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The Chin National Front Perspective



Subject: The Chin National Front Perspective on Nationhood

>From BURMA DEBATE
Nov/Dec 1996

Chin National Front and Chin Nationhood

By Rollin Van Bik of the Chin National Front/U.S.A.

The Chin National Front (CNF) does not claim to be the exclusive voice of
the Chin people who live in Burma. However, the CNF is the largest
organization of Chin opposed to the SLORC military dictatorship, and
therefore, plays an important role when discussing the issue of Chin
"Nationhood" 

The leadership of the CNF is primarily composed of students of the "1988"
generation. The ideas and viewpoints of these younger leaders were shaped by
a different set of experiences than the experiences that shaped the
attitudes of the previous generation of Chin leaders, and consequently, it
should be no surprise that many CNF leaders hold a fundamentally different
perspective on "nationhood" than that held by many in the older Chin leaders. 

The approximately four million Chin-related people are united by a common
language and a common hill-tribe culture. In the late 19th century, British
colonial authorities drew the border between their colonies of India and
Burma directly  through traditional Chin territory. When both colonies later
received their independence after WWII, the boundary originally drawn by the
colonial British became the internationally recognized border between the
newly independent countries of India and Burma. As an ethnic minority
population living in larger countries, the Chin, quite predictably, in both
India and Burma, encountered significant problems with discrimination and
preservation of their culture. Both the governments of India and Burma in
the decades after national independence had to deal with serious problems
with their Chin populations. 
In India, an armed Chin guerrilla movement (called the Mizo National Front)
flared up and simmered for several decades. However, because India is a
democracy, the Indian government resolved its problems with the Chin people
through a negotiated settlement in the mid-1980s. This agreement gave the
Chin-related people in India a semiautonomous state called Mizoram, and
further gave the Chin in Mizoram certain rights concerning their language,
culture, land, and limited rights to local self-government. 

Meanwhile in Burma, after the Ne Win army toppled the democratically elected
government in 1962, an armed Chin guerrilla uprising called the
Anti-Communist and Freedom Organization (ACFO) erupted in 1964 against the
Burmese regime. Unlike in India, the movement in Burma was brutally crushed
by military power, leaving an imprint of resentment in the minds of the
people towards the Ne Win military dictatorship. This resentment is clearly
reflected in the receptive attitudes of the Chin people to the CNF movement
from its inception. 

With their own elected government, the Chin in Mizoram have not only
flourished but have been given the freedom to preserve their cultural
heritage. Unfortunately, the situation for the Chin in Burma has been very
different. Since the Ne Win regime, Burma has been ruled by a military
dictatorship which has launched unrelenting attacks which have been aimed at
obliterating all significant minority cultures in Burma including the Chin.
Knowing that most Chin are Christians and that Christianity is part of their
identity, the SLORC, using military force, has destroyed or removed
Christian crosses from locations on prominent hills and replaced them with
Buddhist monuments. 

SLORC maneuvers of this type have been so extreme that in 1994/95 they even
lured Chin children away from their parents with promises of sending them to
be educated in Rangoon. When the parents originally tried to find
information about their children, they were denied access, only to later
discover that instead of being put in schools, their children had actually
been placed in Buddhist monasteries in an attempt to wipe out their
"Chiness." These types of cultural assaults are typical of SLORC's campaign
to suppress, discourage, and eventually obliterate ethnic cultures. 
Given the nature of the SLORC assault on the Chin culture, it is useful to
lay out some of the perspectives and attitudes of the CNF: 
1. The CNF is anti-military dictatorship. For the CNF, the fundamental
problem is the Burman generals. If the Burman dominated military
dictatorship continues indefinitely, Chin culture will eventually perish
under the weight of SLORC's assault. In contrast, if Burman democrats come
to power in Burma, the long term viability of Chin culture in a united Burma
will be bright, because tolerance for minorities and for minority cultures
is an integral part of the very fabric and philosophy of a modern democratic
government. Obviously, democracy will not solve all problems between a
dominant population group like the Burmans and a minority culture like the
Chin, but democracy solved the major problems between the Chin and the
government in India, and it will solve the major problems between the Chin
and a Burmese government. A democratic government, with its inherent
philosophy of individual human rights and tolerance for differences, is the
best long-term solution to the preservation of Chin culture. 

Considering the bitter experiences they went through under the Burman
military dictatorship, it would be unfair to blame the older generation of
Chin leaders for holding grudges against the Burmans. The leaders of CNF on
the other hand have had the opportunity to work directly and successfully
with Burman democrats and consider them close brothers and sisters in the
drive to overthrow the military dictatorship. (CNF ties are particularly
strong with the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma and the
All Burma Students' Democratic Front). The CNF believes that unity and close
cooperation among all democracy-loving people, both ethnic minority
democrats and Burman democrats, is the recipe for overthrowing the SLORC
military dictatorship. 
2. The CNF does not want independence. The CNF believes that, from any
practical point of view, the Chin people are too few in number and their
land area is too small and landlocked to be an economically viable
independent "nation" in today's global economy. In addition, current
international law and political practices lean heavily against changing
established international boundaries. In short, economic and political
realities preclude the viability of an independent Chin nation-state. Since
its inception the CNF has therefore been urging the Chin people to
concentrate on unity and close cooperation between both ethnic minority
democrats and Burman democrats. 
3. the CNF wants "federalism." As much as the CNF is committed to fighting
for the restoration of democracy in Burma, it believes in and will stand
firm for the establishment of a "federal democratic system" in which
individual states have, to a certain extent, the right to self-determination. 

Because of its many ethnic groups, Burma is the ideal country for
emplacement of a federal democratic system. Although the exact power sharing
arrangement in each type of federal democratic government is different,
federalism generally gives some significant amount of power to the
individual states in the areas of education, taxing authority, language, and
land and natural resources. 

The exact details of how, in a future democratic Federal Union of Burma,
power in these four areas should be divided between the central government
and the individual states are issues that the CNF does not take a specific
stand on. The CNF believes that all such questions should properly be
resolved in a future Constituent Assembly composed of elected
representatives of all the people who have been given a mandate to write a
new constitution for Burma. 

In summation, there is no such thing as a Chin nation -- at least in the
sense of some potential independent nation-state. There does, however, exist
a Chin people divided into many tribes --?from the Asho Chin of  the plains
of Burma, to the Chin in the hills of Chin State, from the Khumi Chin of the
Arakan area of Burma, to the Chin called Mizo who live in India, to a small
group of Chin in Bangladesh. The Chin people want to preserve their language
and important aspects of their culture. Democracy is the only long term
route for doing so. The Chin in democratic India have reached their
accommodation with the government of India. Federal democracy is the type of
democratic government needed to solve the ethnic reality of Burma. As for
the Chin culture in Burma, the long-term future, while not problem-free,
will nevertheless be brighter under a federal democratic government. In
contrast, under the SLORC military dictatorship the long-term future for
Chin culture is bleak indeed. Fighting the military dictatorship is fighting
for the survival of the Chin culture, and at its most recent conference in
March, the CNF adopted four objectives: 
1. To establish a functioning democratic government in a united Burma by
working in close cooperation with other pro-democracy organizations. 
2. To promote and preserve Chin culture and Chin language by establishing a
Chin State inside the framework of a democratic federal Burma. 
3. To teach and educate the Chin people about democracy and practical ways
to resist the military dictatorship with all means available. 
4. To provide essential governmental service to the people in any areas of
Chinland that the Chin National Front liberates from the dictatorship.
 
At its March Conference the CNF also adopted a Code of Military Conduct
based on the Geneva 
Convention to guide its military operations. The CNF considers a cease-fire
inappropriate unless 
SLORC wishes to have a cease-fire in order to negotiate handing power over
to an elected government. The CNF will continue to fight until there is a
democratically elected government in Burma. As soon as such a government
comes into being, the CNF will dissolve itself as an organization and urge
its members to become involved in the democratic political process through
the political party of their choice. 

It should be clear to all, that the goal of the CNF is not to chase some
impractical dream of a Chin nation-state, but rather to assure the long term
survivability of Chin culture in Burma by helping establish a democratic
federal government in Burma. Once that historic mission has been
accomplished, the democratic resistance organization known as the Chin
National Front will dissolve honorably into the proud history of the Chin
people. 



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