Ethnic issue in Burma!

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The Ethnic Issue in Burma: How Can They Solve It?             By Htun Aung
Gyaw

Now is the time for all the minorities and the Burmans to peacefully
negotiate a new constitution that guarantees equal rights to minorities and
drops the right of secession that resulted from the divide-and-rule
treatment under British colonial rule.
Burma has eight major ethnic groups: Burmans, Shans, Kachins, Karens,
Karenni, Mons, Chins, and Arakanese (Rakhine). The majority of the
population consists of Burmans.  Therefore, it is not surprising that the
Burman majority has ruled the country.  In the past, the Burmans treated
the minorities very well and considered them to be their brothers and
sisters, but after the military coup in 1962, the ruler's attitude changed.
 The ethnic peoples were badly treated and forced to work as so-called
"volunteer laborers," who were tortured and sometimes killed when they
refused to work or ran away.  The force that separated the Burmans and the
minorities was the army, and it still is. Burmans still feel that the
minorities are their brothers and sisters, but the use of military force
against them has angered many minorities, who now hate the Burmans.  This
is not good for the future of Burma.
In a free country, minorities have rights: the right to vote, to organize,
to publish, and to learn their own language and literature.  But the
military-backed regimes-the Revolutionary Council (RC), the Burmese
Socialist Program Party (BSPP), the State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC), and the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC)-- have never
allowed the minorities to study their own literature and language in the
schools.  The only languages taught are Burmese and English.  This policy
has created a division between many minorities and the majority Burmans.
The military thinks it will have more control if everyone knows only
Burmese, but minorities turn militant when their rights and heritage are
denied.  Burmanization has not only created tension between minorities and
the Burmans, but it has also led to civil strife and encouraged them to
kill each other.
Cruel treatment drives ethnic minority leaders to try to make alliances
with neighboring countries.  Once, a Shan leader, the internationally known
drug kingpin Khun Sa, declared that Shans and Thais were the same tribe and
that both shared the same language.  Khun Sa respected the Thai king and
wanted the Shan States to become part of Thailand.  When he was a rebel
leader (he surrendered in the 1990s and has been well protected by the SPDC
regime), he displayed photos of the Thai king and queen as his king and
queen in his headquarters. Now Shan children learn only Burmese in school.
A few months ago, a Burmese domestic charter plane, carrying a group of
military personnel and their families, hit a storm and landed in the dense
forest in Shan State.  All the passengers were slaughtered by the nearby
Shan villagers, indicating that the growing hatred of the minorities toward
the Burmans is rising to an alarming point.
The New Mon State Party ( NMSP) reached a cease-fire agreement with the
SPDC a few years ago by which the SPDC agreed that the Mons could run their
own schools and teach Mon to their children.  Last September, the SPDC
rejected the teaching of Mon languages in Mon schools; the promise to honor
the minority's right to its own language was abruptly broken, and
instruction was stopped.
When Burmese living in America compare the United States and Burma, they
see a wonderful ideology in America-- Americans are encouraged to learn
foreign languages, and minorities are encouraged to maintain their
identities and their cultures.  When people want to become Americans or
adopt American culture as their own, they are encouraged to retain as much
of their original ethnicity as possible.
In the beginning, new settlers of North America -- the British, French, and
Spanish -- fought against the Native Americans.  The Native Americans lost
the battles.  European settlers hated them, did not understand them, and
wanted their land, portraying the Native Americans as savages. Later,
Hollywood movies reinforced this stereotype of wild and uncivilized people,
who deserved to be slaughtered.  Now attitudes have changed. In movies like
Dances with Wolves and Pocahontas, Native Americans are portrayed as good,
humble people who were victims and peacemakers.  The new perspective
engenders peace and respect for minority rights. The U.S. government
encourages its citizens to study foreign languages, including Native
American languages.  When a person learns other languages, he or she can
communicate better with native speakers and understand their standpoint or
their real problems.  Thus they become friends and live peacefully.      
Similarly, if the Burmese authorities could see the outcome of the American
experience, or the British experience with the Irish and Scottish, and
change their policies toward ethnic groups, they could stop the civil
strife and rebuild the country as a true federal union.  Not only do
Burmans have to allow the minorities to learn their languages in their own
schools, but they also need to change the education system by hiring
minority teachers to teach minority languages in Burmese schools.  It is
very important for the Burmans to learn their ethnic brothers' and sisters'
languages to build a better understanding for establishing a genuine
federal union.
Last September, ethnic groups that reached a cease-fire agreement with the
military -- the New Mon State Party (NMSP), the Shan Nationalities Peoples
Liberation Organization (SNPLO), the Karenni Nationalities Peoples
Liberation Front (KNPLF), and the Kayan New Land party (KNLP) -- agreed to
support the call for a people's parliament by the National League for
Democracy (NLD) party, which won the 1990 election.  Even though the groups
later withdrew their support when the SPDC put a pressure on them, it was
obvious that they disliked military rule and were eager to reach an
agreement that would establish a civilian parliament.
	General Ne Win staged the 1962 coup, seizing power with his troops, he
claimed, because the Federal Union, which allowed the Shans and Karanni the
right of secession, was in danger of disintegrating.  He stated that some
minorities wanted to separate from the country and the army had a duty to
prevent it.  The announcement alarmed, and got support from, many Burmans
and military personnel who feared the Union might be fractured.  
There was good reason for the Burmans to believe it.  Under colonial rule,
the British recruited the Karens to fight against the Burmans.  Later, the
majority of the soldiers in the British army were Karens, so Karens were
favored as loyal tribes rather than the Burmans.  In addition, the
high-ranking military officers were Karens.  When Burma gained its
independence, the strongest ethnic elements in the British army were thus
the Karens.  Not surprisingly, a Karen insurrection occurred in 1949, one
year after independence was achieved.  The Karen National Defense
Organization (KNDO) and the Burmese Communist Party (CPB) occupied many
areas, and the nascent democratic government was called the Rangoon
Government because at that time it seemed like the government existed only
in Rangoon.  The Burmans were afraid of Karen dominant rule and the KNDO's
goal to set up the Karen Nation, in other words, separate from Burma.  
Similarly, the Wa army became the strongest ethnic minority army in Burma.
In the past, the CPB had trained Was as its best ethnic soldiers with the
help of the Chinese Communist Party, and the Was became the majority in the
CPB army.  A Burman- Chinese racial riot occurred in Rangoon in 1967-68, in
which the Burmese killed many Chinese students; actually it was a plan
devised by the Burmese Socialist Programm Party (BSPP) to channel the anger
of the people, who were desperate because of the rice shortage, toward the
Burmese-born pro-Mao Chinese students.  After the riot, the CPB received
arms, ammunition, Chinese military advisors, and financial assistance from
China to support the fight against the BSPP regime.  Although the ethnic Wa
army was well equipped with Chinese arms under CPB control, the Was
mutinied in 1989 and thus ended the communist revolution.   
Historical records show that without foreign military aid, it is impossible
for all ethnic tribes in Burma to emerge as a strong group.  The Burmese
army (mostly Burmans) emerged under Japanese occupation, the Karen Army
developed under British rule, and the Wa army formed with the help of the
Chinese Communist Party.  Now the Chinese influence in Burma is much
stronger than in the past because the SPDC greatly depends on Chinese
military aid, medicine, machinery, food products, and so forth.  
The Pinlon Agreement gave the Shans and Karanni the right of secession
after ten years of independence if they were not satisfied with the Burmese
government, and now some Shan leaders want to invoke that right.  To
complicate the situation, Was who live in the Shan States are demanding
their own state, which the Shans will not accept.  In addition, there is
another strong ethnic group in the Shan State, the Pao.  The Shans alone
cannot solve their problems.  Today, a cease-fire agreement with the
militant minorities and the SLORC/SPDC is a short-term solution that will
not bring about a lasting peace.  Therefore, the Burmans cannot solve the
ethnic problem by using force; they need to give equal rights to the
minorities and negotiate with them.  The best solution is for the NLD and
the SPDC to trust each other and work together to solve the ethnic issue
which is in the best interest of the nation.
 The divide-and-rule method colonial government practiced by the British
produced a civil war after Burma gained independence.   Now the military is
copying this tactic: divide the Burmans and the minorities by using the
secession issue as a tool to attract the support of the Burmans.
The late Kachin leader Brang Seng and his Kachin Independence
Organization's (KIO) delegation sought support from abroad to establish a
Kachin nation in the 1970s, but nobody supported the idea.   Kachin leader
Dr. Tu Jar explained to students in 1988 that National Democratic Front
(NDF) members dropped the right of secession from Burma in 1982 by their
own choice.  Karen leader General Saw Bo Mya frankly told the student
leaders that his organization had no intention of seceding and that the
Karens wanted only a stable federal union that would guarantee equal
rights.  This is evidence that some minority leaders have no intention of
splitting from Burma.  
The new constitution should guarantee minority rights and exclude the right
of secession, which has been used by the military as a reason for stepping
into politics.  Even though Burmans dislike the military rule, if they hear
that the minorities are demanding the right of secession, they will
continue to support the military.  It is common sense.  For example,
Gorbachev won a Noble Peace Prize for allowing the multiparty system in
Soviet Russia.  But the disintegration of the Russian Republic angered the
Russian citizens, who labeled him a traitor.  As a result, he lost all
support within Russia and was defeated in the presidential election.  
Most Burman leaders do not want to discuss the right of secession with the
minority leaders in the jungle.  Every discussion about minority rights and
demands has been listened to, and the demands accepted, without argument,
even though the Burman leaders disagree with those concessions.  They have
granted rights and demands because they are living in the minority's
territory and they do not want the minorities to be suspicious of them.
But this is a short-term solution, effective only while they are living in
the jungle.  In the long run, it will produce a rift between the minorities
and the Burmans, because when the time has come to rebuild Burma, the
minority leaders will demand that the Burman leaders keep their promises
made in the jungle. Burman leaders will likely refuse and defend themselves
with the excuse:  "We were living under their control, so we had no choice.
 If we refused such a demand, we would not be alive or we would be expelled
from their territories."  Most of them will give that excuse because the
Burmans will not accept the right of secession.  If the Burmans discovered
who accepted the right of secession, he or she would be rejected by the
people.  The minorities will then feel that the Burmans have again lied to
them.
To solve the entire problem, both sides need to trust each other.  The
democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB) needs to declare that it has dropped the
secession right and clearly state that it wants a genuine federal union
based on equal rights.  It should be made public and aired on independent
radio stations such as VOA, BBC, RFA, and DVB.  All Burmans need to prevent
the military from separating them from their minority brothers and sisters
by threatening them with the term "disintegration of the nation."  It is time.
	Both Burmans and minority leaders need to understand the real problem and
have the wisdom to solve it. How can they solve the problem by taking a
long-term view?  They have to solve it right now and do not need to wait
until a democratic system emerges.  If they do that, they will close the
chapter on civil strife in Burmese history and lead the nation as a
peaceful and united country into the twenty-first century.  Only freedom,
dignity, equality, wisdom, and trust can restore peace to a war-torn
country like Burma.