The Vernacularisation of Human Rights Discourse in Myanmar: Rejection, Hybridisation and Strategic Avoidance

ABSTRACT

Violence against Muslim minority communities in Myanmar has brought the issue of human rights to international and domestic attention. Burmese democratic leaders, activists and Buddhist monks have attracted sharp international criticism for their seemingly neglectful responses to widespread human rights violations. Yet little attention has been directed towards understanding how these leaders make sense of “human rights.” This article argues that the shift in international attention from the problem of military authoritarianism to the marginalisation of religious minorities precipitated new ways in which human rights has been given meaning by Burmese Buddhist political and religious leaders. Examining their use of human rights language through interviews conducted between 2016 and 2017, we highlight contrasting responses to “human rights.” Some respondents rejected human rights language outright, while others imparted the phrase with their own meaning, presenting a variety of hybridised visions of human rights that sometimes supported, rather than opposed, the exclusion of Muslim minorities. Finally, others strategically avoided human rights language as they sought to promote human rights aims amidst popular rejection of the discourse. These findings highlight the importance, for actors seeking to promote human rights in Myanmar, of sensitivity towards divergent meanings of human rights.

KEY WORDS:

• Myanmar
• Burma
• human rights
• vernacularisation
• Buddhists
• Muslims

Acknowledgements

For their invaluable feedback on drafts of this article, the authors would like to thank Nick Cheesman, Nyi Nyi Kyaw, Gerard McCarthy, Morten Pedersen and Elliott Prasse-Freeman. The views expressed in this article, however, are wholly the authors’ own and should not be attributed to any of the names listed above. When this article was conceived, researched and written, Amy Doffegnies was a PhD candidate at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ In this article the words “Burmese” or “Myanmar” are used to refer to people from the country of Myanmar. The word “Burman” refers specifically to the dominant bamar ethnic group, as opposed to ethnic minority groups.

² This research was undertaken as a part of this author’s PhD research which focused on the role of Buddhist leaders in the vernacularisation of human rights in the Myanmar context (see Doffegnies 2018).

³ Buddhist arguments and frameworks in support of human rights were seen among monks involved with the Saffron revolution. Hybrid visions of human rights, which supported rather than diverged from the emancipatory aims of human rights discourse, also emerged in interviews and are certainly an important way in which vernacularisation can occur. This article focuses on three sets of responses to human rights which largely reject or diverge from the aims of global human rights ideas, as this is what emerged most strongly from our dataset; however, exploring the ways in which vernacularisation might support or enlarge human rights in Myanmar is also an important possibility for future research.

⁴ The 1947 Constitution of the Union of Burma adopted many aspects of the Westminster parliamentary system of democracy, including a bicameral legislature and a prime minister as head of government.

⁵ Analysis of recent public use of human rights language in Myanmar is challenging as use of the words “human rights” (or lu akwint aye) is now infrequent in the speeches of government actors.

⁶ In 2017, Sitagu Sayadaw delivered what is now a well-known sermon to an audience of military officers in which he discussed a parable of a Sri Lankan Buddhist king who was absolved by Buddhist monks for his many killings in war given that those who he killed were not Buddhist (see Walton 2018; Fuller 2017). While he did not discuss human rights specifically, his arguments, which put the value of the lives of Buddhists above those of other faiths, conflict with the basic premises of human rights.

⁷ The understanding of the Rakhine population as being legitimate citizens of the country, while the Rohingya Muslim population are not, is underpinned by a long history of an ideology of “national races,” excluding Rohingya Muslims (see Cheesman 2017b).

⁸ It should also be noted the same sayadaw is well known for the role he played in helping to subdue inter-religious riots in Mandalay in June 2014, telling rioters to disperse and discouraging violence and hatred.

⁹ The use of the word “opportunities” interchangeably with “rights” is demonstrative of the slippage between the concepts of “rights” and “opportunities” in Burmese language that has been highlighted by Prasse-Freeman (2013, 2015).

¹⁰ The negative connotations of “politics” has been highlighted by Walton (2012, 167), who identified an anti-politics strain apparent in Myanmar political thought in which the “political” is associated with “selfish desire.” In relation to this, he refers to “critique of the lawki [worldly realm] activity of politics as fundamentally oriented towards the acquisition of power, a process that feeds the false sense of self instead of minimizing it.” Walton traces this narrative to before 1948 independence as he identifies the negative implication of politics in U Nu’s speeches. As “human rights” continues to be seen as political, any negative associations of politics are likely to colour the concept of human rights for some.