Team work
Outmoded leadership styles and centralization are not favoured by Burma's democrats. As for the so-called leaders who cling to the old model, Thar Nyunt Oo writes, their days are numbered.
Burma’s people have grown accustomed to living in a closed society for many years. After the era of feudalism, Burma fell under colonial rule. Then, Burma was given spurious independence from Japan. Later, there was a period of parliamentary governance characterized by civil unrest and an absence of democratic rights and values. The military, calling themselves “socialists,” seized power in 1962 and, to this day, has tried to draft a state constitution which solidifies the junta’s hold on the state apparatus. We have grown and matured in an atmosphere of oppression, human rights violations and a lack of democratic opportunities.
According to psychology, a child who has lived under the pressures of restrictive parents grows used to bullying others. As a consequence of our maturation, how we work with others is influenced by our pasts. In particular, many with such backgrounds hold that, unless strong authority and extreme centralization are in place, organizations are bound to collapse.
Actually, such authority structures are detested by civilized persons, including the people of Burma. In Burma, a faction of the military has handled and exploited their own troops with the slogan “With one consent, one voice, one command.” This group oppressed the people with their idea-less forces. They neglected the ideal of “with one consent,” using “command” to create “one voice”—their own voice. We claimed during 1988 that, if the Tatmadaw had concentrated upon command, whether it be right or wrong, instead of focusing on “truth,” the Tatmadaw would have been merely a stooge. After 1988, we struggled through civil disobedience against the despotic rules and commands of Slorc, spearheaded by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. She replaced “command” with the twin disciplines of consideration and reason.
“Command” is part of an oppressive machine that seeks as its goal or aim to gain dominance and control of a person or a group. It might be misuse of power. It may be carried out through an organization which was founded by a person or a group. In the “command” model, the leader or headquarters of the organization are paramount. Without the central figure of the leader or the stability of a headquarters, collapse is inevitable. The fate of the organization is chained to that of its leaders. The duties of the ordinary rank-and-file members consist simply in obeying orders from the leadership and remaining humble before them. The revealed personal qualifications and abilities of the ordinary member are not significant. Members are only cast from moulds framed by rules and orders from above.
In a case where everybody is in dismay concerning an order or command, some organizations have resorted to appointing one individual as “dictator.” Members accede to the authority of the organization. Ko Hla Shwe, chairman of the All Burma Student’s Union during the anti-imperialist movement, was a good example of a dictator appointed by others. All students followed his orders and named him “dictator Hla Shwe.” But the All Burma Student’s Union was not, in the end, a dictatorial organization. Even during the crucial time of chairman Min Ko Naing, he did not order or command the members. He simply led and guided the strategies decided by all members, with one consent. In some cases the organization breaks down because there is no leadership to provide order. For example, the All Burma Federation of Student Unions could not survive once all members of its central committee were arrested in 1960. The Union struggled, just like a underground group, in 1962.
Some may ask, how can an organization function without command, without “unity”? I answer, an organization may control itself through “team work.” We can compare this with a football team. There are different kinds of cleverness or talent for each member on a team. Some may be experts in defence, some may specialize in the corner-ball aspects of the game, and some have “goal luck.” Team members have a mutual understanding and can play well in a give-and-take fashion. Responsibility to make a goal is not that of the whole team only, or that of a single individual, but arises from the commitment of each member. The talent and ability of each member is significant, and is respected by each and all.
Understanding each other is essential for team work. The critical point is understanding the weaknesses and strengths of each member. The issue is how to reveal the potential abilities of members, how to actualize their power, and how to use these to add to team strengths and compensate for team weaknesses. When team members compete with each other, disclosing weaknesses and nulling strengths in the process, team work ends and the cause is ruined.
The most important factor in team work is the mutual respect of others’ values and standards. Everyone holds distinct values and standards. Books have value for the person who is interested in reading, and experience has value for the person who is practical. The standard of a soldier is patience and gentleness. These standards and values are not ways of criticizing others, or to pidgeon-hole them. All values and standards are useful in a colourful and dynamic society. Team work always elevates members, enhancing and complementing their personalities and their abilities.
Certainly, if we can implement teamwork well, we have no need to call for unity, and there is no need for individuals to jocky for position. Indeed, persons or groups that want to influence members of an organization in this fashion are used to using the words “unity” and “stability of organization” to their own advantage. Team work, on the other hand, is a collective leadership system. The aims or goals of an organization are undertaken by all members and do not depend upon a single person or group.
The distinction between human beings and the rest of the animal world lies in our capacity for consideration and reasoning. These distinctions have lead human beings to produce more civil societies. Obedience to despotic orders and rules, and being blindly humble before command, should be relegated to a much more conservative past. Enforcement and threats of an autocratic nature are the relics of this same past.
Those who hang on to these outmoded leadership styles, using them to coerce and control others, and obstructing the opinions and abilities of members in the process, are rapidly becoming extinct. Those who remain, their days are numbered.
This commentary is contributed by Thar Nyunt Oo. He is a prominent student activist in 1996 "December students protest" in Rangoon. He fled to Thailand in 1997.
“Amazing Lambi ”
Lambi marine park and other ecological tourism projects are touted as sound development by the Burmese government. But they are being built on the back of multiple human rights and environmental abuses, writes Win Htein.
The Lambi marine park project was started in May 1997 when the State Law and Order Restoration Council (Slorc) troops began a heavy offensive in the Karen National Union’s Brigade 4 area. The Slorc wanted to take Myint Molatkhat hill for use as a nature reserve. During this offensive, about twenty thousand Karen and Tavoy villagers fled to the Thai border as refugees near where a power station is located for the Yadana gas pipeline project.
According to Terror in the South, a special report published in November 1997 by the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF), Slorc began a clean-up operation along the coastal region in October 1996 for Lambi and other islands targeted for eco-tourism ventures. During this operation, Slorc killed about 40 people in Lambi, about 80 in Kaw Ye, and about 100 on Zadatgyi Island. 3,000 Salon (sea gypsies) were relocated from Lambi, and another 80 villages were moved from the coast by Brig. Gen. Sit Maung, commander of the newly-established Coastal Region Military Command, using 8 army battalions, navy and aircraft.
A villager who spent a week as a forced laborer on the island in mid-1997 says that 150 villagers are required to work there for a week at a time, without food or pay. Depending on their size, some 17 villages near Lambi, including East Aungbar, Kyargyi Aw, Mathein, Kantaw, Salon Aw and others are required to supply between 5 and 14 people to the army for “development work.” Those who do not want to be recruited as forced laborers are required to pay fines of up to 20,000 kyat for a week’s work.
Before the 1988 uprising, there were 5 battalions in Tenasserim Division. Ten years later, there are 40 battalions for the security of the most important joint venture projects, including the Yadana gas pipeline (with Total of France), the Yetagun gas project (with Premier Oil of the United Kingdom), the Tavoy deep sea port and land bridge from Kanchanaburi (with Thai companies), the Lambi eco-tourism venture and many other tourist projects. The SPDC has also forced villagers to work on army barracks and compounds.
“They had already built a mini-airport, 5 heli-pads, a big zoo, a wharf and military bases. Now they are building a luxury resort. They want to finish before the rainy season, so they are pushing the laborers to work very hard, about 12 hours every day,” reported one villager.
An officer of the ABSDF’s southern region who has been monitoring this project stated that “last year, there were about 400 people working as forced laborers on Lambi Island, and this year there are nearly 700 workers. About 300 workers were villagers from Bokpyine, another 300 were porters from Kawthong who were arrested on the border when they came back from Thailand as illegal workers, and the last 100 were prison laborers.”
A fisherman from Aung Yadana boat in Ranong, forced to work in Lambi marine national park, recalled, “I was arrested on Snake Island, between Ranong and Kawthong, as an illegal worker in January 1998, when I was sent back from Thailand to Burma....I stayed three days in Kawthong police compound and then they sent me to Lambi Island with about 300 others in fishing boats.”
Once arriving in Lambi, these laborers had to stay in temporary barracks, waking each morning at 5 a.m. to a cup of rice soup for breakfast. By 6 a.m. they were off to work in construction teams, sometimes involved in heavy work, such as cutting and digging out big trees. At noon they had lunch, but it was never enough. While they were hungry enough to eat three plates each, they were only allowed to eat one.
“The soldiers ordered us to work very hard. They wanted to finish the project before the rainy season. Some people were injured, some got malaria, and others died, so I was very afraid. I escaped from Lambi Island by bamboo float to the Andaman Sea. Two days later, I came across a fishing boat. They brought me here,” he continued.
U Naung Mel is a 38 year-old fisherman from Sakhathat village of east Mergui in southern Burma. Last year, he worked on a fishing boat in Mahachai, known as “Little Burma,” in the south of Bangkok. Since the 1988 uprising in Burma, many Burmese have come to Thailand for work on fishing boats, at construction sites, in factories, on rubber plantations, and as housekeepers. There were no jobs in their homeland, and they feared being used as porters or forced laborers by the army.
They came to Thailand by crossing the border illegally, giving up to 10,000 baht to Thai police and brokers to travel from the border to Bangkok and other towns in central Thailand. Now, more than a half million Burmese illegal workers live in Thailand.
However, across the last year, as the Thai economic slowdown took hold, many Thai workers were dismissed from their work sites. The Thai government decided to send back illegal alien workers to make jobs available for them, warning illegal workers to return to their homes. U Naung Mel was arrested at the Snake Island check point while trying to return to his village.
“Early in the morning on February 1998, nine people were killed and five were arrested when LIB [Light Infantry Battalion] 358 soldiers intercepted a boatload of people trying to flee from the island. On 19 January 1998, six people were also killed. After this, the army ordered boats not to come into this area,” U Naung Mel continued sadly.
The ABSDF report claimed that two western environmental groups gave support for this SPDC project “by technical and financial means.” The report quoted Aung Thin, an SPDC forestry officer, as saying there was “an open channel of communication with the WWF.” The World Wildlife Fund in London and Wildlife Conservation Society in New York have denied any involvement.
The Lambi eco-tourism project has also become involved in the “Amazing Thailand” campaign, suggests an environmentalist from Toward Ecological Recovery and Regional Alliance (TERRA), a Bangkok- based non-profit group. He quoted an article from the Thailand and Indochina Traveler magazine in the October-November 1997 issue of a Bangkok Post publication, which lauded Lambi as “a magical new holiday destination offering wonderful scenery and solitude..... where wild elephants and rhinoceros hide.”
A few weeks ago, Thai and Burmese businessmen met with Brig. Gen. Sit Maung at the headquarters of the Coastal Command in Mergui to discuss tourism transport. An agreement was reached for transport from Ranong to Lambi by luxury boats. Operations are set to begin next month, according to Ranong sources.
The Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) has also been criticized by human rights groups for its “human zoo” approach to promoting tour sites featuring Padong hill tribe women, a Burmese minority group, in Chiang Mai in February 1998, as a part of “Amazing Thailand.”
“If they [TAT] want to join with the SPDC’s Lambi eco-tourism project, firstly they should check whether or not there are human rights and environmental abuses going on. If they are careless and hurry to join the venture, they must be prepared to face adverse reactions from human rights and Burmese opposition groups. Then the ‘Amazing Thailand’ campaign will be as damaged as ‘Visit Myanmar Year,’” says a Burmese environmentalist and former chairman for Green November 32, a non-profit environmental group along the Thai-Burma border.
The Burmese military seized power from U Nu’s elected government in 1962 and established the Revolutionary Council. In 1974 the Revolutionary Council became the Burmese Socialist Program Party (BSPP), and in September 1988 the Slorc took power. In November 1997, the Slorc changed its name to the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC).
“They have changed their name but they have never changed their policy. They killed about 200 people in the 1962 coup and about 3000 people in the 1988 coup. They have never respected human rights, therefore this project cannot be possible because no butcher wants to save life. I don’t think anyone can believe their plans to save wild animals,” he added.
If the SPDC really wants to save wild animals and the environment, they must first show respect for human rights.