Myanmar Coup Acronym Salad #1 - CDM (and the protest movement)

The Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) has become the umbrella term for civic protest action against Myanmar's February coup. It started as a strike of health workers in February, the early days of the coup, the movement quickly spread across the public and then the private sector. On 21 February, the Committee Representing the 3rd Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) - an executive committee of the legitimate Parliament which was dismissed by the coup leaders, called for a general strike which brought millions of people to the streets and gave birth to the politically organized, purposeful mass protest movement, with CDM at its core:

The general strike galvanized a diverse coalition of protest organizers in to action and threw up a number of organizations: the General Strike Committee, a group of civil society leaders, minor Bamar parties, students and trade unions, and the General Strike Committee of Nationalities, a group of young ethnic minority activists.

While these two organizations remained wary of the CRPH, most emerging CDM leaders declared themselves loyal to it. CDM had in March and April a major impact on the economy, shutting down the port operations of Yangon and the national railway system, and bringing industrial production to a halt. The question was always going to be this: with the explicit objective of CDM being to bring the junta to its knees, including by denying it control of the state, and collapsing the productive economy that gives the junta vital revenues, how can CDM actions be sustained, how can CDM-ers and their families be fed?

CDM, while remaining decentralized, quickly organized and professionalized, and set up CDM support teams across Myanmar's 14 States and Regions - with the CRPH and its National Unity Government providing support to striking civil servants. A plethora of small-scale support initiatives from Myanmar's activists abroad, diaspora and friends helped sustain the movement:

Myanmar's trade union movement plays a major role as an organizing force and has born the brunt of the regime crackdown with railway workers particularly hard hit.

The distinctive CDM of the early coup days merged in the public perception with the wider protest movement that included the above-mentioned coalitions into a cross-ethnic, cross-religious civic dream of a new democratic Myanmar that would transcend not only decades of ethnic strife but also the ugly side of Myanmar’s recent politics - the almost unanimous disdain for the Rohingya that led the Tatmadaw down its genocidal path back in 2017.

Its heroic, peaceful resistance, its tolerance and clear efforts to reach across the dividing lines of Myanmar society that had marked Myanmar politics and social life for decades, earned it a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize 2022:

From late March, the regime escalated the violence against the protest movement from crowd dispersal by rubber bullets, to isolated killings, to targeted assassinations of protesters to the use of heavy weapons in civilian areas and abduction of protesters and their relatives effectively broke the protest movement. While CDM continued in the face of escalating repression - threats, harassment, and mass layoffs, the protest movement was squeezed - at least in the major cities - and the hard core of activists turned to armed resistance.

Today, CDM remains particularly strong in the education sector. The recent opening of public schools after the Thingyan holidays demonstrated the continuing force of civil disobedience when many teachers boycotted it (and were dismissed as a result) and student attendance rates remained at levels of around 10%. It was never clear how large a movement CDM was. It is safe to assume that participation was in the millions and probably is still in the high hundreds of thousands at the very least.

With funding always scarce and funding channels like mobile money being restricted by the junta, striking civil servants and private sector workers had relied on savings, donations, and - in particular in rural areas - being fed by the community harboring them. As of June, strike funds are empty, resources scarce and the opposition National Unity Government and the Myanmar diaspora is not in a position to mobilize and get onto the ground sufficient funds to sustain mass civil disobedience.

Development partners had welcomed and endorsed CDM as the benign face of the resistance, but by and large refrained from supporting it (with a few exceptions). This has puzzled many observers, including me: one argument I have heard repeatedly was that CDM worsens the humanitarian situation the country is facing in the short run, and (in the private sector) destroys the country’s manufacturing sector and thereby the base for its future prosperity in the long run. A peculiar spin on the old “the people can’t eat democracy argument” to take for some of the bigger democracy and human rights championing development partners in Myanmar .

Now private and public sector workers have started drifting back to work, and slowly some baseline economic indicators of Myanmar like business confidence are creeping up again (if only marginally), while at the same time continuing price rises in staples and fuel remain a worry - CDM or no CDM.

Being ignored or at least severely underserved by the international community, CDM is running out of time:

While CDM clings on, the original protest movement has fizzled under the pressure of the regime: The General Strike Committee of Nationalities has become inactive as their members focus their efforts elsewhere. Many activists in the protest movement took to arms when the CRPH announced that in the face of brutal junta crackdowns, people had the right to self-defense.

Across the country civil defense forces (also: people's defense forces - I'll look at that in a separate post) formed and activists are increasingly challenging the junta violently. Many were trained in the use of small arms and the production and use of explosives. In the periphery, these forces launched full insurgencies but in the urban areas, where military presence is tighter and daily persecution more systematic, such action is not feasible. Here, security forces are targeted in hit and run actions or bombings. Some of these attacks target junta civilian administrators or just sympathizers:

With CDM under pressure, violence will seem the only viable option of resistance to many. In these attacks, we are getting a glimpse at the sinister future without CDM as activists squeezed ever harder by the junta, are becoming disillusioned at the lack of support for their cause and are being further radicalized in their actions.

Imagine this taking place at a mass scale and you will realize that the end of CDM in Myanmar wouldn’t be a good thing, no matter whether your priority is democracy, economic development or just regional stability. People would then be wishing they had supported CDM and the protest movement when they had the chance.

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash