The wonderful world of Myanmar

Chase Pulley

9 November 2012

Pol-Sc 150-002

Categorizing Political Violence

            Political violence is a major issue in the world today. Whether we are discussing a civil war or genocide, these are pretty severe. According to author David J Samuels political violence is, “the use of force by states or non-state actors to achieve political goals.” (381) The country I am going to be working with as I apply this definition to its conflicts is Myanmar.

             “Myanmar has been led by a military junta since the coup d'etat of Ne Win in 1962. The military have since then violently suppressed any signs of opposition. When public protests have been organized, the government has not hesitated to use one-sided violence as a means of dispersing the crowd. Several such instances were observed already in the 1950s but the practice continued under military rule. Troops were sent twice in 1962 to the Rangoon University campus to stop protests against the military takeover. The government again opened fire on demonstrators in 1967, in 1974, in 1988, and 2007.” (UCDP Data sets)

            Myanmar supports the definition that is listed in the first paragraph quite clearly. Myanmar is clearly used force against the citizens of the country; this can be seen by the deaths of many. The best average of deaths between 1992-2011 is 1,895. Though this number is missing a couple years and is only approximate, it is possible this number is considerable larger. To support the 2^nd part of the definition this again supports the definition by Samuels, the idea that for it to be political violence there must be some part that is political. The entire reason the government used violence against the citizens was to keep control of their power and to suppress any rights that they deemed as dangerous to their power; such as the protests on the Rangoon University  campus when the military.

            The particular type of political violence is a little bit harder to distinguish. According to our class lecture a civil war is, “Major armed conflict within the boundaries of a sovereign state between parties that are subject to common authority at the start.” Two other stipulations are that it must have over 1,000 people killed and must last at least one year. So according to that definition it is a civil war because when they started they were subject to the same common authority, before the current government took control. I feel that because the military did take control that it wouldn’t be a civil war because another government had been set up and has been in power for a long time. If this is the case I would have to agree with the UCDP Data Sets and declare that this is a case of one-sided violence.

            I feel one-sided violence is better suited for Myanmar because the people that are being killed are civilians and not soldiers. Not to say that there have not been any soldiers killed but that the government is specifically targeting civilians to achieve their political goals. Ending this analysis it is important to note that this particular instance of political violence has ended in 2011 with a revision of the constitution giving the citizens more power than they had before.

 

 

Works Cited

Samuels, David J. "Glossary." Comparative Politics. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, 2013. ______381. Print.

"Uppsala Universitet." Database. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 Nov. 2012. ______<http://www.ucdp.uu.se/gpdatabase/gpcountry.php?id=112>.