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MYANMAR: THE COUP, RESISTANCE, AND GLOBAL SOLIDARITY  
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Kurt Stand
July 7, 2024
The Bullet
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_ Three years ago, on February 1, 2021, the Myanmar military staged a
coup, ending nearly a decade of civilian rule, arresting countless
numbers in a brutal crackdown on popular protest. Three years on,
resistance to the coup continues. _

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Three years ago, on February 1, 2021, the Myanmar military staged
a coup
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ending nearly a decade of civilian rule, arresting countless numbers
in a brutal crackdown on popular protest. The military used the
unrestrained power of the army to intensify an ongoing genocidal war
against the Rohingya – a Muslim minority living within a
predominately Buddhist society – forcing hundreds of thousands into
exile and refugee camps in Bangladesh.

Three years on, resistance to the coup continues. In Myanmar, this has
taken the form of student activism, union organizing, and armed
communal defense. Abroad, the exile community has focused on building
support in solidarity and human rights organizations to isolate the
military regime from global bodies, to gain recognition of a national
unity government as the legitimate government, and to organize in
order to force corporations to disinvest.

Some progress has been made. On April 8, Chevron announced that it is
disinvesting from the country. A California-based multinational oil
and gas company, Chevron is notorious for environmental destruction
and contempt for the rights of indigenous peoples as was evident in
Ecuador where it spilled tons of toxic waste on native land.
Previously in Myanmar, Chevron supported the junta through payments
made to the military for exploitation from the Yadan gas project
(natural gas fields off Myanmar’s coast), the company using forced
labour to complete the work.

Popular Pressure

Previously, in October 2023, Congress passed legislation to impose
sanctions on Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) after years of
delays, overcoming corporate lobbying to defeat the measure. Neither
the sanctions nor Chevron’s announcement of its withdrawal took
place in a vacuum; it required persistent agitation, shareholder
action, and popular pressure – including over 250,00 signatures on a
petition to Chevron as well as demonstrations at its California and
Washington DC headquarters.

The combination of intensified opposition to the Burmese military
inside and outside the country may explain the military government’s
April 17, 2024, announcement of an amnesty releasing 3,000 prisoners
and its decision to move deposed President Aung Su Ky from prison
(“due to the heat”) and return her to house arrest. Now 78 years
old, she has been subject to several trials since the 2001 coup,
resulting in sentences that total over 25 years. But those concessions
are more apparent than real. In fact, only about 100 or so political
prisoners were amongst those amnestied (of an estimated 25,000 –
30,000), and some have already been rearrested, while Aung Su Ky is
currently in an “undisclosed location.”1
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Therefore, more pressure needs to be built. As Khaing Zar Aung, a
textile worker from the age 16 and today a leader of the Industrial
Workers’ Federation of Myanmar as well as of the Confederation of
Trade Unions of Myanmar, expressed when she received an award (the
Arthur Svennsson prize) from the International Trade Union
Confederation:

“The award is recognition of the relentless struggles and sacrifices
of the Myanmar trade unions and people for justice, democracy and
human rights. But still there are many people who can do much more to
help remove the illegitimate military regime in Myanmar.

“I urge the EU, international governments, the ASEAN, trade
unionists, and democracy lovers across the world to use all of your
influence to stop the trade preferences, arms and financial flow to
the military junta now.”2
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This struggle is not new. A look back indicates what is at stake, the
course Burmese resistance and solidarity has taken in past decades,
and the kinds of initiatives still needed today.

Background: The Coup and Popular Protest

The documentary film _The Purple Thanaka of the Angels_, by French
director Borit Yannick, released in early 2022, showed the defiant
youthful protest of “generation Z” – radicalized youth born
between 1996 and 2015 – expressed in music and poetry that emerged
in the streets alongside rallies and a strike movement. The film
begins wordlessly with beautiful still photos that lead into real-time
news footage, narrative, and interviews, depicting the line of
division between people and rulers.

Violence quelled the initial round of non-violent protest, but the
military has been unable to either silence opposition or win public
acceptance. The Junta’s answer was made crystal clear on July 23,
2023, when the regime executed four well-known activists who had been
imprisoned on charges of treason because of their participation in
street protests demanding a return to parliamentary rule.3
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Those executions, however, are a sign of weakness, not strength, for
in their individual backgrounds the executed reflect the broad base
and deep roots of the protest movement. Kyaw Min Yu (popularly known
as Ko Jimmy) was a student leader of the 1988 uprising – the 888
Movement, so named because it was launched at August 8, 1988 at 8:08
am, a seminal event in recent Burmese history that was part of a wider
outburst of radicalism throughout East and South Asia.4
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then spent many years as a political prisoner, but once fully freed in
2007, resuming his political activism. Phyo Zeya Thaw was a founding
member of Generation Wave, young people central to the 2007 “Saffron
Revolution,” which sought renewed freedom in society. A former
rapper, he became a member of parliament as part of Aung San Suu
Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) when democratic rights
were partially restored in 2012. Aung Thura Zaw had also been a member
of Generation Wave and remained thereafter an activist for justice
outside of government office, while Hla Myo Aung’s activism began
after the 2021 coup. A cruel twist, reflective of the mindset of
Myanmar’s rulers, is that the four had been allowed visits by family
members days prior, without themselves or those who came to see them
aware that their execution was already planned and imminent. After
they were hung, the four bodies were buried in secret.

Although previous iterations of dictatorial repression have been
brutal with lethal force used to quell protests, it has been more than
30 years since anyone was executed. Likely that was a sign of
frustration with the resistance that has persisted for decades.

Recalling 1990s Solidarity

Afterall, a decades long popular movement overcame a previous
iteration of military rule, beginning with the aforementioned 888
movement – a mass uprising and general strike against the
dictatorial rule of U Ne Win, who had seized power in 1962. The
military responded with force, but though that force could suppress,
it too could not gain consent. The “888” movement forced Win’s
resignation, and in the elections that followed in 1990, the then
newly founded NLD won 81% of the vote, and Aung Suu Kyi was slated to
became head of the government. Instead, the armed forces nullified the
result, placed her under house arrest (where she was held for most of
the next 21 years) and installed itself to rule as the aptly named
State Law and Order Restoration Committee – SLORC.

The subsequent violent repression, directed at students and workers,
forced many into exile, forming the roots of a global solidarity
movement centered on a call for corporate disinvestment from Myanmar
until the restoration of democracy. Doing so, the activists built upon
successful tactics that the then recently victorious anti-apartheid
movement employed in its global campaign for divestment from South
Africa. Over 200 campus groups in the United States were formed,
calling on their respective administrators to stop purchasing consumer
products made by companies doing business that profited by the denial
of labour rights and basic civic justice under SLORC rule.

Organized local “Friends of Burma”5
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introduced resolutions to preclude local governments from patronizing
any corporation doing business in Myanmar. Over 20 municipalities
passed such “selective purchasing measures,” including Ann Arbor,
MI; Boulder, Co; Chapel Hill, NC; and Takoma Park, MD. Critically,
this did not take place in isolation. For example, Takoma Park also
declared itself a nuclear weapons-free zone and a sanctuary city for
Central American exiles, reflective of widespread initiatives to link
locally-based movements for progressive change with global concerns.
This movement was strongest in California, where six cities passed
such resolutions, and in Massachusetts, where success was gained in
five.

In an attempt to give teeth to these bills, many included provisions
to deny tax concessions or to otherwise penalize companies that
violated the ban. When those proved unenforceable, a stronger
state-wide measure was passed in Massachusetts with the significant
help of Franklin Research & Development, now Trillium Asset Management
(under the leadership of Simon Billenness, currently executive
director of Campaign for a New Mynamar) and the Massachusetts Burma
Roundtable. Potential penalties imposed by a state government – with
other state governments considering similar action – did lead some
corporations to pull out of Myanmar or halt planned investments in its
wake. Similar corporate responsibility measures were being considered
directed toward businesses investing in Indonesia (then still under
military rule following a CIA-backed 1965 coup). That brought out
growing opposition from transnational corporations and the global
business community. The European Union and Japan issued protests and
threatened to file charges with the World Trade Organization, calling
such selective purchasing measures as illegal violations of global
free trade agreements. Before the WTO could issue a ruling, a District
Court overturned the Massachusetts law, a decision upheld by the
Supreme Court in 2000.6
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Under pressure from popular movements and following passage of
legislation in the Senate, the Clinton Administration did impose
limited sanctions against Myanmar, banning new investments by US based
corporations, although grandfathering in companies that already had
major investments or production facilities there. Just prior to the
announcement, Unocal – a major energy firm and a notorious violator
of human rights and environmental regulations (subsequently bought by
none other than Chevron) – increased its investments in the country.
Those meaningful but limited sanctions, put in place only because of
the strength of the solidarity movement, were later repealed by the
Obama Administration, in favor of backdoor negotiations.

Taking another path, the International Labour Rights Fund, the Center
for Constitutional Rights, EarthRights International, and others filed
suit in 1996, in a US court, on behalf of Burmese villagers, against
Unocal, under the Alien Torts Act – a 1798 law that had been unused
for 200 years – which enables people outside of the United States to
sue US corporations for civil damages for gross violations of their
rights. In this instance, Unocal oversaw the Burmese military use of
rape, torture, and murder in a community where one of its operations
was located, the corporation turning a blind eye because it profited
from forced labour made possible by that brutality. The aim of the
lawsuit was to establish corporate responsibility overseas for
violations of labour and human rights as well as environmental
protection. The suit was settled out of court in 2005 with the
villagers receiving monetary compensation. The Department of Justice
agreed in order to avoid a possible court ruling that might have
established enforceable guidelines for US corporate behavior
overseas.7
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Organized labour kept up the fight as well. The Oil and Chemical and
Atomic Workers Union (today part of the Steelworkers) and the United
Mine Workers of America took up the fight against mining companies
that had major investments in Myanmar, submitting a resolution
approved by the AFL-CIO that called for sanctions. They were also part
of a global effort led by the International Federation of Chemical,
Energy, Mine, and General Workers’ Unions. This took place within a
deeper challenge to corporate globalization that undermined labour
protections and allowed companies to hide behind free trade rules in
order to continue to profit from the anti-union practices and
workplace oppression such as that imposed by SLORC upon Burmese
workers.

A similar initiative emerged in the food and beverage industry, led by
the International Union of Food and Allied Workers (IUF), as multiple
companies had facilities for production or distribution in the
country, operating without concern for labour or human rights.
Dutch-based Heineken, under pressure from unionists and “Free
Burma” activists, pulled out of a planned investment in a
Rangoon-based brewery and halted all export sales to Burma in 1996, a
similar step being taken by the Belgian multinational Interbrew (then
on its way to become the world’s largest brewing company). The depth
of worker-based solidarity was expressed most dramatically in the
campaign to prevent Carlsberg (the largest Danish brewery) from
entering into a joint venture to build a plant in Burma. The Danish
Food and Allied Workers Union – which represented Carlsberg workers
– announced plans to organize a European-wide consumer boycott of
the company if it didn’t back out of the deal, a threat backed by
the IUF’s European regional organization. By 1996, Carlsberg had
pulled out of the deal. Other corporations that disinvested under
pressure from solidarity activists included Motorola, Kodak, Apple,
Amoco, Liz Claiborne, Rebook, and Eddie Bauer, amongst others.8
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PepsiCo, vehemently anti-union in the United States and globally, and
quite comfortable investing where friendly repressive governments
ruled, was the last holdout in the food and drink industry. In
response, pressure was brought to bear from multiple sources –
unions, human rights and consumer activists, and, of course, the
Burmese exile community. As part of that initiative, Khin Ohmar, a
student activist who took part in the 888 movement (and currently
chair of Progressive Voice Myanmar’s Advisory Board), spoke to
unionists affiliated with the IUF in North America about the need to
boycott Pepsi, telling those assembled of her arrest, of the harsh
treatment she and other activists received at the hands of soldiers,
and thus, of the necessity for her to flee her own country to seek
refuge abroad.

She gave a special talk at IUF’s Pepsi Council, composed of local
union officers and active rank-and file members from PepsiCo-owned
plants from across the country (and Canada too, if memory serves).
These workers knew of Pepsi’s hostility to organized labour, but the
depth of what working people were undergoing in Myanmar was far deeper
and more profound than what these unionists were experiencing and
touched a chord that came up again and again in conversation after her
formal presentation was over. At the same time, it put into context
the anti-union offensive that workers were experiencing. The Pepsi
labour council members responded without hesitation to the appeal for
solidarity with support for the boycott. The action itself was
symbolic, but nonetheless, meaningful. When actions, no matter how
small, multiply the impact can be powerful. In 1997, Pepsi withdrew
from Myanmar.

The combination of international pressure with activism amongst
Burmese workers, resistance amongst the country’s ethnic minorities,
and the ever-recurring student movement led to SLORC’s decision to
permit elections in 2012. Fooling themselves into thinking they had
broad support, the military was unprepared for the massive defeat it
suffered that year and again in 2015 – leading to its collapse. Aung
San Suu Kyi and her NLD Party, with its deep roots in the country’s
Buddhist majority, swept to overwhelming victory. Victory, however,
was partial, based on acceptance of a continued role of the military
in government, which inhibited the ability of the parliamentary
government to address social and economic need, creating space for
continued corporate exploitation from overseas. Moreover, the NLD
government embraced a narrow Burmese nationalism that excluded
“outsiders” and so, accepted the army’s subsequent genocidal
attacks on the Muslim Rohingya minority. Taken together, the stage was
set for the 2021 coup that brought the current regime to power.

A Glance at the Past

To understand the outsized role of the military in Burmese society and
the persistence, intensity, and difficulties of resistance to it, a
brief look at its history can provide some context. Burma had long
been a center of Buddhist teaching and learning, reflected in the high
level of literacy and education the country had achieved by the 19th
century. Existing at a crossroads in Southeast Asia – today, it
borders India, Bangladesh, China, Laos, and Thailand – it has
numerous ethnicities within its population as well as Muslim and
Christian minorities. Its historical development, however, was
disrupted by British colonialism. Great Britain launched three wars
against Burma – 1824-26, 1852-53, 1885-86 – until finally imposing
its rule over the whole country. A large part of the purpose of that
conquest was to protect its hold on India, and, in fact, Burma was
incorporated into “British” India, subjecting its people into a
kind of double colonialism and double suppression.9
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Doing so meant that many civil servants and administrators were Indian
and Muslim or Hindu, not Burmese and Buddhist. Moreover, typical of
British colonial rule, the Karen minority (especially those who had
adopted Christianity) were used as administrators and as staff of the
colonial army, thereby precipitating ethnic disputes that remain to
this day. And standing on top of this was the unconcealed racism of
British colonialists so well described by George Orwell. Born in
colonial Burma, his service there as a police officer contributed to
his subsequent radicalism, the colonist’s mindset depicted in his
first novel:

“Your whole life is a life of lies. Year after year you sit in
Kipling-haunted little Clubs, whiskey to right of you, Pink’un to
the left of you, listening and eagerly agreeing while Colonel Bodger
develops his theory that these bloody nationalists should be boiled in
oil. You hear your Oriental friends called ‘greasy little babus,’
and you admit, dutifully, that they are greasy little babus. You see
louts fresh from school kicking grey-haired servants. The time comes
when you burn with hatred of your own countrymen…”10
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A reflection of that racism was British insistence that they be
addressed as “Thankin” – which means “master.” The
nationalist movement, repressed but never fully repressed, persisted
throughout the years of colonialism, turned that meaning around in the
1930s, calling themselves the “Thankin Movement,” reflecting the
desire of the Burmese people to be masters of their own destiny.

Under the leadership of Aung San – the long-time leader of Burma’s
revolutionary movement and of Burma’s Communist Party (and Aung Su
Kyi’s father) – Burma declared independence from Britain in August
1945, shortly after Japan’s surrender. The same week, Sukarno
declared Indonesian independence from the Netherlands, and Ho Chi Minh
declared Vietnam’s independence from France, reflecting the
interconnection of nationalist movements throughout the region.

Aung San’s announcement was followed by a supportive mass walkout
that began to take shape as a general strike. In 1947, on the eve of
Britain’s recognition of Burma’s independence, the Anti-Fascist
Peoples League won parliamentary elections, with Aung San slated to be
prime minister. Their aim was to create a federated state that would
give autonomy and representation to all minorities within the country.
That program was never implemented, for Aung San was assassinated,
along with six other cabinet members, just prior to taking office. In
the vacuum that those deaths created, the parliamentary system became
unstable, riven with disputes and insurgencies, both ethnic
(particularly from the Karen people) and political (by Burmese
Communists who objected to the path of development being taken) that
the post-colonial government was unable to resolve.

Nonetheless, under the leadership of independent Burma’s first prime
minister – U Nu, a Burmese Buddhist scholar and socialist who had
collaborated with Aung San – some progressive reforms were
implemented, and some attempt was made to rebuild infrastructure and
the civil society that had been undermined by British rule. U Nu’s
government played an important role in the non-aligned movement that
emerged in the 1950s, and prospects for a different and better future
seemed graspable. U Thant, a close ally of U Nu (and later
Secretary-General of the United Nations, where he was a principled
advocate for peace), outlined the government’s goals in 1956:

“Today a whole new nation is being built in Burma — politically,
socially, and economically. Part of the task is physical: to repair
war damage and create enough industrial capacity to improve living
standards and make out country self-sustaining; an even greater part
is social and psychological: to educate a people long held down by
colonialism in the ways of democracy and self-development. Because
there is very little private capital in Burma, the major
responsibility has inevitably fallen upon the Government. Its greatest
efforts are now being applied to such fields as these.”11
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Yet lack of capital and foreign investment limited economic growth and
inhibited the flowering of the programs the government has hoped to
implement. The inability to resolve economic difficulties and
political conflict was the background for Ne We’s 1962 coup
(simultaneously anti-Western and anti-Communist) who sought to resolve
the country’s problem through isolation, autocratic
self-sufficiency, and narrow Burmese nationalism. This laid the
groundwork for continuing conflicts with the Karen and Rohingya and
the insertion of the military into the center of political and
economic life.

Unresolved contradictions pointed to two possible but contradictory
directions – either renewed and revitalized democratic engagement
demanded by the student movement or, alternatively, modernized
military rule, politically neutral, friendly to capital whatever the
source. In the conflict between the two, the military gained the upper
hand. Economic life henceforth centered on overseas corporate
investment as the economic irrationalities of Ne We’s rule were
replaced by the “rational” economics of contemporary global
capitalism.

Labour rights and Corporate Responsibility

Lack of labour rights and the order maintained by the military has
made Myanmar an attractive place for business. Maung Zarni, a Burmese
human rights activist and co-founder of FORSEA (Forces of Renewal for
Southeast Asia) explained the consequences:

“…high street fashion brands, Zara and others, and … textile
apparel industries, they are still producing and sourcing their
materials in Burma, in a country that has zero or no labour rights
protections, labour laws in place or enforced. … And, you know,
there is a long list of European, Japan, Australian, the Americans and
even Canadian corporate interests operating on the ground, while the
politicians and the foreign affairs or State Department officials come
up with these grandiose condemnations, grandstanding that they are
doing something moral, ethical, in principle.”12
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In this, Myanmar was part of a development touching virtually every
region of the globe. By the late 1980s up to the early 1990s,
cross-border corporate mergers, the concentration of industrial giants
to take advantage of global markets, led to increased power of
business relative to national governments, relative to organized
labour, relative to the communities in which they operate. This trend
was first apparent in auto, steel, and other manufacturing industries
but had become ubiquitous as the century neared its close. For
example, the food and beverage industry, which had been relatively
decentralized and rooted in regional and national markets, had become
highly concentrated with even large corporations being bought out by
ever larger ones – different parts of the industry dominated by a
handful of corporations such as Unilever, Nestle, Cargill, and others.
That, in turn, contributed to changes in food consumption habits (at
the expense of the income and health of the already poor), and to the
concentration and centralization of retail industry (precursor to our
Walmart, Amazon-dominated world), leading to an increased exploitation
of land and labour, all with a particularly devastating impact on
former colonial countries in Asia and Africa where these corporate
fortunes had been originally made. Corporate power that had become
expressed through “branding”, i.e., spending on advertising, took
on an ever-greater share of corporate expenditure at the expense of
workers and national/local cultures.13
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The same process was underway in the textile industry – and global
corporations, either directly or through sub-contractors, in food,
beverage, and clothing industries which were the ones that set up shop
in Myanmar. Alongside this came growing indebtedness across the Third
World, which increased structural disparities between wealthy and
poorer nations, and facilitated the creation of a shadow economy
fueled by illegal drug sales. Myanmar, because of the enormous market
for heroin amongst US servicemen in Vietnam, also suffered from that
phenomenon. Oil and gas industries, in their own way, operated as a
drug as well, as a source of quick cash, albeit in a form that
benefitted neither the local population, nor national industrial
development. As developed capitalist countries deindustrialized to
undermine domestic labour countries, Myanmar became ever more
attractive for investment.14
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In microcosm, the country’s direction post-1988 coincided with the
emergence of neoliberalism and the financialization of the global
economy – and hit upon the rock upon which both liberal and
authoritarian market-based national development plans failed. One sign
of this was a decision in 1988 for the United Nations to abandon plans
to establish a code of conduct for transnational corporations, a code
long sought by labour and socialist organizations as well as by third
world governments. This decision spelled the doom of the radical
proposals contained within the Socialist International’s
Brandt-Manley Commission. Its report, released in 1985, sought to
create alternative structures of development at a time when popular
and radical movements globally seemed to allow space for them.

Corporate power and the willingness to exercise that power directly
received a dramatic boost with the end of the Cold War. With the
Soviet Union’s demise, the threat of an alternative that provided
basic economic security (no matter how the Soviet system was otherwise
judged) was lost, an absence that employers were quick to use to their
advantage. An example of the change could be seen at the International
Labour Organization. When the IUF in 1993 attempted to use a
tripartite (business, labour, government) agreement on minimum
standards of corporate conduct from 1976, to compel PepsiCo to cease
doing business in Burma because of Burma’s repressive actions,
business representatives, backed by the US and British governments,
refused to go along. Their argument was that they would never have
signed on to the corporate conduct agreement had they thought that it
could stop them from doing business in a country where human rights
were not respected. Tripartism, in other words, was a dead letter. The
gloves were off.15
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On both sides. Burmese unions were banned in the 1960s, yet labour has
played a critical role in every outbreak of popular resistance,
re-emerging in organized form at the Thai-Burma border in the 1990s,
growing dramatically when unions were legalized in 2011. The
Confederation of Trade Unions – Myanmar (CTUM) – alongside other
small federations and individual unions, represented tens of thousands
of workers, largely in export-oriented industries.16
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In those circumstances, the international Burma solidarity movement in
the 1990s was all the more important, for it demonstrated that
concerted action across borders could crack through corporate strength
to force concessions that companies thought they no longer needed to
make. Moreover, within Myanmar, it contributed to the intimate links
between demands for democracy and demands for economic justice, and is
the reason Burmese trade unions, alongside students, remain central to
the struggle today. _Myra Dahgaypaw, a Karen_ refugee serving as
International Justice and Accountability Officer at the Unitarian
Universalist Service Committee, explained:

“Profits should never be put above human lives, and the world will
need to transition away from fossil fuels entirely by the end of the
decade if we are to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate
change. Why not start with the oil and gas projects that are being
used to enable one of the worst dictatorial regimes on the planet?

“Taken together, the arguments to hold off on sanction any longer
don’t hold water. The people of Myanmar have waited too long already
for the justice and democracy they deserve. The United States should
go after the junta in a way that it will notice: by cutting off the
billion-plus dollars it rakes in each year off the backs of the people
of Myanmar.”17
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Hope and New Beginnings

Corporate power does not exist in a vacuum; it is sustained by
government power. The plan originally charted by Burma and other
founding members of the non-aligned movement in the 1950s constituted
a search for a path of development that would put people ahead of
profits. The desire for such an outcome was frustrated by
international institutions, which narrowed choices and ultimately
inhibited the flowering of alternative models of economic and
political development. So it is that today, in addition to putting
pressure on corporations to disinvest, the resistance movement in
Myanmar is seeking targeted sanctions to prevent foreign governments
from selling weapons to the Junta and to discourage trade and
investment. Many countries, in particular China, Singapore, and
Thailand, for pragmatic reasons, have pursed economic and arms
policies that have helped prop up the current regime, as has,
increasingly, Russia. Japan, too, has been unresponsive to solidarity
demands.

This is sometimes justified by the legitimate rejection of
interference in the internal affairs of other societies (for such is
inherently anti-democratic), yet it can constitute a false neutrality
that accepts and reinforces illegal government rule. Fear of border
instability due to the massive influx of refugees into Bangladesh and
Thailand and concern over border instability elsewhere in the region
will only be overcome when military rule is overcome. The Burmese
people’s movement has not called for foreign intervention – but it
has called for the United Nations, ASEAN (Association of Southeast
Asian Nation comprised of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos,
Malayasia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar),
and other international bodies to reject the legitimacy of the
coup’s representatives in international bodies and to isolate the
government diplomatically.

The UN and ASEAN have made some positive statements – as has the US
government – and Thailand and China have helped broker some
negotiations, but as yet, it is far too little; as of yet, words have
failed to translate into meaningful actions. As is the case with
Palestine, there is a long path to move from recognizing the
legitimacy of national rights and the reality of genocide, to getting
international governments to act – in part, today, because of the
intricacy of amoral corporate power and the narrow tit-for-tat of
global politics that define progress and national security in terms of
security of investment. Yet popular struggle matters – the continued
resistance on the ground has begun to bear fruit.18
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For its part, the popular movement in Myanmar, learning from the past,
has created a National Unity Government – comprising NLD members of
parliament ousted by the Junta, but also comprising representatives
from the Rohyinga, Karen, and other peoples not justly represented
before. So, too, the NUG includes organizations participating in
building a social protest movement within the country. This broader
conception of Myanmar as a country that belongs to all its peoples is
evident in the political perspective that has come to the fore within
the NLD and in the wider popular movement of resistance. This is
expressed in an article Khin Ohmar and Thinzar Shunlei wrote in the
exile paper Myanmar Now, roundly criticizing past treatment of the
Rohyinga:

“The formation of Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG) by
elected members of parliament, ethnic and civil society leaders, and
representatives of the Civil Disobedience Movement and General Strike
Committees of the Spring Revolution was a historic moment. For the
country’s diverse communities, it offered real hope that a genuine
federal democracy — one that guarantees and protects their rights
— can be established. As a moral as well as a political guide, the
NUG must therefore transparently communicate to the people of Myanmar
what and who it stands for.”19
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Such unity is hard to sustain the longer the fighting continues,
making it all the more urgent for solidarity movements to gain
strength. As democratic rights and social justice are imperiled
everywhere by unrestrained corporate capital; as the resulting
instability has turned into war; as environmental destruction, racism,
and division sow authoritarian politics, we all the more need to stand
in solidarity with the people of Myanmar. Their quest for justice
should be recognized as well as our own. •

Endnotes

* “Chevron Exits Myanmar With Withdrawal From Natural Gas Project,
Kimberly Kao and Ben Otto
[[link removed]],” Wall
Street Journal, April 9, 2024; “New Year, Old Tactics: Myanmar’s
Junta’s Amnesty Skips Political Prisoners
[[link removed]],” The
Irrawaddy, April 18, 2024; “New US Sanctions on MOGE: Hitting the
generals where it hurts?
[[link removed]]”
Mike Haack, Frontier Myanmar, December 21, 2023.
* International Trade Union Confederation, “Khaing Zar Aung
expresses ‘honour and sadness’ for global rights prize
[[link removed]],” 4/22/2024.
* “Burma Executes Four Activists as Resistance to Military
Government Grows Since 2021
[[link removed]],”
Maung Zarni interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Democracy
Now.
* George Katsiaficas, Asia’s Unknown Uprisings, Vol. 2: People
Power in the Philippines, Burma, Tibet, China, Taiwan, Bangladesh,
Indonesia, 1947 – 2009, PM Press, Oakland, 2013
* According to Progressive Voice Myanmar “One year following the
1988 pro-democracy uprising, the former military junta changed the
country’s name from Burma to Myanmar overnight. Progressive Voice
uses the term ‘Myanmar’ in acknowledgement that most people of the
country use this term. However, the deception of inclusiveness and the
historical process of coercion by the former State Peace and
Development Council military regime into usage of ‘Myanmar’ rather
than ‘Burma’ without the consent of the people is recognized and
not forgotten. Thus, under certain circumstances, ‘Burma’ is
used.” [I have followed the usage of my sources – ks.]
* Labor Link: A Publication of IUF North America, May-Nov. 1996, #
8, p15; Dec. 1996 – May 1997, # 9 pp 6-7; “Trade War Over
Burma, In These Times, June 13 [or Feb. 17] 1997; Linda Greenhouse,
The Supreme Court: The Foreign Policy Issue; Justices Overturn a State
Law on Myanmar, New York Times, June 20, 2000.
* “Historic Advance for Universal Human Rights: Unocal to
Compensate Burmese Villagers
[[link removed]],” Center
for Constitutional Rights, October 23, 2007.
* Labor Link, op cit.
* For a thumbnail sketch of Burma/Myanmar’s history see: Dinyar
Godrej, A Short History of Burma
[[link removed]], New
Internationalist, April 18, 2008. Background for developments since
the 1960s are discussed in Reading Myanmar: U Nu and His Prison Novel
[[link removed]],
Tony Waters, Irrawaddy, June 5, 2024, and Thant-Myint U: What Next
for Burma?
[[link removed]], London
Review of Books, March 18, 2021. For a fuller history see also his The
Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy
in the 21st Century, Norton Books, 2019.
* George Orwell, Burmese Days, a Harvest/HJB Book, 1962, p 69.
* Building a Nation: Goals for the Future,
[[link removed]] U
Thant, Atlantic Magazine, February 1958.
* Maung Zarni, op. cit.
* See Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
[[link removed]], Knopf Canada, 1999.
* Frederick Clairmonte and John Cavanagh, Merchants of Drink:
Transnational Control of World Beverages, Third World Network
(Malaysia), 1988 and Susan George, The Debt Boomerang: How Third World
Debt Harms Us All, Pluto Press with the Transnational Institute,
London, 1992 are books that reported and analyzed these developments
as they were taking shape. Kevin Watkins, “GATT and the Third World:
fixing the rules.” Race and Class Vol 14 # 1, July – September
1992 appeared in an issue of the journal focused on how financial
institutions were undermining economic decolonization initiatives.
* Michael Manley, Up the Down Escalator: Development and the
International Economy – A Jamaican Case Study, Howard University
Press, Washington DC, 1987; Global Challenge: From Crisis to
Co-operation: Breaking the North-South Stalemate, Report of the
Socialist International Committee on Economic Policy, chaired by
Michael Manley; President Willy Brandt, Pan Books, London and Sydney,
1985; Mike Allen and Kurt Stand, “Comment,” Global Labour, Issue
1, May 1993.
* Myanmar Labour Market Profile 2019
[[link removed]],
Danish Trade Union Development Agency.
* “Want to stop Myanmar military atrocities? Sanction oil and gas
[[link removed]],”
Myra Dahgaypaw, Myanmar Now, August 26, 2022.
* Articles touching on these issues include: “The End of
Myanmar’s Resource Boom Could Doom the Junta
[[link removed]],”
Guillaume De Langre, Frontier Myanmar, December 19, 2023;
“Inverting ASEAN’s Diplomatic Inertia on Myanmar
[[link removed]],”
David Scott Mathieson, Myanmar Now, June 12, 2024; “Escalating
Violence and Civilian Attacks in Myanmar
[[link removed]],
UN, Progressive Voice Myanmar, June 6, 2024; “United in Inaction
[[link removed]],”
Progressive Voice, Progressive Voice Myanmar, April 12, 2024; “Open
Letter Calling on the UN General Assembly to Show Strong Leadership in
Response to Deepening Crisis in Myanmar
[[link removed]],
427 Myanmar Civil Society Organizations, Progressive Voice Myanmar,
October 25, 2021.
* The National Unity Government Cannot Ignore Past Injustices if it
Truly Seeks to Free Myanmar from Military Rule
[[link removed]],
by Khin Ohmar and Thinzar Shunlei, Myanmar Now, August 24, 2021.

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