The Vicious cycle of extreme nationalism

As the experience of the former Yugoslavia attests, the rise of rabid nationalism can subvert democracy in dangerous—and devastating—ways

By IGOR BLAZEVIC

At a press conference on March 29, U Min Ko Naing of the 88 Generation Students group said the evidence was “very clear” that the riots that broke out in Meikhtila in late March and quickly spread to other areas of Myanmar were instigated by “welltrained terrorists.” The painful events that occurred in my home country of Bosnia in the 1990s are not altogether unlike those of Myanmar today. e thnic cleansing is never spontaneous, or a result of “ancient hatreds,” which was the phrase used to describe the former Yugoslavia’s descent into conflict. The involvement of well-trained paramilitaries in Bosnia organized by the security apparatus is a matter of historical record. Their job was to do the dirty work without showing the direct link between regular forces, officials and their political patrons and the groups carrying out the massacres.

Of course the situations in Myanmar today and in Bosnia are different. I do not know who is responsible for the terrifying events in Myanmar and I cannot make any predictions for the future based on the parallels with the former Yugoslavia. But there are lessons learned.

Nationalism often becomes the last line of defense for former authoritarian regimes. With the fall of communism in Central and eastern europe in 1989, even the relatively soft communist rule in Yugoslavia could not hold any more. Communist parties were basically confronted with two choices.

One was to abandon the leading role bestowed upon them by their constitutions and transform themselves into socialist parties, accept the rules of democratic competition and face a probable defeat in the first free elections. After decades of one-party rule, people wanted new choices and new leaders. In opposition, the former repressive communist parties could remove their most compromised members and put forward more competent technocrats and managers from their own ranks.

The new parties elected in the first free and fair elections would soon disappoint their voters. Former dissidents would prove that they were less capable at running ministries. Daily politics would compromise their popularity. So the former communist, now socialist center-left, parties could wait to win the second or third elections after the democratic change. This pattern was repeated across excommunist europe.

Another option the communist parties had was to cling to power at any cost. That was the road that Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbian Communist Party took. Communism had evaporated and gone, but the well-organized party machinery was still there and it had control over the economy and media as well as over the army, police and secret services. Managers of the factories and agricultural farms, directors of banks, heads of trade companies, general directors of television, generals in the army, heads of the police, the secret police officers were all afraid of what the change would bring for them. Milosevic offered to them ongoing positions in power, as well as a “piece of the cake” in the privatization. They were ready to follow.

In order to stay in power Milosevic had to engineer and mobilize a bitter nationalism. First Milosevic unleashed the nationalist intellectuals and religious leaders to whip up public fervor for violence against other groups. They talked of old grievances, which had to be rectified. The revived nationalism of “one side” found the other side ready to respond with their own sense of nationalism. The “others” too had their own (his)stories and their own grievances. They also had their own aspiring politicians preparing themselves for the first postauthoritarian, “democratic” elections. h owever, all of this would not be enough to win the elections. It was necessary to rub new salt into old wounds. What you need next is a trigger event, some ugly incident that goes beyond what is acceptable for the majority of people. Broadcast this a thousand times over through the media, and even normally cautious, reasonable and moderate people will become blind to reality, ready to volunteer for self-defense units and go and kill others and burn their houses down in the name of saving their own lives and their own homes.

After having lived for so long under the drab public discourse promoted by the parochial state media, the newly energized yet inexperienced private media took the situation from the frying pan to the fire. People were drawn to the magnetic, almost hypnotic mix of showbiz celebrity gossip and cheap tricks that was served up daily at newsstands and on the television. Meanwhile, extremist political parties were encouraged, some led by former spies.

An alleged rape case involving a Serbian villager who said he was kidnapped by Kosovo Albanian radicals was one such trigger event used to mobilize almost the whole Serbian nation behind Milosevic. The whole story was pretty murky and until today nobody knows what really happened. But for the Serbian nationalists and “patriotic” media, there was no doubt that the perpetrators were Albanians. The majority of Serbs started to believe that they were a nation under threat, encircled by enemies from within and outside.

Interaction between the regular army and paramilitaries played a crucial role in executing the ethnic cleansing. For many Westerners, it was easiest to digest the complex social upheaval in terms of ancient hatreds between ever-warring Balkan “tribes.” But there was nothing irrational in the ethnic cleansing. On the contrary, ethnic cleansing was a highly planned and well-organized endeavor.

Prominent members of the other community were targeted and horrific crimes were committed publicly, so that everybody else would run away en masse. houses were burnt down, so that there was no property left to be reclaimed later on. All religious, cultural and historic monuments needed to be reduced to dust, so that no trace was left of the “others” ever being present on territory that belonged to us and us alone.

Paramilitaries were well equipped and highly mobile units consisting of elements of ex-intelligence officers, former soldiers in foreign mercenary armies, criminals released from prisons, football fans and unemployed youth were formed. The paramilitaries were often joined by the local mob, which was keen to take part in killing, raping and looting.

The army was also deployed to “bring security and protection” and “calm things down,” as it was said. In reality, the role of the army was to control strategic points; to secure roads and other important infrastructure; to block the entrance of any unwelcome intruders, such as journalists, activists or observers; to block any attempts to arm or organize the targeted minority population; to manage the mass flow of the people; and finally to secure the territory once it was “cleansed.”

With paramilitaries doing the dirty work, the military, the government and President Milosevic could always say to the international community and domestic audience that they were not responsible, that they were doing all they could to calm the situation. The “problems,” they said, were created by local self-defense groups, which were provoked by the attacks of others.

At some point, the lies of the instigators transform into a selffulfilling prophesy and horrific crimes are committed on all sides. Such is the vicious cycle of extreme nationalism.

In the meantime, Milosevic and his now “socialist” party won several elections without any problems. For almost a whole decade, Milosevic was the popularly elected president. The price paid for keeping former communists in power for another 10 years was four wars, 200,000 dead, millions of people ethnically cleansed from their land and the economy completely destroyed.

Finally, however, Milosevic was toppled in a popular uprising led by the youth movement and a united opposition. h e was handed over to the International Court in The hague, where he died of a heart attack before the court case against him came to a conclusion.

There are obviously very great differences between Milosevic and Myanmar’s President U Thein Sein, and I am certainly not trying to draw any parallels between the two men. But the idea that ethnic cleansing can happen on the scale it did in Myanmar in March without orchestration has no historical precedent. To brake a potentially vicious cycle of violence before it is too late, courageous moderates such as U Min Ko Naing must be listened to. It is ultimately the responsibility of the state to stop the violence from breaking out again. All non-state forces should work together to make this a reality.

Igor Blazevic is a Czech-based human rights campaigner of Bosnian origin and the director of Educational Initiatives, a training program for Myanmar activists based in Thailand.