Grassroots Multi-ethnic Discourse for a Democratic and Pluralistic Burma (Myanmar): Lessons from the Formation of People's Radio Myanmar

• In Event: The Power of Protest in Myanmar: Building Alternatives to Military Dictatorship through Education

Proposal

With the rise of nationalism globally, nationalization of different people with different cultures, languages, and norms requires schooling to unite as one by disseminating the ideas and ideals of a ‘nation’. The nation-building project produces and reproduces the kind of citizens that the nation desires in a double gesture of hope and fear: hope to hold the responsibility and obligation to make government possible and with the fear of difference and dangerous populations that would prevent its ability to govern (Popkweitz, 2018). In post-colonial Burma (Myanmar), the nation-building project desires citizens to be Burmese-speaking Buddhist Burmans, and fears, ignores, or threatens the non-Burman, others. While nation-building projects of states create the “kind of people” it requires, activism opens up a space for resistance to create conditions for other kinds of people to claim rights. For Haraway (2013), activism in the human sciences is regarded as reorganizing cognitive boundaries with the desire to open the path of new human potentialities.


Since the February 1st, 2021 military coup, many people all across Myanmar/Burma and abroad have demonstrated against the military coup in different ways such as protesting in the street, banging pots and pans at night, and participating in social media campaigns. Up until the junta’s lethal crackdown on non-violent demonstrations in March 2021, young people went out daily to voice their opposition to the attempted coup through peaceful non-violent action. After the crackdown, they vowed to find any way to continue to oppose the junta. Young people started to rely more and more on digital technologies and media to carry forward democratic messages. One example of this is People's Radio Myanmar (PRM), an initiative established by young people from different ethnic groups all over Myanmar/Burma, that promotes grassroots youth-led multi-ethnic discourse on non-violent nation-building for a democratic and pluralistic Myanmar.


Conjoining ethnography with radio journalism methods, the speaker explores how the power of resistance makes the inclusive community possible in the midst of adverse circumstances. This paper demonstrates the teaching and learning happening among young people of different backgrounds who volunteer at PRM: thirteen ethnic groups (Kachin, Karenni, Karen, Chin, Naga, Burman, Mon, Rakhine, Rohingya, Shan, Pa-O, Dawei, Anyar); social vulnerable groups (women, those in Civil Disobedience Movement (CDMers), refugees, Internal displaced persons, LGBTQ, non-official minorities); and different religious groups (such as Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh). This paper highlights the teaching and learning of volunteers in PRM and the power of resistance in creating an inclusive community when oppressed “kinds of people” come together in nonviolent acts of resistance, protest, and activism.

Author

• Ei Thin Zar, University of Wisconsin-Madison