What does a coup mean for musical artists in Myanmar?
This may or may not be a good idea but here goes.
If you are reading this and don’t personally know me: Hello! It’s me, Bondy. I spent the past 3.5 years doing a PhD on copyright in the Myanmar music industry at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. I was interested in learning how musical artists would be impacted when a country with an extremely outdated copyright law (ratified in 1914 and used so rarely that, to many, it didn’t even exist) suddenly enacted a modern and “westernized” system of copyright. Throughout my research, I spent several months talking with musical artists, industry professionals, and legal experts in Myanmar who shared their inspiring stories and enthusiastic energy about the prospect of copyright reform. In a country where laws had been, at best, written to be ineffective or, at worst, used to justify atrocities, I had the privilege to meet and speak with a faction of musical artists who were regaining faith that a copyright law, enacted and enforced by the Myanmar government, might actually help them for the better.
Then came February 1 2021.
When I learned, I was having coffee with a friend on my University campus in Brisbane. I hadn’t been checking my phone until the end of our conversation. I hadn’t been following the political situation in Myanmar closely enough to be continually refreshing the Myanmar Times or checking my several Google Alerts each morning. I wasn’t expecting the news. I picked up my phone and had messages from friends on a variety of digital platforms. I saw the news alerts and missed calls. I barely had time to process what I was reading beyond the major bulletin: there’s been a coup in Myanmar. I immediately got up to leave, absently apologizing to my friend that I had to go while looking up bus schedules.
Zin was on the phone with her sister when I arrived, arguing in Burmese. I sat down and pulled up a live news broadcast as she finished up the call. She told me that her older sister, who lives in Yangon with her husband and three-year-old son, insisted she not do anything crazy like buying a ticket to fly back to Myanmar right away. I agreed with Zin’s sister that it would be a crazy thing to do, which it turned out was the wrong answer. We briefly squabbled, weighing the value of Zin completing her PhD against the value of Zin becoming a political prisoner to stand up for what she believes. The conversation quickly devolved into a discussion about what this would mean for the work we have been doing over the past three years and the impact we had both hoped our work would have in Myanmar. Zin chose to do a PhD on journalism and conflict resolution in Myanmar because she has never once wavered in her convictions to help her country since the day I met her. I chose to do a PhD on the Myanmar music industry to learn more about her home country and because I had been fascinated by Myanmar’s unique music scene (as a lifelong musician myself) when I first visited in 2017. I add all of this personal context because this explains why, in addition to everything and everyone else, my heart breaks for musical artists in Myanmar. I have now spent years learning from and about musical artists in Myanmar. I wrote an 80,000-word PhD thesis that was only possible due to the kindness and wisdom of musical artists in Myanmar. I dedicated that thesis to amplifying the voices of those kind and wise musical artists in Myanmar. My friends are musical artists in Myanmar. As the initial shock of the day slowly started to subside, the main question on my mind was: what does a coup mean for them?
Why now?
Many factors contributed to the events of February 1 2021. My understanding is limited, and my views are those of an outsider, but I can at least highlight a few areas to widen the perspective. First was the promise of progress. The National League for Democracy (NLD) have been the dominant opposition political party in Myanmar for decades, and in 2015 they won the majority in the second democratic national election held in Myanmar since the military voluntarily abdicated power in 2011. Of course, this wasn’t their first majority win. In 1990, the NLD won nearly 60% of the vote and claimed almost 80% of Parliament seats. However, shortly after the NLD’s victory in the elections, the military announced they were rejecting the results, throwing NLD figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi in jail, and maintaining control. But that was then. In the 1990s, the country was still relatively isolated from the national stage. One of the few ways word of the outside world made into Myanmar was through popular music. By 2015, the country was much more connected to the outside world, and the outside world was much more connected with Myanmar. There was a hopefulness surrounding the 2015 election and, when the results were announced, they were respected. The results were not challenged or invalidated, the NLD was allowed to take majority control, and Aung San Suu Kyi, serving in her official role as state advisor, was restored as a figurehead of the political party and an icon of democracy.
Put bluntly, the past five years have been rough for the NLD. The NLD has struggled to follow through on promises made, simmering ethnic tensions have erupted in violence, and Aung San Suu Kyi has plummeted from international graces. The international community has heavily criticized the NLD’s (lack of) progress, joining the choir of internal voices that have remained devoted to the status quo of military rule. Similar to another consequential election that took place last year, the 2020 Myanmar election was an ideological battle for survival. Did the NLD’s failures over the past five years prove that their vision of democracy was viable in Myanmar? Would the citizens of Myanmar, frustrated by those democratic failings, be ready to accept the familiar embrace of military rule once again? The answer to both questions, demonstrably, was no. The NLD, once more, won a resounding victory in November 2020.
Faith in Elections
A second factor in the events of February 1 2021 was the legitimacy of elections in Myanmar. As mentioned above, Myanmar and the NLD have been through this before; the election ends, the military says, ‘the election results are invalid’, and balance of power is preserved. While there is precedence for that to have happened again in 2015, it didn’t. By 2015, Myanmar was four years into one of the most unprecedented digital revolutions the world has ever seen. In the early 2000s, Myanmar had an extremely limited telecommunications infrastructure and what networks the country had in place were only accessible to the elite class; many who could afford a TV set also needed to afford a satellite connection and the cost of a personal sim card could stretch up to $1000 USD. In 2011, the same year the military voluntarily handed power over to a civilian government, a series of laws were passed to liberalize the tech sector. Among the many changes that followed was the introduction of two foreign telecommunications providers, Telenor of Norway and Ooredoo of Qatar, that immediately set to work building high-speed internet infrastructures in Myanmar. In less than five years, internet penetration had jumped from one of the lowest in the world to one of the highest in the ASEAN region. Coupled with the advent of affordable smartphones from China, Myanmar has exploded onto the world wide web over the past decade, which has brought about unprecedented opportunities and advancements as well as highly disconcerting threats and pitfalls.
Facebook is the internet in Myanmar. The social media platform has become so ubiquitous that the company has become a synonym for being connected to any form of internet. To its minimal credit, Facebook provides a platform for Myanmar society to join together for information, education, creative expression, and entertainment with unthinkable speed and expanse. Facebook has also provided a platform for disinformation, cyber hate-crimes, and conspiracy theories. The real-world implications of social media in Myanmar have become such a ‘bugbear’ for Facebook that it came up in questioning before the US Congress. I say ‘bugbear’ because Facebook’s response in the years since have clearly shown that the representatives and leaders of the Silicon Valley tech giant were much more interested in putting the issue to rest than actually devoting the necessary resources to address to underlying issues of managing a platform in a society it (Facebook) fundamentally did not understand. As a result, it was significantly more difficult to combat allegations and conspiracies of election fraud that began proliferating on Myanmar social media after the 2020 elections.
When Zin told me that one of the official stated reasons for the coup was ‘election fraud’ it instantly triggered my American sensibilities. As someone who has been reading about and listening to insane bloviations relating to election fraud for the past six months, at the moment I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to the US political situation and the unfolding historical crisis in Myanmar. Though it’s been less than a day, in short-term hindsight, I see how that perspective is immensely imperialistic, US-centric, and colonial. It was unequivocally not because of the US that the Myanmar military claimed election fraud as an excuse to overthrow the government. But it was undeniably not helpful that the US had been embroiled in election debacle that led to an insurrection last month. All of the rhetoric, all of the criticisms, the concerned citizens who “just want to make sure claims are being investigated” were visible to those individuals and organizations in Myanmar who had motive and means to cause disruption. The same social media platforms and high-speed internet that enabled them to watch the American crisis unfold were deployed to spread similar conspiracies in Myanmar. Again, I am not trying, nor do I want to draw any causal links between Facebook or the Trump Cult and the events of February 1 2021. Rather, it’s significant to note that the messages spread and, more significantly, the military had a strong motive and means to cause disruption at this precise moment in Myanmar’s history.
Constitutional Reform
A third important factor that can help explain why this happened now is the constitution of Myanmar. Dr Thant Myint U, preeminent Myanmar historian, activist, and philanthropist described the 2008 Constitution of Myanmar as a retirement plan for the aging generals of the junta. The constitution includes ridiculous provisions such as “anyone that has been married to a foreigner is ineligible to run for president” to ensure Aung San Suu Kyi (and also Zin ) would be barred from holding a seat of real power. The constitution has been widely criticized in Myanmar and from foreign onlookers and has acted as a massive roadblock toward meaningful democratic progress since the NLD took power in 2015. The constitution requires a 75% majority vote to approve amendments but, of course, the constitution also mandates the military hold 25% of the seats in Parliament at all times. In essence, the constitution was designed to be tamper-proof unless the NLD somehow won a full 75% majority of parliamentary seats, which was unlikely, or, perhaps even less likely, military MPs voted with the NLD.
As I noted at the beginning, I haven’t been following Myanmar politics very closely over these past few weeks. In addition to being helplessly transfixed with the political situation in my birth country, I managed to finish my pandemic PhD in mid-January, demanding any and all of my residual attention. Perhaps if I had been watching more carefully, I might have noticed that one of the major campaign platforms of the NLD in 2019/2020 was constitutional reform. I legitimately have no idea whether the NLD won enough seats to vote to amend this time around, or if there was a contingent of military turn-cloaks willing to march for progress, because the first day of the new parliamentary session on, you guessed it, February 1 2021.
In my view, the clear and immediate threat of constitutional reform triggered a fight or flight response from the Myanmar military. I cannot presume to speak on behalf of the millions of people living in Myanmar and the millions from Myanmar living abroad who watched the events of February 1 2021 unfold. What I can say is that I, like Zin, like Zin’s family, like many of our friends in Myanmar, was shocked and appalled by the events of February 1 2021. I was shocked and appalled because I, like our close family and friends, was cautiously optimistic that there was not going to be another coup. And yet there was. There is no doubt that this moment will be examined, questioned, and debated for many years to come but from where I am sitting this happened because the NLD and Myanmar society writ large came close, dangerously close for the military, to enacting constitutional reform. The politicians knew this. The people knew this. The military knew this, which is why they had to act fast.
Reforming the constitution of Myanmar is absolutely paramount. It was the single most critical task for the NLD before they could take further steps toward addressing other important issues or following through on campaign promises. They were unable to do so after the 2015 elections, but the disproportionate response from their opponents in 2021 indicates they might have been able to make it happen this time around. Without delving into the many different issues for which the NLD and Myanmar government have been criticized domestically and internationally, it is vital to underscore just how necessary a legitimate constitution is for meaningful change to take place and stick. Not to be overly hyperbolic, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD have spent the past five years negotiating at gunpoint against an omnipotent force acting in bad faith that always held in hand the threat of perpetrating another coup. That’s not to endorse or defend some of the highly controversial positions taken and decisions made by the NLD over the past five years, but it at least draws attention to the fact that any sudden movements the NLD took could have, in theory, been met with this exact response. Yet, even so, the NLD dared to move for constitutional reform. And then this happened.
Ripple Effects
Having provided my lengthy hot take on the events of Feb 1 2021, let’s now return to the musical artists. There are, of course, going to be many far-reaching consequences of this coup. The military has announced that they plan to hold another election in the coming weeks, of which they will tooooootally respect outcomes and hand power back over if the NLD wins again. Nothing suss. You can trust them. But that’s just it. How can anyone trust anything in the short-term aftermath of this? It is hard to describe how frustrating this is without conjuring imagery of Zin sitting next to me and literally tearing at her own hair in exasperation, outrage, and disbelief. Among the many, many, many reasons Zin was so upset was because she has been working alongside Dr Thant Myint U in his campaign to raise awareness of and promote policies to address climate change. Yangon, the major port city and most populated urban centre in the country, sits barely above sea level (at time of writing) at the mouth of the Irrawaddy Delta. Yangon could become a casualty of climate change in a matter of decades. Immediate, urgent policy action is needed in Myanmar to address climate change. Zin has spent years invested in fighting for that action (along with several other causes, chiefly improved education and training for other journalists like her). In the months following a coup, how could one reasonably expect climate change or environmental policy possibly to be a topic of parliamentary debate? For me, that hair-pulling frustration is about music and copyright.
Copyright was not reformed after Myanmar won its independence from the British in 1948 because it was not a high priority; there were bigger fish to fry at the time. The revolutionary general, Aung San (legendary father of Aung San Suu Kyi) had been assassinated six months prior to independence on January 4 1948. Fourteen years later General Ne win plunged the country into an autocracy via a military coup. The military junta did everything they could to isolate the populace and restrict foreign influence. Even before the flawed Constitution of 2008 was ratified, the rule of law has enjoyed very little esteem in Myanmar. Much has been written about the respect for (or rather lack thereof) the rule of law in Myanmar up to and including the shift of power in 2015. The century-old copyright law was just another policy that was basically meaningless and held no actual power in the everyday realities of Myanmar musicians. But around 2017, it was changing, and in 2019 it changed.
I started my PhD in July 2017 and began my fieldwork in October 2018. The new copyright law came into effect in May 2019. Throughout the months I spent talking to stakeholders in the Myanmar music industry, I couldn’t help but get sucked in by the optimism many of my informants expressed about the future of their professional lives as musicians. Despite my view that international IP treaties create far more problems than they solve in most non-Western contexts, I couldn’t deny the concerns expressed by musical artists in Myanmar that lives and livelihoods would stagnate without a copyright system of some sort in place. In my PhD thesis, I critique the enduring colonial legacy of copyright and argue that now is the moment to decolonize copyright, to change the laws to better serve the artists of Myanmar, to better serve those in Global South. This is why I was ready to pull my hair out when Zin and I were talking about the ripple effects of the coup. This is why I decided to stay up and write a diatribe instead of sleep. This is why I will keep working for and with the instrumentalists, singers, producers, advocates, and allies in the Myanmar music industry. They were so close. There were so many opportunities. They were even ready to work with the government. And now this.
Addressing climate change and copyright reform are just two examples of the many legislative tasks that doubtlessly will be tabled for the foreseeable future. The military, the NLD, representatives from other political parties, and members of dozens of marginalized ethnic groups have a long road ahead as they attempt to sort out major questions of governance. Through their actions this week, the military may have completely eroded the delicate foundation of trust between the government and those in Myanmar who were willing to believe that their government could begin to tackle progressive issues. As was the case after the Revolution in 1948 and coups that have taken place over the past six decades, those that were ready to embrace change may once again have to sit and wait and hope that whatever comes next can repair the damage dealt this week rather than make things worse.
I know it may seem incredibly myopic for me to be thinking or talking about copyright law of all things less than two days after a full-on military coup that could still break out into violence at any moment. I want to again stress that this is not to diminish the seriousness or severity of the illegal detainments, the threats of violence, and the rejection of the will of the people. I just can’t really speak to any of that; It’s outside my very limited field of understanding. Politicians, sociologists, historians, religious authorities, neighbours, and strangers are likely to spend the next decade(s) unpacking the political ramifications, the effectiveness of sanctions, the violations of human rights, and the pathways toward rebuilding democratic ideals in Myanmar. The invisible consequences of February 1 2021 will not make international headlines; or at least not for some time. One of the news articles I read yesterday was titled something like “we keep getting it wrong with Myanmar” and discussed all of the moments when Myanmar defied the expectations of international onlookers, for better or worse. They didn’t expect the military to relinquish power in 2011. They didn’t expect Aung San Suu Kyi to let them down in 2017. They didn’t expect a coup to take place in 2021. There is so much more going on than meets the eye in Myanmar; my eyes just happened to behold the musical artists. Which is why, in the weeks and years to come, I will continue to wonder: what does a coup mean for them?
Thank you for reading.
I would normally cite sources or include links throughout this kind of writing to support all of the claims I’ve been making but I have been writing this in vivo and don’t want to go back and source/edit this whole thing as though it was something I had planned out.
Much of what I wrote here draws directly from my PhD thesis, which will be freely available for download here in the next few weeks. You can also watch a three-minute summary of my thesis here. Zin and I also published a research article about cultural policy in Myanmar last year (here — paywalled). I’m not thrilled at the idea of promoting myself at the end of a piece like this, but, at the same time, I believe that the work that Zin and I have been doing has merit and might be of interest to you if you have made it this far.
If you want to read further, I strongly recommend any of Dr Thant Myint U’s works or his website lostfootsteps.org for historical accounts of Myanmar. If you are interested in the law, recommend the works that have come out of the Australian National University (ANU)’s Myanmar Research Centre, in particular work by Dr Nick Cheesman on the constitution and the rule of law. If you are interested in the technology, I recommend works from Telenor Research, in particular work by Lorian Leong. I have also personally drawn great inspiration from the works of Dr May Thida Aung and Dr Heather MacLachlan.
If you want to get in touch with me, Twitter is probably your best bet.
Stay safe. Save Myanmar.
Je zu tin ba deh