Fall 2022 Newsletter

The Inya Institute Quarterly Newsletter

It is hard not to feel that the State Administrative Council’s frustrations are currently driving an escalating cycle of violence and atrocities across the entire country and guiding an ever growing num ber of inept and erratic decisions, be they related to monetary policy, fuel supply or humanitarian as sistance. There is a long history of similar patterns among Myanmar’s ruling class. The question now is how long can it go on when millions of lives are at stake.

In spite of this dire context, the Inya Institute remains hopeful. It continues to operate and develop new activities, including its inaugural ‘Languages of Myanmar’ Course series held on September 5-16, 2022. Our three teams of language teachers, all of whom are native Kachin, Karen, and Shan speakers and hail from Lashio, Myitkyina, Sittwe, Kengtung, Nahmsan and Insein, taught an intensive online course to a total of 42 participants. Half of the par ticipants were located in Myanmar, while the other half joined the course from Thailand, Japan, China, Australia, and the U.S. The feedback from the par ticipants enables us to confidently consider running a 2023 course series. Whereas the inaugural series, considered a pilot course, was free of charge for all the participants (with funding provided by the

U.S. Department of Education under Title VI of the Higher Education Act), participation in the 2023 series will be subject to a reasonable fee for interna tional learners; the fee will help cover the stipends of the language teachers. Myanmar learners, whether based in the country or overseas, will be able to join the course for free, an incentive aimed at encourag ing greater fluency of languages spoken in Myanmar among the Bamar youth. We feel that the current situation in the country warrants the offering of such opportunities.

Other new activities also include the online we binars at which CAORC-INYA fellows present their field work carried out not in Myanmar due to securi ty reasons but in a third country. This past month we invited the 2020 CAORC-INYA short-term fellows who conducted fieldwork in the U.K. and Thailand. This coming fall, we will invite our 2022 CAORCINYA scholar fellows to present their findings based on their research carried out in the U.K., Thailand, and India. Detailed information about these webi nars is available on pp.13-14. We look forward to your participation!

The Inya Institute Team in Yangon

Address in Myanmar:

50 B-1 Thirimingala Street (2) 8th Ward

Kamayut Township Yangon, Myanmar +95(0)17537884

Address in the U.S.: c/o Center for Burma Studies

101 Pottenger House

520 College View Court

Northern Illinois University DeKalb, IL 60115 USA +1 815-753-0512

Director of Publication: Dr. François Tainturier

Layout and Formatting:

Zin Nyi Nyi Zaw

Interview: Khine Lei Hlaing

U.S. Liaison Officer: Carmin Berchiolly

Contact us: contact@inyainstitute.org

Visit us on Facebook: facebook.com/inyainstitute.org

Library: It currently holds a little more than 800 titles and offers free access to scholarly works on Myanmar Studies published overseas that are not read ily available in the country. It also has original works published on neighboring Southeast Asian countries and textbooks on various fields of social sciences and humanities. Optic fiber wifi connection is also provided without any charge.

Library digital catalog: Access here.

Working hours: 9am-5pm (Mon-Fri)

Digital archive: It features objects, manuscripts, books, paintings, and photographs identified, preserved, and digi tized during research projects undertaken by the institute throughout Myanmar and its diverse states and regions. The collections featured here reflect the country’s religious, cultural, and ethnic diversity and the various time periods covered by the institute’s projects devel oped in collaboration with local partners.

Digital archive: Access here

The Inya Institute is a member center of the Council of American Research Centers (CAORC).

It is funded by the U.S. Department of Education under Title VI of the Higher Education Act (2020-2024).

Academic Board

Maxime Boutry, Centre Asie du Sud-Est, Paris Jane Ferguson, Australian National University

Lilian Handlin, Harvard University Bod Hudson, Sydney University Mathias Jenny, University of Zurich Ni Ni Khet, University Paris 1-Sorbonne

Alexey Kirichenko, Moscow State University Christian Lammerts, Rutgers University Mandy Sadan, University of Warwick San San Hnin Tun, INALCO, Paris Juliane Schober, Arizona State University Nicola Tannebaum, Lehigh University (retd) Alicia Turner, York University, Toronto U Thaw Kaung, Yangon Universities’ Central Library (retd)

Board of Directors

President: Catherine Raymond (Northern Illinois University)

Treasurer: Alicia Turner (York University, Toronto)

Secretary: François Tainturier

Jane Ferguson (Australian National University)

Lilian Handlin (Harvard University)

Nicola Tannenbaum (Lehigh University)(retd)

Thamora Fishel (Cornell University)

Current Perspectives

Collaborative Research on Spatial Violence during Unprecedented Times

One of the Principal Investigators of a British Academy-funded research project on spatial violence in Yangon, Dr. Catalina Ortiz and Co-Investigator Dr. Elizabeth Rhoads reflect on how the research team navigated the double crisis of Covid-19 and the coup over the past two and half years.

Led by a team of the University College of London’s Development Planning Unit together with three Myanmar-based organizations, including the Inya Institute, the project went through a drastic overhaul of its methodology and plan. Here Catalina and Elizabeth offer a summary of the project’s main findings.

In 2020, weeks before the declaration of a global pandemic, we kicked off a small collaborative research project spearheaded by University College London’s Bartlett Development Planning Unit which partnered with three local organizations in Yangon with funding from the British Academy. The project focused on spatial violence, or forms of violence that manifest in space, where the site of violence is primarily space rather than the human body. We see spatial violence as enacted primarily as a means to alter and control space (forced evictions, demolitions,

2020), and political opponents (Seekins 2011). These frame works and practices, developed during periods of colonial and authoritarian rule, have continued to operate across time and space. In order to navigate towards a more just urban future, we believed it was crucial to understand the history, context, and mechanisms behind the use of spatial violence in Yangon’s past and present.

Our collaboration proposed to examine histories of spatial violence and the living heritage of communities impacted by

View of the timeline for the colonial period (source: www.yangonstories.com)

nationalizations, fire, etc.), and to control or punish popula tions.

Historically, the city used large-scale forced evictions as a tool for urban planning along with legal frameworks, policies, and institutional practices which helped justify violent opera tions to control the population by controlling urban space (Rhoads 2018). In addition to using urban planning-related regulations as tools of spatial violence, the state has used other regulations, targeted against specific groups - such as racial ized ethnic and religious groups, ‘potential foreigners’ (Rhoads

spatial violence as a way of decreasing and confronting these practices. By framing living heritage as a tool to prevent spatial violence, the project aimed to focus on studying alternative scenarios and housing futures that may prevent violations of the housing rights of Myanmar’s urban poor. By understanding the work that Yangon’s urban poor do to create and support their communities as a form of living heritage, our partners hoped that discourses around the urban poor could be reframed, lead ing to more pro-poor policies. For example, one partner studied the work of locally organized Covid-19 Committees in a low-

income township of Yangon to see how they support each other during the pandemic, while another found that communities of care and reciprocity in low-income housing communities were vital (Kolovou Kouri, Sakuma and Ortiz forthcoming).

In addition to imagining how urban poor communities’ existing living heritage could help to alter official discourse that saw these communities as problems, threats, or not at all, Yangon Stories aimed to understand the modalities of spatial violence in Yangon by tracing urban practices over time. Forced evictions, Nationalisations, and Fire are the three types of spatial violence the project highlights - which often overlap and intertwine in city-making along with other forms of violence. In contrast to forced evictions which can be understood as human rights violation violations, nationalisation and fire can be justi fied by existing law and policy. We found that regulatory reper toires – including new legislation or ministerial regulations, or a new interpretation of existing laws – were often preceded by political change. From this perspective, these urban planning and land control policies - or regulatory repertoires – can also act as vehicles for spatial violence.

In the pre-coup period, spatial violence was exerted on the communities living in the suburbs through forced evictions, a coercive legal apparatus, and discriminatory administrative procedures that lead to either surveillance or active nonrecognition (Astolfo and Boano 2020; Boutry 2018; Rhoads 2018; 2020). Since the February 1, 2021 coup and in light of the extreme spatial violence exerted by the military authorities across the country, the project was partly reframed so as to ad dress this context and its consequences on the Yangon suburbs communities.

After the 2021 coup, spatial violence intensified through the imposition of martial law in a large number of suburbs of Yangon in March 2021, confiscation of properties identified as

belonging to individuals opposed to military authorities, forced evictions in peri-urban Yangon in October 2021, and outright physical violence through crackdowns on any protest against the coup (Rhoads and Sakuma 2021; www.yangonstories.com).

The project documented multiple types of events in Hlaing Thayar, in a detailed timeline covering events of the FebruaryOctober 2021 period and also geolocated for some of its most significant events.

What the documentation of post-coup spatial violence in Hlaing Thayar highlights is that spatial violence in Yangon may be best represented as a cycle oscillating between ‘low-intensity’ or ‘high-intensity’ phases. The spatial violence happening in the suburbs of the city is exerted not only through coercion, abuse of power (in legal and territorial terms) but also through seizure of private properties, outright physical violence, or raids of pri vate homes. The regulatory repertoires that normalize certain elements of violent control over space during times of relative peace can be quickly weaponized and mobilized in times like the present. Below are a few examples related to nationaliza tions, fire, and forced evictions.

Nationalizations/confiscations/seizures: Following the 2021 military coup, confiscations have also been used for punitive purposes against the resistance. In September 2021, the Myanmar Military announced the confiscation of proper ties linked to the National Unity Government (NUG) and the Committee Representing Pyithu Hluttaw (CRPH) by referring to them as ‘terrorist organisations’ under the Unlawful Asso ciations Act (originally enacted in 1908). Under the act, those guilty of associating with unlawful associations can have their property seized and confiscated.

Fire/arson: Fire has particularly played a key role in insti gating programs and processes of both nationalisation and

Stories’

privatisation in Yangon’s history. State policies related to fire are closely linked to policing of the urban poor and control over urban poor communities since at least the colonial period. Following the coup, the military have increasingly used arson to target the homes, villages, crops, and property (including land, housing, and livestock) of those seen as supporting the Spring Revolution. By targeting communities with arson they are not only attempting to destroy places of shelter or sources of liveli hoods supporting the resistance, but arson is used as a form of (re)territorialization. Now that the structures have been burnt, the land is reclassified as ‘fire-gutted land’ in towns and urban centres, and at a minimum, permission is required to reclaim the land and rebuild. Or the military could pursue property owners under the 1963 Fire Brigade Act and claim that they set their own properties alight, resulting in permanent nationalisa tion. In this way, the military uses arson not only as a form of collective punishment, but also as a means of re-ordering space and breaking up communities engaged in resistance to military rule.

Forced evictions: There have been diverse experiences and perceptions by residents who affected by spatial violence. In the case of post-coup evictions in Hlaing Thayar, some residents were fortunate enough to find a place to stay by using their relatives and social networks, while many found difficulties in affording their next accommodations. In some cases, the mili tary deliberately relocated squatters to formal areas so that they could be under their surveillance to avoid further resistance. Some residents prioritized their attachment to the area even though they are under surveillance and risk of violence rather than relocating to safer areas elsewhere.

Curating stories and histories of violence during the coup was seen by our team as having a multitude of purposes and

audiences. Firstly, team members wanted to document what was happening in their communities and how this related to or was wholly different from previous experiences. Secondly, we telling these stories meant that some details or personaliza tion was deliberately left out. Often the team chose archival materials or historical accounts over the present conditions to illustrate certain patterns when it was not clear that the case could be adequately anonymized. This meant that often the sto ries were more patterns of behavior, practice, and impact drawn from multiple accounts, rather than individual stories as we had originally intended.

To bring the stories to life, Yangon Stories collaborated with predominantly Burmese illustrators (in-country and diaspora) to develop cartoon stories of people affected by spatial violence. These stories were initially envisioned as part of a wider cam paign to raise awareness on the situation of informal dwellers by targeting a general audience, hoping to influence widely-held negative perceptions of informal dwellers as “illegal” or “squat ters”. It was hoped that the stories would generate understand ing and compassion by sharing the multiple difficulties and the process of displaceability, cycles of informality, as well as diverse strategies of resistance and coping mechanisms. The 12 stories are divided into three series: 1. Why do people live in ‘Informal’ Settlements?; 2. The Various Impacts of Evictions; 3. Squatter Struggles and Resistance since the coup. All are available on our website: Yangon Stories

Works Cited

Astolfo, G. and C. Boano. 2020. ‘Unintended Cities’ and Inoperative Violence. Housing Resistance in Yangon. Planning Theory & Practice, 21(3): 426-449.

Boutry, M. 2018. “Migrants seeking out and living with

Screenshot of the ‘Yangon Stories’ website (source: www.yangonstories.com)

floods: A case study of Mingalar Kwet Thet settlement, Yangon, Myanmar” In: Living with floods in a mobile Southeast Asia. A political ecology of vulnerability, migration and environmental change. C. Middleton, R. Elmhirst and S. Chantavanich, eds. New York: Routledge, pp. 42-62.

Kolovou Kouri, M., S. Sakuma, and C. Ortiz. Forthcoming Community-led housing in Yangon: the struggles of nonconfrontational resistance and feminist crisis management, The Open Journal of Socio Political Studies

Rhoads, E. 2018. “Forced Evictions as Urban Planning?

Traces of Colonial Land Control Practices in Yangon.” State Crime and Colonialism, a special issue of State Crime Journal, 7(2): 278-305.

Rhoads, E. 2020. “Property, Citizenship, and Invisible Dispossession in Myanmar’s Urban Frontier”, Remaking the Re source Frontier – Insights from Myanmar and Beyond, a special issue of Geopolitics. DOI: 10.1080/14650045.2020.1808887

Rhoads, E. and S. Sakuma. 2021. “Violations of the Right to Adequate Housing after the Coup”, Policy Paper, University College London.

Screenshot of the ‘Yangon Stories’ website (source: www.yangonstories.com)

Reflections from the Field

The View of Yangon from London

Dr. Matthew Bowser, Assistant Professor of Asian history at Alabama A&M University, is one of the four 2022 CAORC-INYA scholar fellows. His research focuses on decolonization in Myanmar and Southeast Asia, examining the intersections of race, nationalism, and imperialism in the process of achieving independence from colonial rule. Unable to come to Myanmar and conduct field work in the country, he offers his insights on his archival research in the U.K.

I arrived in London in July 2022 at the tail-end of a monthslong celebration: Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, a comemmoration of her 70 years as monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Union Jack flag still littered the streets. All of the tourist shops were overflowing with stock of little figu rines of the Queen and other royal memorabilia to capture the moment (and to make a quick dollar on it if they could). As I look back now in September, now that the Queen has passed away, I somewhat regret not feeling more in the spirit of the historic occasion. For me, though, I could not help but reflect on a hide ous contrast. Here I was in London – the center of one of the most extensive, and exploitative, empires in world history – on a research trip funded by the CAORC-INYA Fel lowship for Studies of Myanmar in a Third Country. As readers of this newsletter might be familiar, this fellowship exists primarily because research in Myanmar is extremely difficult today due to the military coup of 2021, which has ended yet another of the country’s brief glimpses of democratic government. So, while I walked the streets of the capital of the former British Em pire engaged in a celebration of 70 years of democracy, prosperity, and achievement, I could only compare the condition of Britain’s former colony of Myanmar, whose people were once again being denied the democracy that its colonizer supposedly “gave to them” as part of its “civilizing mission” almost exactly the same amount of time ago – 74 years – in 1948.

View of a street in London during the Queen’s Jubilee (source: M. Bowser)

how do modern empires attempt to ensure that their economic and geostrategic goals continue even after a colony has gained independence? I think I am so fixated on this question because I was born an American in 1991, so my entire conscious life has been spent watching my country, the United States, maintain by force the extreme global imbal ance of wealth and power in favor of itself and its allies in the West. Most often this process involves the United States and the former colonial pow ers like Britain and France “contain ing” radical economic or geopolitical change in their former colonies by selecting and placing into power right-wing dictators or military juntas (for example, the cases of Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and In donesia in 1965). But excellent work has already been done on American imperialism and “containment” after decolonization, both by academics (such as Wen-Qing Ngoei’s 2019 book with Cornell University Press, Arc of Containment: Britain, the United States, and Anticommunism in Southeast Asia) and by journalists (namely Vincent Bevins’ 2020 book, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World). So, beginning in my dissertation under the supervision of British imperial historian Heather Streets-Salter, I decided to look at how the imperial power enforced these priorities before and during decolonization itself. This project has since ex panded into my first book project, tentatively titled, Containing Decolonization: Fascism and the Politics of Race in Late Colonial Burma.

These thoughts would have been on my mind whether there was a Jubilee going on in London or not, because it was exactly this subject that my research trip was about. I am first and foremost a historian of empire, and my primary research ques tion for this first project (and probably all of my future ones) is:

In my work, I argue that the United States’ “containment” policy during the Cold War was part of a longer trend of re treating colonial powers ensuring that their interests remained intact after anti-colonial movements successfully forced them out. My research found that in colonial Burma, British officials

made a concerted effort to repress the radical wing of the anticolonial movement – led by such figures as Myanmar’s spiritual founder, Aung San – who wished to pull Burma out of the British Commonwealth, reverse the extractive priorities of the colonial economy and industrialize, and perhaps most danger ously, unify with India and other decolonizing Asian countries to form an anti-imperialist bloc. To do so, they amplified this radical wing’s political rivals such as U Saw, who stood much more on an ethnonationalist majoritarian platform that empha sized protecting the indigenous majority (Bamar Buddhists) from “foreign invaders.”

As Premier between September 1940 and January 1942 – a position he was not elected to but into which he was placed with the help of the British Governor – U Saw used the colonial state’s wartime emergency powers to hunt down and imprison virtually the entirety of the Burmese left, including future

Prime Minister of independent Burma U Nu. But, while U Saw’s program served the British colonial state well, it had a couple of important consequences, particularly that it amplified rightwing ethnonationalism and unleashed violent action against the Indian and Chinese migrant population as well as indigenous ethnic minorities such as the Karen, Rakhines, and Rohingya. During World War II, these violent outbursts developed into a civil war that has continued to rage, in different forms, until the present day. After the war, my research found that local Brit ish officials tacitly supported and that some even coordinated with U Saw in his assassination of Aung San in July 1947. The implications are clear: in order to “contain” the radical wing of the anti-colonial movement, British colonialists amplified the ethnonationalist right – who, perhaps ironically, were much more beneficial for their continuing geostrategic and economic interests in the region – with devastating consequences. There

The Bristish Library, London (source: M. Bowser)

Downing Street 1947 with British PM Clement Atlee meeting Aung San and U Saw (source: The British Library)

An article from Thuriya newspaper which sparked an anti-Muslim riot in 1938 (source: The British Library)

fore, this argument does not resurrect the old “divine-and-rule” narrative that the British nefariously plotted to turn the peoples of Myanmar against each other. Rather, it states that, much more pragmatically, British interests simply aligned with the indigenous political movements who would.

I was lucky enough to be able to visit the National Archives of Myanmar, Yangon University, and the Inya Institute (and celebrate Thingyan!) in April 2018. There, I was able to find invaluable local resources for the “ground-level” political his tory of my work, especially late 1930s and early 1940s copies of the key nationalist newspapers Thuriya and Myanma Alin. But, due to the nature of my subject, the vast majority of my material is located in the Greater London area at the British National Archives and in the India Office Records at the British Library. So, utilizing the funding from the Inya-CAORC fellowship, I was able to complete my research on this subject in London and

submit my manuscript to Cornell University Press this summer. While we academics can change little about the real world in the short-term, the hope is that our research will illuminate the realities of that world and inspire others to make that change.

At the very least, I hope to shed light on why London was cel ebrating 70 years of peace and prosperity this summer and why Yangon was not.

The National Archives, Richmond (source: M. Bowser)

Testimony

Pursuing Admission to U.S. Community Colleges in Post-coup Myanmar

Zin Wai Yan, one of our Yangon-based interns, and Laura Chang, a Cornell University student, investigate the chal lenges experienced by Myanmar students first in Myanmar when pursuing admission to U.S. community colleges and then in the U.S. when enrolled in their programs. With few educational and job opportunities in post-coup Myanmar, a massive number of young people in Myanmar consider studying abroad, sometimes without being fully aware of the financial, legal, and mental health implications. This is the second part of a two-part feature.

Thank you to Cornell University’s Einaudi Center for International Studies for supporting Laura’s internship!

The challenges of Myanmar international students do not end once they depart from Myanmar–they face various chal lenges with their arrival and studies in the U.S.

1. Challenges in arriving to the U.S. on time for the scholas tic term

In addition to all the challenges that Myanmar international students face during the visa application process, visa inter view scheduling can cause students stress by complicating their timely arrival in the U.S. As the U.S. Embassy and consulates in Myanmar were largely closed or at limited capacity during the pandemic, they now appear overwhelmed by the influx of ap plicants looking to study abroad after the 2021 coup. Emily Gif ford, Coordinator of International Student Services at Mohawk Valley Community College in New York, observes that prior to the coup, her institution would receive two applications from Myanmar applicants per cycle, but for the Fall 2022 semester, she has gotten over 100. Because of this significant increase in demand, visa appointments are being scheduled far out into the future, perhaps months after a student is supposed to begin their term in the U.S. Carly O’Keefe, Coordinator of Global Education and International Services at Monroe Community College in New York, describes the desperation that students

exhibit in their efforts to secure a student visa on time: “I worked with a student who was trying to get here who, because the embassy was closed in Yangon, was concocting this idea to travel to another country like Thailand to try and get a visa there and then come.”

In order to ameliorate this challenge, international advisors at community colleges have been creative and flexible. Gifford remarks that her institution will roll a student’s acceptance and I-20 for the following term if the visa interview is scheduled for after the intended term begins. If Myanmar international students are scheduled to arrive a couple of weeks into the semester, O’Keefe remarks that she will try to register students for classes that are more forgiving of a later arrival, such as remote or late-start classes. Although schools normally pre fer to enroll students in majority in-person courses, O’Keefe notes that she is more flexible towards Myanmar international students due to their desperation to depart from their home country and the limiting conditions under which they attempt to secure their visas. To mitigate the difficulties that come with arriving late to the U.S., international advisors can empathize with the challenges of the students and collaborate with them to craft appropriate schedules or shift the term of matriculation. Community colleges may provide a support letter for a visa candidate to advocate for an emergency or expedited visa ap

Mohawk Valley Community College, NY (source: mvcc.edu)

pointment, but this letter gets sent to the student, who may then pass it along to the embassy or consulate. O’Keefe notes that community colleges do not have special privileges to guarantee students a faster visa appointment, which is a common miscon ception that students have about these institutions, so support letters have little efficacy. The students themselves ought to complete their college applications as efficiently as within their capabilities, particularly if the college has rolling admissions, so they can progress to their visa application sooner. On a broader scale, Gifford suggests that the National Association of Foreign Student Advisors (NAFSA) should advocate to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services about visa approvals for Myanmar/Burmese citizens.

2. Financial difficulties as a Burmese international student in the U.S.

Once Myanmar international students settle into commu nity college, a major difficulty that arises for them is finances. Although the cost of tuition is typically more affordable at community college, unless students have someone sponsoring them, it can be a strain to gather the finances for educational and living costs. U.S. student visas limit students to 20 hours maximum of on-campus work when school is in session, and during breaks, students can work up to 40 hours. Unfortunately for international students, many on-campus work opportunities are limited to federal work-study, which international students are not eligible for. Since community colleges tend to have less funding than four-year institutions, their departments often take advantage of federal work-study to pay student workers, so international students are excluded from these job opportuni ties. Often times, international students must compete with one another to obtain the few job openings that align with student visa restrictions.

To work off-campus, international students can apply for Curricular Practical Training (CPT) during their time as a student or Optional Practical Training (OPT) before or after they graduate. However, these off-campus work opportunities are highly restricted. Perhaps the greatest restriction is that the off-campus position must be directly related to the student’s de gree requirements or field of study. Due to restrictions on CPT or OPT time, there are generally no opportunities for interna tional students to work off-campus in jobs that do not pertain to their studies–it is unlikely for an international student to be working at a local restaurant or cafe, for example, while they have F-1 visa status. That being said, on May 25, 2021, ICE

and the Department of Homeland Security issued an Employ ment Authorization for Burmese/Myanmar F-1 Nonimmigrant Students Experiencing Severe Economic Hardship as a Direct Result of the Current Crisis in Myanmar. This work authoriza tion exception was meant to “provide relief to Burmese citizens who are lawful F-1 nonimmigrant students so the students may request employment authorization, work an increased number of hours while school is in session, and reduce their course load while continuing to maintain F-1 nonimmigrant student status”, thereby expanding the work opportunities of Burmese/ Myanmar F-1 students. However, this exception only applies to F-1 students present in the U.S. on or prior to May 25, 2021, and it is only active until November 25, 2022. Myanmar F-1 students arriving after that date are unable to take advantage of this financial opportunity, despite being under many of the same pressures as those who arrived prior. O’Keefe explains that this caveat is likely designed to dissuade Myanmar citizens from migrating to the U.S. under the pretense of wanting to study. Nevertheless, many Myanmar F-1 students who are eligible for the exception are unaware of its existence, so it does not seem as though extending this exception to those who arrive after May 25, 2021 would be a driving factor for Myanmar migration to the U.S. For Myanmar international students that are currently eligible to work off-campus under this exception, international advisors should make students aware of this opportunity. Gif ford also argues that advocacy arising out of NAFSA for the U.S. government to extend the May 25, 2021 work authorization ex ception may be helpful in granting more Myanmar F-1 students the chance to earn income through off-campus work.

Outside of working to better their financial circumstances during school, Myanmar international students may receive financial aid or funding through scholarships. International stu dents do not receive financial aid from the U.S. federal govern ment after filling out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), but O’Keefe encourages international students to complete it because many institutions determine need based on the FAFSA, and need-based scholarships often use the FAFSA as criteria as well. If they are experiencing financial hardship, Myanmar international students should speak with their advisors about what scholarships they are eligible for, and they should apply to all of those. Discussing financial matters with advisors, even though it may be a sensitive topic, is highly valuable, as advisors can point students to additional, campusspecific resources, such as on-campus food pantries.

Monroe Community College, NY (source: monroecc.edu)

3. Consequences when international students cannot main tain their student visa status

If a Myanmar international student decides to drop out of community college, he/she is in violation of his/her stu dent visa. The school’s international student services office is required to notify immigration authorities, although it is ICE’s decision whether they would like to take action against the student. It seems that some students have misconceptions about their student visa status. When speaking with Htin Paing (Psuedonym), a former Myanmar international student who is effectively undocumented after dropping out of a community college near Chicago, it seemed he had the misconception that his student visa was still valid. International recruiters and advi sors should carefully advise their international students of their student visa regulations and the consequences of violating those terms.

Nevertheless, some Myanmar international students choose to drop out of community college and apply for asy lum. O’Keefe mentions that one of her students studied for a semester but then discontinued his studies and applied for political asylum, as he had been involved in student-led protests in Myanmar. In the U.S., he found that the costs were too high, and O’Keefe states that “getting approved for asylum would give him more opportunities for his education because he would be able to come back and study part-time if he wanted to, he’d have more opportunities for work authorization, and the costs could be decreased because he’ d be eventually able to pay an in-state rate of tuition.” For Myanmar international students faced with these challenges, they should be aware that it can take several months to a couple of years for an asylum application to be ap proved or denied, and hiring a lawyer can be costly unless the lawyer does pro bono work, although a lawyer is not necessary for asylum application. If the student wants to maintain legal status in the U.S. as their asylum application is pending, they can apply for an Employment Authorization Document (EAD), but an EAD application costs $380 USD and also takes a couple of months to process as well.

The difference that educators and advisors can make

There are numerous challenges that Myanmar international students face when preparing for their studies in the U.S. and attending U.S. community colleges. However, educators and advisors can make a significant difference in alleviating some of those challenges. Kyaw (Pseudonym), a Myanmar interna tional student enrolled at Mohawk Valley Community College, recognizes the incredible difference that a responsive advisor can make. Kyaw is in the process of transferring to a CUNY because he has many friends in New York City and has had is sues with the transportation infrastructure in Utica, New York, where MVCC is located. He states that while the drive from his brother’s home to campus is only 15 minutes long, a one-way bus ride can take as long as an hour. He is having one major issue with applying to the CUNY, though: “The admissions process. If I email [the admissions office], it will probably take a month to get a single reply…and even if I call them, it will take 30 minutes to wait for them to answer the call. Sometimes, they say I have to wait for over an hour, so I just hang up.” At this point, the delayed responses from their admissions office concern Kyaw because he does not feel he will be admitted in time for the Fall 2022 semester. He finds that the responsiveness of the international student services office can make a world of difference for a Myanmar international student. In contrast to his experiences with the CUNY, he finds that working with Gif ford at MVCC has been “incomparable” because of her continu ous support throughout the application process. The difference that an international advisor can make does not end with a student’s admission into the community college. Kyaw also notes that “during the semester at MVCC, they actually help us with what we need to do, what major we should focus on, and how we should support ourselves financially or with housing. Emily even helped us with the housing problem in case we were to live separately from our brother.” The support that educators can provide to Myanmar international students, who are driven from their home country as a result of the military coup, can greatly mitigate the challenges documented in the report.

College Lake County, IL, one of U.S. community colleges attracting a large number of Myanmar students (source: clcillinois.edu)

Recent Activities at Inya

Mentoring Workshop for CSOs by Instructor Pyai Nyein Kyaw

The ‘Use & Practice of Research in the Project Cycle’ mentoring workshop held from May 6 to July 22 had five partici pating organizations: (1) Action Labor Rights, Yangon; (2) Myanmar Down Syndrome Association, Yangon; (3) Myam Research Institute, Namhsan (Shan State); (4) Thit Pin Development Organiza tion, Meikthila; and (5) Kyan Dine Aung Community Development Organization, Bago. All five organizations developing activities in labour rights, non-formal

education for street children and literacy promotion, people with disability, and community development received guid ance on how to develop and use research and survey as a way to inform their cur rent and future programs.

The topics addressed by each or ganization reflected today’s concerns in Myanmar: impact of the military coup on the factory workers’ welfare; job op portunities for Down Syndrome youth; conditions under which non-formal

2022 ‘Languages of Myanmar’ Course series

Following a ‘Training of Language Trainers’ held on August 22-September 2 and facilitated by Prof. San San Hnin Tun, University of Wisconsin’s SEASSI current Burmese language instructor and also Burmese language instructor at INALCO-Paris, the institute held its in augural ‘Languages of Myanmar’ course series.

Our three teams of language teach ers taught their language course to a very diverse audience of learners located in Myanmar, Thailand, Japan, Australia and the U.S. Fifteen par ticipants joined the Karen language course; fifteen the Shan language course, and twelve the Kachin language course.

Upcoming Events at Inya

education may resume; reading practices and culture in rural settings; livelihoods of vulnerable women-led households. Most research activities focused on com munity survey assessment with assistance given by the institute on research design, questionnaire development, and data analysis. At the end of the workshop, all give organizations were invited to con vene and present their findings.

We look forward to pursue similar initiatives in the near future!

The experience and feedback offered by the participants at the end of the inaugural course series has enabled us to identify areas for improvement and discuss with the three teams of language teachers ways to strenghten the teaching materials. Stay tuned to our Facebook page for the 2023 announcement of the language course series!

Upcoming Events at Inya

Upcoming Events across the U.S. and beyond

October Events

1. Gatty Lecture: Claiming Karen as National Identity: Transnational Experiences of Karen Baptists in Nineteenth-Century America and British Burma

Location: Cornell University, Kahin Center

Date: October 20, 2022 at 12:30pm Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Speaker: Hitomi Fujimura

Hitomi will lecture on how the Karen Baptists who later established the KNA nurtured the idea of claiming national identity through multi-layered settings. The analysis entails a broader, trans national perspective because their life was as mobile as they lived in foreign lands. This talk will argue that when Karen Baptist intellectuals began the political self-representation in British Burma, they claimed the Karen nation not merely as an ethnic assertion. They mainly aimed to appeal to the colonial government as an indigenous nation of British Burma, distinct from the major ity Burmans, while their ethnic-identity project was a total failure with their fellow Karen-speaking population. In contextualizing the Karen case, usually labelled as pro-British, with the firm, monolithic ethnic sentiment, Hitomi will bring the historicity of claiming national identity into the discussion.

More info here Register Zoom here

2 Rebel governance and People’s Defence Forces in Myanmar

Location: Australian National Univer sity, ANU Campus and Virtual event Date: October 21, 2022 at 12:00pm to 1:00pm (AEDT)

Speaker: Samuel Hmung and Tamas Wells

Before the 2021 coup, power sharing in Myanmar focussed on interaction between the National League for Democ racy, military (Tatmadaw), and Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs)/political parties. These different actors had dif ferent preferences for the dynamics of power sharing between inclusive, disper sive, and constraining approaches. Since the coup, political and conflict dynamics have shifted significantly, especially with the emergence of a new phenomenon known as People Defense Forces/Local

Defense Forces (PDFs/LDFs). In more than a year after the coup, over 300 groups have identified themselves as defense forces on social media and many of them are actively engaged in armed conflict, posting an unprecedented threat to the military’s consolidation of its grip in post-coup era. This paper examines the phenomenon of PDF/LDFs and their impact on positions and preferences of the country’s long-established elite political actors.

More info here Register Zoom here

3. Myanmar’s Revolutionary Situa tion & Political Theory

Locaton: Arizona University, Durham 240 & Zoom

Date: October 28, 2022, at 11:00am

Speaker: Nick Cheesman

Since a coup of February 2021 armed groups in Myanmar and their political affiliates have been competing for sover eign power over the whole country. This is fully a revolutionary situation, in the sense that Mona El-Ghobashy (2021), following Charles Tilly, has written of Egypt; one in which coalitions of con tenders are advancing claims against the state that are endorsed by very signifi cant parts of the citizenry in conditions in which rulers are unable to suppress them. It is an historically significant situation not only for Myanmar’s peoples but also for scholarly understandings of revolution in this century. Confronted by those facts, I ask what possibilities Myanmar’s revolutionary situation holds for collaborative political theorizing that, rather than rolling out general proposi tions to be tested once more in a specific case, proceeds from situated interpreta tions of how revolution happens so as to address the question not of why people revolt, butof what it means that they do, in the ways that they do.

More info here Register Zoom here

November Event

1 Deconstructing and reinforcing gender norms and cultural taboos in Myanmar’s Spring Revolution

Location: Australian National Univer sity, ANU Campus and Virtual event

Date: November 4, 2022 at 12.00pm–1.00pm (AEDT)

Speaker: Aye Lei Tun

Chair: Hunter Marston and Cecile Medail

In the 2021 revolution, we witnessed changes in gender attitudes, particularly in social taboos upon women’s utilities, male dominance ideas about margin alized gender groups, and women’s political participation. Most of the young protesters from the urban area have been fighting against misogynist ideas and acknowledging women’s role in the po litical and social movements. Yet, in the power struggle between oppressors and oppressed, human dignity and political correctness have been caught in a bind, as women from both groups have been targeted for personal attacks to defeat the opposing side. Thus, this presentation want to argue that, despite some flaws, the revolution could be a driving force in changing gender perceptions, whereas this trend was not seen in earlier protests against military coups.

More info here

Register Zoom here

2. Gatty Lecture: The Future of Land in Myanmar

Location: Cornell University, Kahin Center

Date: November 17, 2022 at 8:00pm Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Speaker: Miles Kenney-Lazar

This talk addresses ongoing efforts to devise new approaches for governing land and associated natural resources. Supported by a team of CDM research ers, interviews were held online from June to August 2022 using encrypted communication. Various oppositional actors and key informants working on land issues shared their visions for the future of land and recommendations for actions that should be taken to achieve them. Land issues may seem inconse quential at this moment in comparison to the humanitarian conflicts and crises the country is facing, but the interview ees felt otherwise. Many expressed that it is essential to begin thinking now about how land relations should be organized in an equitable, democratic, decentral ized, and just society to avoid repeating the problems of the past.

More info here Register Zoom here

New Books On Myanmar

atic planning of Mandalay and construc tion of its potent landscape constituted the expression, not formulated in words but in tangible form, of the throne’s claim of Burma as a ‘Buddhist land’ (Buddhadesa) at a time when Lower Burma had been annexed by non-Buddhist believers.

Columbia University Press, September 2021

Political Violence in Southeast Asia since 1945: Case Studies from Six Countries

Eve Monique Zucker, Ben Kiernan Routledge Publisher, 2021

This book examines postwar waves of political violence that affected six South east Asian countries – Indonesia, Burma/ Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, the Phil ippines, and Vietnam – from the wars of independence in the mid-twentieth century to the recent Rohingya genocide. The book delves into the violence that has reverberated across the region spurred by local and global politics and ideologies.

UntiltheWorldShatters:Truth, Lies,andtheLootingofMyanmar

Daniel Combs

Melville House Publisher, 2021

In Myanmar, where civil war, repres sive government, and the $40 billion a year jade industry have shaped life for decades, everyone is fighting for their own version of the truth. Until the World Shatters, takes us deep into a world in which journalists seek to overcome censorship and intimidation, ethnic minorities wage guerilla war against a government they claim refuses to grant basic human rights; devout Buddhists launch violent anti-Muslim campaigns; and artists try to build their own havens of free expression.

Leonard Rubenstein—a human rights lawyer who has investigated atroci ties against health workers around the world—offers a gripping and powerful account of the dangers health workers face during conflict and the legal, politi cal, and moral struggle to protect them. In a dozen case studies, he shares the stories of people who have been attacked while seeking to serve patients under dire circumstances including health workers hiding from soldiers in the forests of eastern Myanmar as they seek to serve oppressed ethnic communities, surgeons in Syria operating as their hos pitals are bombed, and Afghan hospital staff attacked by the Taliban as well as government and foreign forces.

MandalayandtheArtofBuilding Cities in Burma

François Tainturier

NUS Press-Singapore / Royal Asiatic Society-London, 2021

The book renews scholarly discussion on Southeast Asian urban traditions and offers a critical investigation into the ‘cosmic’ dimensions of one of the region’s centers of power. It provides further in sight into how rulers articulated lineage, power, and promotion of Buddhism by creating potent landscapes. The system

PerilousMedicine:TheStruggleto

Protect Health Care from the Violence of War Leonard Rubenstein

OrderingViolence:Explaining ArmedGroup-StateRelationsfrom ConflicttoCooperation

Paul Staniland

Cornell University Press, 2021

In Ordering Violence, Paul Staniland advances a broad approach to armed politics—bringing together governments, insurgents, militias, and armed politi cal parties in a shared framework—to argue that governments’ perception of the ideological threats posed by armed groups drive their responses and interac tions. Staniland combines a unique new dataset of state-group armed orders in India, Pakistan, Burma/Myanmar, and Sri Lanka with detailed case studies from the region to explore when and how this model of threat perception provides insight into patterns of repression, col lusion, and mutual neglect across nearly seven decades.