Burma Redux: Global Justice and the Quest for Political Reform in Myanmar (45 page)

4.
     Accurate data on ethnic composition are not available. In 2011, a US estimate gave this breakdown: Bamar 68 percent, Shan 9 percent, Kayin 7 percent, Rakhine 4 percent, Chinese 3 percent, Indian 2 percent, Mon 2 percent. US Central Intelligence Agency,
The World Factbook.
www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook
. The University of Maryland tracks six endangered ethnic groups inside Myanmar: Chin, Kachin, Karen, Mon, Rohingya and Shan. Minorities at Risk,
www.cidcm.umd.edu/mar
.

5.
     The junta assumed two distinct identities in the period from September 1988 to March 2011. However, since there was considerable continuity of membership and policy, this analysis refers throughout to a singular junta.

6.
     
Irrawaddy
, “SPDC, R.I.P.,” March 30, 2011.

7.
     Transnational Institute and Burma Centrum Nederland,
Ethnic Politics in Burma: The Time for Solutions
(Amsterdam: Transnational Institute and Burma Centrum Nederland, 2011).

8.
     Thant Myint-U,
The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma
(New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), p.ix.

9.
     Aung San Suu Kyi,
Freedom from Fear: And Other Writings
, rev. ed. (London: Penguin, 1995), pp.192–8. In an April 2011 interview, she put it this way: “More people, especially young people, are realising that if they want change, they’ve got to go about it themselves—they can’t depend on a particular person, ie me, to do all the work.” Polly Toynbee, “Saturday interview: Aung San Suu Kyi,”
Guardian
, April 16, 2011.

10.
   Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies,
Listening to Voices from Inside: Myanmar Civil Society’s Response to Cyclone Nargis
(Phnom Penh: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, 2009), p.124.

11.
   Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies,
Listening to Voices from Inside: Ethnic People Speak
(Phnom Penh: Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, 2010), p.202.

12.
   Lowell Dittmer, “Burma vs. Myanmar: What’s in a Name?,”
Asian Survey
48:6 (2008), 885–8.

13.
   
Working People’s Daily
, “Placenames law enacted,” June 19, 1989.

14.
   
Working People’s Daily
, “Change in national anthem,” June 19, 1989.

15.
   Rudyard Kipling, “Mandalay,” in Rudyard Kipling,
Barrack-room Ballads
(New York, NY: Signet, 2001), 40–2.

16.
   George Orwell,
Shooting an Elephant: And Other Essays
(London: Secker and Warburg, 1953).

17.
   
South China Morning Post
, “Burma states terms for student talks,” June 20, 1989, p.12.

18.
   See, for instance, Mya Maung, “The Burma Road from the Union of Burma to Myanmar,”
Asian Survey
30:6 (1990), 602–24, n.1.

19.
   Cited in Derek Tonkin, “The 1990 Elections in Myanmar: Broken Promises or a Failure of Communication?,”
Contemporary Southeast Asia
29:1 (2007), 33–54, p.38.

20.
   Amnesty International,
Myanmar (Burma): New Martial Law Provisions Allowing Summary or Arbitrary Executions and Recent Death Sentences Imposed under These Provisions
, ASA 16/15/89 (London: Amnesty International, 1989), p.4.

21.
   James F. Guyot and John Badgley, “Myanmar in 1989: Tatmadaw V,”
Asian Survey
30:2 (1990), 187–95, p.188.

22.
   James F. Guyot, “Myanmar in 1990: The Unconsummated Election,”
Asian Survey
31:2 (1991), 205–11.

23.
   Tonkin, “The 1990 Elections in Myanmar.”

24.
   
Working People’s Daily
, “State LORC Declaration No. 1/90 of July 27, 1990,” July 29, 1990.

25.
   Everyday usage is now quite variable, with old and new names often employed interchangeably. Nevertheless, official positions taken by leadership groups tend to stick to the old terminology.

26.
   The State Department puts it this way: “The SPDC changed the name of the country to ‘Myanmar,’ but some members of the democratic opposition and other political activists do not recognize the name change and continue to use the name ‘Burma.’ Out of support for the democratic opposition, the U.S. Government likewise uses ‘Burma’.” US Department of State,
Background Note: Burma.
www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/35910.htm
.

27.
   Matthew J. Walton, “Ethnicity, Conflict, and History in Burma: The Myths of Panglong,”
Asian Survey
48:6 (2008), 889–910.

28.
   James C. Scott,
The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

29.
   Dittmer, “Burma vs. Myanmar.”

30.
   In 2010, Amartya Sen, who lived for three years as a boy in prewar Mandalay, wrote this: “The military rulers have renamed Burma as Myanmar, and the renaming seems perhaps understandable, for the country is no longer the Burma that magnificently flourished over the centuries. New Myanmar is the hell-hole version of old Burma.” Amartya Sen, “We hear you, Michael Aris, loud and clear,”
Outlooklndia
, November 15, 2010.
www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?267765
.

31.
   J. S. Furnivall,
Colonial Policy and Practice: A Comparative Study of Burma and Netherlands India
(New York, NY: New York University Press, 1956), p.11, n.1. British historian Hugh Tinker held to this usage in all four editions of
The Union of Burma
, published in 1957, 1959, 1961 and 1967, explaining that he was following the practice adopted in the 1953 census. Hugh Tinker,
The Union of Burma: A Study of the First Years of Independence
, 4
^th
ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), p.xi.

32.
   Michael W. Charney,
A History of Modern Burma
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p.201.

33.
   Bertil Lintner,
Outrage: Burma’s Struggle for Democracy
(Hong Kong: Review Publishing Company, 1989).

34.
   Martin J. Smith,
Burma: Insurgency and the Politics of Ethnicity
, 2
^nd
ed. (London: Zed Books, 1999).

35.
   Tom Kramer,
Neither War nor Peace: The Future of the Cease-fire Agreements in Burma
(Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2009).

36.
   Thomas Hobbes,
Leviathan: Or the Matter, Forme and Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1955), p.82.

37.
   Mary P. Callahan,
Political Authority in Burma’s Ethnic Minority States: Devolution, Occupation, and Coexistence
(Washington, DC: East-West Center Washington, 2007).

38.
   Michael Aung-Thwin, “Parochial Universalism, Democracy
Jihad
and the Orientalist Image of Burma: The New Evangelism,”
Pacific Affairs
74:4 (2001–02), 483–505, p.492.

39.
   Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies,
Myanmar Civil Society’s Response to Cyclone Nargis
.

40.
   Zaw Oo and Win Min,
Assessing Burma’s Ceasefire Accords
(Washington, DC: East-West Center Washington, 2007).

41.
   Amnesty International,
The Repression of Ethnic Minority Activists in Myanmar
, ASA 16/001/2010 (London: Amnesty International, 2010).

42.
   Donald M. Seekins,
State and Society in Modern Rangoon
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2011).

43.
   Andrew Selth, “Modern Burma Studies: A Survey of the Field,”
Modern Asian Studies
44:2 (2010), 401–40.

44.
   For a full survey and a different way of dividing the field, see Robert H. Taylor, “Finding the Political in Myanmar, a.k.a. Burma,”
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
39:2 (2008), 219–37.

45.
   Scott distinguishes two kinds of
nats.
The first are “inhabitants of the six inferior heavens” of the Burmese spirit world. “Perfectly distinct from these are the nats of the house, the air, the water, the forest,—the spirits of nature, fairies, elves, gnomes, kelpies, kobolds, pixies, whatever other names they have received in other countries.” Shway Yoe,
The Burman: His Life and Notions
, 3
^rd
ed. (London: Macmillan, 1910), p.232. On Scott, see Andrew Marshall,
The Trouser People: A Story of Burma in the Shadow of the Empire
(New York, NY: Counterpoint, 2002). On the 37
nats
in the contemporary pantheon, see Bénédicte Brac de la Perrière, “The Taungbyon Festival: Locality and Nation-confronting in the Cult of the 37 Lords,” in Monique Skidmore (ed.),
Burma at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century
(Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 65–89.

46.
   H. Fielding-Hall,
The Soul of a People
(London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1898). H. Fielding-Hall,
A People at School
(London: Macmillan, 1906). Fielding-Hall also wrote books about domestic life and religion described by Maung Maung as “tender and loving and a little romantic.” Maung Maung,
Burma’s Constutition
, 2
^nd
ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961), p.5.

47.
   Lucian W. Pye,
Politics, Personality, and Nation Building: Burma’s Search for Identity
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1962).

48.
   E. R. Leach,
Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure
(London: G. Bell, 1954). F. K. Lehman,
The Structure of Chin Society: A Tribal People of Burma Adapted to a Non-Western Civilization
(Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1963). Manning Nash,
The Golden Road to Modernity: Village Life in Contemporary Burma
(New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 1965). For a full survey, see U Chit Hlaing, “Anthropological Communities of Interpretation for Burma: An Overview,”
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies
39:2 (2008), 239–54.

49.
   Ardeth Maung Thawnghmung,
Behind the Teak Curtain: Authoritarianism, Agricultural Policies and Political Legitimacy in Rural Burma/Myanmar
(London: Kegan Paul, 2004), p.9. Selth, “Modern Burma Studies,” pp.410–11.

50.
   The second edition of Fink’s book was published as
Living Silence in Burma.
Christina Fink,
Living Silence in Burma: Surviving under Military Rule
, 2
^nd
ed. (London/Chiang Mai: Zed Books/Silkworm Books, 2009). Monique Skidmore,
Karaoke Fascism: Burma and the Politics of Fear
(Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004).

51.
   Arthur P. Phayre,
History of Burma: Including Burma Proper, Pegu, Taungu, Tenasserim, and Arakan, from the Earliest Time to the End of the First War with British India
(London: Trübner & Co., 1883). G. E. Harvey,
History of Burma: From the Earliest Times to 10 March 1824, the Beginning of the English Conquest
(London: Longmans, Green, 1925).