No room for
dissent
With a year to go until Myanmar’s next general
election, political activism is being pushed to the
periphery. Charlotte England reports.‘M
any political activists are
lying low,’ say Thinzar
Shunlei Yi, frustrated. ‘There
are not many of us speaking up any
more. We are always afraid.’ She reels
off obstacles to campaigning for political
change in Myanmar.
Despite decades of oppressive military
rule, Myanmar has a strong activist tradi-
tion. Under the junta, which controlled
the country outright until 2010 when
political reforms began slowly to emerge,
thousands risked their lives to fight for
democracy and human rights. The nar-
rative then was simple; iconic freedom
leader Aung San Suu Kyi served as a moral
compass, binding an activist resistance.
It may have been dangerous to engage in
politics, but it was more straightforward:
you knew your enemy, you knew your
idol, and you had hundreds of thousands
of comrades who agreed with you.
But since Suu Kyi won a landslide
victory in a 2015 election that many saw
as the culmination of a successful democ-
ratization process, the vast majority of
Myanmar’s political activists have either
gone quiet or been absorbed into the
country’s booming charity sector, leaving
only a tiny number of dissenting voices to
hold her to account.
In the four years since Suu Kyi became
Myanmar’s de facto leader, an aggressiveFEATUREreligious nationalism has gained pace,
fuelling abuses that amount to genocide
against the country’s Rohingya Muslims.
Meanwhile, in the north, the army has
continued to commit atrocities against
the Kachin and other ethnic groups.
Suu Kyi has responded by placing new
restrictions on freedom of expression.
For international observers, Suu Kyi
has fallen from her pedestal, but within
Myanmar there is currently no major
campaign to defend the Rohingya, let
alone a leftwing party to stand against
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democ-
racy (NLD) when the country next goes
to the polls in November 2020.
Thinzar Shunlei Yi says that political
activists who once idolized Suu Kyi are
now disillusioned, isolated and unsure
how to proceed. ‘The situation has
deteriorated since 2015. We have more
enemies now. Political activists are being
attacked by the current ruling party, as
well as the opposition, the military and
the ultra-nationalists.’Freedom of expression
In 2015, poet Maung Saungkha became
the first person to be jailed under an
anti-defamation law known as Article
66(d). He spent six months in a notori-
ous prison in Yangon for posting a poem
on Facebook about having a tattoo ofthen-president Thein Sein on his penis.
Soon after his release, he founded activist
group Athan (‘voice’ in Burmese) to cam-
paign for freedom of expression.
Although it was the USDP – the party
of former generals that ruled from
2010-15 – that brought charges against
him, Maung Saungkha says things have
deteriorated further under the NLD: of
some 200 people charged under the anti-
defamation law, 189 were prosecuted by
Suu Kyi’s party.
To stand in the 2015 election, the NLD
had to agree to abide by a military-era
constitution, which guarantees the army
25 per cent of parliamentary seats along
with other concessions, and bars Suu Kyi
from becoming president. Criticism of
Suu Kyi is often tempered by the sugges-
tion that she is severely restricted in what
she can do. Maung Saungkha rejects this,
claiming the NLD is actively pushing
a legislative crackdown on freedom of
expression.60 NEW INTERNATIONALISTYoung bravehearts. Maung Saungkha (above) and
Thinzar Shunlei Yi (below right) at a march for
press freedom in Yangon, 1 September 2018.
ANN WANG/REUTERS
Below left: Cheery Zahau (right) visits the head
of the Chin Progressive Party in Falam Township.
CHARLOTTE ENGLAND