The people’s resistance to the attempted coup by the Myanmar [1] military is gaining momentum. Grassroots, locally organized self-defence groups, the Civil Disobedience Movement, unions, students, teachers, parents and activists, from the most remote, rural areas of Karenni and Chin States, to the densely populated cities of Yangon and Mandalay, are united in their opposition to the military junta. The actions of the Spring Revolution – dispersed, local, and decentralized – with diverse tactics, are demonstrating and enacting the democracy that the military is trying, and failing, to put down.

In Chin State and Sagaing Region, local groups of people’s defence forces have been stubbornly, courageously and persistently, defying military rule, demanding the release of local people arrested by the junta, attacking military convoys, and determinedly guarding their towns using hunting rifles and homemade weapons. Towns and cities across these two more remote parts of Myanmar, such as Matupi, Kalay, Mindat, and Hakha have shown inspirational courage to defy the odds and keep the military at bay for many weeks. Not only does this resistance demonstrate how resolute people are to defy the junta, but how it is possible. Places such as Mindat were able to hold out for weeks. Until the military declared martial law, used heavy artillery and launched airstrikes using helicopter gunships against the locally formed Chinland Defence Force – Mindat, the people were in control. It is only after the Myanmar military uses the most brutal and large-scale military offensives, committing grave human rights violations such as the use of civilians as human shields and sexual violence against women and girls, and creating a humanitarian crisis, can they claim to be in control of the town. Yet this is not control, this is the exercise of brute force.

Not only has the resistance to military rule in Mindat been that of successful self-defence, it has established alternative administration and governance structures. The Mindat People’s Administration Team was established in February as the only legitimate administrative body in the town. It cited the 1948 Chin Special Division Law as the legal basis for its governance and rejected military rule as illegitimate. Governing the town in terms of administration, military and judicial affairs, the Mindat People’s Administration Team shows how, until a huge military operation that put the town under seige, grassroots organisation can not only resist the violence of the military junta, but demonstrate the capability for alternative governance. It illustrates a bottom-up way of doing things that incorporates ideas and principles from the national struggle yet without hierarchical, top-down, centralized coordination. There are of course, other examples across Myanmar, with Ethnic Armed Organizations such as the Karen National Union (KNU) and their long-established administration, judiciary, military and land policies governing parts of ancestral Karen land, or Kawthoolei. Within KNU-controlled Kawthoolei, the Salween Peace Park, initiated by civil society organizations, is a peacebuilding initiative, led by indigenous Karen people, and based on conservation, traditional practice and bottom-up democracy. While quite different in terms of their character, both are examples of self-determination that a future federal democracy must be built on.

Since the offensive against the people of Mindat on the weekend of May 15-16, many of its population have had to flee to the hills and the junta has cut electricity, water and blocked food and other essential supplies from arriving in the besieged town. Yet as the junta cracks down in one town in the west, on the opposite side of the country the people rise again. In Demoso, Karenni State, the Karenni People’s Defence Forces have taken security outposts of the military, and blocked reinforcements from entering the town via road. Further clashes in other parts of Karenni State involving this newly formed group are also ongoing and the civilian population have faced cruel violent retaliation from the junta, including roadside executions, shelling of a church where people were taking shelter, indiscriminate shooting and the use of heavy artillery on local neighborhoods.

As well as the local self-defence forces seen in rural, ethnic minority areas, various groups are forming in Myanmar’s urban centres and more remote towns, with several announcements of the establishment of township branches of the People’s Defence Force in Yangon. The use of small scale explosives on junta forces, police stations and General Administration Offices (GAD) are increasing in Yangon and other towns and cities across the country. It should be noted that these groups and actions are a means of defence to respond to the brutality and barbarity of the military junta. Meanwhile people are obstructing the functioning of GAD offices that are run by the illegal junta, boycotting the products of military companies, and refusing to pay electricity bills. Furthermore, protests and peaceful demonstrations, in face of brutal junta violence, continue to pop up, as brave men and women take to the streets.

The resistance of the Spring Revolution against military rule demonstrates its dispersed, bottom-up, grassroots character. While the National Unity Government may be widely regarded as the legitimate, interim government of Myanmar, the various forms of opposition to military rule, whether the Chinland Defence Force, the ongoing peaceful demonstrations, or boycotts of military produced products, do not need central organization. They are organic expressions of political agency, localized in their character and form, and reflect a self-determination in which no violent military junta can fully put down. For a future Myanmar, in which federalism and democracy is more than just a political label, lessons from this grassroots organization and resistance must be learned to establish a state that is founded on the empowerment of the people, not a state that simply rules over people.

Progressive Voice Myanmar

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