Opening address: Helen Sullivan and Nick Cheesman

12:30-1300

Join Dean Helen Sullivan of ANU’s College of Asia and the Pacific and Nick Cheesman of ANU’s Myanmar Research Centre as they officially open conference proceedings for 2021.

Keynote address: Yanghee Lee

13:00-14:00

Yanghee Lee of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar (SAC-M) will give the Update’s keynote address, chaired by Jonathan Liljeblad of the Australian National University.

Panel 1a: The Coup

14:10-15:30

1. Elliott Prasse-Freeman (National University of Singapore):

   'UN Please Ignore Us’: Addressee Design in Myanmar’s Ongoing Anti-coup Uprising

2. Nicola Williams (ANU):

   The Contested State of Burma: Conflict, Coups, and the Federalism Promise

3. Samuel Hmung (ANU):

   New Friends, Old Enemies: Politics of EAOs after the Coup

Chair: Jonathan Liljeblad (ANU)

Panel Abstracts:

‘UN, Please Ignore Us': Addressee-design in Myanmar’s ongoing anti-coup uprising

Elliott Prasse-Freeman, National University Singapore

In the massive Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) uprising against Myanmar’s recent military coup, many of the protest messages appearing across the country seem to seek addressees beyond Myanmar’s borders. Either in terms of substantive content (posters that ask foreign militaries to “save us”) or formal structure (enormous messages – written on pavement, mountains, and plains, and often through human bodies constructing mass ornaments – that cannot be read by those constructing them), signs appear to appeal to transcendent figures: the UN, the USA, or a vague “international community.” However, closer inspection of the way these signs are consumed, commented upon, and circulated – on Burmese Facebook by Burmese users – reveals additional dynamics regarding addressees and addressee design structure. I argue that these signs operate in a boomerang fashion, in the sense that for some Burmese protesters these signs do not actually require external mediators (no “international community” needs to confirm receipt; indeed, that "community's" refusal of uptake might progressively denude the images of their “demanding” capacity); instead the signs are taken up locally, where their reiteration conducts political work: they either symbolically assault Myanmar’s generals (by appealing to other sovereigns), or produce a distance from the immediacy of struggle against street violence to inscribe on the coup itself summary statements about it (‘Save Myanmar’, ‘Federal Democracy,’ and, of course, ‘Fuck the Coup’). This latter archive-in-formation project produces a field of joint attention in which Myanmar people talk to one another, foregrounding common enemies (generals and collaborators) but also introducing political dissonance that must be addressed: the sign ‘We Want Democracy’ posted on one hill is clarified and challenged by the demand for ‘Self-Determination’ inscribed on another, demanding: what kind of “democracy” will this be? After tracking how this tension has compelled a rapid evolution of the anti-coup movement's politics, the paper concludes by noting how the heterogeneity of addresses is mimicked by the heterogeneity of political claims and social identities embodied within the CDM itself.

The Contested State of Burma: Conflict, Coups, and the Federalism Promise 

Nicola Williams, Australian National University

Vicious cycles of protracted conflict, coups, and dictatorship by the Myanmar military have motivated democracy movements and armed rebellion. The military’s wholesale production of a Bamar Buddhist ultra-nationalist ideology across decades of nation-building, state-building and warfare has driven opposing ethno-nationalism and alternative state-making processes which elevate the ‘peace’ promise of federalism. The latest incarnation of attempted military rule via the 2021 coup has augmented parallel processes of state-making, with elected officials seeking to gain support from ethnic groups in creating a government of ‘national unity’ and path towards democratic federalism. This paper navigates evidence and theory within the dynamic context of conflict and contemporary state formation in Burma/Myanmar, examining the continuum of contest for the state. It describes how coalescing dynamics from domestic nation-building, state-building, and warfare, have institutionalised fragmented identities and contest along cultural, territorial and ethnic lines, with more minority groups making statehood claims. It argues that divisions in ethno-nationalisms, existing on both national and local scales, create fault lines for ongoing federalism debates and design. A challenge for federalism proposals heavily reliant on ethnic-based federalism will be overcoming, and not recreating, the military’s divisive legacy.

New friends, old enemies: Politics of Ethnic Armed Organisations after the Myanmar Coup - Samuel Hmung, Australian National University.  

This research paper examines the stances of eighteen ethnic armed organizations (EAO) and their coalitions in Myanmar. Has the coup brought these groups closer together against their common enemy? Or has the coup deepened their disunity, and the likelihood of the formation of the federal army? In order to identify the post-coup stances of different EAOs, this paper analyses EAOs’ statements, activities and engagement with the military through a framework based on two dimensions: political and military. Mapping of the EAOs’ positions indicates that their positions can be broadly divided into four categories. There are: groups that are in open armed conflict with the military; groups that condemned the coup publicly but are reluctant to endorse military means; groups that want to take advantage of a military that is overstretched by domestic and international pressure; and groups that maintain the status quo by remaining silent. The two-dimensional analysis suggests that the coup has deepened the EAOs disunity despite the widespread public expectation that it would unite different forces facing a common enemy. EAOs responses toward the coup and post-coup stances no longer depend on their coalition, nor on whether or not they signed the NCA. The EAO’s contradictory positions have also diverged from the prospect of a new armed alliance or a federal army, which the anti-coup protesters longed for at the beginning of the coup.

Panel 1b: Conflict and resistance

15:40-17:00

1. Khin Khin Mra and Deborah Livingstone:

   Women’s resistance and the potential for transformative change: how women’s movements challenged gendered social norms during the fight against the military coup in Myanmar

2. Than Tun and Soe Lunn:

   Navigating between the Pandemic and Civil Conflicts: The Rakhine Civil Society Response

3. Michael Dunford (ANU):

   Centering heterogeneity in Myanmar’s Civil Disobedience Movement

Chair: Toni Erskine (ANU)

Panel 1B Abstracts:

Women’s Resistance and the potential for transformative change: How women’s movements challenged gendered social norms during the fight against the military coup in Myanmar

Khin Khin Mra and Deborah Livingstone.  

Myanmar is at a critical juncture in the changing political landscape since the Myanmar Spring revolution. The protests are not simply against a “coup” but a challenge to transform the unequal state and fragmented society created over decades of military domination. Women’s movements provided a challenge to militarized masculinity and patriarchal culture in the mass protests. A transition to a state that guarantees women’s rights became possible with the adoption of the Federal Democracy Charter by the alliance opposing the military coup. While the final outcome of the revolution is still uncertain, it seems Myanmar’s revolution provides an opportunity to advance equality and federal democracy. Using a feminist institutionalist lens, this paper explores how the Myanmar state framed and dominated women’s roles and participation and how the women’s movement sought to challenge the military imposed institutions in their fight against the military coup. A qualitative analysis draws on a literature review, and interviews with active women participants of the protests. This paper makes a key contribution to improved understanding of nuances of formal and informal gendered institutions to generate ideas for the women’s moment and policy makers to harness this critical juncture as a stepping stone towards gender equality reform in Myanmar.

Navigating between the Pandemic and the civil conflicts: the Rakhine Civil Society Response

Than Tun and Soe Lunn, People for Sittwe.  

In August 2020, Rakhine State occupied headline news as it experienced the surge in COVID-19 cases. This surge further stretched the already strained health system in the state from the ongoing humanitarian and development challenges. The local Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) were active players in responding to this COVID-19 surge as well as the previous pandemic management since early 2020. This pandemic response of the Rakhine CSOs occurred amid challenges from the continuous and intense fighting involving the Arakan Army as well as the persistent tension between religious communities. This presentation maps how these CSOs responded to these challenges, focusing on the changes in the Rakhine CSO sector since 2011, including the return of NGO professionals from exile and the localisation of the humanitarian sector from 2018. We will outline the dynamic transformation of the grass-root organisations as well as the local professionals. We will describe how they relate to broader international and national events, including the 2021 coup. Using individual and organisational case studies, we will present how Rakhine CSOs are rooted in both Rakhine nationalism and international development discourse. As a collaboration between a CSO practitioner and a researcher, we will present lessons learned from the recent transformations of the local CSO sector, broader Rakhine society and Myanmar as a whole.

Centering heterogeneity in Myanmar’s Civil Disobedience Movement

Michael Dunford, Australian National University

The Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) here refers to participants in the vast array of strikes, street demonstrations, and other direct actions carried out in protest of Myanmar’s 2021 coup d’etat. Despite a decline in media coverage, these actions are ongoing. One of the most remarkable aspects of the CDM is its kaleidoscopic heterogeneity: in Yangon, Bamar nationalists have marched with Muslim activists; massive demonstrations have taken place in regional towns (and especially in Myanmar’s “ethnic” States) on a scale unprecedented by the movements of 1988 and 2007. Drawing on Chen’s (2010) “deimperialist” analysis of postcolonial Asian politics, this paper seeks to understand what precisely is at stake in the tension between the repressive postcolonial state—embodied by the Tatmadaw—and the heterogeneous anticolonial public(s) that form the CDM. The Tatmadaw’s claim on Myanmar’s political future is based on a “rickety yet repressive” (Callahan 2002) colonial model. CDM, by contrast, represents a vast array of contradictory claims, which range from liberal democracy to federalism to anarchism; some CDM participants even call for discipline, echoing Tatmadaw rhetoric. This paper will argue that the incredible diversity and apparent incoherence of the CDM’s demands is exactly its strength: as long as its demands can never be precisely pinned down, it can never be absorbed into an apparently reformed (but still violent) version of the Tatmadaw. The question that remains unanswerable is whether the CDM will be able to continue striking long enough to support the emergence of an alternative state structure.

Invited Speaker: Khin Zaw Win

17:15-18:00

Khin Zaw Win, the director of Yangon’s Tampadipa institute, will cap off the day’s discussions through a conversation with Nicholas Farrelly (University of Tasmania).