Saffron Revolution Research Articles

Myanmar and the Responsibility to Protect: Principles, Precedents, and Practicalities

Abstract Since its admission as a member of asean in 1997, the human rights situation in Myanmar has been a major concern of the organisation. asean has had to respond to external reactions and pressures calling for decisive action on various crises in Myanmar, notably the 2007 Saffron Revolution, the 2008 Cyclone Nargis humanitarian disaster, the clashes between Rakhine and Rohingya in 2012, and the military operations against the Rohingya in 2017. In the aftermath of the 1 February 2021 coup in Myanmar, asean once again confronts the challenge of expectations to prevent further atrocities in the country. Myanmar’s internal situation has occasioned debate on norms and principles in the asean Charter, and tested the limits of asean’s decision-making processes. Through its Myanmar experience, asean has set new precedents in its regional diplomacy toward defiant members. However, asean’s leverage and limitations in its Myanmar response will continue to be confined to the diplomatic, humanitarian and peaceful interventions related to the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) that are being currently employed in the post-2021 coup situation.

Provoking Civilian Disruption against Popular Protests: The Myanmar Military’s Counter-Mobilisation Strategies

While mass contentious movements face a wide range of state-led counter-mobilisation strategies, existing studies have mainly focused on repression by the security forces and violence contractors. Much less is understood about the impact of governments’ more deceptive strategies to provoke anti-protester hostility among the public, including labelling protesters as criminals and engineering widespread violent crimes. This article examines the effectiveness of these two types of strategy by juxtaposing two similar cases of popular protests under military-ruled Myanmar: the 1988 Four-eight Uprising and 2007 Saffron Revolution. The analysis leverages a novel qualitative dataset consisting of content from state media, authoritative secondary sources, as well as original interviews and written accounts by 109 civilians who witnessed or participated in the protest events. It is found that while anti-protester narratives were ineffective, orchestration of criminal activities targeting civilians on a large scale fuelled civilian distrust toward strangers, leading adult men to disrupt protest events by unfamiliar activists. This finding underscores both the crucial role of nurturing inter-group trust in order to grow a broad-based contentious front as well as the challenging conditions for doing so when a regime is steadfastly committed to crushing dissent.

THE CONSTITUTION IN THE SHADOW OF A GUN: HISTORICAL AND LEGAL VIEWS ON MYANMAR’S COUP D’ÉTAT

The Tatmadaw’s military takeover in Myanmar on the 1st of February has marked a significant step back in the country’s path towards democracy. Several doubts are raised as to why the military has decided to dismiss the institutional changes that it agreed to grant the country after the Saffron Revolution of 2007 in the first place. This paper seeks to examine the current military takeover in Myanmar through the lenses of its complex post-colonial history, marked by the continuous evolution of various intra-state stakeholder’s interactions, such as the Sangha, the Tatmadaw and the students. Subsequent to the historical analysis, we provide a legal outlook combing through the salient constitutional provision on the division of powers, aiming to understand if the balance thereof has been seen as an existential threat undermining the military’s hegemonic position over time. Finally, we aim to offer an account on why western expectations regarding Aung San Suu Kyi as a representative of Western liberal democracy could not be factually met. We conclude that the 2007 constitution institutionalized a political system that allowed wiggle room for non-military stakeholders to obtain further democratic concessions, that could result in a significant threat to the Tatmadaw’s rule. Such approach sheds outlook on the causes of the coup d’état and allows projections for the near future.

Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar Under Censorship and in Transition. By Ellen Wiles. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 288 pp. $50 cloth.

Saffron Shadows and Salvaged Scripts: Literary Life in Myanmar Under Censorship and in Transition. By Ellen Wiles. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 288 pp. $50 cloth.Myanmar turns a historic corner this year: the National League for Democracy party, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, has just formed the majority of a new democratically elected parliament. The military government, which came to power in 1962, has been peacefully relinquishing control, albeit retaining a 25 percent presence in parliament which gives them the continued power of veto. A key indicator of change is the military's relaxation of its stranglehold on free speech, which supported half a century of repressive rule. At long last, Myanmar is on track to join the ranks of countries which protect freedom of expression. Saffron Shadows by Ellen Wiles is an important record of Burmese cultural production during this transition to democracy. Sociolegal scholars interested in censorship and the rule of law will welcome the rich interviews with contemporary writers that comprise the core of this book. They provide the first empirical study of the Burmese literary community since 2012 when the government stopped rigorously enforcing censorship laws. Each interview is paired with newly translated selections of the writer's work. The selected pieces are, on the whole, strong in their own right, so Saffron Shadows will appeal to readers interested in contemporary Asian poetry and literature as well.Wiles is a human rights lawyer; she conducted the ethnography while in Myanmar in 2013 training Burmese lawyers on the rule of law. Through this work, she explains, she encountered politically active poets and authors, who introduced her to the wider literary community. In all, 50 years of censorship profoundly impacted three generations of contemporary writers. Chapters Two, Three, and Four contain their selected writings, often alongside heartwrenching testimonies of spiritual resilience in the face of brutal persecution by the authorities. The sampling of selections offers readers a peek into the mind of the censor. These works were treated by the censors in one of three ways: there are those that were banned completely and only published after 2012; some were heavily censored, only then receiving the stamp of approval; while others were readily approved, with the junta even bestowing special honors on their authors. Unsurprisingly, censors banned outright or partially censored writing that overtly depicted challenges to the military's authority. For example, one of the translations in the book is a chapter excerpt from a novel describing a young man who is thrown in jail, simply for walking alongside protesting monks during the 2007 Saffron Revolution. When it was submitted to the censors, the whole novel was banned and the author's own publishing house was immediately shut down. The book was only published again after the lifting of the most repressive censorship laws in 2012. Off-limits topics also extended beyond politics. …

Remember September: Re-performing the Burmese ‘Saffron Revolution’ at the Singapore Biennale

In the autumn of 2008, artists Chaw Ei Thein and Richard Streitmatter-Tran and collaborators laboured outside in the sweltering heat to create September Sweetness, an installation made of five and a half tons of sugar, for the second Singapore Biennale. September Sweetness was intended to honour the memory of those who perished in the 2007 uprisings known as the ‘Saffron Revolution’ in Myanmar, and to show the ‘erosion of hope’ for a better future. September Sweetness took place a number of years ago now, but the intentionally ephemeral nature of the art object itself – a sugar temple that gradually melted away – as well as its social reception, multiple meanings and collaborative construction process, and the ways in which the memory of the work continue to resonate with past and present politics, make the performative acts that radiated through this project important to recount.

The ASEAN Charter: A Commentary

The ASEAN Charter:A Commentary Andrew Harding Walter Woon Singapore: NUS Press, 2016. xi + 295 pp. ISBN: 978-981-4722-08-7 (pb) ASEAN has been in existence for almost half a century, and has progressed via a system of consultation and non-confrontation, rather than by implementation of a highly legalist structure such as that which governs the European Union. This modus operandi was often referred to as ‘the ASEAN way’. However, since 2008, when the ASEAN Charter came into effect, ASEAN has inched towards a more legalist approach. For example, a Protocol on Enhanced Dispute Settlement Mechanism was added in 2010. In a real sense, this Charter is the organization’s constitution. This book provides a thorough commentary on the Charter and, if we understand (as we should) the Charter as a major development in ASEAN’s history, it is a very timely book. In the intervening seven years several developments have made the Charter even more significant. It follows from the same author’s Towards a Rule-Based Community: An ASEAN Legal Service (2014), and Tommy Koh, Rosario Manalo and Walter Woon (eds), The Making of the ASEAN Charter (World Scientific Publishing, 2009). Walter Woon is currently David Marshall Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore, the Dean of the Singapore Institute of Legal Education, and President of the Goethe Institute Singapore. He was formerly Attorney-General of Singapore, ambassador to the European Communities and several European countries, a member of the High-Level Task Force to draft the ASEAN Charter, and a nominated Member of Singapore’s Parliament. As such he is eminently qualified to provide us with this welcome commentary. The commentary itself is embedded within a helpful historical and contextual narrative provided in the Introduction and continued in detail throughout the book, which also provides a timeline of ASEAN’s development and details of the process that led to the drafting of the Charter. Interestingly enough, this process began as early as 1974, when it was proposed by the then Philippines Foreign Minister. It took the multiple crises of 1997–8 (political change in Indonesia and Thailand; economic and environmental disaster across the region); and the adding [End Page 180] of four new members (Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar), coming in at a lower level of economic development than the existing six, to propel the idea of a Charter towards realization. It was, as the express intention of the ASEAN Leaders’ Declaration on the Establishment of the Charter in Kuala Lumpur in 2005 showed, to create a legal and institutional basis for ASEAN, codify ASEAN norms and values, and provide for the legal identity of ASEAN itself. Naturally enough, given the prevalence in SE Asia since the 1990s of the Asian values debate on human rights, it was this topic which created the most difficulties, with member states expressing different preferences, the principal issue being whether there should be a human rights commission. The CLMV countries were against having a commission; Indonesia and Thailand wanted one; the other states took an intermediate position. This potential deal-breaker was finessed into an agreement to deal with the issue of human rights via a separately developed ‘mechanism’. In a move that proved interesting in light of further developments, a principle of rejecting unconstitutional and undemocratic changes of government was modified into a general support for constitutional and democratic government (Thailand experienced a military coup in 2006, and again in 2014; Myanmar experienced its ‘saffron revolution’ in 2007). The Charter finally came into effect in December 2008. Apart from some useful appendices and the index, the balance of the book— more than 200 pages—sets out the text of each provision of the Charter in bold with a commentary by the author. The commentary provides information about the background of each portion of text, including its progenitors, comparative information, and extensive footnotes. The author discusses the controversial issue of human rights at length. His discussion reveals strongly how the settling of this issue represents a compromise between the positive and negative views and explains a good deal about the half-hearted and almost symbolic nature of ASEAN’s embrace of human rights following the ASEAN...

Those Men in Saffron Robes

The sangha in Myanmar is often considered by some scholars to be a “loose,” “autonomous,” “democratic,” and “de-centralized” organization that does not resemble a “church” in the Western sense of the term. Yet, when it serves certain ideological purposes — particularly when many in saffron robes march against a government one does not like — then, the sangha suddenly becomes a cohesive and ideologically united organization. But when the crisis is over, and one wants it to be no longer monolithic — that is, when one desires to promote its anti-centralist nature and Government’s effeteness in controlling it — then it returns once again to being a “loosely” organized autonomous, and “democratic” organization. Scholarship on the Myanmar sangha needs far more consistent methodology, rigorous analysis, better use of original evidence, and a longer historical context in which to “locate” it than heretofore realized. This is particularly crucial when interpreting highly-charged, emotional, and sensational events such as the so-called “Saffron Revolution” of 2007, which turns out to be neither “saffron” nor “revolutionary.” This becomes most clear when the sangha , as in this article, is studied not in isolation and out of historical context, but within a long-term and intimate relationship with the state.

Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar: Cultural Narratives, Colonial Legacies, and Civil Society

For centuries, Burmese have looked to the authority of their religious tradition, Theravada Buddhism, to negotiate social and political hierarchies. Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar examines those moments in the modern history of this Southeast Asian country when religion, culture, and politics converge to chart new directions. Arguing against Max Weber's characterization of Buddhism as other-worldly and divorced from politics, this study shows that Buddhist practice necessitates public validation within an economy of merit in which moral action earns future rewards. The intervention of colonial modernity in traditional Burmese Buddhist worldviews has created conjunctures at which public concerns critical to the nation's future are reinterpreted in light of a Buddhist paradigm of power. Author Juliane Schober begins by focusing on the public role of Buddhist practice and the ways in which precolonial Buddhist hegemonies were negotiated. Her discussion then traces the emergence of modern Buddhist communities through the colonial experience: the disruption of traditional paradigms of hegemony and governance, the introduction of new and secular venues to power, modern concerns like nationalism, education, the public place of religion, the power of the state, and Buddhist resistance to the center. The continuing discourse and cultural negotiation of these themes draw Buddhist communities into political arenas, either to legitimate political power or to resist it on moral grounds. The book concludes with an examination of the way in which Buddhist resistance in 2007, known in the West as the Saffron Revolution, was subjugated by military secularism and the transnational pressures of a global economy. A skillfully crafted work of scholarship, Modern Buddhist Conjunctures in Myanmar will be welcomed by students of Theravada Buddhism and Burma/Myanmar, readers of anthropology, history of religions, politics, and colonial studies of modern Southeast Asia, and scholars of religious and political practice in modern national contexts.

A Burmese Case Study: Far from Inherent – Democracy, and the Internet

The inability of the Junta to stop information from leaking during the 2007 Burmese Saffron revolution has been used by many as evidence of the intrinsic democratic character of the Internet, and the power of citizen journalism to create dissent. However, the issue becomes increasingly complex when framed in a more comprehensive sociological context. How can we call the Internet inherently democratic when restricted access prevents the vast majority of voices in ‘developing’ nations from being heard and acknowledged? The socio-economic composition of bloggers from Burma is never scrutinized: who were these bloggers and were they the average Burmese citizen? Restrictions and filtration software complicate the discussion of the assumed and inherent democratic dream of the Internet and raise questions about the role of the state. While the Internet may provide a new medium for dissent and opposition, its impact is offset when bloggers represent only a small, particular cross-section of the Burmese population, and by the conscious efforts to censor, limit and monitor user activity through state control. The Burmese Saffron revolution acts as a reminder that the world is not on an equal playing field, and that restrictions, including socio-economic barriers and state intervention, impede democratic visions of the Internet.

Failure of the Saffron Revolution and Aftermath: Revisiting the Transitologist Assumption

Myanmar often baffles political scientists throughout the world for the resilience of its military regime and its resistance to attempts at democratization. Although Eastern Europe provides a plethora of examples reaffirming the rosy picture that Western democracy will gradually prevail as the universal political system, Myanmar seems to offer an exception. Paradoxically, most of the factors conducive to the introduction of democratization — such as increasing costs for military maintenance, a long-term economic fiasco, widespread local mobilization, sweeping electoral defeats for the military-backed government, international boycotts and condemnation — exist in Myanmar. In August 2007, a new spate of uprisings, later to become known as the “Saffron Revolution” or the “Saffron Uprising,” was suppressed by the Myanmar junta, leaving the junta to continue in power to mishandle the disastrous cyclone of May 2008. Why does the transitologist assumption for democratization record consistent failure in this cou...

The Role of the Internet in Burma’s Saffron Revolution

The 2007 Saffron Revolution in Burma was in many ways an unprecedented event in the intersection between politics and technology. There is, of course, the obvious: the event marks a rare instance in which a government leveraged control of nationalized ISPs to entirely black out Internet access to prevent images and information about the protests from reaching the outside world. At another level, it is an example of an Internet driven protest which did not lead to tangible political change. On deeper reflection it is also of interest because of the complex interaction between eyewitnesses within the country and a networked public sphere of bloggers, student activists, and governments around the globe. To that end, this case study examines the root causes, progress, and outcomes of the Saffron Revolution and attempts to parse out the extent to which technology may have played a useful or detrimental role in the unfolding of events. The case concludes with some initial hypotheses about the long-term impact of the protests and the role of the Internet in highly authoritarian states.

ASEAN's Albatross: ASEAN's Burma Policy, from Constructive Engagement to Critical Disengagement

Following the abortive “Saffron Revolution” of autumn 2007, Burma's ASEAN partners were subject to the timeworn criticism that the grouping persistently fails to act against its pariah member due to its near-religious adherence to the norm of non-interference. Conversely, this paper argues that ASEAN's policy towards Burma has never been one of strict non-interference, but has always been premised on the claim that ASEAN can encourage political change there. Moreover, the non-interference principle has come under increasing pressure since the Asian financial crisis. The article tracks the evolution of ASEAN's policy, from the adoption of constructive engagement in 1988, through the gradual frustration of ASEAN's designs, to its present position of critical disengagement, arguing ASEAN's failure to take a stronger line has less to do with any binding “norms” than with the interests of the region's predominantly illiberal elites and the grouping's increasing difficulties in achieving meaningful consensus. We don't set out to change the world and our neighbors. We don't believe in it. The culture of ASEAN is that we do not interfere. (Goh Chok Tong, Prime Minister of Singapore, 1992)1 ASEAN is trying to democratize Myanmar. (Nguyen Dy Nien, Foreign Minister of Vietnam, 2004)2

Burma's ‘saffron revolution’ and the limits of international influence

The demonstrations in September 2007 were the most significant civil protests seen in Burma since the ill-fated pro-democracy uprising of 1988. The military government's brutal response to the latest unrest prompted an unprecedented level of diplomatic activity and a rare consensus on the need for political change. Since then, however, efforts to resolve the crisis have withered away, underlining the international community's inability over the past 20 years to make a significant impact on the situation in Burma. Neither the principled approach of some countries and organisations, nor the more pragmatic attitude adopted by others, has persuaded the regime to abandon any of its core positions. Indeed, by demonstrating the international community's continuing disagreement over Burma, and the limited policy options available, the lack of concerted action since the protests has probably encouraged the regime's obduracy and increased its confidence that it can survive external pressures. An appreciation of the generals’ threat perceptions may help the international community to understand the regime's intransigence, but it is still difficult to see what policies can be effective against a government that puts its own survival before accepted norms of behaviour and the welfare of its people. Real and lasting change will have to come from within Burma itself, but the events of 2007 suggest that this is a distant prospect.

The Saffron Revolution: The Role of Religion in Burma’s Movement for Peace and Democracy1

The sight of thousands of Burman Buddhist monks marching through the streets of Rangoon and other cities in Burma, dressed in saffron robes and carrying upturned alms bowls, caught the attention of...

BURMA'S DESPAIR

The Saffron Revolution is Burma's 9/11; much will never be the same. The regime's harsh crackdown and killing of monks in fall 2007 has aroused a new generation of dissidents. Economic grievances have morphed into antigovernment political protests, and the political situation has become even more polarized. Burma's 9/11 may also be sowing dissension within the military as ostracism from the sangha (Buddhist community) and popular revulsion affects institutional interests, ones that may no longer be identical to those of the ruling junta, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC). The government's seven-step roadmap to democracy appears to have lost all credibility, and no one believes that the military or its proxies will implement the proposed Constitution in good faith. There is concern that the SPDC is only going through the motions of the UN-sponsored dialogue and still hopes to impose a democracy in shackles. Indonesia has provided inspiration for the SPDC, especially the paramount political power exercised by the Indonesian military during the New Order era (1967-98), but the junta fails to see that this model has already been overtaken by events and popular aspirations. Meanwhile, the international community debates how to break through the current impasse, given that economic sanctions and constructive engagement have not produced any progress. Transforming unprecedented international attention to Burma's plight into sustained support for alleviating severe humanitarian conditions, promoting nation building, and nurturing a time-bound dialogue for national reconciliation and democratization remains a key challenge.

Burma and the challenge of humanitarian assistance

Burma's “Saffron Revolution”, and the brutal military crackdown which followed it, brought the world's attention to this closed and troubled country. The Buddhist monks and nuns who led the movement have called for dialogue, democracy, and human rights. But they also called on the junta to address the initial spark of the uprising: the five-fold increase in the cost of gas, the doubling of diesel prices, and the two-thirds increases in petrol costs imposed by the junta on Aug 19, 2007. Burma's people were already in desperate straights before these price hikes.