Unions call general strike against coup in Myanmar
‘We will never be slaves to a military junta’
https://themilitant.com/2021/03/13/unions-call-general-strike-against-coup-in-myanmar/
BY SETH GALINSKY
Vol. 85/No. 11
March 22, 2021
March 10 protest in Katha, farm town of 27,000 on border of Kachin and
Shan ethnic regions, part of Myanmar-wide strikes and protests demanding
end to military junta’s seizure of power.
MIZZIMA
March 10 protest in Katha, farm town of 27,000 on border of Kachin and
Shan ethnic regions, part of Myanmar-wide strikes and protests demanding
end to military junta’s seizure of power.
Working people in Myanmar began a general strike across the country
March 8, seeking to topple the military junta that seized power Feb. 1.
The strike comes alongside massive protests, in spite of more deadly
repression by the regime.
“We are not slaves to the military junta now and we never shall be,” 18
trade unions, union federations and organizations of farmers and
farmworkers said in a joint statement, calling on “all workers
nationwide, union and nonunion alike” to join the strike.
Protest in Los Angeles Feb. 27 backs strikes, mass protests by working
people in Myanmar fighting to overturn Feb. 1 military coup, part of
solidarity actions around the world.
MILITANT/DEBORAH LIATOS
Protest in Los Angeles Feb. 27 backs strikes, mass protests by working
people in Myanmar fighting to overturn Feb. 1 military coup, part of
solidarity actions around the world.
The call to action comes after more than a month of daily protests in
big cities and rural towns against the coup. Cops and soldiers have
increasingly used live ammunition and vicious beatings against peaceful
demonstrators. They were caught on video beating emergency medical
workers with rifle butts for treating wounded protesters.
Despite over 2,000 arrests, more than 60 deaths, hundreds injured, the
use of torture, and untold numbers “disappeared,” protesters keep
pouring into the streets.
If anything, the attacks by the police and army have brought workers,
farmers and youth; Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Christian religious
leaders; and ethnic minorities closer together.
The demonstrators are not naive about what they face. Kyal Sin, 19, shot
dead during a March 3 protest in Mandalay with a bullet behind her ear,
had posted on Facebook that if she were killed she wanted her organs
donated to save other lives.
The depth of the protests has surprised even longtime opponents of the
military high command. Kyaw Zwa Moe — a veteran of the 1988 uprising
that was crushed in blood by the generals — wrote in Irrawaddy, a
Yangon-based news service that supports the protests, that two days
after the killing of Kyal Sin, “we were amazed to see photos of still
bigger crowds of protesters taking to the streets in Mandalay.”
After the strike call, police and soldiers began occupying hospitals,
universities and schools to use as base camps. According to Irrawaddy,
they fired guns throughout the night in Yangon in an attempt to
intimidate people. The repressive forces also are stopping cars and
pedestrians and arresting those who have anti-regime literature.
Decades of military rule
Under Myanmar’s 2008 constitution, imposed by the generals as part of
allowing a controlled “democratic” opening after decades of military
rule, 25% of the seats of parliament are appointed directly by the
commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, giving him veto power over any
changes to the constitution. Key ministries are also appointed by the
military.
In 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi, head of the bourgeois National League for
Democracy, became de facto head of government after her party won a
landslide electoral victory the year before, the first contested
election in decades.
Suu Kyi’s standing flows from the reputation of her father, Aung San,
who was killed during the struggle for independence from British
colonial rule, as well as her years of imprisonment by the military.
Despite her earlier reputation as an opponent of the military rulers,
she has become the main public defender of the army’s repression of the
Rohingya minority in Rakine province.
Suu Kyi is also widely mistrusted by many from ethnic minorities
mistreated by the military and the government. Divisions between the
ethnic minorities — more than 30% of the population — and the ruling
Bamar majority are a legacy of British colonial rule and its strategy of
divide and rule. After Myanmar won its independence in 1948, the
post-independence regimes continued to foster those divisions, including
the military regimes waging war against their struggles for autonomy.
After 2016, the National League for Democracy overturned some laws that
restricted democratic rights and passed legislation weakening the
generals’ control of lucrative businesses, like their trade in jade. The
generals feared that there would be more pressure to limit their
economic and political power after the National League for Democracy won
an even bigger margin in the November 2020 elections.
Burmese ‘socialism’
The military high command played a key role in capitalist development in
Myanmar in 1963, the year after Gen. Ne Win deposed the civilian
government. Claiming they were organizing “the Burmese Way to
Socialism,” the junta nationalized foreign banks and many businesses.
These nationalizations without a revolution — like similar
expropriations carried out by the military castes in Egypt and Syria —
had nothing to do with eliminating capitalism or advancing the interest
of working people. Instead, they served as an incubator for a native
capitalist class, primarily from the Bamar ethnic majority, especially
those with ties to the military.
Senior military officers and their families gained control of the most
lucrative businesses and industries. This accelerated in 2011 when
state-owned businesses were sold off, often to military officials and
their cronies. This was coupled with a major expansion of foreign
investment from companies based in China, Singapore, Japan, the United
Kingdom and the U.S.
The influx of capital and expanded production meant a growth in the size
of the working class along with union organization and struggles.
Myanmar has become a major center for world garment production, with
some 600,000 workers who earn even less than their counterparts in
Vietnam and Cambodia.
Hundreds of thousands of farmers — many of them members of ethnic
minorities from the outer provinces — are being driven off the land and
into the factories in Yangon and Mandalay. One unintended consequence of
this migration has been that many workers from different ethnic
minorities find themselves side by side in garment and other factories,
fighting together against exploitation by the bosses and their military
cronies. This solidarity finds its way back to their villages.
Some 2,500 residents from 34 farm villages in Mu Traw District, an area
that is predominantly settled by the Karen minority, issued a statement
March 2 pledging “our solidarity and support with all the protesters
rising up against the military dictatorship. We will continue to fight
for our rights until we achieve the establishment of a genuine
democratic federal union with ethnic equality and self-determination.”
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