On election night in Myanmar, as results trickled in and it became clear that Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) had won in a landslide, thousands jubilantly crowded outside the party headquarters in Yangon. The air seemed filled with a sense of catharsis — a feeling of deliverance from long suffering under decades of military rule. As one voter said the night of the November 8, 2015 contest, “This is our chance for freedom.”
Yet outside the majority-ethnic Burman lowlands, scenes of exultation were notably absent. While the NLD performed well in these areas, reports indicated disengagement from the electoral process, low voter turnout, and concerns about the NLD’s ability to govern.
Elsewhere, disaffection with electoral politics was the least of concerns. On Election Day in the northern Shan State, the Myanmar military continued bombing the Shan State Army-North. And in Myanmar’s western Rakhine State, Rohingya Muslims spent Election Day confined to camps for the internally displaced — this after anti-Muslim violence swept an area where hundreds of thousands of Rohingya have been living in abject exclusion. (Courtesy of Jacobin)
No comments:
Post a Comment