According to a paper released by the Legal Aid Network (LAN) on May 16th, the Wa are the only non-Burman ethnic group that has enjoyed the right of self- determination, and the Wa’s relative freedom has come at the expense of other ethnic groups who have been fighting for the right of self-determination for decades even though Burma’s Panglong Conference guaranteed ethnic groups the right of self-determination in 1947.
“[The Wa] govern their respective territory, form their own army and conduct their self-rule, without any embarrassment from successive ruling military regimes… [but] it may not be fair [if] the Wa alone enjoy it at the expense of other ethnic nationalities who are seeking for similar ends,” says the paper, which was prepared by Burmese human rights lawyer Aung Htoo and members of the LAN advisory board, which includes well-known Burma scholars Josef Silverstein, Suzannah Linten, David Fisher, Simon Young, and Venkat Iyer.
The State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC), which came to power in the wake of Burma’s 1988 democracy movement, entered into a ceasefire with the United Wa State Party/United Wa State Army (UWSP/UWSA) in 1989. As part of Wa’s ceasefire agreement with Burma’s government, SLORC formally recognized the UWSP along with their territory and army, a move which the LAN paper says violated existing Burmese laws.
The ceasefire was signed shortly after the UWSP/UWSA was established by ethnic Wa who were formerly members of the Communist Party of Burma (CPB), the long-standing political party based on the Burma-China border which collapsed when Wa and other ethnic groups rebelled against the CPB’s Burman leadership in 1989.
A core principle of legal theory is that equal situations must be treated equally under the law. As such, the LAN paper contends that Burma’s government acted contrary to the rule of law and has been discriminating against other groups, which have not enjoyed similar self-autonomy.
In this regard, the LAN paper reasons as follows: “Undisputed facts indicate that other non-Myanmar ethnic states such as Kachin, Chin, Shan, Arakan, Mon, Karen, Karenni etc …. existed independently in history [and should therefore]…also have the right to enjoy equal status, at minimum, similar to Wa. Unfortunately, this is not taking place. The right to self-determination of other non-Myanmar ethnic nationalities have been consistently denied by successive military regimes although such right has been granted to Wa nationals in practice since May 1989.”
The paper also describes the actual situation on the ground, highlighting the fact that the UWSP/UWSA is being let off scot-free while Naypyidaw still treats other armed ethnic organizations as enemies, attacking them and taking their land and resources with brute force until they “have been annihilated — or, at minimum, neutralized — by the regime after the nationwide ceasefire. Hence, it means that the UWSA survives now at the expense of the other [armed ethnic groups].” However, the authors then caution that given the modern history of Burma’s army, the Wa might eventually suffer “a similar fate in the end.”
Finally, LAN concludes its paper by arguing that “the 2008 constitution and other organic laws need to be amended,” but laments that instead of operating under the law, Burma’s government goes right through it.
