Country Profile
The Spring Revolution and the Power of Creative Dissent in Myanmar
Myanmar
On a seemingly ordinary Monday morning in February 2021, military forces in Myanmar abruptly took control of the country in a coup d’état, declaring a state of national emergency. The Tatmadaw, as the country’s military forces are commonly known, immediately placed the leaders of the National League for Democracy under arrest, much to the shock of the entire world. One year later, Myanmar and its people continue to endure the hardships spurred by the military takeover, with nearly 1,500 killed and thousands having experienced detention, torture, and physical or sexual assualt. Despite the growing restrictions and the constant threats to their lives, many in Myanmar – particularly the artists at the forefront of the movement – continue to protest the atrocities of the military, forging a pro-democracy revolution.
The Spring Revolution, as it has come to be known, refers to the mass protest movement against the military forces behind the coup in Myanmar, which erupted soon after the takeover. Artists were some of the first to be arrested in the early days of the Spring Revolution’s protests and have continued to come under fire ever since for their leadership in the movement and their activism against the military government. On the early morning of February 1, prominent filmmaker Min Htin Ko Ko Gyi was detained, while renowned Burmese actor Lu Min was arrested for having allegedly "incited" civil servants to join the movement on February 21. As the weeks passed, the military forces increasingly began to institute “digital dictatorship,” with Chinese facial recognition technology and artificial intelligence being used to track protesters outside of their homes, creating a chilling environment for artists and other dissidents.
Even in the early weeks of the coup, it was clear that artists, particularly poets, were being targeted by the military. PEN America has identified at least 45 creative artists who have been detained since the coup started, with many more being hunted and targeted for arrest, or forced to hide or go into exile. At least five have been brutally killed and many more have been subjected to abuse and torture. Following the coup, the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) received six urgent requests from artists seeking to flee from Myanmar, underscoring the heightened danger and uncertainty faced by many artists in the country. ARC continues to receive requests for virtual private networks (VPNs) from artists currently in Myanmar, as well as supporting efforts to amplify their advocacy efforts in international art and human rights networks.
Spring, a Myanmar-based visual artist speaking under a pseudonym for her own safety, told ARC that the poets and cartoonists are particularly targeted by the military because of the perceived potential their work has to mobilize the masses. In a podcast interview we conducted in June 2021, Spring spoke to a long history of uprisings in Myanmar and explained that artists and poets have always played an important role in these protests, making them an obvious target for the military.
“Our government is really afraid of poets and cartoonists – they became very targeted because they can really mobilize the public. Cartoonists have really criticized the recent situation and poets can really encourage through their poems,” Spring said. “Day by day, we awaken and we encourage each other to keep going even though you read that every day there are people who keep dying.. but, but we keep doing our resistance with different forms.”
The role of artists as activists in Myanmar’s history is not new, and is in many ways something that has been passed down from one generation to the next. However, with the rise of new technologies and mediums, the landscape of protest art has evolved significantly. In the last decade, following political reforms that began in 2011, Myanmar has seen a growth in the diversity of creative expression, with a number of artists exploring mediums like multimedia, cinematography, digital illustration, rap, and electronic music.
“We used to use this line, ‘Don’t act like the ’88 generation, we are the 2021 generation.’ We use things differently – mobile phones are very cheap now so we can all get the internet now [and access social media]. When the revolution started, the artist and the designer really got to participate in this military coup,” Spring explained. “People said that this was the first time that the artist and general public became one, and were able to fight back against the military.”
In the wake of the coup, these more recent and diverse forms of creative expression have also become vehicles for protest art, with artists creating wide-reaching performances and digital art campaigns. In the days following the coup, artists were seen peacefully protesting in the streets, creating murals and performing songs. However, this changed quickly, as military forces began relentlessly threatening protestors, making it dangerous for public gatherings, big or small, to take place.
According to Aye Win, a hip-hop artist in Yangon and the director of the music project, Rap Against Junta, the attendance at freestyle rap events protesting the coup abruptly diminished in response to the growing efforts of the military to monitor such gatherings. Forced into becoming an underground movement, the group moved its meetings to the internet. “Now I am trying to explore what I can do as an artist and how I can use art as a medium in this crisis,” Aye Win said.
With military rule making in-person assembly almost impossible, artists and activists quickly turned to the internet to continue protesting. What emerged is a digital revolution, with online activism becoming central to the advocacy and organizing tactics of the Spring Revolution. Citizens from Myanmar joined the #MilkTeaAlliance movement, an online pro-democracy and human rights movement that has also protested political inequities in Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Social media has since been flooded with illustrations, artwork and posters in protest of the military’s rule in Myanmar. Online art collectives like “Raise Three Fingers” have provided a platform for artists to anonymously showcase their protest artwork, while others like Yangon.design have made their designs freely available for use in protests.
Digital activism may have created a foundation for significant international solidarity for artists in Myanmar, but it comes at the expense of intense scrutiny brought on by internet shutdowns and online censorship. A new cybersecurity bill proposed by the military in Myanmar would outlaw the use of VPNs (virtual private networks) and access to social media and calls for the immediate takedown of content deemed to “cause hatred, destroy unity and tranquility,” anything containing “untruthful news or rumors,” or anything that is “inappropriate” to Myanmar’s culture. Besides raising serious privacy concerns, the bill was also criticized for violating the fundamental human right to freedom of speech and expression. Despite criticisms from local citizens and international organizations like Human Rights Watch, the bill is reportedly on the cusp of being passed into law. Existing laws in Myanmar already criminalize a range of expression, including criticism of the junta.
The shrinkage of safe spaces for creative and cultural expression in Myanmar mimics a regional trend that we at ARC have noted in the course of our work this past year, and shared in our publication Arresting Art, on the state of artistic freedom in Asia. More recently, PEN America’s report “Stolen Freedoms: Creative Expression, Historic Resistance, and the Myanmar Coup'' explores the creative response to the coup and the military’s retaliatory crackdown, framing it within Myanmar’s long history of creative expression and protest and analyzing the immediate effects of the coup on the creative industry, including the shutdown of venues, galleries and institutions in the face of military coercion. Even prior to the coup, the creative economy in Myanmar found itself in a precarious position as a result of the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic. As noted in the UNESCO report “Backstage – Managing Creativity and the Arts in South-East Asia,” Myanmar’s creative and cultural economy struggles from challenges including a lack of access to funding, lack of funding diversity and limited internal capacity for financial planning and business administration. This has led to a reduced availability of resources for local artists and an underdeveloped creative market. Celebrated visual and performance artist Moe Satt, who was arrested in the early days of the coup and later released in June 2021, spoke to the Art Newspaper about the problems facing artists in Myanmar including the obstacle of receiving payments, especially from international sources – a challenge that remains unaddressed and is critical to the survival of artists in Myanmar, particularly those actively engaged in meaningful protest work.
As we look back on the past year of loss, protest, and revolution in Myanmar, we must acknowledge the traumatic circumstances artists have endured, and the difficult choices that artists have faced as a result of the coup and threats to their safety and livelihood. In an effort to protect themselves and their loved ones, many artists have gone into exile and have systematically “disappeared” themselves from social media and search engines. However, in spite of the hardships and uncertainties they face on a daily basis, the artists of Myanmar continue to share their resilience and tenacity through their work, their campaigns and their stories. We at ARC stand in solidarity with the artists and citizens of Myanmar, and will continue to amplify their voices and advocate for their freedom.
By Manojna Yeluri, March 28, 2022. Manojna is the Asia Regional Representative at the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) and is based out of India.