By - Zin Linn
Amidst constant political insecurity across Burma (Myanmar) due to the Burma Army’s offensive war against the ethnic armed groups, Zau Lawn from ‘The Kachin Research Group’ has written a vivid research-paper explaining the norms of military system in the name of the “Disciplined Democracy” which stands for the policy of the newly civil dressed military government under the leadership of President Thein Sein.
Moreover, the paper underscores the effort and genuine collaboration of Ethnic nationalities - Kachins, Shan and Chin - in view of the 1947 Panglong accord. The paper also criticizes the current situation that the implementation of the Panglong belief in formulation of a Federal Union, has been systematically downgraded till today. The Burmese government in power used to say that “the era of Panglong is over.
In one clause, the research paper says: “Having manipulated the power to rest only in Burmans and constructed Burman nationalism based on chauvinism and jingoism, the Burman groups grasped both the central and the state power rejecting the provision of sharing power by means of the Federalism. Moreover, all the “rights and privileges” provided are cut off. Instead the Burmans in power are treating Ethnic nationalities as their alien and enemy.”
The researcher recounted about the civil war between Burmese Military and the KIA. As said by the paper, the almost seventeen year old cease?fire agreement between the Burmese Military and the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) completely collapsed once Thein Sein’s troops invaded the KIO’s territory at Sang Gang and seized the KIA’s Bum Sen post on the 12th of June, 2011.
It occurred amidst having been officially warned repeatedly by the KIO in order to avoid the civil war across the land. The Sang Gang war broke out on 9 June as a defensive action against the Burmese military troops which fired first toward the KIA. The conflict lasted for three days and nights. This war made the KIO declare “civil war between Burmese Military troops and the KIA across Kachinland and beyond”, on 12 June 2011, the paper explained.
It also continues its explanation that for the sake of security, the KIA has destroyed a dozen bridges used for major communication of government troops. As the war has spread out across the area, it is assumed that there is high number of causalities, particularly to the government side.
The paper points out that during the civil war, attention is given towards a particular issue of Burman Nationalism on the bases of the government’s troops’ ill-treatment. Burmese soldiers committed inhumane torture, rape, dehumanization and killing of local Kachins in the war zone, violating the UN Declaration of Human rights and the international law for prisoners of war.
According to ‘The Kachin Research Group’, the analysis is based upon accessible data form radio news, news papers, messages and interviews. The first category is the analytical synthesis to the policy of waging war upon KIO by Thein Sein’s troops as the state?run, the New Light of Myanmar “blames Kachin rebels for fighting” in the aftermath of the week long war. The state-paper claims that the fight at the KIA’s Bum Sen post was its “inevitable reaction to the ethnic Kachin rebels, who fired first, in order to protect a major Chinese?built hydroelectric power project.”
The research-paper says in a place: “This wording “the ethnic Kachin rebels” and “protection of a major Chinese?built hydropower project” is to be considered logically and realistically and reflect the plan and fundamental policy of Burmanization, exercised as Burmese Nationalism. Obviously, it indicates the government troops, sent by Thein Sein, are an official body deployed in order to protect the state?run project for the prospect of economic development with military might and KIA as “the rebels”, which resist the state’s policy and its project.”
It says that Ethnic nations like Kachin, Kayin and so on are not to be condemned by accusing them as “the separatists” from Union of Burma. Rather Kachins have struggled for federal democracy from the hands of consecutive Burmese military nationalists. The current government also represents the neocolonial power within the respective ethnic soil. The spirit of friendship and or brotherhood established between General Aung San and Kachin Duwas could activate the Panglong agreement. But at present, the research-paper says, Kachins are treated as the “enemy” of the Burman majority in various ways.
In conclusion it says: “Therefore, it is not the time to stick too much on a certain nationalism which leads one to be disloyal to one’s country. Instead, the right nationalism has to be the act of revolution, identification of a common political policy which could render hope, security, prosperity, peace and dignity for all. Therefore, the nationalism here has to be a civilized ideology, which is the real power in the contemporary era, resisting all uncivilized manner of discrimination, ethnic extermination and domination, not to love a certain group of people and to campaign on a mission in its interest by misuse of its power, particularly with military might.”
Burma’s sixty-four year-old Historic Panglong Agreement has been ignored by the successive Burmese military regimes up to this day. The said agreement has been ignored by the current President Thein Sein government which is also under military control.
The question of Panglong Agreement nowadays become a key point in the contemporary history of Burma’s politics.
“All the armed forces in the union shall be under the command of the Defense Services,” says section 337 of the 2008 constitution.” It means ethnic armed troops must be under state control and the union government will not allow self-determination of the ethnic people. Equality of ethnic minorities with the Burmese majority was out of the question to the new constitution.
Aung San Suu Kyi told the media a day after her release that she would like to call for a second Panglong Conference that is fitting to the 21st century perspective.
Without addressing and honoring the ethnic people’s political aspirations, the new military-controlled President Thein Sein government will be toothless to stop political and civil strife throughout ethnic areas. National reconciliation and ethnic self-determination are two sides of a coin.
- Asian Tribune -
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