Myanmar was ready to explode—just like the historic student union building that General Ne Win dynamited after his coup in 1962. Asia’s former “rice bowl” was now empty and classified by the UN as a least developed country, the parliamentary democracy long gone, no pride left. By 1988, these were the terrible legacies of his coup and his iron-fisted rule over the previous 26 years.
When it exploded, it shook Ne Win’s entire system. It was the 1988 people’s uprising. He could do nothing but step down in shame. History was having its revenge. But even before he stepped down, he threatened the protestors in a state-run broadcast: “The military never fires into the air. It just shoots straight to hit.” We would expect nothing less from the mouth of a dictator—and he was regarded as exactly that: the first dictator of Myanmar.
Though his coup, or the “Mother Coup”, in 1962, faced little resistance, history didn’t repeat for the coups to follow.
The ’88 Uprising and the 2021 Spring Revolution drew similar levels of nationwide popular participation, but they differed in other ways. Here’s one overlooked but crucial point of difference between the two coups: In 1988, the military staged its takeover one month and 10 days after the pro-democracy uprising erupted across the country in an attempt to topple the Socialist authoritarian regime led by Ne Win. In 2021, the military staged a coup when the country was stable and the people were in a good mood, full of positive expectations to welcome a newly elected civilian government.
To make it very clear: in 1988, a nationwide uprising sparked a coup; but in 2021, a coup sparked a nationwide uprising. The sequence of events was reversed.
In March 1988, a riot in which university student Phone Maw was shot to death by security forces led to a student demonstration. Later it escalated into a democracy movement as the public’s discontent with political repression and economic hardships was already at boiling point after 26 years of the regime’s oppressive rule and mismanagement. When student-led demonstrations evolved into a nationwide uprising on Aug. 8, known as the Four Eights Uprising or the ’88 Uprising, Ne Win and his immediate successors tried to convince the public that they would change their one-party system to a multi-party system.
But the people continued their uprising to get rid of what was just a military dictatorship in disguise. The daily protests continued in full swing across the country for more than one month until Sept. 18, when the generals staged a bloody coup. (Here, it is important to understand that the junta actually assumed power from Ne Win’s Socialist regime rather than grabbing it by force. The coup took place with Ne Win’s consent but its goal was to stop the people power movement by force and prevent outcomes which might be even worse from the regime’s perspective.)
The coup was led by Ne Win loyalists and younger generals—General Saw Maung and his deputy officers Than Shwe and Khin Nyunt. Of course, the coup halted the uprising, with regime troops killing several thousand protesters and arresting thousands more across the country. Such a brutal and massive crackdown outraged the people. Public sentiment against the regime and in support of radical change was still strong; it maintained its momentum and there were all kinds of intentions and ideas on how to continue the anti-regime movement in different ways to achieve the main goal—democracy. But the junta’s new political course led to a new political landscape.
New landscape
Right after the coup, the junta announced that it would hold a free and fair election under a multi-party system—a U-turn from the one-party system of its predecessor Socialist regime.
Immediately, many political figures and forces rushed to form parties. Both old politicians and new faces became leaders of those parties. U Nu—the first prime minister of the country—Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, old communists, ex-generals, ethnic figures and even young student activists who were part of the ’88 uprising formed political parties. After 26 years under just one party—the Burma Socialist Programme Party led by dictator Ne Win—about 200 parties were registered. Contesting elections became the main political priority. Let’s call those engaged in this task “the urban politics” camp, which was close to what we called it back then.
Globally, it should be noted that when Myanmar reintroduced a multi-party system in September 1988, right after the coup, the Soviet Union had yet to collapse and its reformist leader Mikhail Gorbachev had yet to introduce his policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) to reform the USSR’s one-party system. Even before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the end of the Cold War on the world stage, the ’88 uprising in Myanmar managed to bring down the Socialist regime and force the new military junta to transform the country’s political system from a one-party to a multi-party system. It also appeared set to switch to a market economy after 26 years of isolation. Under the circumstances, that was a significant change brought to the country by the ’88 uprising.
As new political parties mushroomed, two other spheres of anti-junta activity emerged—one was the armed struggle (or “AS”, a term student activists then used widely). Another was an underground movement launched by student unions. Both of these were led by students. After the coup and nationwide crackdown, students who wanted to take the AS route left for border areas where ethnic armed organizations have been based for decades fighting for autonomy. There, thousands of students formed the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front (ABSDF) as a student army.
Those in the student unions continued their anti-regime activities (broadly speaking, this was a pro-democracy movement) in urban areas, organizing underground activities such as guerilla-style street protests, publishing and distributing political journals and statements to keep the public informed and politically aware. The latter—to which I belonged—was part of the “urban politics” camp. So, the whole “urban politics” camp was based on non-violent methods employed by political parties and underground student unions. But we regarded all three ways—political parties, underground student unions and AS—as supporting one another to keep pressuring the junta. (Note: That’s not what happened in 2021. The “fresh election” option was rejected by the public, and the political parties that chose to reregister after the 2021 coup were regarded as collaborators of the junta who rejected the recent election result.)
A dominant trend emerges
Among the three alternatives, however, the most popular was to contest the junta’s elections. Newly formed political parties were actively preparing to take on the junta-backed party, the National Unity Party, which was transformed from Ne Win’s Socialist party, and hoping to form a civilian government after the elections. The country’s many ethnic parties were also a main force in this “urban politics”, planning to contest the elections both in main cities and their ethnic states. They were not related to the ethnic armed organizations based along the borders.
The new political landscape had advantages: the political parties could open offices across the country, they could officially organize party activities, and they could conduct campaigns in which thousands of people could take part. Mainly, they could publicly challenge the ruling junta. And people could support the parties they liked. The political space was significantly widened, though the junta continued to arrest and intimidate party members as well as student activists and dissidents, sentencing them to lengthy terms of imprisonment. This anti-regime movement through non-violent methods within the framework of the political parties became quite active and dynamic. It became the main political trend after the coup and the majority of the people supported it.
On May 27, 1990, the junta held the election as promised. Millions of citizens cast votes, almost three decades after the people’s democratic rights were denied. The result shocked the ruling generals—a landslide victory for the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party they had endlessly denounced and oppressed the most. The junta refused to hand over power to the victorious NLD. Later, the junta arrested many elected members of parliament and jailed them. Some elected members were forced to flee the country.
This led to the formation of the National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma (NCGUB) in late 1990, in Manerplaw, Karen State (home to the headquarters of the KNU). Comprising elected MPs from the NLD and other parties, the NCGUB was formed with the aim of implementing the results of the 1990 election. But it never gained sufficient traction to threaten the junta’s de facto rule.
However, the election result became a legitimate political tool with which the international community could pressure the junta.
Why the ‘AS’ didn’t work
The armed struggle along the borders started by the newly formed student army (made up mostly of Bamar students from cities like Yangon and Mandalay, the central regions and other cities and towns) was fought for two years at that time but never achieved anything significant either. (In stark contrast to what we have seen in the current post-2021 armed revolt.)
There were several reasons for that. One was that established ethnic armed organizations were not ready to fully support the student army. (A totally different scenario from the cooperation we’ve seen between some EAOs and newly formed resistance forces since the 2021 coup.) Among the reasons was that the young students from the cities couldn’t really adapt to the tough jungle life. Soon after arriving, several thousand students went back to their homes when the junta offered them an amnesty.
Another big factor undermining the students’ armed struggle was a ceasefire agreement initiated by the junta. After the coup, the junta’s powerful Secretary-1 and spy chief General Khin Nyunt convinced many ethnic armed organizations to sign ceasefire agreements in the late 1980s and 1990s. More than a dozen ethnic armed groups, including major groups like the Kachin Independence Army, the United Wa State Army, the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, the New Mon State Party and others signed the junta’s ceasefire agreements, though the process was obviously a sham. Many people, including ethnic communities, regarded the EAOs as the junta’s “allies” or “ceasefire partners” at the time, deviating from the pro-democracy political course embarked upon after the ’88 uprising.
Looking at it through a political prism, it’s easy to understand that the “ceasefire” was the junta’s card to divide the resistance forces. For the junta, at that time, there were two main political enemy camps: the political parties “inside” the system and the dozens of ethnic armed organizations along the borders. Of these two, the political party camp was the top priority for the generals as it was supported by the majority of people. The generals knew that if they could neutralize ethnic armed organizations with “ceasefire agreements” and offers of business concessions, they wouldn’t need to fight them, so they could use their energy and capacity to annihilate the “urban politics” camp—both the political parties and the underground student unions.
Many leaders of the NLD and ethnic parties were arrested. But as the elections approached in May 1990, the crackdown became more targeted: Many key leaders of political parties, including Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and ethnic figures, were arrested even before the vote.
Most of the student activists were also thrown behind bars with lengthy imprisonment terms. To take my own case as an example, I was arrested at a protest in 1991 along with over 100 other students. We were each sentenced to a minimum of 10 years’ imprisonment. A series of student protests occurred in the 1990s and the junta responded with a blanket crackdown on them. I would say there were almost no dissidents who were not arrested at least once after the 1988 coup. All of us who were active dissidents under a political party flag or a student union flag were arrested and tortured because the junta aimed to “kill” our political awareness and fighting spirit, so that it could not be passed to a new generation. That was the junta’s political strategy at the time—to annihilate “urban politics” rather than the neutralized ethnic armed organizations along the borders. Their strategy worked.
To analyze the whole situation after the 1988 coup, the nonviolent “urban politics” camp, the armed struggle launched by the new student army and the established ethnic armed organizations were not on the same page or synchronized at all. That’s how the AS lost its way at that time.
Hard lessons
The “urban politics” camp was crippled by the junta’s systematic, yearslong crackdown. But by securing political legitimacy for the anti-regime movement, the election result was the most significant and long-lasting achievement of the 1988 uprising. It was used for political leverage and a tool by the international community led by the UN and the West to pressure the junta to hand over power or enter negotiations with the election winner and ethnic organizations. And it took exactly 20 years for the ruling generals to formally “override” the people’s 1990 choice with its rigged election held in 2010.
If I had to give a name to the popular resistance against the coup in 1988 and the following decades, I would call it “the nonviolent resistance period” as it overwhelmed other political trends and methods. So, the resistance against the regime throughout the whole period before and after the 1988 coup didn’t reach the level of a revolution (တော်လှန်ရေး), in which all necessary methods are applied, especially armed struggle.
But all of the military’s brutality and cheating—the coup in 1988, the killing of innocent protesters and political persecutions, and the blatant refusal to hand over power to the party for which the people voted—were engraved in the hearts of the Myanmar people once more. It was the second time the entire population had been deceived.
The generals have displayed this political treachery again and again since 1962. It has become institutionalized as “the military institution’s political culture.” This unethical and brutal military culture sufficiently angered and outraged the Myanmar people that their motivation changed from anti-regime sentiment to anti-military sentiment. This has never waned—it has only grown and grown.
Here, we should understand what the Myanmar people learned—through their own experience and suffering—from the ’88 Uprising and the couple of decades that followed it under another round of military dictatorship:
- Popular uprisings don’t work because the generals will simply oppress them.
- Elections and even landslide victories don’t work because the generals will reject them.
- Nonviolent methods don’t work because the generals respond with violence.
- Pressure from the international community doesn’t work because the generals don’t play by its standards.
- The biggest lesson of all, based on the above lessons: The generals individually and the military institutionally use their power and cunning ways to destroy the people’s aspirations to, at a minimum, simply live and die in a free and democratic society.
But these seemingly discouraging lessons couldn’t kill the people’s hopes or stop them struggling to achieve them. That’s the nature of the Myanmar people. In the next installment in this series, we’ll see how these lessons have been applied to their unfinished struggle.
Read the first part of this series: Evolution of the Myanmar Revolution (Part 1): Why the ‘Mother Coup’ Faced Little Resistance
Read this story in Burmese မြန်မာ့တော်လှန်ရေး ဆင့်ကဲဖြစ်ပေါ်တိုးတက်မှု (အပိုင်း ၂)- ၈၈ အရေးတော်ပုံ ဘာကြောင့် တော်လှန်ရေးအဆင့် မရောက်ခဲ့သလဲ
