Watch Out Suu Kyi, Myanmar Soldier Civil Disobedience on the Rise

by Antony Adolf · 2010-09-26 07:32:00 UTC
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Pro-democracy human rights icon and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is starting to face strange, direct strategic and tactical competition (or indirect collaboration?) from the very people imposing the military rule she has struggled against for decades: Myanmar's soldiers. The awesomely awkward conjunction of events raises serious questions about the direction rights activism is taking, and what can or should be done about it.

Just as the country's officials announced that Suu Kyi would be allowed to vote in the upcoming elections (though as opposition leader she is barred from running for office and so is boycotting them), new reports have emerged that soldiers of the country the BBC calls Burma are refusing to carry out routine tasks they are ordered to by their commanders, because rations and pay have been cut for ongoing weeks. For her part, Suu Kyi is detained in a lakeside mansion and has two live-in maids.

The voting permission accorded to Suu Kyi and her two live-in maids, who share her mansion arrest, have raised convoluted legal questions because convicted, serving prisoners have no right to vote under Myanmar's 2008 constitution. While allowed to vote, they will not be allowed to leave their prison. Meanwhile, the hungry soldiers who cannot support their families are demonstrating courage that can cost them their lives if their civil disobedience is construed as mutiny.

Who are the heroes here? When Suu Kyi's "incarceration" was extended because an American tried to swim to her rescue last year, I pointed out that the fate of the pro-democracy and human rights movement in Myanmar (and, by extension, everywhere) being tied to that of a single person is a sure sign that icons can limit social change in being their exclusive catalyst. Now that the "grassroots" of the military regime are taking the very kind of concerted nonviolent action that won Suu Kyi the Nobel Peace Prize, will the global peace and human rights community rush to and sustain their support as it did with her?

Photo Credit: 200MoreMontrealStencils

Antony Adolf is the author of Peace: A World History, and a teacher, public speaker and independent scholar. He is the publisher of One World, Many Peaces: Current Events Creating the Future.
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