| JUNE, 1999 - VOLUME 7 NO.5 |
Working Underground to Plant the Seeds of Civil Society
A student activist with eight years of experience working underground in Burma reflects on the limitations and possibilities of “UG” activism. He points to a need to re-think strategies if long-term goals are to be achieved. Democracy will only succeed if there is a strong civil society in Burma; and now is the time to sow the seeds, Min Zin writes.
“Leadership commits a crime against its own people if it hesitates to sharpen its political weapons where they have become less effective.”-Nelson Mandela
In the past, whenever I reflected on clandestine or what we activists call underground (UG) activities, it was very difficult for me not to be subjective. Because of my personal experience inside Burma as a UG activist for over 8 years, I used to fully support the UG way of engaging in politics, seeing it as an inevitable form of resistance and the only way to achieve political victory.
In fact, I still believe that UG activism is an essential part of the struggle to bring freedom to Burma. But the question I now ask myself is whether such activism will in itself achieve our political goal of restoring democracy. To answer this question, I will try to be as objective as possible about the nature and value of underground activity, in order to suggest ways in which it can be more effectively utilized to bring about a successful transition of power in Burma.
I think that the Burmese are as familiar with the term “UG” as most foreign observers of Burmese politics are. Inside Burma, the word “UG,” which is used to refer to activists who engage in clandestine political activities, inspires feelings of awe and respect in most people. Why is this? Because it takes tremendous commitment and risk to work as a UG, many of whom have ended up in prison because of their political activities.
In Burma today, few organizations and political parties have legal standing and there are no democratic rights such as free speech or free assembly. So any organization or political party that wishes to uphold its political beliefs and pursue its objectives must choose the underground method of engaging in politics. Those who are barred from legal politics become UG activists. Even political parties that are legal find themselves tremendously restricted, so if they want to truly implement important policies, they too must combine UG-style activism with their legal activities.
The primary goal of UG activists is to remove the existing power structure or government. What are the tasks of UG activists? Mainly the tasks are organizing, distributing information, forming UG alliance fronts, supporting their own network (including political prisoners), and infiltrating the military and the government. UG activists must find ways to penetrate and work in different sectors of society, while continuing to maintain a long-term political vision. They must recruit and mobilize forces. And they must carry out the right action at the right time — whether it is circulating pamphlets or staging a mass movement - even if it means having to wait for long periods of time. There are also many disciplinary rules and organizational structures. I won’t go into all of them here, but the most important UG discipline is “secrecy” and the most important UG structure is the “vertical communication system.”
During my time on the run inside Burma, I was an active member of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU). Under British colonial rule and during the parliamentary period in the 1950s, the ABFSU was a legal organization, which represented the interests of university students. Since the student union was destroyed by the Ne Win regime in 1962, forcing the organization to go underground, the ABFSU has had a long and rich history of UG life.
The ABFSU was very active during the 1988 demonstrations and early 1989 election campaign period, but then the organization had to go completely underground again because of massive arrests. I worked openly with the ABFSU during the 1988-89 period and continued to work with them, while living in hiding in Burma, from 1989-1997.
There are several misconceptions about UG work and activities, some of which are a result of the inherent limitations of this form of political activity. Because we have to operate under conditions of severe repression and must maintain secrecy at all costs to protect our members, we unavoidably need to limit our community to trustworthy and reliable groups of activists. Security concerns compel us to create an atmosphere of inner-circle politics, which excludes many people. This is unfortunate, because some of those who are not included might have great potential. These measures to block the infiltration of spies limit us to forming small solid groups. Rather than recruiting broadly, potential recruits are usually approached in a cautious manner. When we want to recruit someone into the heart of our established group, it takes a long process of examination.
Occasionally major demonstrations break out which spontaneously generate new activists and leaders, such as during the 1996 December student movement. But during politically quiet periods, it is hard for us to recruit a new generation of reliable and efficient activists. Another problem with the way that our UG networks have been operating is that they cannot follow democratic practices such as accountability and transparency all the time.
In practice, there are also unintended and unfortunate side effects of UG-style politics. One of the most important side effects is that it tends to make activists misunderstand what engaging in politics means, especially when the political climate is seemingly quiet.
Many UG activists come to assume that politics consists solely of producing, distributing or circulating pamphlets and staging protests, with the anticipated outcome being that one day or another, they will be arrested and given a lengthy prison sentence. This misconception discourages activists. Some see political work as not worth the sacrifice and some end up leaving politics altogether.
But this should not discourage activists. They should not come to the unjustified conclusion that UG work is ineffective. It is tremendously effective in many ways, and it has great strengths. A review of the history of the student movement in Burma demonstrates that all of the greatest achievements have come from UG politics. Also, I would like to make it clear that these limitations and misconceptions are not all due to the intrinsic nature of the UG. It would be incorrect to assume that the nature of UG necessarily breeds these limitations and misconceptions. The main problem is not the nature of UG work but our own misunderstandings. Most Burmese students haven’t understood (or have been vague about) the true nature of UG work. We have been confusing UG work and non-violent resistance.
The concept of UG originated in Burma during World War II, when the country was under Japanese occupation. Many groups, such as communists, socialists, youth associations, people from the education sector, government personnel, British army veterans, and Christian religious groups began doing UG political activities in order to wage a resistance movement against Japanese rule. Since then, every revolutionary movement in Burma has seen or utilized UG activity as an essential supportive component to armed struggle. UG activists were always trying to find ways to combine a UG-organized mass movement with armed struggle in order to overthrow the government. UG activists never believed that the primary UG tactic, namely fostering a mass uprising, could bring genuine victory alone. But UG activists point out that although you can organize huge mass mobilizations, you must be able to fill the vacuum of power at the center of the upheaval.
I think this view of the role of UG activities persisted until around 1990. Since 1990, the widespread victories of non-violent democratic struggles in other countries, the prevalence of non-violent education, the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and the shrinking of the armed struggles of the different rebel groups in Burma caused many activists to confuse UG work with non-violent resistance. Many activists, including myself, thought of UG tactics as having a mysterious strength that could topple the military dictatorship. By doing only UG politics and preparing for mass mobilization, we thought we could transform our society. But now it has become clearer and clearer to us that we shouldn't let ourselves overly romanticize UG politics.
In fact, if we want to transform the society peacefully, we must sow the seeds of an autonomous civil society in all different sectors of society. This does not mean that we must forget UG. We must not. But at the same time, we must recognize the importance of developing a civil society. We must understand that one of Burma’s fundamental problems is “the lack of spaces” for activities not directly under the regime’s control. What we failed to see before is that if we really believe in the non-violent method of struggle, we must create and expand independent spaces in our society. We must encourage established spaces to be independent and expanded. We must also create thousands of new spaces.
But what constitutes an independent space? This question is very important for us to consider. I will present my point in terms of a comparative political approach with popular movements in other parts of the world.
Gandhi created some independent economic spaces in colonial India by encouraging everyone to weave their own clothes, so as to avoid contributing to the British-controlled economic system. Paolo Friere started a movement to educate impoverished and illiterate people of Brazil while the military regime that took power in 1964 by and large denied educational opportunities for this sector of the population. In El Salvador during the 1980’s, progressive Catholic priests applied the same principles to religious education, and developed the concept of“Liberation Theology.” In practice, a core Christian community of perhaps a dozen people would meet regularly to read the Bible and apply the scriptural lessons to their current social circumstances. While faith and devotion were not necessarily lost, the concepts of justice and compassion took on new meaning amid such a repressive social system.
Such independent spaces are possible in Burma. The danger, of course, is that organizations, whether domestic or international, claim independence but may be co-opted by the military. Some “independent” organizations, such as the Union Solidarity and Development Association and the Myanmar Maternal and Child Welfare Association, are merely additional tentacles of the SPDC. International non-governmental organizations, whose aims include poverty alleviation and community development, must maintain cozy relations with military officials in order to operate. Such closeness can compromise their independence.
There are several examples of small-scale independent movements and also several self-reliance groups or institutions organized by the local grass root youth inside Burma. At the macro level, we can point to the example of Thamanya Sayadaw’s social activities such as the construction of roads, bridges, schools and so on.
If you focus solely on the political arena, you might say that operating in an independent space in Burma is impossible. But if you broaden your scope to other fields such as education, health, and religion, you will realize that there are thousands of possibilities. This consideration also reflects one of our strategic understandings-we must shape our democratic movement not only in terms of politics but also in terms of social and economic values and practices.
In practice, we must focus on the formation of Above Ground (AG) groups and movements/campaigns in every sector of society. At first, these groups might be small in scale, but their activities would be very healthy because of their independence from any authoritarian control. These groups should be decentralized and plural in structure. They need not be politicized. They should be allowed to grow and be self-empowered. They can choose what they want to do in their own way. In this way, we can encourage the development of democratic practices.
In fact, we have examples to draw on from our past. When Burma was under colonial rule, the ABFSU (student union) began as a purely social organization that was allowed by British. But later it shifted its direction and became much more political in nature. To give another example, the Malon Rice Donation Association, which provides rice to monks and nuns has remained a religious association since its founding in 1896. Both the ABFSU and the Malon Rice Donation Association are very healthy institutions for civil society, which have operated on their own terms and given people an opportunity to practice and develop a democratic culture. To some degree, they have also balanced the power of the State.
In conclusion, I believe that even as we continue our UG activities for mobilizing a mass uprising, we must also encourage the emergence of independent self-organized groups. These groups can serve as the beginnings of civil society, which is an essential structural foundation for the peaceful transformation of the country. Therefore we must devote our human and material resources to both purposes, because it is only by combining UG and AG work that we can bring about a genuine democratic transformation in Burma.
This article was contributed by Min Zin. Min Zin is a student activist now based in Thailand.