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Abstract
What role do prison protests play in revolutions? This article examines the prison protests that have occurred since the military coup, situating them as integral and instructive elements of an unfolding revolutionary situation. The analysis explores the character and significance of such protests at a moment of fierce and violent political contestation. It documents and contextualises them and develops an argument about their contemporary significance informed by the academic literature on prisons and revolution and prisons and protest. The article shows how the prison today is a revolutionary battlefront characterised by the activation and vulnerability of prisoners’ bodies, the interrelation between collective and individual actions and consequences, and the connection between events outside and inside the prison. Today’s protests resonate evocatively with those of the past. They are sometimes a deliberate intervention in bigger struggles and sometimes a response to the everyday and immediate provocation of inhumane conditions. Whatever the range of forms, patterns, drivers, and triggers of prison protests, the most common response from the authorities is violence, often with deadly effects.
Acknowledgements
We thank Nick Cheesman, Justine Chambers, and Helene Maria Kyed for convening the great group of colleagues working together on issues of revolution in Myanmar. We have also appreciated the constructive comments of fellow Myanmar scholars and the anonymous reviewers and Journal of Contemporary Asia editor Kevin Hewison. Special thanks to Pernille Jensen and Malte Egelund Haar for their significant contributions to the mapping and analysis of the prison protests.
Notes
1 The third author lives and works in Myanmar. At the time of writing, for safety and security reasons, this author must remain anonymous.
2 Like a best-fit curve it approximates the trends that can be deciphered from a range of accounts; the claim is for plausibility rather than veracity. Details of such events are patchy and reports often contradictory. They emerge in a highly charged media environment where both sources and outlets are positioned in particular ways and where the interpretation of events is highly contested.
3 Like protests/riots notions of political imprisonment and political prisoners are contested by stakeholders (see, for instance, Kenney Citation2018 Llorente Citation2016 McEvoy Citation2001). Opposition figures claim the label as a badge of honour and a sign of the regime’s illegitimacy while the authorities insist the prisoners are criminals intent on disrupting order. In Myanmar there is no legal definition of political prisoners though historically some prisoners have been treated differently to others when imprisoned for crimes of dissent or subversion or when seen as high-profile opposition figures, granting them at least a kind of de facto status as “political.” For an important discussion of the genesis of the concept and its application in Myanmar, see Tin Hla (Citation2024).
4 For this article such prisoners are referred to as “prisoner leaders.” In the vernacular the most senior of them are referred to as Tan-zees; during the colonial period they were also called “convict officers.” They are an important and integral part of what Martin and Jefferson (Citation2023) call “proxy governance.”
5 Research by Martin, Jefferson, and colleagues has examined the changing nature of state-subject relations via an analysis of histories and contemporary practices of imprisonment in Myanmar (see https://legacies-of-detention.org). The coup and ensuing revolutionary situation radically changed the flavour of the times but the focus of the research on changing forms of state-subject relation and imprisonment has remained constant.
6 The military has a long history of shifting the labelling and modelling of authoritarian rule such as the caretaker government (1958–1960) or the one-party system under the Burma Socialist Programme Party (1974–1988), including a long list of acronymised governing councils such as the Revolutionary Council (RC) from 1962–74, the State Law and Order Council (SLORC) from 1988–1997, the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC) from 1997–2010 – and now the State Administration Council (SAC).
7 Curiously one of the first modern Burmese novels was James Hla Gyaw’s Maung Yin Maung Ma Me Ma from 1904 which is an adaptation of Alexander Dumas’ great prison-escape classic The Count of Monte Cristo (Hla Gyaw Citation1959).
8 One such figure was the famous monk, U Wisara, who died in prison after a 166-day hunger strike in 1929 (Kyaw Zwa Moe Citation2018, 35).
9 Thakhin Ohn Myint was a renowned and influential journalist and political activist, whose struggle against colonialism and military dictatorship spanned more than 60 years. He is often referred to as a mentor for Aung San Suu Kyi (Irrawaddy, September 17, 2010).
10 The penal colony on Cocos Island was first used during the caretaker government from 1958–1960, but was re-opened some years later for a second generation of political prisoners during Ne Win’s Revolutionary Council in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
11 Other famous accounts of and by the second generation of Cocos Island prisoners include Khin Maung Aye (Citation2019) Kokoe Kywan mhar Nya-paung ta htaung Ghon yaung Athinchay [One Thousand Nights and Infinite Glory in Cocoa Island] and Htet Myat (Citation2016) A-mhyaungdu ko Pyat-than chin [Passing through the Darkness].
12 The four men put to death by the military junta were convicted after closed trials that fell far short of international standards. A military tribunal sentenced veteran pro-democracy activist Ko Jimmy and prominent NLD lawmaker Phyo Zeya Thaw to death on January 21 under Myanmar’s overbroad Counterterrorism Law of 2014. Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw were convicted in April 2021 for allegedly killing a military informant.
13 One such speculation even hinted that the killings could be a direct retaliation against recent PDF attacks on nearby prison labour camps, but that was not verifiable.
14 It is possible that some protests have in fact been defused through negotiations between authorities and prisoners; because they have not escalated they do not receive media attention. In any case, future analysis could consider how such negotiations play out and with what effect. Such negotiations might offer a microscopic view of some of the dynamics at stake in grander political discussions about Myanmar’s future. Is a negotiated settlement an option? Can junta officials and revolutionaries talk? Who sets the terms for negotiation? Where are the red lines?
15 The link between prisons and revolutions is undeniable and there is a significant pool of literature acknowledging this. A cursory search located 295 articles. The literature is varied in terms of discipline, methodology, location, and time frame. It covers, for example, sites and events such as the prisons of 19th century Russia, the Black Panther movement in the US, and the Arab Spring in the Middle East and North Africa. The literature is notably global in scope covering contexts such as Peru, Mexico, the US, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, Tunisia, Iran, Palestine, and the Philippines among many others.
16 Literature growing out of the civil rights movement in the USA is reflective of this (Jackson Citation1977 Davis Citation2005). See also Pellow (Citation2018) on the imprisonment of climate activists.
17 A series of pen and ink sketches of everyday life in detention that were smuggled out from Myanmar prisons circulated widely on online media and feature in a curated exhibition that toured internationally (SEA Junction Citation2023).
18 While it is true that prisons are relatively easily weaponised to serve explicitly repressive purposes, it is not necessarily the case that front-line officials are in favour of such initiatives. Increased securitisation of penal spaces can generate more tensions and more anxiety for frontline penal staff.
19 Bosworth and Carrabine (Citation2001, 507) note “how forms of counter conduct … will be motivated as much by anger, rage, exploitation and injustice as by pleasure, play and boredom.” On mass affect, see Thomassen (Citation2012).