Myanmar’s Torment: The Saffron Revolution

Myanmar’s Torment: The Saffron Revolution

By Philip Shaw M.Sc.

They are calling it the “Saffron Revolution”.  That’s how some in western media circles are labeling the current up tick of unrest in Myanmar, formerly called Burma.  Clothed in saffron Buddhist monks with their begging bowls and placards extolling peace have been on the march in Myanmar.  It is the biggest challenge to Myanmar’s brutish military regime in years.

For some of you in the west this must seem “a million kilometers away”.  Nobody really knows where Myanmar is.  A country called Burma seems much more familiar.  However, here we were this past week seeing several western leaders like George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown publicly taking positions supporting human rights in Burma.  Depending on what happens next (as of this writing the military is cracking down) Myanmar or Burma may be foisted on the world’s radar screen.

For me this is not some abject subjective view on some farm off country.  I’ve seen Myanmar as up close as any western journalist gets these days. (Western journalists are banned from the country)  As some of you know I’ve traveled down the river Naaf, which separates Bangladesh from Myanmar in the year 2000.  Peering into the mountains across the Naaf’s shimmering waters was an inquisitive moment for me.  Not only was Myanmar forbidden fruit for me to visit, but also no western journalists ever get to even see the country.

The reason for my travel was my destination, St. Martin’s Island, Bangladesh.  It’s a small speck of a place off the coast of Myanmar, which through historic and geographic anomaly is Bangladeshi territory.  Enamul and I had planned the trip with the support of his wife and sister-in-law.  However, I think after a rough, wind and water swept crossing to the island, our female companions will be staying home next time.

St. Martin’s island is a wonderful place, pristine in beauty and wonderfully quiet compared to the boisterous and loud Bangladeshi cities.  From its sandy shores you get a perfect view of Myanmar.

Of course as I looked into Myanmar I knew I was on a precarious border.  Refugees from persecution called Rohingyas had fled across the Naaf over several of the previous years.  Not only is the Naaf the political border but it serves as a cultural border as well, separating two culturally diverse races of people.

From that point it seemed Myanmar was forbidden fruit.  There was no formal border crossing.  However, I’m sure when the sun goes down smugglers make there way back and forth.  Later that week I met a Bangladeshi who had been to Teknaf, the small border town on the southern tip of Bangladesh.  On telling him I’d been to St. Martin’s, he told me he had crossed clandestine across the Naaf.  After that it became obvious, he had crossed to enjoy the alcohol served at local water holes.  I’ll never be able to figure out why that was so fascinating.

If I were there today, I’d have completely different feelings about staring into Myanmar.  As I write this the “Saffron Revolution” is being broken up as the Myanmar military is in the streets.  Many monks and nuns have been beaten up and some people have been killed in Rangoon.  Alarmed, France and Britain have called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council.  Myanmar’s biggest ally China says it’s an internal matter.  The Americans have called for new sanctions against the military regime.

Why such concern about Myanmar from the western world?  It’s hard to say.  Images coming out of Myanmar through the Internet and the BBC make once far away backwaters hard to ignore.  Of course it might be slow news day in the Middle East.  The Democratic Republic of the Congo is having its problems again too.  There is a lot wrong with the optics of abuse currently coming out of Myanmar.  The charismatic Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Ky remains under house arrest.  It would seem at this end the west must do something.

Of course what to do?  It would seem China has the most to lose from the Myanmar end game.  If the Saffron Revolution is brutally suppressed, China looks bad.  If it succeeds, China’s own human rights record will be exposed as suspect in the west.  India, Bangladesh and Thailand also have much at stake here.  Refugees from a crisis in Myanmar are only a moment away.

It would seem in 2007 the world can do better than let military rulers run amok in Myanmar.  However, as we all know this isn’t a perfect world.  Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, Iraq, North Korea and others are examples of places where brutally sometimes gets state sanction, while the world looks the other way.  Myanmar might be the latest example.  The “Saffron Revolution” lies in the balance.

“Saffron Revolution” or “Protest Against Price Rise”?

by Dr. A.K. Enamul Haque

The crisis is Myanmar is closely watched all over the world.  The western media as well as Bangladeshi and other eastern nations are pretty quick to label this as the “Saffron Revolution” and I believe it has raised a very important point in terms of human culture, knowledge and also religion.

The genesis of the crisis, as explained in the media is to do with the oil price hike in Myanmar.  As the world oil price is soaring countries like Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan, and many others find it difficult to cope within a short period of time.  This is partly because the fiscal strength of these governments is not strong enough to allow them to continue to subsidize their domestic economy over time.  These countries are primarily producers of agricultural products and so their terms of trade are continuously going against them as prices of agricultural products often goes down and prices of industrial products (their imports) are going up.  Mind you, oil prices have been going up from $23 on 9/11 to currently about $82. Can you imagine the stress on these poor economies dealing with this?

Apparently, the Myanmar government has finally realized the problem (the realization is rather slow and I believe it is because of their closed characteristics of governance that is run by a military junta) and doubled fuel prices.  This has resulted in a major crisis in Myanmar.  The Monks, who are highly respected in Myanmar and who have a strong reputation worldwide, have decided to start the protest against the oil price hike.  However, one of my Buddhist friends who have been watching the monks told me that some of them had sticks in their hands (which violates the tenets of Buddhism) and most of them were young monks (as he observed from TV screens).  He thought that the “revolt” is very unusual particularly because between July and October, Monks are expected to remain in “meditation”.  These are the months of strict non-violence.

Although it is difficult to analyze the ground scenario without being in Myanmar, news reports carried on CNN, Al-Jazeera, BBC, DWTV, and CCTV illustrates that there were some organized actions behind this so-called “revolt”. The anger against price hikes is understandable. I believe if petrol prices are doubled in the USA riots would have started in New York too!  The opposition was very quick to capitalize on the event without realizing that their own politics was not successful to bring the people together over the past 20 years!  As predicted, the “revolt” is over now.

The most important surprise to me is the reaction from all over the world.  They were quick to entice the pro-democratic groups to engage in active politics.  This, to me, will not work.  Compared to other nations, the Myanmar people are peace loving and non-violent in nature.  Myanmar is not a very rich country.  The connection between these protesters and Aung San Suu Ky is not clear to me at all, except for the fact that in 1948 the former British colony Burma got its independence and Aung San Suu Ky is a British citizen.  The “revolt” shows that the people of Myanmar do understand when to raise their voice against the government but at the same time, it also tells me that Suu Kyi and her comrades could not persuade these people to organize against the military junta in the past two decades. If democracy were so dear to the people, they would have revolted for the passion of democracy and not have used the oil price hike as the pretext.

Burma is a resource-rich country with 7 states and 7 divisions and since 1962 the country is under military rule. The ethnic divisions in the country have been one of the major difficulties for running it and in 1989; the country renamed itself as the Union of Myanmar (formerly Burma) to bring more solidarity between the Burmese and other ethnic groups.  In Bangladesh, we had at one time 200,000 refugees who fled into Bangladesh for safety and some of them are still in Bangladesh.  Clearly to me, the major problem in that country is not “democracy”; the major problems are poverty and illiteracy.  A democracy without educated citizens is likely not to last long.  Illiteracy and poverty breeds divisions in a country and may promote ethnic violence.  Myanmar had been fighting this for many years. I hope that the western world understands from the Iraq experience that promoting democracy without other necessary social infrastructure changes could become dangerous.

Having said all these, I do agree that Myanmar needs to improve its structure of governance to allow people to speak their mind.  It often helps to dissipate anger in public life and makes the country stable.  At the same time, I hope that we, who are living outside Myanmar, also understand that while we sympathize with the democracy activists; the choice, ultimately, has to be made by the people of Myanmar.  It cannot be imposed or pushed from outside or through the UN charter.