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This is the first in a three-part series examining recent developments in Burma. Tomorrow, Animating Burma’s reform from within…
Reflecting on his time as a political prisoner from 1997 to 2000, a Burmese friend once told me that he would like to go back to prison, for just one week. Seeing my surprise, his confederate clarified: “It was actually a hopeful time. We were together, we talked about all the ways we would change the country when we got out. I’m out but nothing changes, I can do nothing, it feels like I am in prison.”
Describing Burma as an open-air prison often obscures more than it illuminates. Burmese life is not dominated in the way the word ‘prison’ suggests, but is rather repressed and restricted. The ‘prison’ metaphor, however, successfully outlines the way life is put on hold, and invokes a sense of suffocation and enervation. Indeed, for two generations a particular group of Burmese have been trudging through anemic existences, feeling the attendant dull ache that seems, at least for my two friends as they looked back on it, worse than the prison time.
Perhaps nowhere is the feeling of indefinite delay more pronounced than in Mae Sot, the Thai border town where tens of thousands of Burmese live in exile. While conducting interviews in 2010, dissidents and activists repeated the phrase “we are waiting for the spark” like a mantra. The prison’s effects also morph, taking on different forms depending on how groups navigate the state and their own lives: inside, even those who expressly disavow traditional “big-P” politics have long seemed to be waiting for that moment when the entire system would begin to change and life could begin again. Thus we see an entire community – both inside and outside the country – trying to balance living and waiting.
Is now the moment they have been waiting for? Those same ex-political prisoners are unsure, but they tell me of the palpable and undeniably new feeling of possibility suffusing Rangoon over the past six months. And indeed, Burma’s reforms are shocking: Thein Sein’s government, meant to be the Tatmadaw’s puppet, has already freed most political prisoners, expanded press freedom and internet access, legislated the right to strike, signed a ceasefire with the Karen National Union and the Shan State Army-South, created a human rights commission, and convinced erstwhile exile Aung San Suu Kyi to return to politics. Perhaps most symbolically resonant, in halting the Myitsone mega-dam project, the government has committed an act that would be anathema to its predecessor: appearing to succumb to public pressure by reversing a contentious policy.
Yet their policies are still steeped in indeterminacy – no one knows what might happen. Why then the blithe endorsements of the regime, or conversely the vociferous condemnations from the likes of Maung Zarni or Bertil Lintner? The radically divergent accounts are alike at least regarding the unequivocal nature of their conclusions. What explains this?
The sheer suddenness of the changes in an environment inured to such dynamism may clarify the polarisation in responses. Life in the virtual prison has been static, predictable, and in those regards, almost safe. As this gives way to a deluge of political occurrences, sensations of speed, risk, uncertainty, and peril are inserted back into the world, creating a phenomenon simultaneously frightening and thrilling. It is difficult to know what these events signify. Hence each side falls back upon their classic modes of interpretation, demanding that either everything has changed, or nothing has (“the generals are evil, this is just another insidious trick!” versus “Burma is on the road to development, bring in the IFIs!”). These actors respond to the abyss and uncertainty of politics in Burma – between military and civilian opponents, between Burman and ethnic, and so on – by fleeing to the safety of discourses like Law and internationally-orchestrated Development. In doing so, however, they miss the opportunity to articulate an actual vision for where the country will go from here, and the politics that would animate that path.
Instead, many seem to be fighting the interpretive battle today so as to justify policies enacted over the past twenty years – note Human Rights Watch’s contention that the recent political prisoner release can be ascribed to its advocacy, or the Wall Street Journal’s unsubstantiated claim that sanctions have caused the current thaw. We could conclude the precise opposite: that the military regime did not want to be coerced by hypocritical neo-colonists, and hence was more obstinate regarding political prisoners or détente than it otherwise would have been. We cannot determine which way the cause-and-effect runs, hence these commentaries only open up the counter-arguments through their opportunistic or obtuse claims.
While they fight these battles, we might entertain the possibility that these reforms might signal opportunity – for either immense improvement or vast deterioration. The task becomes to analyse how Burmese people can insert themselves into the flow that these events are creating, and direct it toward desirable ends. Changes in Burma’s political life will cause anxiety and dissensus, but they must be engaged. And we need to address how certain discourses such as Law and Development become comfortable panaceas that distract from these painful but necessary political conversations that Burma now has to embrace.
Elliott Prasse-Freeman is Founding Research Associate Fellow, HR+SM Program, and Advisory Board Member, Sexuality, Gender, and HR Program at Harvard Kennedy School. He spent five years working in international development for various agencies—from the UN to international NGOs—where he directed projects in Burma, India, Thailand, and other countries in Southeast Asia.
You have gotta love these guys. I am talking about a particular breed of Americans from Harvard, or some other high-power places where they with their over-sized egos tinged with typical substance-less arrogance, arrogate to them the power to offer ‘visions’ and blueprints for the rest of the world while Pax Americana burns. Don’t get me wrong – I am not slagging off all Americans . I love and admire some of them, especially those who decided to drop out and do something meaningful and intelligent with their brains – like Pete Seeger or Bill Gates – rather than staying on in school and parroting the voodoo theories about “Human Rights” “Development” or “Social Movements”. Mr Prasse-Freeman set up a binary straw man where people like Bertil and me rush to stick with our ‘comfortable panaceas’. I don’t know about my friend Bertil. But I am one of the few – or maybe the only idiot – who questions the fashionable, hegemonic discourse of Development. I have hang out for too long with gurus in UK who, after having helped invent “Development Studies”, as an alternative regime of academic truth to economics, have long turned their back towards “Development” or economics, to be able to view “Development” as my cocoon. If anyone who is still enamored with this intellectually much-discredited “thing” called “development” it would be Mr. Prasse-Freeman.He himself confessed to have led, in effect, a parasitical existence as a project director in the development industry. As with Mr P-F’s wisdom on the need for engagement,I was the first Burmese dissident who broke with the entire Burma ‘social movement’ and the pro-sanctions Burma mafia at a time when no clever person in the Burma world would break the stupifying pro-sanctions consensus. The visionary author would do well if he spares 2-hours, or even 15-min here: http://www2.lse.ac.uk/IDEAS/events/events/2011/111207BurmaZarni.aspx m, or better still, fix his own broken Pax Americana.
Well said !
Prasse-Freeman’s attack on Zarni and Lintner is quite childish and self serving. Both have offered well informed critics of the so called change taking place in Burma and cited the ongoing conflict in Kachin state which Prasse-Freeman has conveniently ignored.
Zarni sadly undercuts his decent arguments with his typical bombast “But I am one of the few – or maybe the only idiot – who questions the fashionable, hegemonic discourse of Development.” Ever heard of Samir Amin, Paul Farmer, Peter Hallward, Raj Patel, Naomi Klein, Patrick Bond. There are numerous critics of the orthodox school of development, the NGOs and the IMF/World Bank consensus, Zarni isn’t alone in this, maybe he needs a library card.
Zarni would be better off he was re-born a Marxist or at least a radical social democrat, no serious critic of development I know praises Bill Gates. just check out the awful things the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation does in the name of development.
EP-F still seems to show a proclivity towards assuming he is presenting a balanced viewpoint, while to anyone who is not in denial of Burmese political & social issues, he comes-off as being pro-regime, or in other words, he seems to be advocating working within the current system in order to affect change through pragmatism.
The fatal flaw of such a viewpoint is assuming that the regime is not also capable of using pragmatism to take advantage of the strengths which THEY have built-into THEIR current system, a system which was designed & implemented by the best political strategists, public relations gurus, & academic geo-political sharpshooters that THEIR blood money could buy.
At this point, I think Mr. Prasse-Freeman would do well to avoid any further negativity towards Maung Zarni, who only does HIS people a great service by promoting a cautious approach to the putative reforms of Thein Sein’s nominally-civilian government.
What the regime giveth, they can easily take away.
The Burmese people may be at the mercy of regime subterfuge, & they may have to take a wait-&-see attitude to find out how things will pan-out, but they certainly don’t need people who have not walked a mile in their sandals to sugarcoat or obscure the truth while the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, & the persecuted suffer more persecution which is unwittingly paid for by ill-informed/blissfully ignorant western investors.
In fact, I think Mr. Prasse-Freeman would do well to study as many articles by Dr. Zarni as he can find prior to posting any further segments to this series, he may be able take advantage of Dr. Zarni’s real-world experience to make a truly balanced argument, & at some point, perhaps even come down off of the fence he is perched upon while he is pointing his index fingers in opposite directions, & by default, always leaning towards the regime.
Heck, Dr Zarni may even teach EP-F a new $5 word or two!
(Sorry DZ, I couldn’t resist)
Is this Zarni the bat guy who wandered and shuttled between US and Burma during his foe-like friend Khin Nyunt heyday in search of his own kingdom. As long as he is Khin Nyunt and he too is Zarni, no one in Burma will trust them.
He may write as if he is super academic and can shred light on some issue needed to be resolved but he is a fox disguised as a sheep among us only waiting for his own prey. He may befriend Thein Sein in near future again as if he has befriended Khin Nyunt who was later he was captured and jailed. He is a real damned opportunist.
As always, egomanical Zarni turns everything into a discussion on himself. Of course, he spends so much time talking, he doesn’t hear anything: PF’s article critiques Zarni for being in the camp of those who think the law will set them free, not the Development camp. If Z bothered to click through and read himself he’d see: “the Nargis Constitution of 2008…places the military above the law and legalizes any military coup at the whims of the commander-in-chief..” PF in the next article takes down on this kind of thinking.
Zarni is usually a semi-smart critic of development, but endorsing the monopoly capitalist Bill Gates?! he should read some zizek: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n07/slavoj-zizek/nobody-has-to-be-vile.
so, to review, Z is egotistical, sloppy, and a little daft. that adds up to: sad.
My my, the Zarni bashers are out in force.
While they usually have nothing to say about anything, they always come out to criticize Zarni, as if he is not allowed to make comments based on his experiences without being tagged as self-serving.
Especially after being pointed-out as an anti-regime extremist by book educated Elliot Prasse-Freeman, who is about the least credible so-called Burma expert I have ever read. EP-F’s misguided beliefs in the power of grass roots organizations to make meaningful changes in the face of a deceptive and well organized regime which has stacked the deck and rammed the faux-democracy down the peoples’ throats are absurd.
Of course, what Zarni’s skeptics have or have not done remains a mystery, probably because unlike Zarni, they have never led OR followed, only gotten out of the way, never made any mistakes OR done anything worthwhile, because THEY spent their lives doing nothing but complaining about what others have not succeeded in doing for them.
Regardless of Elliot’s verbose liberal social development handbook ramblings, the fact remains that Burma is STILL controlled by greedy mass murderers, monk-killers, thieves, rapists, and extortionists, who are supported by hundreds of thousands of highly trained and heavily armed Burma Army shock-troops who are still in the ethnic homelands conducting business as usual.
Certainly, the generals are well set for the future, and once their “disciplined democracy” successfully ends international sanctions, their ill-gotten investments, foreign bank accounts, and crates of confiscated gemstones will be worth billions.
But what about the ranks of colonels, majors, captains, et al who have been punching their career tickets and doing the generals terrorist dirty work decade after decade?
Are they just going to pack it in and become businessmen, cab drivers, factory workers and monks?
That’s a Burmese Fairy Tale.
Tell me another story, I like stories.
I was surprised that not many question how genuine the changes are? Unlike the changes in South Africa they are not based on some kind of ‘compromise’ no ‘legislative’ base to fall back on. Just relying on the ‘trust’ between TWO people. To me it’s more like trying to run a program on an ‘operating system’ that wasn’t compatible with each other and time and again you’ll be getting the Error message. Ashin Gambira was freed but then again detained, why? No one can tell for sure because there’s no rule of law in Burma. The law as it stands, the military can stage a coup whenever they want – no checks, no balances. The one who has the gun in his hands decides what it the law. When all those ‘so-called’ exiles returned and the military decided to stage a coup and put them all in jail, who’s going to make a fuss from outside? Businesses? As long as they get away cheaply even Apple cannot resist making things in China where the conditions of the workers are so bad that some went to the extent of suicide. I don’t have higher education like these guys on both side of argument but I do have this ‘gut-feeling’ not to trust the Burmese. How many ‘cease-fire agreements’ the ethnic groups have signed with the Burmese Tattmadaw? How many promises have been broken. If Ma Aye could tell when she’s been cheated how many times should we let them con us?
Those objective Burmese watchers and most importantly the majority of the Burmese themselves dom accept that Sanctions did play an important role by forcing those reluctant Generals who insist on staying on stage after the curtain has long drawn in 1990 to make some nice gesture to the Burmese people.
So it is obvious that ELLIOTT PRASSE-FREEMAN knows nothing about Burmese politics or he is on the take given by those murderous generals.