Guwahati (The Stellar News): As the National League for Democracy (NLD) has won a clear mandate from the Burmese electorates to rule Myanmar for the next five years, the Daw Aung San Suu Kyi led political party should work towards genuine national reconciliation, overturn the structural and institutional policies and laws that work in favour of the majority Bamar ethnic group over minorities, and lay the foundations for a shift in attitude regarding ethnicity, identity, and nation.
“Since Myanmar’s independence, the idea of a Burma (Myanmar) nation has been a contested, bitterly fought over, uneven and exclusionary notion. Ethnic identity and strict classifications of race – a legacy of the British – have been at the forefront of these discourses,” said Progressive Voice, a participatory rights-based policy research and advocacy organization that was born out of Burma Partnership on 10 October 2016 in its latest weekly newsletter (16-22 November 2020). Dominated by the Bamar (Burman) majority military, the modern history of Myanmar has been one of violent state building, forced assimilation of ethnic minorities, and the systematic suppression, marginalization, and exclusion of ethnic minority culture, expression, religion, and language.
Building Myanmar in the image of the Buddhist, Bamar has been the modus operandi of the military rulers, and indeed civilian rulers before and after the decades of military junta rule, added the group. It also pointed out that the ethnic-based exclusions and
marginalizations were not only a feature of military rule as the liberal democracy, despite its limitations in exercising its power
due to the military-drafted 2008 Constitution, continued to embody the Burmanization agenda. Building statues of Bamar heroes in ethnic minority localities at the expense of local martyrs and recently naming a new bridge in Mon State after General Aung San, rather than a local ethnic Mon figure, could have been avoided for the cause of a federal democratic union.
“Dealing with Myanmar state authorities, who are primarily ethnic Bamar, are often discriminatory towards non-Bamar people can be a degrading experience. Many Karen villagers simply do not have their IDs and hence cannot prove their citizenship. It impacts their ability to register land, to vote, to move freely, and attaining education beyond primary level,” stated the group. The issues around ethnic identity and Burmanization are deeply rooted in terms of policy, laws, maps, institutions, discriminatory attitudes, and behaviours at all levels of Myanmar society. The NLD government in NayPieTaw is certainly not going to solve these challenges in just five years. However, with the overwhelming majority and the unwavering support it has from the electorate, it should work for overhauling of various institutionalized structures, policies and laws that marginalise the identity of ethnic minorities.
