the First Forum of the Defection and Defiance Movement: Recap and reflection

 From July 5–7,2023, Freedom Fighter Myanmar and People’s Goal hosted the inaugural Forum of the  Defection and Defiance Movement to strengthen the focus on security force defections in Myanmar as a non-violent means to undermine Myanmar’s military junta. Bringing together security force defectors, researchers, and civil society organizations via Zoom, the forum aimed to discuss the impact and potential of defection campaigns in the current Spring Revolution. It represented a cross-section of the more than one-hundred guest speakers, who have participated in panels hosted by People’s Goal over the past two and half years. The general forum is scheduled to be repeated every six months to sustain the focus on defections and to provide a space for revolutionaries to share ideas and perspectives with ex-military and police. The forum is an opportunity to practice, on a limited scale, the kind of debate, dialog, inclusivity, and trust-building that will be essential for the forging of Myanmar’s post-dictatorship society and institutions.

At its inception, People’s Goal was motivated to understand the variety of ideas and feelings within the revolution, especially at a time when an unprecedented number of ex-Myanmar security force personnel are seeking refuge in the very ethnic minority communities that have been in conflict with Myanmar’s military for decades. These vastly different groups must be able to understand each other; there must be a path to reconciliation beyond the denial and sublimation that pervade and poison so much of Myanmar society. Without openly discussing resentments, suspicions, expectations, and boundaries, post-dictatorship Myanmar will not be prepared to develop the healing institutional process of transitional justice or the sustaining system of inclusive and equitable federalism.

We find encouragement for this approach from revolutionary thinkers of the past. In the 1930’s, for example, the French philosopher and activist Simone Weil reflected,

One magic word today seems capable of compensating for all sufferings, resolving all anxieties, avenging the past, curing present ills, summing up all future possibilities: that word is “revolution”… If one were to take one by one all those who have ever uttered hopefully the word “revolution”, to seek out the true motives that have turned each of them in this direction, the precise changes, of a general or personal kind, which they genuinely look forward to, one would discover what an extraordinary variety of ideas and feelings can be covered by the same word (Weil, 151). 

A Few Forum Takeaways

The forum brought together at least two levels of discourse: (1) the personal feelings and experiences of defectors and the members of ethnic revolutionary organizations (EROs) that are now hosting defectors, and (2) researchers and political strategists imagining and building a new way forward. These two levels of discourse coalesced around three interrelated points: trust, coordination, and messaging.  

Trust

Most of the defectors who engaged with People’s Goal joined the civil disobedience movement as conscientious objectors within the first months after the coup. Many who showed their commitment to the revolution by joining early were embraced by EROs with open arms. However, as time has passed, defectors who show up later are questioned about their motivation and whether they bring anything to the revolution’s table. There has also developed a need to grapple with the qualitative differences between people with disparate experiences who fit under the umbrella term “defector,” which might be defined as someone who does not simply leave the security forces, but who deliberately joins the opposing side. For example, for people on the ground, there is a huge difference between someone who changed sides early to join the CDM or a people’s defense force (PDF) and someone who deserted from their unit two years after the coup out of exhaustion and with the hope to be taken care of by the revolution’s liberal spirit. The first type presents few security concerns for their host community; the second may not be trustworthy or seemingly worth the resources it takes to monitor and support them. One ERO commander in the forum said, “We need concrete policies [for defectors]. I have seen how CDMrs are not well cared for in liberated areas. One reason for this is that CDMrs, defectors, and surrenders are all put in the same camp and there is no trust. We really need to know who each individual is.”

Trust issues between security force defectors and their host communities not only affect the revolution’s ground dynamics, but also the international community’s perception of the revolution’s coherence and ability to resolve its internal points of tension. This perception impacts the funding of the revolution and the wider strategies that are reliant on such funding.

Coordination

The forum’s panelists nearly unanimously agreed that one way to overcome these trust issues is to increase coordination horizontally across the revolution many EROs, PDFs, CDMs in towns and cities, and security forces sympathetic to the people and who are in a position to share valuable intelligence. This latter type has earned the name “watermelon” for their green military uniform on the outside and their red spirit of rebellion on the inside. Not only must horizontal coordination improve, but vertical coordination must increase between ground forces, political bodies like the NUG and NUCC, and the international community.

One practical measure proposed is the development of a central defection-program database, presumably administered by the NUG, that would house all relevant data about defectors and potential defectors and facilitate their vetting and processing. Such a database would give ERO and PDF commanders a direct channel to information that could allay many of their suspicions and allow them to focus more energy on fighting the junta instead of policing their own communities.

Such a database would not only be useful for security purposes, it would also be a way for different revolutionary actors to share data about the numbers of defectors coming in, their whereabouts, their qualifications, how they are faring, and more. This would allow for the much need development of an aligned strategy for vetting, hosting, supporting, and putting defectors on new trajectories. For example, this data would be a valuable administrative resource for the NUG’s disbursement of aid to defectors and for its solicitation of funding for more such aid from the international community.

One panelist—a defected soldier—summed up this goal of the forum saying, “Over the last 2.5 years, there hasn’t been strong collaboration between different defection groups. There must be better coordination, collaboration, outreach, and advocacy. All stakeholders must be brought together to discuss defection and appreciate its value. If the military were to collapse from within, this would be a huge advantage to everyone in the revolution.”

Messaging

With increased information sharing and strategic coordination between revolutionary stakeholders about the defection program, the revolution will be better able to refine its own vision and share that vision with people still living under State Administrative Council control—including current soldiers and police—and with the international community.

In the forum’s closing remarks, one panelist—a former policeman—spoke of how encouraged he felt to hear so many people from different fields agree on the value of upscaling and strengthening the coordination of defection campaigns as part of the revolution. In his own journey, he had followed his gut to do what felt right, and he has continued, with very little support, recruiting his old friends and subordinates from the police force to directly or indirectly join the CDM by defecting or becoming “watermelons.” If channels open between him and his police contacts, EROs, the NUG, and international organizations, they will be able to reach deeper into the foundation of the security force pyramid and undermine it from within, saving many lives.

Future forums

Myanmar and its revolution are nothing if not diverse, and nothing will spell its doom like disparate participants looking past each other at a chaos of scattered goals. Simone Weil warned,

At bottom, one thinks nowadays of the revolution, not as a solution to the problems raised at the present time, but as a miracle dispensing one from solving problems. The proof that it is so regarded is that it is expected to drop from the skies; one waits for it to happen, one does not ask oneself who is to bring it about (Weil, 153).

To foster this patience for detail and deliberate construction of a new Myanmar, we invite you all to participate in the next general Forum on Defection and Defiance Movement scheduled for around the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024.  

Thanks to Helene Kyed for helpful feedback.

References

Weil, Simone. “Critical Examination of the Ideas of Revolution and Progress.” In Oppression and Liberty. Translated by Arthur Wills and John Petrie. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1978