Everyday Justice in Myanmar
Everyday Justice in Myanmar

Author: Helene Maria Kyed

Publisher: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9788776942816

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This volume explores how ordinary people in present-day Myanmar obtain justice and resolve disputes and crimes in a time of contested transition in government, politics, society, and the economy. Its empirical questions serve as a lens to analyze the wider dynamics of state making, the role of identity politics, and the constitution of authority in a country emerging from decades of military rule and civil war. Based on a unique collection of ethnographic studies with ordinary people's experiences to the fore, its contributions illustrate that legal pluralism exists in urban as well as rural contexts: from the cities of Yangon and Mawlamyine to the Naga hills, the Pa-O self-administered zone, the Thai refugee camps, and villages in the Karen and Mon states. In all of these places, the official state system is only one among many avenues for people seeking resolution in criminal and civil cases. Indeed, a common practice is to evade the state whenever possible. Most people prefer local and informal resolutions, and therefore the main actors consulted in everyday justice are village elders, local administrators, religious leaders, spiritual actors, and the justice systems or individual members of ethnic organizations. Prevailing are also a range of alternative understandings of (in)justice, misfortunes, and disputes that differ from those of the state-legal system. These alternatives are based on different cultural norms, religious beliefs, and forms of identification. Despite the ongoing transition in Myanmar, the long history of military rule and conflicts based on ethnic divisions continue to foster a mistrust in the state and an orientation towards 'the local' in everyday justice. The book explores these forms of state evasion and what it means more broadly for state-society relations in the current transition.

The Significance of Everyday Access to Justice in Myanmar’s Transition to Democracy
The Significance of Everyday Access to Justice in Myanmar’s Transition to Democracy

Author: Helene Maria Kyed

Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

Published: 2019-06-13

Total Pages: 30

ISBN-13: 9814843857

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Legal pluralism in Myanmar is a reality that is not sufficiently recognized. A lack of recognition of and clear mandates for the informal justice providers, along with the absence of coordination between these providers and the judiciary, present critical challenges to local dispute resolution and informal legal systems. This results in a high level of unpredictability and insecurity concerning the justice outcomes and in the underreporting of cases. The lack of jurisdictional clarity represents an even greater challenge in areas of mixed control and where numerous armed actors are present. Discussion of reform of the justice sector in Myanmar and debates surrounding peace negotiations and the role of the ethnic armed groups in service provision are separated. This situation reinforces the divide between ceasefire areas and the rest of the country and raises concern that the improvement of justice systems will leave conflict-affected populations behind. Recognition of and support for community-based dispute resolution are crucial to reducing the escalation of conflict at the local level. Justice systems like those of ethnic armed groups can contribute significantly to stability and order at times when the official system has limited territorial reach and is mistrusted by civilians.

Opposing the Rule of Law
Opposing the Rule of Law

Author: Nick Cheesman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2015-03-12

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1107083184

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A striking new analysis of Myanmar's court system, revealing how the rule of law is 'lexically present but semantically absent'.

The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century
The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century

Author: Thant Myint-U

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 1324003308

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A New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2019 A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2020 “An urgent book.” —Jennifer Szalai, New York Times During a century of colonialism, Burma was plundered for its natural resources and remade as a racial hierarchy. Over decades of dictatorship, it suffered civil war, repression, and deep poverty. Today, Burma faces a mountain of challenges: crony capitalism, exploding inequality, rising ethnonationalism, extreme racial violence, climate change, multibillion dollar criminal networks, and the power of China next door. Thant Myint-U shows how the country’s past shapes its recent and almost unbelievable attempt to create a new democracy in the heart of Asia, and helps to answer the big questions: Can this multicultural country of 55 million succeed? And what does Burma’s story really tell us about the most critical issues of our time?

Myanmar Transformed?
Myanmar Transformed?

Author: Justine Chambers

Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

Published: 2018-09-20

Total Pages: 42

ISBN-13: 9814818542

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The triumph of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy at the 2015 election was supposed to mark the consolidation of a reformist trajectory for Myanmar society. What has followed has not proved so straightforward. This book takes stock of the mutations, continuities and fractures at the heart of today’s political and economic transformations. We ask: What has changed under a democratically elected government? Where are the obstacles to reform? And is there scope to foster a more prosperous and inclusive Myanmar? With the peace process faltering, over 1 million people displaced by recent violence, and ongoing army dominance in key areas of decision-making, the chapters in this volume identify areas of possible reform within the constraints of Myanmar’s hybrid civil–military governance arrangements. This latest volume in the Myanmar Update Series from the Australian National University continues a long tradition of intense, critical engagement with political, economic and social questions in one of Southeast Asia’s most complicated countries. At a time of great uncertainty and anxiety, the 13 chapters of Myanmar Transformed? offer new and alternative ways to understand Myanmar and its people.

Fifty Years in the Karen Revolution in Burma
Fifty Years in the Karen Revolution in Burma

Author: Ralph

Publisher: Cornell University Press

Published: 2020-02-15

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1501746960

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Fifty Years in the Karen Revolution in Burma is about commitment to an ideal, individual survival and the universality of the human experience. A memoir of two tenacious souls, it sheds light on why Burma/Myanmar's decades-long pursuit for a peaceful and democratic future has been elusive. Simply put, the aspirations of Burma's ethnic nationalities for self-determination within a genuine federal union runs counter to the idea of a unitary state orchestrated and run by the dominant majority Burmans, or Bamar. This seemingly intractable dilemma of opposing visions for Burma is personified in the story of Saw Ralph and Naw Sheera, two prominent ethnic Karen leaders who lived—and eventually left—"the Longest War," leaving the reader with insights on the cultural, social, and political challenges facing other non-Burman ethnic nationalities. Fifty Years in the Karen Revolution in Burma is also about the ordinariness and universality of the challenges increasingly faced by diaspora communities around the world today. Saw Ralph and Naw Sheera's day to day lives—how they fell in love, married, had children—while trying to survive in a precarious war zone—and how they had to adapt to their new lives as refugees and immigrants in Australia will resound with many.

How Generation Z Galvanized a Revolutionary Movement against Myanmar’s 2021 Military Coup
How Generation Z Galvanized a Revolutionary Movement against Myanmar’s 2021 Military Coup

Author: Ingrid Jordt

Publisher: ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute

Published: 2021-05-12

Total Pages: 44

ISBN-13: 9814951749

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On 1 February 2021, under the command of General Min Aung Hlaing, Myanmar’s military initiated a coup, apparently drawing to a close Myanmar’s ten-year experiment with democratic rule. State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were arrested along with other elected officials. Mass protests against the coup ensued, led by Gen Z youths who shaped a values-based democratic revolutionary movement that in character is anti-military regime, anti-China influence, anti-authoritarian, anti-racist, and anti-sexist. Women and minorities have been at the forefront, organizing protests, shaping campaigns, and engaging sectors of society that in the past had been relegated to the periphery of national politics. The protests were broadcast to local and international audiences through social media. Simultaneously, a civil disobedience movement (CDM) arose in the shape of a massive strike mostly led by civil servants. CDM is non-violent and acephalous, a broad “society against the state” movement too large and diffuse for the military to target and dismantle. Semi-autonomous administrative zones in the name of Pa-a-pha or civil administrative organizations emerged out of spontaneously organized neighbourhood watches at the ward and village levels, effectively forming a parallel governance system to the military state. Anti-coup protests moved decisively away from calls for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other elected political leaders, or for a return to democracy under the 2008 constitution. Instead, it evolved towards greater inclusivity of all Myanmar peoples in pursuit of a more robust federal democracy. A group of fifteen elected parliamentarians, representing the ideals of Gen Z youths, formed a shadow government called the Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) on 5 February 2021. On 1 March the CRPH declared the military governing body, the State Administrative Council (SAC), a “terrorist group”, and on 31 March, it declared the military’s 2008 constitution abolished. Gen Z’s protests have accomplished what has been elusive to prior generations of anti-regime movements and uprisings. They have severed the Bamar Buddhist nationalist narrative that has gripped state society relations and the military’s ideological control over the political landscape, substituting for it an inclusive democratic ideology.

First, They Erased Our Name
First, They Erased Our Name

Author: Habiburahman

Publisher: Scribe Publications

Published: 2019-08-06

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13: 1925693724

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For the first time, a Rohingya speaks up to expose the persecution facing his people. ‘I am three years old and will have to grow up with the hostility of others. I am already an outlaw in my own country, an outlaw in the world. I am three years old, and don’t yet know that I am stateless.’ Habiburahman was born in 1979 and raised in a small village in western Burma. When he was three years old, the country’s military leader declared that his people, the Rohingya, were not one of the 135 recognised ethnic groups that formed the eight ‘national races’. He was left stateless in his own country. Since 1982, millions of Rohingya have had to flee their homes as a result of extreme prejudice and persecution. In 2016 and 2017, the government intensified the process of ethnic cleansing, and over 600,000 Rohingya people were forced to cross the border into Bangladesh. Here, for the first time, a Rohingya speaks up to expose the truth behind this global humanitarian crisis. Through the eyes of a child, we learn about the historic persecution of the Rohingya people and witness the violence Habiburahman endured throughout his life until he escaped the country in 2000. First, They Erased Our Name is an urgent, moving memoir about what it feels like to be repressed in one’s own country and a refugee in others. It gives voice to the voiceless.

Rescuing Justice and Equality
Rescuing Justice and Equality

Author: G. A. Cohen

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 449

ISBN-13: 0674029658

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In this stimulating work of political philosophy, acclaimed philosopher G. A. Cohen sets out to rescue the egalitarian thesis that in a society in which distributive justice prevails, people’s material prospects are roughly equal. Arguing against the Rawlsian version of a just society, Cohen demonstrates that distributive justice does not tolerate deep inequality. In the course of providing a deep and sophisticated critique of Rawls’s theory of justice, Cohen demonstrates that questions of distributive justice arise not only for the state but also for people in their daily lives. The right rules for the macro scale of public institutions and policies also apply, with suitable adjustments, to the micro level of individual decision-making. Cohen also charges Rawls’s constructivism with systematically conflating the concept of justice with other concepts. Within the Rawlsian architectonic, justice is not distinguished either from other values or from optimal rules of social regulation. The elimination of those conflations brings justice closer to equality.

The Force of Custom
The Force of Custom

Author: Judith Beyer

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2016-12-16

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 0822981548

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Judith Beyer presents a finely textured ethnographic study that sheds new light on the legal and moral ordering of everyday life in northwestern Kyrgyzstan. Through her extensive fieldwork, Beyer captures the thoughts and voices of local people in two villages, Aral and Engels, and combines these with firsthand observations to create an original ethnography. Beyer shows how local Kyrgyz negotiate proper behavior and regulate disputes by invoking custom, known to the locals as salt. While salt is presented as age-old tradition, its invocation needs to be understood as a highly developed and flexible rhetorical strategy that people adapt to suit the political, legal, economic, and religious environments. Officially, codified state law should take precedence when it comes to dispute resolution, yet the unwritten laws of salt and the increasing importance of Islamic law provide the standards for ordering everyday life. As Beyer further reveals, interpretations of both Islamic and state law are also intrinsically linked to salt. By interweaving case studies on kinship, legal negotiations, festive events, mourning rituals, and political and business dealings, Beyer shows how salt is the binding element in rural Kyrgyz social life, used to explain and negotiate moral behavior and to postulate communal identity. In this way, salt provides a time-tested, sustainable source of authentication that defies changes in government and the tides of religious movements. Beyer's ground-level analysis provides a broad base of knowledge that will be valuable for students and researchers of contemporary Central Asia.