The Ethnic Issue in Burma: How Can

[suantak@xxxxxx]

Subject: Re: The Ethnic Issue in Burma: How Can They Solve It 

It is very interesting to read the
article by Htun Aung Gyaw. I would like
to thank Htun Aung Gyaw for expressing
his fear for the military to hold on to
power if the minorities continue to
demand secession. It is very true that
so long as the non-Burman demand
secession there will be panic among the
Burman. Htun Aung Gyaw has the forsight
to plea to the Burman to allow the
(minorities) to learn their own language
in government institutions. This is
indeed what many non-Burman
nationalities would like to have.

On the otherhand, Htun Aung Gyaw is very
ignorant of the history of the recent
past. He wrote" In the past, the Burman
treated the minorities very well ...in
1962, the rulers attitude changed. The
Burman cheated in 1947 the non-Burman by
making Burma a quasi federal union and
gave them little or no rights in the
affairs of the union. Under the
government of the AFPFL or during
parliamentary democracy, the Burman took
the helm and slowly and surely steered
Burma towards Burmanization of the
non-Burman and Buddhistization of the
non-Buddhist. Development projects were
concentrated in the Burman areas, as to
be seen around Rangoon today. The
sprawling, congested, polluted, and
stinking Rangoon was the result of the U
Nu government's building of factories in
and in the vicinity of Rangoon.  This is
no good treatment to the non-Burman, who
live far from Rangoon.  Starting in 1949
Ne Win and his army had been terrorizing
the non-Burman, Karen, Shan, Karenni,
and Arakanese, but the
plea by the non-Burman in Parliament to
stop the atrocities were ignored by the
Burmese government. The outcome was
unavoidable demand for separation by
some section of the youth in the
non-Burman society. The non-Burman
politicians however, demanded an
amendment of the constitution so that
rights were to be given to them as
promised at the Panglong agreement. It
was then too late as Ne Win and his army
had become too strong not to stay away
from temptation to run the country.  If
Htun Aung Gyaw would look back into the
history of the recent past, he will see
that ethnic rebellion for
independence started in the late fortys
to the early sixties, during the time
that he thought the Burmans treated the
(minorities) very well. So, Htun Aung
Gyaw has to study, what happened during
the Burmese rule before 1962. There was
the independent Burma Army not
controlled by the U Nu government.
Raping, killing, and all kinds of
atrocities happened during that time in
the remote areas of the non-Burman
disturbed areas. The Burman civilian
government handed over the military to
solve the ethnic conflict to the army
but by military means. The better choice
would have been a political
solution. The army used this to enlarge
itself until it was ready to make a
coup, strong enough to arrest the Prime
Minister and to put his government in
jail.

I congratulate Htun Aung Kyaw for his
farsighted views of how to a certain
extent the peoples of the Union can live
together respecting each other and with
no army to bind them together by force.
So long as there are threats for the
survival of the non-Burman as distinct
groups with distinct linguistic,
cultural, social, and political
identity, they will always pursue an
exit, although they know that this is
not the answer. The answer is to find a
formula how the different ethnic
nationalities can work together in an
atmosphere where there is
proportionality in all walks of life.
Both Burman and non-Burman should in
population proportion work together and
share responsibility and participate in
the nation building.

Having said this, to under the current
situation  Htun Aung Gyaw should study
also the  proposals made by the NLD in
its manifesto of 1996 which recognized
the need to build separate national
state governments where each state is
free to teach what language they want to
teach in their schools.  The only thing
the non-Burman is not happy with is the
subjugation of their languages in the
Union level in the NCUB draft of the
constitution of 1997.  They want the
Union government to recognize their
languages as official languages of the
union, so that  it touches upon the
proposal by Htun Aung Gyaw.

On the other hand the NLD?s manifesto
designated the Peoples Assembly to build
the Union Government  and  to chose or
elect the Prime Minister or Chief
Executive Officer of the Union.  This is
not acceptable to the non-Burman who
will be in the 1/3 minority, because
they will never achieve a majority even
if they have a block vote.  Should the
Burman have the will to integrate the
non-Burman as a serious partner, they
might raise the number of members of the
National Assembly to a certain level so
that there is not such a big gap in the
combine house of parliaments, which will
then elect the Chief Executive Officer
of the Union.  The NLD 1996 manifesto
also designated the Lower House or the
Peoples Assembly to decide of the
Budget.  This once again put the
non-Burman on the side of the loser as
they have no possible influence on the
outcome.

Another on going complaint by the
non-Burman is the lack of their
participation in the policy making
process of the Union and their lack of
participation in the civil and military
departments. Unless some kind of
arrangement is made which represents the
1:2 ratio of the population thickness of
the Union, there could be little
satisfaction.  The complaint are far off
from the simple language problem
suggested by U Htun Aung Kyaw.

The NLD, as the winning party of 1990
would have not make the non-Burman
satisfied if they had applied their 1996
manifesto and build the government in
1990.  They must have to find a better
formula using their simple majority to
run the business.  Democracy is a
process good for finding out what the
majority of the people want.  But in the
case of the Union of Burma there are
fine thin lines that need to apply such
as other constitutional and political
science practices.