Myanmar’s political opposition intricate is celebrating its three-year anniversary of the military coup that ended in 2021, but its progress has been at best subpar and at worst an absolute failure.
The National Unity Consultative Council ( NUCC), an appointed executive body for the National Unity Government ( NUG), and the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw ( CRPH), a group of parliamentarians from the National League for Democracy ( NLD ) elected in the 2020 nationwide election that was overturned by military coup-makers, are the three groups that make up the complex.
There are 204 members and a more 230 spectators. The Second People’s Assembly, which was convened by the NUCC on April 4 through April 4, was held for three weeks amidst heated discussion, sparking long-standing conflicts between these groups.
The last day was likely the result of a contentious discussion between attendees that resulted from procedural irregularities and division of responsibilities, long-standing personal animosities, dramatic accusations of a NUG-sponsored attack on a well-known People’s Defense Force ( PDF) leader, and disagreements over the movement’s future priorities.
All in all, there was n’t much “unity ” on display.
The NUCC’s post-assembly statement about the controversiously controversial 1982 Citizenship Law good addressed one question. Of the three “decisions ” passed by the assembly, the third “determined that the ( law ) would be abolished…implemented in accordance ( w )ith ( sic ) Chapter ( 5 ) ‘Interim Legislature ’ of the Federal Democracy Charter. ”
The guiding record of innovative Myanmar, released in March 2021, states in Chapter 5 that:” the provisions and policies in this Charter are the fundamental guidelines that may be used to implement the issues relating to the time government and time constitutional arrangements that will come quickly. ”
Little has changed in more than three years, and the repeal of the biased citizenship law has been largely accepted platitudes. Whilst the FDC has become the Rosetta Stone of the anti-SAC social movement, especially the NUG/CRPH/NUCC structures, it has n’t served the other minority and stateless people of Myanmar. Why has n’t the citizenship rules been repealed?
For such a controversial equipment, it is amazing the legislation has endured. It becomes even more illogical because it was actually the founder of tyrant Ne Win.
His speech releasing the policy, published on the front page of the Working People’s Daily on October 8, 1982, is a nakedly racist diatribe, justifying a law that broke citizenship into three categories, “( r )acially, only pure-blooded nationals will be called citizens”, Ne Win vowed, formalizing the concept of taingyintha or official “ethnic nationalities. ” The two lower classes, naturalized and associate people, had “mixed body ” and deserved lesser right, according to the law.
The army was engaging in rigorous war atrocities against ethnic communities in Karen, Shan, Kachin, Arakan, and many other fight areas when South Asians were expelled from then-Burma following the military coup of 1962, anti-Chinese protests, and the first large-scale abuse on Rohingya Muslims in 1978.
The concept of taingyintha was established with the classification of 135 regional races, a record so excessively manufactured it should have been discredited and scrapped centuries ago.
But the rules persisted, being used by trivial bureaucrats to control access to education, employment, release of ID cards, passports and company subscription for Rohingya, Tamils, Chinese, Punjabis, Gurkhas, Telugus, Bengalis and smaller ethnic minorities living in remote areas. It was not just a tool of domestic repression, it also contravened Myanmar’s obligations to international treaties, especially on child rights.
The Kofi Annan-formed Rakhine Advisory Commission report of 2017 contained a significant section on the subject and solid recommendations for reform, but it also included a more opportune suggestion to “set in motion a process to review the law. ” It also contained a more cautionary suggestion to “set in motion a process to review the law. ”
2019’s International Commission of Jurists produced a thorough report with compelling arguments for reforming the law. Numerous academic articles on the subject have been written by authors like Elizabeth Rhoads and Nyi Nyi Kyaw. According to Rhoads, the Myanmar state “uses various measures to strip, delay, and defer citizenship of racialized and minoritized populations. ” ”
Between 2016 and the coup attempt in 2021, the Aung San Suu Kyi administration’s alleged worsening of these measures. Her NLD was resistant to legal reform. Looking Familiar, Remaining Strangers, a 2023 report from the think tank Mosaic Myanmar, documented the experiences of “unofficial minorities ” both before and after the coup, the capricious and corrupt nature of local administrators, and how the lack of documentation particularly affected younger people and the working poor.
As the anti-coup” Spring Revolution” began, people were hoping that the law would be repealed in accordance with the FDC’s fine principles. On June 3, 2021, the NUG released a “Policy Paper on the Rohingya in Rakhine State”, which promised to treat all minorities as equal citizens and pledged a “process of repealing, amending, and promulgating laws, including the 1982 Citizenship Law, by the new constitution when the drafting is complete. ”
So legal reform and minority rights are held hostage to elite NUG/CRPH/NUCC inertia? Senior opposition officials frequently make reform promises, but they are never followed by action.
When the NUG Ministry of Foreign Affairs was asked directly, aloof from the concerns of the international community, to hold its first press conference ever in 2023, they completely ignored the question. Aung Kyaw Moe, a highly regarded Rohingya activist, was appointed as deputy minister of human rights in the middle of the NUG’s most encouraging move in 2023.
The 21 recommendations and proposals from the NUCC included strong calls for reform, including the creation of a “special commission on minority affairs, ” a pledge to “eliminate all discrimination against ethnicity, religion, and the crucial final point, to amend or repeal laws that violate the values of women’s and human rights. ”
What laws have the NUG/CRPH/NUCC addressed in the past three years? Only one law has been abolished: the Myanmar Police Force Maintenance of Discipline Law in 2022 ( Law 1/2022 ). Three laws have been enacted. The first appointment, which came on February 9 and came on the same day as the CRPH was established, was the State Counsellor of State ( Law 1/ 0121 ), which gave Aung San Suu Kyi the authority to provide advice to the citizens and the interests of the state in ways that are not incompatible with the constitution. ”
That is the constitution of 2008 that the majority of revolutionary movements oppose. The NLD prioritized the appointment of their leader just a week after the coup, much like the party did in 2016, when Suu Kyi’s inaugural State Counsellor Law, which enraged the Myanmar military leadership, was the first piece of legislation to enact effective head of state status. The other two laws were the Union Taxation Law ( Law 6/2021 ) and the People’s Police Force Law ( Law 2/2022 ).
The five amended laws involved taxation, public debt management, gambling and the state counsellor law. For a stable and effective government, this would be a shockingly unimpressive legislative record.
The symbolic amendment or repeal of repressive laws should be merely a keystroke away, however, for the CRPH, which operates in a virtual Zoomtopia. They could have made sweeping, dare one say revolutionary, symbolic reform to the tangled, nasty web of the Myanmar legal system, with a priority being the Citizenship Law, therefore laying the ground for future revolutionary implementation.
One strategy might be to use the laws the SAC is enforcing against domestic dissention. SAC Order No. was issued by the regime. 29/2024 on April 17, remitting sentences of convicted prisoners, except for murder or rape or offensives from several laws that included the Unlawful Association Act and 2014 Counter Terrorism Law, but also absurdly the 1878 Arms Act, the 1924 Shan State Arms Order, and the 1948 Arms ( Emergency Penalty ) Act.
This would be police-state parody if it was n’t so repulsively repressive. And yet the “legitimate” NUG/CRPH/NUCC continues to threaten people with prosecution using some of these laws.
The NLD/NUG/NUCC/CRPH inner circle of foreign advisors, who publicly deny their involvement in the ongoing military and bureaucratic oppression of all nationalities, share a collective responsibility for failing to demand the repeal of the citizenship law.
Why do they fight a supposedly legitimate government that has abdicated its fundamental right to defend the rights of others? How can foreign donors provide millions in federal funding for a so-called “revolution” that still believes in racial hierarchies?
The balking of the “revolutionary troika ” to prioritize basic legal change is rank cowardice. This failure stems from a culture of bureaucratic infighting, personality vendetta, moral inertia, political hubris and the ingrained imperiousness of NLD political culture, a personality cult that fuels servility.
This crippling culture has been largely ignored by the NUG and CRPH. This is in part due to their poor performance and declining popularity. Entitlement, alas, is not a strategy.
David Scott Mathieson is an independent analyst working on conflict, humanitarian, and human rights issues on Myanmar