Strange Bedfellows or Trusted Comrades? Digital Solidarity Building among Myanmar’s Revolutionaries

Abstract

The shock and anger felt by the Myanmar public as they witnessed their democratically elected government deposed in an illegal military coup in early 2021 has led to a revolutionary break in Burmese politics. The Bamar Buddhist political elites, formerly silent on the Rohingya Muslim crisis, apologised for failing to administer justice for the Rohingya victims; the coup breathed new life and possibilities into the formation of a federal democracy; and young students and strike leaders dared to challenge the dominance of the elites. However, little is known about whether this struggling together against military dictatorship might enable a broad-based development of solidarity among Myanmar’s traditionally divided ethnic communities. Since many revolutionary communities across Myanmar took to social media to mobilise resistance, studying these groups’ online interactions can provide critical insights to this question. By analysing conversations over the year following the coup on three of the most popular resistance Facebook groups from Bamar and non-Bamar communities, this article finds a two-step process of inter-ethnic solidarity building, driven by both instrumentalist interest and organic empathy. The findings deepen understanding on solidarity building among diverse anti-dictatorship forces, revolution dynamics in post-coup Myanmar, and the role of social media on forging inter-communal empathy.

Key Words:

• Digital activism
• inter-ethnic reconciliation
• military coup
• Myanmar
• revolution
• solidarity building

Acknowledgements

We benefited from valuable comments and feedback by the anonymous reviewers, journal editor, Justine Chambers, Nick Cheesman, and participants at the Revolution and Solidarity in Myanmar workshop hosted by the ANU Myanmar Research Centre and Danish Institute for International Studies, ANU Myanmar Research Centre Dialogue Series, Annual Political Science Workshops of the Low Countries, UC Berkeley-UCLA Southeast Asian Studies Conference, and Asian Politics Online Seminar Series.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 EROs are also referred to as Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs).

2 Besides the EROs, there are also other non-Bamar armed groups, including the Border Guard Forces, that have given up insurgency and been incorporated into the Myanmar military.

3 When searching for content with a focus on the Rohingya or other Muslims by using the Burmese keywords “Muslim, “Rohingya, and “Bengali” in the original dataset, in the NUG and PDF groups, there was either spamming content or shallow content that overwhelmingly focused on expectations for inter-governmental bodies to “arrest” Min Aung Hlaing based on the ongoing International Court of Justice case.