INTRODUCTION

A wide range of justice providers, co-existing with the official legal system, operates in Myanmar. While the state's is legally the only court system in the country and customary laws and ethnic justice systems are not recognized, it does not enjoy a monopoly in the actual resolution of most cases. Ordinary people distrust and fear the official system and perceive courts as expensive, slow, distant, intrusive, and therefore the least preferred option in efforts to seek justice. As a result, village elders, religious leaders, and such local administrators as ward, village or village tract leaders are the main providers of everyday justice. In ceasefire and conflict-affected areas, the justice systems of ethnic armed organizations also play a pervasive role.

Recognizing this pluralism is particularly important because the vast majority of people across ethnicities and in both rural and urban areas of Myanmar prefer seeking solutions to disputes through local informal mechanisms, and between 70 and 90 per cent of respondents in recent surveys say that disputes are best resolved within their own communities. But be that as it may, systems of justice at the community level have not received much attention from scholars and the policy community.

This paper draws information and data from research undertaken as part of the “Everyday Justice and Security in the Myanmar Transition” (EverJust) project between 2016 and 2018. This was based on interviews with more than 400 people on observation of dispute resolution and on a quantitative survey of 602 respondents in selected villages and wards of Yangon, Karen State and Mon State. These include non-conflict areas administered by the Myanmar government, areas under the de facto governance of the main ethnic armed organizations in Karen and Mon States, and areas that are conflict-affected or under mixed governance.

LEGAL PLURALISM NOT SUFFICIENTLY RECOGNIZED

Access to justice is crucial to the attainment of peace and development, according to the UN and other international agencies. If people believe that adequate mechanisms are in place to provide such access, they are more likely to trust and approve of the post-conflict ordering of their society. The need for access to justice not only means addressing flagrant large-scale injustices, such as past atrocities and the deprivation of rights; securing access to justice in the everyday—understood here as remedies and reparations for grievances, crimes and disputes—is also necessary.

Since Burma won its independence in 1948, successive Burmese governments have confronted claims of multiple sub-state nationalist groups to the right of greater autonomy and separate independent states. The common position taken by all Burmese central governments is that appeasing such demands could create a domino effect leading to the breakup of the country, and thus it is believed that these movements must be contained as much as possible. Concern over losing political power and control of economic resources is another reason why the Burmese governments have been reluctant to devolve power to the sub-national levels.

This chapter assesses policies and practices implemented by successive governments toward sub-state nationalist groups in post-colonial Burma. It stresses, in particular, the Shan, Kachin, Karen, Kayah, Mon, Arakan, and Chin – the seven largest sub-state nationalist groups, whose names correspond to the current seven states in Burma. The first part of the chapter sets out historical paths that laid the foundation for Burma's multiple nations and analyzes the emergence of sub-state nationalist movements. The period after independence saw the central authorities attempting to appease secessionist demands by forming three ethnically based states and by giving them considerable civil and political freedom and the right to express ethnic identity. However, a lack of consensus within the ruling coalition (the majority of whom later took up arms against the state), failure to implement greater autonomy at the regional levels, and weak state infrastructure handicapped the government's ability to handle competing claims made by sub-state nationalist groups.

Introduction

The Myanmar military regime's harsh crackdown on popular demonstrations in September 2007 has generated intense international condemnation as well as other responses. Most of the criticisms and policy proposals offered in these responses, however, have focused upon political reform. Relatively little in the ways of proposals or even concern has dealt with economic reform, the lack of which was the main grievance of the demonstrations and protests. This article seeks to shed light on the roots of the current economic crisis while also analysing a number of measures taken by the post-1988 military regimes in order to find ways to remedy their difficult and indeed perennial economic problems. It will assess the rationale behind these varying measures and their impacts upon Myanmar citizens, the economy, and the regime's survival and future prospects. The article emphasizes the need for simultaneously devising new strategies to put pressure upon the Myanmar military regime to undertake economic reforms that not only address inefficiencies and mismanagements, but most particularly resonant with the needs of the majority of the population in Myanmar.

Aftermath of the September Demonstrations

The Myanmar Government came under intense international pressure when it severely repressed, in September 2007, the public protests and demonstrations organized in response to the raising of subsidized fuel prices. The majority of international demands that followed in the wake of this repression, however, have been aimed at political rather than economic reforms. Most prominent among these have been calls for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, and an insistence upon opening dialogues among various ethnic opposition parties, the NLD (National League for Democracy), and the SPDC (State Peace and Development Council). Neither the government nor any of the international groups or actors, however, has managed to come up with concrete, workable, or sustainable plans to solve the economic crisis in ways that could or would address the needs of the country's various impoverished communities. Instead, the Myanmar government puts the blame on Western economic sanctions for the nation's economic woes.