Thread by @Jonathan_Saha

The nauseating spectacle of Myanmar's fascist military using a holiday commemorating the country's wartime antifascist resistance to murder citizens and bomb Kawthoolei underscores the global importance of the #CivilDisobedienceMovement. THREAD on authoritarian impunity 1/21

First a caveat. This is not to explain the #SpringRevolutionMyanmar, and certainly not to play the expert with solutions. It is instead to draw the attention of progressive activists to #WhatsHappeninglnMyanmar because the connections to causes across the world are clear. 2/21

Some progressive voices in the UK are making these links, such as @labourlewis, but more solidarity from the left is needed. 3/21

https://twitter.com/labourlewis/status/1375836796169359361?s=20

As @theohtet, who has been doing incredible work amplifying the voices of activists on the ground in Myanmar, has noted the struggle is not only against the military but greed and impunity more widely. 4/21

https://twitter.com/theohtet/status/1376399988041805830?s=20

Impunity in Myanmar operates on two levels. First, the ability of the rank-and-file of security forces to kill and torture on spurious legal authority, or entirely without it, with no threat of sanction. Second, the Generals' avoidance of international justice. 5/21

Police and soldiers use authoritarian laws to arrest and detain protestors. Martial law has given them licence to act beyond the law in parts of Yangon. Outside of the law they have engaged in everything from petty vandalism to extrajudicial killings. 6/21

The point here is that impunity is not just security forces being beyond the law; the authoritarian criminal laws that curtail the right to protest *enable* security forces to act with impunity. Repressive legislation creates the context for impunity. 7/21

This is a critique that applies to the PCSC Bill in the UK, which proposes to severely curtail the forms that legal protest can take. The @GoodLawProject briefing is essential reading: goodlawproject.org/news/pcsc-bill… 8/21

A comparison to the Myanmar Penal Code sections 141-147 and 505(b) that relate to "Unlawful Assembly" and "Offenses Against Public Tranquility" might prove instructive; not least given the Code's British colonial-era origins. 9/21

Importantly, these sections of the Penal Code were being heavily used prior to the coup, under the limited democratic 2008 constitution, to suppress legitimate protests. hrw.org/sites/default/… 10/21

The PCSC Bill may not (in the short term at least) lead to the same abuses of power as we've seen in Myanmar, but it will contribute to providing more scope for the Police in the UK to act with impunity. #KillTheBill is a fight aligned to the #CivilDisobedienceMovement 11/21

The fight against the impunity of political leaders is another common frontline between activists in Myanmar and progressive causes around the world. The sickening travesty of Min Aung Hlaing's lavish celebrations amid murder is worse than hypocrisy. 12/21

It is a threat and message to Burmese citizens that it does not matter that the military are subverting its purported societal function to protect them. This overt perversion of the military is, I think, a show of impunity intended to demoralise and disempower. 13/21

Being unashamedly, contemptibly abusing state authority in public is to say citizens cannot have an effect. It is apparent in a range of cruel parallels, from the (comparatively) minor case of the UK Home Secretary's bullying to Modi's hand in the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. 14/21

I should make it clear, at this point, if this is a deliberate stategy of weaponising impunity publicly so as to disillusion protestors, its has manifestly failed in Myanmar as across the country demonstrates and strikes continue. 15/21

The bombing of areas of Kawthoolei resonates with states' impunity when indiscriminately killing minoritised civilians more widely, whether Saud-led airstrikes in Yemen, India's crackdown on Kashmir, China's ethnic cleansing of Uighurs, or sadly far too many other examples. 16/21

In Myanmar it builds on the impunity of the Burmese state in the face of seventy years of human rights abuses against Karen peoples, as well as other ethnic groups, most recently the mass violence against the Rohingya in 2017. 17/21

The prospect for justice for these abuses may seem dim, but #CivilDisobedienceMovement is the clearest prospect for dismantling the Tatmadaw. It is not just orientated towards getting justice, but to rooting out and abolishing the perpetrator. 18/21

The emergence of the shared notion of a federal union, the repudiation of the human rights abuses against the Rohingya by prominent pro-democracy politicians, and plans for a federal army, are signs of a distinct expansion in what is politically possible in Myanmnar. 19/21

This goes beyond the depoliticising legal impulse to have individuals face legal consequences for their actions, to pointing towards a deeper reform of political structures. For a good illustration of these issues read @mm1124's thread on Nuremburg:

https://twitter.com/mm1124/status/1327386608375635969?s=20

20/ 21

All these parallels and resonances should make it urgent that progressive activists support the #CivilDisobedienceMovement. Their victory will be a victory that we can all build on and learn from. Below are some things you can do👇🏽21/21

Donate to strike funds. @UVWunion have one: crowdfunder.co.uk/support-worker…

.@UNISONorg have one: unison.org.uk/news/article/2…

The All Burma Federation of Trade Unions have one: gofundme.com/f/abftu

Donate to fundraisers supporting activists across the country. Including the @CrphMyanmar itself: donate.crphmyanmar.org

.@MutualAidMyanmr provide support via: mutualaidmyanmar.org

Friends of Myanmar based in the UK have a donation page here: mutualaidmyanmar.org

Lobby brands and companies working in Myanmar. Campaign for divestment from Myanmar's military. @randallbreanna and @JusticeMyanmar are doing incredible work on this front, follow them, amplify and support their campaigns.

If you're in the UK write to your MP. Here's a template letter circulating online arguing for targetted sanctions and an arms embargo: drive.google.com/file/d/1B-KHho…

Follow and support the brave journalism of @FrontierMM and @Myanmar_Now_Eng. Follow and share the critical radicalism of activists in Myanmar like @SoupNotCoup @PVamplify @ThawWinnie and many others on this site.

Shamelessly tagging twitter people with aligned politics but much bigger followings than I @PriyamvadaGopal @OwenJones84 @AyoCaesar @ADFofficial @ApsanaBegumMP @NadiaWhittomeMP @zarahsultana

Anyone still reading by this point and interested in impunity as a political concept, I recommend the work of @ZahidChaudhary1. This essay is a great place to start: politicalconcepts.org/impunity-zahid…

Right, back to marking I suppose.

There's also this fundraiser for internally displaced people in Karen State.

https://twitter.com/charliethame/status/1376749554410872834?s=19