genocide influenced her late father’s role. She continued to claim that her military father is the father of the Burmese military. She had special relations in incarceration with the army generals during her house arrest. She focused on the democratic transition which she promised in the 2015 election. This study reveals that this rule of law has purely political narratives because the generals are not accountable. This paper subsumes ongoing legal reforms in Myanmar.

Responses by the United States to Attacks on the Rohingya in Burma

On November 22, 2017, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson released a statement addressing attacks on the Rohingya population in Burma: [T]he key test of any democracy is how it treats its most vulnerable and marginalized populations, such as the ethnic Rohingya and other minority populations. Burma's government and security forces must respect the human rights of all persons within its borders, and hold accountable those who fail to do so.… .These abuses by some among the Burmese military, security forces, and local vigilantes have caused tremendous suffering and forced hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children to flee their homes in Burma to seek refuge in Bangladesh. After a careful and thorough analysis of available facts, it is clear that the situation in northern Rakhine state constitutes ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya.

Experiences of Burmese Chin Refugee Women: Trauma and Survival From Pre- to Postflight

Since 1988, persecuted people primarily from the Chin state in Burma have fled into India due to large-scale human rights violations. A qualitative study was conducted to understand the narratives of 5 Burmese Chin refugee women retrospectively. Using their drawings as a stimulus, an unstructured interview was employed to help participants recall their life trajectories across 4 temporal periods: (a) preflight, (b) experience of traumatic events, (c) experience of flight, and (d) present status. Results highlighted 2 main concepts—systemic gender inequalities and hope. Participants’ gender-specific experiences of inequalities during their trauma in Burma and postdisplacement lives in India were a result of masculinized ideological frameworks of institutions such as the Burmese military and the Indian police. Simultaneously, they described a sense of hope to return to their home country and work toward its development while also desiring a sense of self-sufficiency through the Burmese model of family economy. Additionally, their means of hope was evident in their continued faith in God. Findings merit the attention of UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), local nongovernmental organizations, policymakers, and government officials in India for proposing gender-specific policies and suggesting initiatives for psychosocial issues related to women refugees’ employment opportunities, vulnerability to sexual abuse, and local xenophobic sentiments in India.

Why a National Peace Agreement Is Important for Myanmar

AbstractAs Myanmar readies itself for the second national conference on its ‘new’ peace process in February 2017, an update on outstanding issues with Myanmar's peace process may be timely. It is hardly surprising that, despite the months of preparation for the second Panglong Conference in August or September 2016, there was little or no change in the realities on the ground in Myanmar during the year: armed incidents between the Burmese military and armed ethnic groups continued in the days leading up to that conference, whether or not official ceasefires had been signed; armed groups that had sparred with each other regularly continued to do so; and in some cases, clashes occurred between groups that had not actually fought each other for many years.

Leaving Politics: What Burmese Generals can Learn from South Korean and Indonesian Experiences

The Burmese generals’ five-year liberalisation project has allowed only modest steps towards real democracy. Which model of post-military rule transition is most instructive to Burma’s opposition activists? This article argues that they should look most seriously at the Indonesian experience though, given the great power of the Burmese military, they are likely to be at the beginning of a long and arduous road toward democracy.

Ethnic Persecution

The world has praised Burma for certain social, economic and political reforms taking place in central Burma since 2011 and the present administration continues to assure the world that the process of democratization and liberalization in the country is irreversible. However, the Christian Kachin in the northern corner of Burma continue to face greater oppression, persecution and brutalization which has been terribly but freely perpetrated and perpetuated by the Burmese army since June 2011. The main thesis of this article is that the church in Burma is entrusted with the divine mandate, authority and obligation to responsibly show their firm solidarity with their Kachin brothers and sisters persecuted by the Burmese military. It is the mission of the church to defend the oppressed against injustice, oppression and violence and to encourage an active and prophetic stance toward creating justice and equality between ethnic groups in the country.

Why Do Military Regimes Institutionalize? Constitution-making and Elections as Political Survival Strategy in Myanmar

In recent years Myanmar underwent drastic political changes. While many see these changes as first tentative steps towards democratization, we argue that the current political transformation is not a deliberate process of liberalization, but a survival strategy of the military regime. Using arguments of the ‘new institutionalism’ as a theoretical foundation, this article explores the hypothesis that the high degree of professionalization of the Burmese military creates the incentive to institutionalize power-sharing among the ruling elite. Our empirical analysis finds evidence for both a highly professionalized military and institutions that by securing the military's continuing dominance serve the purpose of institutionalizing military power- sharing. These results imply that further democratization is unlikely as it must be initiated from within the still dominating military itself.

Remarks by Richard Herz

The issues raised in Kiobel are surely in keeping with the Annual Meeting's theme of complexity. Indeed, I know that earlier in the week another entire conference was devoted to addressing these issues. Thankfully though, the specific issue that Chimene has asked me to address allows me to avoid most of the complexity. That question is Why sue corporations at all? Or, to put it another way, How much does the corporate liability aspect of Kiobel really matter? The answer is that it matters a lot, but not necessarily as much or for the reasons that one might at first assume. When the Supreme Court granted certiorari in Kiobel, the only issue was whether a corporation can be a defendant under the ATS. Under existing case law, there is no question that the ATS allows victims of egregious human rights abuses to sue individual corporate officers, and that they may also sue both corporate officials and corporations themselves under state law. Now that the Supreme Court has expanded the issues it will consider to include the scope of the extraterritorial application of the ATS, it is not clear that individual officers will remain subject to suit in cases arising abroad. Corporations and corporate officers will presumably remain subject to state law actions, unless the Court issues a ruling so broad that it eviscerates the transitory tort doctrine. But assuming some mechanism for suing corporate officers and corporations will survive Kiobel, what then is the import of corporate claims under the ATS? ATS cases are often brought simply for the opportunity to tell the truth. Most ATS cases involve people who have suffered abuses due to a lack of the rule of law, and who were often victimized again by being forced to remain silent. For them, it is deeply meaningful to bring those responsible before the law, to present evidence that the unspeakable actually happened, and to receive a judgment from a neutral arbiter. Litigation--validation--is its own reward. In that context, the ability to sue corporations is critically important, because in many corporate cases, the abuses were specifically committed to promote corporate interests. Consider, for example, Doe v. Unocal, a case in which I was privileged to serve as counsel for the plaintiffs and perhaps the first corporate ATS case to garner significant attention. There, a California oil company, in conjunction with its French partner TOTAL, decided to build a natural gas pipeline across a narrow strip of Burma. Before they began, they were told by human rights advocates and their own consultants that if they went forward with the project, the Burmese military would commit serious human rights abuses in the region. Undeterred, they used the Burmese military for security and to build pipeline infrastructure, and not surprisingly, the military committed murder, rape, and other torture, and forced villagers to work under horrendous conditions for the benefit of the project. To tell the truth in cases like Unocal, it is not sufficient to sue individual corporate officers, because the abuses were caused by the acts and decisions of the corporation. …

The United States and Myanmar: a ‘boutique issue’?

Myanmar has been one of a number of countries that the new American Executive branch selected for policy reconsideration. The Obama administration's review of relations with Myanmar, characterized as a ‘boutique issue’ during the presidential campaign, has received considerable attention in 2009, and in part was prompted by quiet signals sent by both sides that improved relations were desirable. Begun as an intense policy review by various agencies, it has been supplemented by the first visits in 15 years to the country by senior US officials. The policy conclusion, that sanctions must remain in place but will be supplemented by dialogue, is a politically realistic compromise given the strong congressional and public antipathy to the military regime and the admiration for Aung San Suu Kyi, whose purported views have shaped US policies. US claims of the importance of Myanmar as a security and foreign policy concern have also been a product of internal US considerations as well as regional realities. US—Burmese relations since independence have been strongly influenced by the Cold War and China, whose strategic interests in Myanmar have been ignored in the public dialogue on policy until recently, with US policy focused on political and human rights concerns. Attention is now concentrated on parliamentary and local elections to be held in 2010, after which the new constitution will come into effect and provide the military with a taut reign on critical national policies while allowing opposition voices. Future relations will be strongly influenced by the transparency and freedom both of the campaigning and vote counting, and the role—if any—of the opposition National League for Democracy. Strong scepticism exists in the US on prospects unless the Burmese institute extensive reforms. The Burmese military, presently controlling all avenues of social mobility, will have a major role in society for decades. The article initially evaluates US policies towards Myanmar prior to 1988, when a military coup marked a negative shift in US—Myanmar relations, from cooperation to a US sanctions regime. It looks at the influence China's involvement in Myanmar and the role Aung San Suu Kyi have had on the formulation of US policy towards the country and assesses the prospects for the US-Myanmar relationship under the Obama administration.

Burma/ Myanmar: Challenges of a Ceasefire Accord in Karen State

Burma (Myanmar) has seen some of the longest-running insurgencies in the world, which have had a devastating effect on local populations and the country as a whole. While the Karen National Union (KNU), which has fought successive Burmese governments since 1949, is in a critical phase of its life, the KNU/KNLA Peace Council (KPC) is experiencing life under a ceasefire accord with the Burmese government, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). Major challenges have occurred since the ceasefire and future developments are uncertain. Like all ceasefire groups in the country, the KPC has come under immense pressure to follow the government's “seven-step road map” to democracy, compete in the 2010 elections, and transform its troops into a border guard force under the control of the Burmese military or face disarmament. This article seeks to provide some insights into a ceasefire group, to analyse the failures and successes of the ceasefire accord, and to outline future challenges to the country.

How “The Generals” Think. Gustaaf Houtman and the Enigma of the Burmese Military Regime

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical introduction to Gustaaf Houtman’s work on the contemporary political situation in Burma in order to make this work better known beyond the circles of Burma scholars and in order to discuss its author’s stance. Houtman has propounded the most sophisticated interpretation of the current Burmese military regime, of its ideology and policy. Yet, it is argued, he has not drawn the obvious conclusion his work inspires, that is, “ the generals” are first and foremost Burmese, and their world view a product of Burmese culture.