While the previous chapter focused on room to manoeuvre for civil society under authoritarian rule, the following chapters describe how Myanmar civil society actors framed their advocacy messages towards an international audience in their search for political, moral and financial support. In contrast to the volatile ‘under the radar’ activities described earlier, the transnational advocacy activities of the democracy movement called for a clear and simple message concerning the social and political problems in Myanmar and the question of who was responsible and how such problems could be addressed. Social movement theory holds that human rights advocacy messages are only partly determined by factual situations and feasible solutions. Other factors, such as the susceptibility of the target audience to certain messages, also play a role.

In contrast to many actors working under the radar during Myanmar’s early years of transition, as well as the more open engagement attempts of the Third Force towards the military, representatives of the democracy movement continued to openly oppose the government. The distinction between proponents and opponents of engaging the government, moreover, became more pronounced as the political transition unfolded. The occurrence of cyclone Nargis in 2008 not only led to a gradual emancipation of civil society actors based inside the country, but also resulted in the emergence of contrasting ‘frames’ about the benefits of distributing local aid. These frames became even more noticeable after elections had been announced for 2010, which further polarized both the political and the civil society landscape. Parallel to developments in the political sphere, those affiliated with the Third Force chose to call for participation in the elections, while those affiliated with the democracy movement boycotted the elections. This dichotomy was accentuated as both proponents and opponents of the elections attempted to reach out to the international community to influence foreign positions towards the Myanmar government. The contestations around the 2010 elections will be discussed in Chapter 6.

Although the elections formed the focal point of the disagreement over the government’s ‘Roadmap to Democracy’, some of the varying frames had already become visible in earlier debates. These include the question of economic sanctions, the evaluation of the 2008 constitution and the distribution of aid in the aftermath of cyclone Nargis.

With the exception of 2011–20, Burma/Myanmar has the questionable honour of being the longest running military dictatorship in the world. The consecutive military governments that came to power in 1962 and 1988 were each known for their severe human rights violations, and the military leadership that took power in the 2021 coup has even surpassed their violent legacies. This chapter provides a brief historical overview, explaining how contestations over territory, political structures and ethnic minority rights have been recurring since before colonial independence and provided a motive for the military to continue its rule. Pre-existing tensions as a result of ethnic diversity had been exacerbated during British colonialism, which ended in 1948, and were far from solved when a military coup in 1962 brought an end to the recently established parliamentary democracy. Nationalist sentiments intensified as ethnic nationalities struggled for self-determination, while Buddhist nationalism also surfaced periodically, re-appearing in the course of the political transition period that started in 2010. Respective periods of nation building resulted in both extensive military rule and the search for a Burman Buddhist identity at the expense of indigenous minorities.

British colonialism and nationalist resistance

Between 1824 and 1886, the British took control of the territory now known as Myanmar during three Anglo-Burmese wars and engaged in violent pacification campaigns towards the local population. The Burmans, in turn, had come to dominate the earlier inhabitants of the territory, including the Karen and the Mon (Harvey, 1925; Lieberman, 1984). Burma initially became part of British India and from 1937 was a separate colony. In their efforts to formally map territorial boundaries, the British brought together a number of previously unaffiliated ethnic and linguistic groups. A division was created between the central area inhabited by the majority Burman population and the current ethnic states in the border areas, where bureaucratic rule by the British remained largely absent. The colonizers brought in staff for administrative positions from elsewhere and treated Burma as a less advanced and less profitable part of British India, which increasingly upset the Burmese population. In her book Making Enemies, Mary Callahan (2003) describes how the indigenous population was treated as an internal threat to colonial rule rather than inhabitants entitled to protection and inclusion in institution building.

As part of the military’s ‘Roadmap to Democracy’, elections were scheduled for 2010. Once the date of 7 November was announced in August that year, a framing contest around the elections took off. Those who saw the elections as an opportunity made a strategic decision to emphasize the political and societal changes inside the country, while opponents chose to emphasize the lack of significant political change and the need to maintain pressure on the government. Both camps drew selectively on ‘marketing strategies’ to emphasize their points and steer developments in the desired direction. Moreover, both parties claimed to act for the larger good of the country in advancing their preferred strategies towards democratization. For foreigners, too, the ‘in-between’ position became ‘both more appealing and less tenable amid the polarization surrounding the 2010 elections’ (Metro, 2011: 10). Those who were optimistic about the increased space granted by the government were not alone in their expectation that the elections would bring about further change: research on Malaysia two years earlier, for example, shows that elections may offer unique opportunities for political engagement by civil society in repressive environments, and may lead to a re-assessment of relationships between politicians, the state and the people (Lee et al, 2010). For many people in Myanmar, the 2010 elections would be the first time they could vote at all, thus providing an opportunity to discuss politics more openly in the context of voter education (Lidauer, 2012).

Yet the 2010 elections and the surrounding controversies also provided a unique opportunity for those opposing the military government to campaign against its political framework. In the course of 2010, a large election boycott campaign emerged consisting of two elements: a domestic component, calling on people inside the country not to vote (though there was some confusion as to the actual goal of the campaign, as discussed subsequently), and an international component, calling on other governments not to acknowledge the election results as legitimate. Although an election boycott by opposition parties is not uncommon in politically restrictive environments (Kagwanja, 2005; Beaulieu, 2006), the campaign in Myanmar was additionally characterized by a high level of involvement by civil society organizations (CSOs) that took the opportunity to publicize their goals.

For all the political sensitivities and organizational rivalries discussed earlier, civil society’s room to manoeuvre in Myanmar, as in any country, is conditional on having the funds available to carry out activities. This chapter describes both the opportunities provided and the challenges posed by foreign donor assistance to civil society. Although civil society actors in Myanmar have become skilled at organizing activities with relatively low budgets, many organizations, especially those without a clear religious affiliation, suffered from the pervasive poverty levels in the country and turned to outside funders for assistance. This partial dependence on foreign donors and the sudden rise in donor funding during the political transition period posed a number of challenges not unlike those described in development literature on other recipient countries. Senders of aid have been accused of prioritizing their own political, economic and geo-strategic interests over the interests of beneficiaries, of distributing aid insufficiently and inconsistently, and of paying lip service to values such as development and democracy while actually pursuing economic agendas. At the same time, donors have sometimes provided vital financial and moral support in environments where the country’s own government and local actors are incapable or unwilling to do so. The pervasive role of the military in Myanmar posed a number of unique challenges to donors and recipient organizations alike, resulting in particularly vehement debates around the politicization of aid.

Although funding for civil society can come from a number of sources, government assistance and private donations from inside the country are often ruled out in contexts of pervasive poverty levels and repressed civic space. As wealth in those contexts is often acquired in close collaboration with political and business elites, the more affluent sections of society tend to be reluctant to support activities that might challenge the status quo (Parks, 2008). Moreover, in authoritarian countries many organizations try to stay under the radar, which complicates their ability to fundraise (Cleary, 1997; Wells-Dang, 2012). This has certainly been the case in Myanmar; as a respondent commented in 2015: “I think we should also do fundraising inside the country. But those who have the money are the cronies.”

After five years of contentious rule, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party secured its largest victory to date in the elections of November 2020. The military alleged voter fraud, despite widespread evidence to the contrary, and put pressure on the Union Election Commission (UEC) to hold off with the formation of a new government. When it became clear that the new parliament would convene as planned, Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing staged a coup on the morning of 1 February 2021. The military took control of parliament in Naypyidaw, imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other elected NLD leaders, and took over all powers under the name of the State Administration Council (SAC). The SAC appointed its own ministers as well as a new UEC, which subsequently confirmed mass voter fraud and cancelled the election results (Reny, 2022).

The 2021 military coup was a major setback in the transition process and a big surprise to the international community, which had largely underestimated the continued role of the military in Myanmar politics. The move was less surprising to local observers, as the military had been raising doubts about the election process and the role of the NLD-appointed UEC since mid-2020. In the months after the elections, at least 45 demonstrations were held protesting against presumed electoral fraud, mostly organized by the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), which reportedly paid participants to demonstrate (Bynum, 2021). Although the 2008 constitution contains a provision for a military coup, the 2021 coup was widely considered to contravene that provision. Min Aung Hlaing would have been forced to retire as head of the military in June 2021 and had likely hoped to become president. The NLD’s electoral victory deprived him of that opportunity and also posed a risk to the many military-controlled enterprises. The increasing number of international prosecutions of human rights violations involving the military probably also made its leadership less confident of a secure future (Jordt et al, 2021: 4).

The military initially seemed set on organizing elections mid-2023 in an effort to establish a legal basis for continued SAC rule. However, in early 2023 it extended the nationwide state of emergency without mentioning a new date for the election, which constitutionally should be held within six months after termination of a state of emergency (International Crisis Group, 2023b).

This book has explored the forms and functions of organized civil society as it developed before, during and after Myanmar’s political transition period between 2011 and 2020. Starting from the pre-2010 era, when the country was relatively isolated and civil society presumed largely absent, I traced back the origins of some of the organizations and movements that became visible to outside observers in the early years of political transition. I showed that both welfare organizations and democracy activists that gained prominence in the 1990s have partial roots in forces that emerged around independence from British colonialism. The military’s top-down ‘Roadmap to Democracy’ from 2003 onwards generated opportunities for some civil society actors to engage more openly in political debates, especially around the three national elections that were held between 2010 and 2020. As this book testifies, some people in Myanmar experienced increased room to manoeuvre, while others, particularly in the ethnic areas, saw their opportunities decreasing. The military coup of February 2021 brought an end to this decade of political transition, and the resistance in response to renewed violent repression led to the emergence of a number of younger and more progressive groups that sought out new alliances both within and beyond Myanmar.

When discussing the forms and functions of civil society, this book has focused on two types of contestation. The first, which dominates the country’s modern history, is contested political power and resistance against the military, both in central Myanmar and in the ethnic border regions. The impact of over five decades of military rule on the country and its (civil) society cannot be overstated. The formally military-ruled era from 1962 until 2010 and the power struggle between the military, the people and their elected representatives which has intensified since 2021 have been characterized by widespread repression, violence and destruction of the economy and social services. A series of repressive laws, some of which stemmed from colonial times, criminalized most forms of civic association from the 1960s onwards, while organizations that continued to operate often worked under the radar and were subject to intrusive surveillance. The arbitrary application of rules and the absence of an independent judiciary made people in Myanmar subject to the whims of the military, leading to widespread fear, distrust and self-censorship.

In order to analyse the activities and advocacy positions of various civil society groups (as covered in Chapters 4 to 6), it is important to establish the identity factors that influence people’s lived experiences and help explain their stance towards the government and other actors. By employing this intersectional lens, moreover, we can explore how certain minority identities interact to create multiple forms of marginalization. The fault lines in Myanmar that are most relevant for analysing contemporary civil society are ethnicity and religion, generation and gender, and class, including poverty levels and the rural/ urban divide. Furthermore, this chapter covers the division between independent and government-associated civil society organizations (CSOs), and between organizations inside and outside the country. Lastly, it will reflect on the elitist nature of some CSOs and their relationship with grassroots activism.

Fault line 1: ethnicity and religion

As discussed earlier, religious organizations have historically played a key role in Burmese society, where around 90 per cent of the population is Theravada Buddhist. Buddhist monasteries have been providing social services such as schools and orphanages in central Myanmar since long before any of the ‘Western type’ non-governmental organizations (NGOs) appeared, and Christian organizations (consisting predominantly, but not exclusively of ethnic nationalities) have long been active in the ethnic states. In fact, a distinction between religious and secular organizations in the context of Myanmar would be rather artificial, as many actors working outside faith-based organizations nevertheless identify with a particular religious group.

The role of Buddhist monks

Buddhist monks (together with nuns referred to as sangha) have gained prominence in the Western imagination of Burmese civil society, especially since the 2007 uprising in which they played a significant and internationally visible role. The role of Buddhism as a force in contemporary Myanmar politics, however, continues to be subject to debate (Jordt, 2007). Aung-Thwin (2013), for example, argues that the Western scholarly and media emphasis on politically motivated monks is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the sangha, which remains predominantly apolitical. According to Aung-Thwin, monks only made up 10 per cent of those involved in the 2007 uprising, and the uprising itself was heavily influenced by external (mainly American) funding.

This chapter explores the precarious experiences of retired workers who used to work in a former state-owned enterprise. As Vietnam shifted from a planned to a market economy, the regulation of labor relations changed from the socialist social contract to a legal regime operating in line with market principles. As a result of these changes, workers in the case-study enterprise experienced less economic security and deteriorating working conditions. The chapter demonstrates how their discontents and dissatisfaction at work reveal the gap between socialist ideals of workplace justice and post-reform reality. These workers turned to informal and corrupt practices, which operate in a vague, ill-defined area of the law, to be granted early retirement and claim benefits that they perceive as deserved and just. Yet the actual benefits that workers have received fall short of their expectations and make them vulnerable to poverty and further exploitation in their old age.