In May 2021, three months after Myanmar’s military took power in a coup, Rupa traveled around 300 miles from her home in the city of Pyin Oo Lwin to enlist in one of the country’s roughly two dozen major ethnic armed organizations (EAOs).
Rupa, who has been granted a pseudonym due to the risk of reprisals, was a recent high school graduate at the time and was one of tens of thousands of young people who joined the uprising against the military junta. Some people enlisted in People’s Defense Forces, which formed specifically to fight against the new military regime, while others joined EAOs that had already been fighting for self-determination before they committed themselves to the wider resistance movement.
This ongoing movement, known in Myanmar as the Spring Revolution, seeks to eliminate the military from politics and establish a federal democracy that shifts the balance of power toward state-level governments.
Many of Myanmar’s ethnic minority groups have waged decades-long fights for autonomy in the borderlands, and they are now seeing their goals within arm’s reach for the first time. But while the Spring Revolution has inspired a groundswell of interethnic and interreligious unity against the military, some remaining key challenges will need to be addressed to resolve territorial disputes, build social cohesion, and develop a political framework that promotes lasting peace.
Rupa joined the Kachin Independence Army, which seeks autonomy over an area that the Kachin people identify as their homeland in northern Myanmar. But Rupa is neither from this area nor an ethnic Kachin: Of Nepali ancestry, she is part of the organization’s Gurkha Force, with members that include the descendants of a regiment that served under British allied forces during World War II.
Gurkhas are one of several minorities in Myanmar—most are of South Asian or Chinese descent—that face barriers to full citizenship rights under a 1982 law that requires those who do not belong to one of 135 official “national races,” or taingyinthar, to prove their generational residence in Myanmar through lengthy bureaucratic processes. Religious minorities—including Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs—are also often excluded, in practice, from full citizenship in the Buddhist-majority country.
Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG), a parallel administration made up of politicians and activists who oppose the coup, has vowed to replace the 1982 citizenship law with one based on birthright principles. However, the NUG has yet to release a full policy, and its discussions around federalism have mostly focused on the recognized taingyinthar groups.
As the Spring Revolution gathers momentum, advocates are calling for measures that also promote the rights of marginalized groups such as the Gurkha community. “This is a critical time [for] every individual and community in Myanmar,” said Aung Ko Ko, the executive director of Mosaic Myanmar, an organization that focuses on ethnic and religious inclusion. “Everyone needs to be accommodated in the new political system.”
Rupa said that she believes that federalism has the potential to promote peace, stability, and development for all communities in Myanmar, but she emphasized the importance of adhering to core values. “For me, the true achievement will be ensuring equal rights, the absence of ethnic and religious discrimination, and equal access to education for everyone,” she said.
The concept of federalism in Myanmar traces back to a 1947 conference in Panglong, Shan state, on the eve of independence from Britain. Gen. Aung San—the father of deposed Myanmar leader and pro-democracy activist Aung San Suu Kyi—convinced leaders from the Chin, Kachin, and Shan communities to join the Union of Burma, offering “full autonomy in internal administration” in return.
Aung San was assassinated months later, and the Panglong Agreement was left unrealized. Despite the emergence of EAOs, federalism at the national level gained little traction until recently, said Lian Hmung Sakhong, who serves as the vice chair of the Chin National Front, another EAO. He noted that initial efforts to incorporate federalism into the constitution ended with a 1962 military coup, and that while nationwide pro-democracy protests erupted in 1988, they did little to advance ethnic political rights.
Dynamics shifted after the 2021 coup. “In 1988, federalism was not the core for the movement, but in 2021, federalism was the center,” Sakhong said. He was part of a committee that released a Federal Democracy Charter in March 2021, intended to serve as a road map for a transitional constitution. The same month, he joined the NUG as minister of federal union affairs, serving alongside members of the former elected government and other ethnic minority leaders.
“Our principles are now the same; our goal is the same, so that’s why we are working together for this federalism,” Sakhong said. In collaboration with an advisory group known as the National Unity Consultative Council, he is now working to finalize the transitional constitution.
The draft version is not yet public, leaving questions about how federal units will be demarcated and administered. Although Myanmar’s pre-coup map includes seven ethnic minority states and seven Bamar-majority regions, this configuration fails to capture the country’s diverse reality on the ground.
Sakhong said that he expects a hybrid federal model to emerge, with state boundaries based on a combination of geography and ethnic groups’ territorial claims; certain powers would also be granted to local levels of authority. He added that it will not be practical for every ethnic group to have its own state, but that provisions will be included to protect communities’ rights to practice their own customs, language, and religion.
The protection of minority rights is critical in a country where ethnic and religious discrimination have long been normalized, said Ko Jag, a youth activist from Myanmar’s Sikh community who requested to use a nickname due to safety concerns.
“If you see the society in Burma, it is like us versus them,” he said. “For example, the majority Bamar is ‘us,’ and the other minorit[ies], ‘them’ … and if they want to make a bigger ‘us’ … then they will say 135 Indigenous ethnic[ities] as ‘us,’ and people not given Indigenous status as ‘them.’”
Some racial and ethnic barriers began to fall in the wake of the coup, as people came together to protest peacefully and suffered together under the military’s violent crackdowns. “Things changed totally,” said another youth activist from Kachin state, who identifies as Gurkha and also requested to remain anonymous due to safety concerns.
“Nobody asks [if you are] Muslim; nobody asks [if you are] Hindu,” he said. “They just see—these are the people, and we are the same, and the ultimate enemy of the country is the military.”
Expressions of solidarity have abounded, alongside apologies from members of the Bamar majority for prior indifference to the plight of Myanmar’s minorities. Many of these apologies were directed toward the Rohingya minority, which was the target of a 2017 military campaign of killings, sexual violence, and arson in Rakhine state, for which many members of the public showed apathy at the time.
“The public became more aware of the brutality of the military,” said Annawar, a Rohingya youth who also requested to use a nickname due to safety concerns. “In the past, people were familiar with the military’s propaganda … but after the coup, they could sympathize with Rohingyas.”
Still, others emphasized that there is remaining work to be done to end harmful prejudices in Myanmar. Pont Pont, a teacher and an ethnic Bamar Muslim from the city of Meiktila, said that Buddhists and Muslims had protested side by side after the coup, helping to ease tensions in a city that had experienced deadly intercommunal violence in 2013. (She also requested the use of a nickname out of fear for her safety.)
But Pont Pont added that many Muslims had struggled to find a place in the post-coup resistance movement. “Even among people who supported the Spring Revolution, there was a noticeable mindset of discrimination toward Muslims,” she said. “Because we are still living within the country and facing discrimination based on our identity and religion, it has been difficult to participate actively.”
The extent to which marginalized communities will be represented by any post-coup political system remains to be seen. Maung Saungkha, a poet and activist who leads the Bamar People’s Liberation Army, an EAO formed after the coup, said that he believes that federalism would benefit everyone in Myanmar by decentralizing power.
“Federalism is the only way to prevent the control of a single majority ethnic group,” Maung Saungkha said, adding that every ethnic group should have the right to self-determination, with policies in place to protect the rights of other groups living within their territories. “This will foster a peaceful society and harmonious relations between states,” he added.
Members of marginalized communities, however, have expressed concern that linking the governance system to ethnicity would increase their vulnerability. “Myanmar, as a diverse country, will not be well-suited to an ethnic-based federal system because numerous ethnic minority groups are living within the states,” said Annawar, the Rohingya youth. “We often hear about situations where a majority attempts to dominate a minority, even during the Spring Revolution.”
The Gurkha activist from Kachin state feared that the goodwill that recognized taingyinthar groups had shown toward other communities—including his own—could erode if the military were removed from power. “I am really worried that in the name of federal democracy … the ethnic armed groups will be fighting again for their own profits,” he said. “I don’t want to have any power competition and different kind[s] of dictatorship among them.”
Aung Ko Ko, of Mosaic Myanmar, said that while the Spring Revolution had opened a “window of opportunity” for advocacy around minority rights, the issues faced by groups not recognized as taingyinthar were typically seen as secondary. “I don’t really believe ethnic-based federalism can be achieved to manage our diversity positively,” he said.
Instead, many of those who spoke to Foreign Policy suggested that the focus should be on ensuring fundamental rights. “Democratic values, human rights values—those are the things that are more important to us,” said Ko Jag, the Sikh activist.
Rupa, who recently deployed as a front-line medic, said that she is proud of her Gurkha heritage but is motivated by a desire to serve her country—Myanmar—rather than promote her own ethnic group. “The Spring Revolution was not defined by race,” she said. “As a Gurkha, I feel honored to have the opportunity to be involved. The success we most desire is captured by the saying, ‘The victory of the people is our victory.’”
Myo Thazin Nwe contributed reporting.
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