The coup occurred in reaction to the most recent parliamentary election. On November 8, 2020, one of the leading parties, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won over 80% of the available parliamentary seats. The vote was seen as a popular endorsement of the NLD, which Aung San Suu Kyi has led since 2015. Ms. Suu Kyi has been hailed as a beacon of democracy and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.  However, her international reputation has suffered following her refusal to condemn crackdowns on the Muslim Rohingya minority in Myanmar, and the subsequent human rights crisis, genocide and migration that has followed.

The election was expected to be ratified in a parliamentary session this week. The Tatmadaw, led by General Min Aung Hlaing, did not endorse the results.

In Myanmar, the Tatmadaw’s influence is felt in all aspects of society, a relic of its multi-decade long rule. It has its own schools, hospitals and food production systems. Its elite are married into the business world and high-ranking members of the NLD. The party also controls the two largest conglomerates with interests in resources, banking, infrastructure, insurance, media and more.

The democratic constitution did little to disentangle the military’s power and in some instances, reinforced it within the new political institutions.

Prior to the coup, the Tatmadaw was constitutionally guaranteed control of the ministries of defense, home affairs and border affairs. It reserves 25% of seats in national and regional assemblies. Also, it has veto authorities over certain amendments to the constitution. 

The Tatmadaw invoked some of these provisions to declare a state of emergency as a justification for the coup, claiming allegations of voter fraud. Under the constitution however, only the civilian leader can claim a state of emergency which lasts for one year. Independent rights groups have criticized the election for excluding ethnic minorities, however, the nation’s election committee accepted the results and found no evidence of voter fraud.

Because of the constitution’s structure guaranteeing certain roles to the military, the Tatmadaw’s power fundamentally does not change with the coup, rather the appearance of power does. Experts have claimed that the military’s actions are still characteristic of the country’s democratic backsliding because the institutions allowing for a people’s voice have been ignored.

While the motives for the coup have not been made public, some suspect the coup provides a means for the military’s leader, Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing, to stay in power. He was scheduled to retire this year upon reaching the Defense Service Act’s mandatory retirement age of 65. The elected civilian president would have chosen a successor, meaning that the NLD likely would have chosen a more reform minded leader.

The citizens of Myanmar have not reacted kindly to the coup. This past week, tens of thousands of people have protested the Tatmadaw’s actions in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. Chants of “We don’t want military dictatorship, we want democracy” could be heard throughout the city, and many protesters held posters of Aung San Suu Kyi and other detained officials. The Tatmadaw claims it will hold free and fair elections after reconstituting the election commission, although did not specify when elections would take place.

The Tatmadaw has attempted to prevent the protest through a series of measures, including internet blackouts and false news reports of detained officials’ release.

But protests have spilled over into neighboring Bangladesh, where Myanmar national Rohingya Muslims have taken refuge following previous violent crackdowns on ethnic-minorities by the Tatmadaw.

Few reports of violence have come as a result of the protests, with one instance of gunshots and one report of police authorities using rubber bullets to break up a rally. The Saffron Revolution of 2007, a prior protest movement of similar scale, resulted in at least 13 dead and hundreds injured and arrested. The protests began in response to a state-sponsored jump in fuel prices, but turned against the military rule. The Saffron revolution was considered an important stepping stone in Myanmar’s shift to democracy in 2011. The Tatmadaw has remained largely silent over the public’s opposition to the coup.

Throughout the West, governments quickly condemned the actions of the Tatmadaw, although defining the takeover has been a bit more nuanced. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and President of the European Council Charles Michel denounced the coup and called for the detained officials’ immediate release. U.S. President Joe Biden, however, has criticized the military’s “assault on the country’s transition to democracy” and threatened sanctions, but stopped short of calling the actions a coup.

Nearby countries in Southeast Asia have had more mixed reactions to the recent events. Cambodian leader Hun Sen refused to comment on the “internal affairs of another country;” whereas Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia expressed concern over the Tatmadaw’s actions.

China, the region’s most powerful country, blocked a United Nations Security Council statement condemning the Tatmadaw. China claims that sanctions or international pressure may make the situation worse in Myanmar.

As the events in Myanmar unfold, key things to look out for include the development of protests, the international community’s actions, and the military’s response to each respective interest.

With a population of 600 million and a total GDP of $1.9 trillion, South East Asia is rapidly capitalizing on its potential to become a major economic power. While its economy is developing briskly and consistently – nearly 5% every year – its political development of has been rough and inconsistent. With a growing, educated middle class and greater access to information technologies, citizens are clamoring for more democratic liberties and a wider range of political rights. In 2015, several key states made important developments towards democracy.

Burma
From 1962, the military Junta has ruled Burma with an iron fist. However, in 2011, the country took unprecedented steps toward democratic reform: 1) releasing Aung San Suu Kyi, the longtime opposition leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD), 2) establishing a Commission on Human Rights and 3) relaxing censorship. Furthermore, in 2012, there was a by-election in which the NLD won 40 seats in the parliament. The country has attempted democratization in the past—namely in 1990 when it held multi-party elections that simply ended with the results annulled and a crackdown on the NLD. But developments in the past few months suggest the democratic changes beginning in 2011 are here to stay.

In January of 2015, the government opened formal talks with student representatives regarding an education bill after major (illegal) demonstrations. In a country that usually cracks down on protests, this is a positive sign of government accountability and toleration of freedom of assembly and association. Protests continued throughout the year by students, citizens and the press alike with little obstruction. The biggest development was the announcement of an election promising wide opposition party participation; held on November 8, the NLD achieved a landslide victory with 77% of the seats in parliament.  

Burma is not a full-fledged democracy and the military still wields substantial power (25% of the seats of parliament are military appointments). However, they have promised to respect the decision of the election, and the NLD will choose the next president. The military’s motto is “disciplined democracy”, and while it seems like a contradiction, it is leading to unprecedented liberalization within the country.

Cambodia
Cambodia has been ruled since 1979 by the semi-authoritarian Cambodian People’s Party (CPP), led currently by President Hun Sen. A formerly Marxist-Leninist party, the CPP dropped its leftist affiliations in the early 1990s and adopted market economic reforms and supposed democratic restructuring. While the CPP has had regular elections since 1993, through intimidation, corruption and stringent regulation they have denied any opposition party a genuine chance at winning. However, in order to maintain legitimacy amidst rising unpopularity, the regime has recently embraced real democratic reform. The government held a 2013 election in which the opposing Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), a democratic liberal reform party, came within four percentage points of winning. The CNRP gained 55 out of 123 seats in the National Assembly despite allegations of voter fraud.

On November 12, 2015, the government issued an arrest warrant for the CNRP leader, Sam Rainsy, for public defamation, and expelled him from the National Assembly. Largely seen as a political move, it came at a turbulent time; two opposition party politicians were assaulted in November outside the National Assembly. With the opposition facing greater persecution by the government, Rainsy in self-imposed exile abroad and negotiations stalled, it seems that Cambodia’s path forward is rocky—two steps forward, one step back.

Thailand
Thailand is a constitutional monarchy historically ruled by a military Junta. The country has repeatedly attempted democratization but has failed to make meaningful progress. The most recent military government, which came to power through a coup in 2014, has promised to put Thailand back on the path of democratization, mainly pressured by large-scale citizen activism and protests. But 2015 saw very little change; the constitutional drafting process failed, resulting in the inevitable prolonging of the military government. Thailand has had 19 constitutions in less than 100 hundred years, and while there is currently a project to get another constitution written by April 2016, the junta’s commitment to writing a lasting document is questionable.

Additionally, the military government has created a climate of fear, as major political figures near the King and dissenting officers in the army were arrested for dubious corruption charges. It suggests that the government’s commitment to the rule of law is secondary to maintaining political control. Perhaps the most important development was news that the 2016 elections would be delayed. Thailand technically became a democratic state in 1932, and despite this legacy, the military junta seems to be deliberately delaying democratization for its own aggrandizement.

Vietnam
Vietnam is a one-party-rule communist state and is also one of the fastest developing countries in South East Asia. Vietnam embraces the Chinese model, using economic growth to maintain their political grip on the country. While the government does have a strong hand in media, internet censorship largely exists in name only and outside information is widely available.

Dissidents recently received a higher profile in the country. Citizen journalists wielding smartphones are trying to break the government’s monopoly on the media by circulating reports regarding human rights violations on the internet. While the government is cracking down, criticism from NGOs and other governments is limiting their ability to respond and is allowing citizen journalism to proliferate. There is an active online community of dissidents, some of whom send their grievances to the government directly.

An NGO known as Bloc 8406, a coalition of many regional and local pro-democracy parties, serves as the main organization pushing for greater political freedom. Its very existence indicates that the roots of democratization are being laid in the country. The government has been harsh in its suppression of dissidents and independent journalists, but is unable to silence all the voices or prevent more from joining the movement. It is important to note that with relatively high levels of economic growth and relative satisfaction, dissidents and active opposition against one party rule are still a minority, making any major changes beyond a relaxing of laws on freedom of speech and press unlikely in the near future.

The Regional Outlook
Democracy and basic political freedoms have become globalized norms that states and their citizens in South East Asia cannot ignore. South East Asia has a long history of military and one-party rule, but the region’s governments face an increasing demand for fair representation and political rights from their citizenry. Greater economic prosperity and the accompanying access to the internet and global media are fueling an increasingly fervent domestic discourse, which will result in a demand for government accountability and protection of human rights. Burma is the surprising leader in this move, and could serve as an inspiring development for similar movements in Thailand and Cambodia as well as activists in Vietnam.

With this in mind, it is unlikely that there will be violent and explosive revolution; citizens are unlikely to sacrifice economic growth and stability, and current governments have a strong grip over their respective states. However, we will see continued and escalating non-violent citizen pressure in 2016, led by students and members of the middle-class, reminding governments of their political and human rights.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors or governors.

50 years ago yesterday, the first American troops landed in Vietnam to launch the Vietnam War, one of the longest wars in US history. For the US, the war had countless repercussions, including the death of 58,000 Americans, the passing of the War Powers Resolution and the popularization of the pacifist movement. It left a lasting legacy on US foreign policy; but, in Vietnam, the war wrought devastation on a greater scale. Estimates of Vietnamese civilian deaths range from the hundreds of thousands to the millions. Additionally, the country was ransacked by chemical and conventional warfare. After the war, Vietnam was one of the poorest countries in Asia, with a bleak economy and dispirited population.

Refugees

With the fall of Saigon, the lives of South Vietnamese sympathizers were jeopardized while the government established its absolute authority. In an effort to eliminate capitalism from Vietnam, the government persecuted the South Vietnamese upper and middle classes. Some families were killed while others had their money confiscated and assets frozen. In response, hundreds of thousands left the country by any means possible, creating a global refugee crisis.

Fleeing Vietnam on fishing boats, so-called “boat people” established ethnic communities in California, Texas and other locations, but not without hardships. Vietnamese refugees were often attacked by Thai pirates, killed by storms at sea and exiled without food or water on islands in the Pacific. Eventually, the UN granted the exiled Vietnamese refugee status, but many had already suffered immeasurably on their journey.

Ethnic Chinese, particularly the Hoa people, were hit the hardest by the crisis because they made up a large percentage of the businessmen and bourgeoisie in Vietnam, the communists’ primary target. As the government filled freight boats with ethnic Chinese refugees to be sent to China, the Vietnamese government actually extorted the equivalent of thousands of US dollars for each refugee. However, the Chinese government was not open to this persecution and the forced influx of immigrants, and closed its borders to Vietnamese refugees. China and Vietnam’s communist ties could not ease the tensions surrounding immigration, and the Sino-Vietnamese border conflict broke out four years after the end of the Vietnam War.

The Cambodian-Vietnamese and the Sino-Vietnamese Wars

In the wake of the Vietnam War, Vietnam experienced two closely linked conflicts, one with Cambodia (then called Kampuchea) and the other with China, called the Cambodian-Vietnamese War and Sino-Vietnamese War respectively. Although all three countries were communist, there was a strong sense of rivalry among them. Vietnam viewed itself as the lynchpin of the Southeast Asian communism and was therefore obligated to exert some form of control in communist Kampuchea. However, Kampuchean leaders were not keen to the idea of Vietnam controlling the entire region. When internal conflicts in Kampuchea led to the ascendance of Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime – a brutal government that created chaos and violence in Kampuchea – Vietnam invaded.

For the Vietnamese, the war in Cambodia proved to be much like the Vietnam War was to Americans, a justifiable effort that turned out to be more complex, time-consuming (14 years in total) and tragic than expected. For example, many Vietnamese soldiers believed in their cause – freeing Cambodians from the Khmer Rouge – but oftentimes Cambodians reacted negatively to the invasion. One Vietnamese soldier remembers, “American soldiers thought they helped Vietnam…We were the same in Cambodia.” Vietnamese soldiers did not receive the appreciation they expected in Cambodia, especially after Vietnam attempted to occupy the country following the Khmer Rouge’s fall. Even today there is lingering bitterness against Vietnam in Cambodia.

Similarly to the US’s experience during the Vietnam War, public approval of the Cambodian-Vietnamese War decreased by the day in Vietnam. Today, the war is a memory rather left forgotten, a blemish on the Vietnamese government’s history. The Cambodian-Vietnamese War was physically and psychologically scarring for Vietnamese soldiers. Veterans returned traumatized, yet were not greeted as heroes in Vietnam—another parallel between the Vietnam War and the Cambodian-Vietnamese War.

China reacted negatively to the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia; the war, combined with Vietnam’s treatment of ethnic Chinese immigrants, caused the PRC’s People’s Liberation Army to attack Vietnam. Both governments claim victory in the Sino-Vietnamese War, yet neither celebrates it openly because of the large death toll each country suffered; in just weeks, thousands of Chinese and Vietnamese were killed and the Vietnamese countryside was destroyed.

Today, relations with China have not improved. The two countries have maritime disputes that intensify yearly regarding each country’s Exclusive Economic Zones. In 2014, China installed an oilrig in Vietnam’s claimed maritime space, sparking outrage and protests throughout Vietnam. In response, Vietnam purchased Russian Kilo-class submarines to patrol their waters for any Chinese ships.

Unlike Vietnam’s relationship with China, its relationship with the US has gradually improved in the past two decades, beginning with President Clinton’s 1995 initiative to normalize relations. Since then, trade between the two countries has blossomed with 134 times more trade in 2014 than in 1994. The US recently also lifted a 40-year embargo on lethal weapons to Vietnam, a move that is seen by both the US and Vietnam as a strategically prudent move for Asian security. Leverage against China seems to be a top priority for both the US and Vietnam.

In recent decades, Vietnam has done much to move on from the pains of the Vietnam War and its aftermath, including ending the age of the “boat people,” introducing economic reforms and becoming a part of the developing Trans-Pacific Partnership. According to the Center for the Study of Democracy at the University of California, Irvine, people in Vietnam are generally happy with their lives, the economy and the government. Among those surveyed, 90% have confidence in their government and 91% express happiness and satisfaction with their overall situation in life, more than in many developed countries.[1] Modern Vietnam is a far shot from the Vietnam of 1979 and has only become stronger as it moves away from the shadow of the Vietnam War.

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Glimpse from the Globe staff, editors, or governors.

Other Works Cited

[1] Dalton, Russel J. and Nhu-Ngoc T. Ong, “The Vietnamese Public in Transition, World Values Survey: Vietnam 2001,” Center for the Study of Democracy (2001): 2.