Higher education sector under systemic attack since coup

The use of force, arrests, mass suspensions and dismissals, campus raids and occupations, and other coercive legal actions by the military and police against students and scholars since the February 2021 military coup “represent a resounding attack on the human rights, academic freedom and institutional autonomy” of higher education in Myanmar, said Scholars at Risk (SAR) this week.

In its 2021 Free to Think report, published on 9 December, SAR reported an “intense and prolonged crackdown” on the higher education community in connection with the coup.

“Military and police forces frequently used violent force, detentions, and prosecutions to restrict and retaliate against students and scholars protesting the coup,” SAR said.

Higher education campuses were raided and occupied by military forces in an effort to quash dissent and establish military control over those institutions, noted SAR, adding that thousands of academics and other higher education personnel were suspended from their positions for protesting against the coup.

SAR, in its report, called on military and police forces in Myanmar to immediately refrain from the use of force, detentions and arrests against protesters; stop raiding and occupying educational facilities and other civilian structures; and remove military and police forces currently occupying the same facilities and structures.

The junta has been trying to re-open universities and resume normal classes. “Even when they are opened by force these days, classes remain largely vacant because of the boycott of their faculty members and university students,” said Nyi Nyi Kyaw, a political scientist and fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities in Essen, Germany.

Higher education is a ‘disaster’

“What’s happening in Myanmar now is not about a limited number of scholars at risk but a systemic attack on higher education as a whole. It’s not just about academic freedom anymore, it is that the right to freedom has been violated and suppressed across the sector,” said Nyi Nyi Kyaw during a 9 December virtual symposium launching Free to Think.

“Higher education in Myanmar is a disaster. The Myanmar [post-coup] spring revolution is still very much ongoing. We don’t know if it will succeed,” he said. The symposium heard that with ongoing repression, alternatives to the existing higher education system are being put in place in Myanmar, some of them organised online from abroad.

Nyi Nyi Kyaw said the main effect of systemic repression of higher education by the military is on faculty members who have joined the civil disobedience movement (CDM) – the widespread movement by state employees in Myanmar who refuse to work under the military regime; university students, who he described as “the usual protagonists” who have been at the forefront of past uprisings in the country; and administrative and support staff at higher education institutions.

Pointing to the last group, he described their participation in CDM as “unprecedented. It has never occurred in Myanmar before.”

Universities remain closed

With both faculty and administrative staff involved in the boycott on campuses, the civil disobedience movement remains very strong. Though the military is still very much in power, “the gates of universities, colleges and institutes remain closed”, he said.

“Many faculty members, many administrative staff and many support staff at universities are in hiding. And those who have joined the CDM are not getting paid so they have to rely on support from members of the Spring Revolution, which is never sufficient.”

According to its report, SAR understands from scholars supporting colleagues in Myanmar that the government has also taken disciplinary action against overseas civil servants enrolled in PhD programmes who have expressed support for the CDM, in some cases ordering them to return to Myanmar or ordering the revocation of their government scholarships.

SAR urges the military to “swiftly restore democratic, civilian-led government and rule of law in Myanmar, and protect and promote human rights, including academic freedom, and other conditions needed for quality higher education and the free exchange of ideas”.

SAR further calls on international government and higher education leaders to support Myanmar’s higher education community by pressing the military to restore freedoms “including through appropriate sanctions”.

But experts during the symposium organised by SAR noted that systemic damage to the higher education sector would need a major effort to restore.

In the five years or so before the February coup, during a period of democratic transition under Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy together with the military, “a lot of good things were happening to the higher education sector, but we were still in the very beginning because higher education is a long-term business,” said Nyi Nyi Kyaw.

“We took a lot of time to go forward but we are now going backwards so rapidly. I hear and I see a lot of hopelessness among young university students,” he said.

Alternative higher education institutions

The National Unity Government, the Myanmar government in exile, and CDM have set up alternative classes and online institutions, such as Spring University.

Alex Kaung Myat Ahkar, a lawyer based in Washington DC who also teaches at Myanmar’s Spring University law school, said their research had identified some 93 interim educational institutions set up since the coup.

Students and the population of Myanmar in general are highly united in opposing the military regime and are fully aware what military rule is like from past experiences under military rule, he told the SAR symposium, adding: “The people of Myanmar have already understood that this is not going to be a short run.

“And that is how the interim educational institutions like Spring University Myanmar sprang up. We understand that this is going to be a long fight and people will need to be equipped with educational opportunities.”

He noted that more teachers in urban areas are part of CDM compared to rural areas, where there are fewer means of surviving without government salaries. While he acknowledged that CDM may be weakening overall in the country as people need their salaries, it is still very strong in the higher education sector.

“Higher education is the most rebellious sector partly because of the students pressuring teachers to join CDM, so there is a lot of student pressure and peer pressure that is not as strong in other government sectors,” said Kaung Myat.

“We have nine faculties at Spring University Myanmar, and one of the faculties – the faculty of education – is mainly composed of CDM teachers.”

He added that a lot of interim educational councils and internal educational institutions in Myanmar have been trying to recruit and support CDM teachers through the Spring University platform, including student unions and Myanmar’s ethnic minority groups to provide access to higher education in rural areas.

“Throughout history in Myanmar, student unions have been a power to be reckoned with in terms of political space, so these student unions at different universities have come up with their own interim university councils, which are conducting a number of classes to continue the education of the students,” Kaung Myat said.

But Kaung Myat noted that running such institutions is not necessarily safe under the military junta. “They do target us,” he said, pointing to a recent incident with Spring University Myanmar when “some of our colleagues had to flee to another country, because the junta started cracking down on us”, because the university was seen as supporting CDM teachers.

Nyi Nyi Kyaw said that student unions, despite being targeted by the junta, are emerging stronger in people’s minds. Despite higher education reforms, the National League for Democracy failed to empower student unions in Myanmar, and in fact sidelined them, he said.

Nyi Nyi Kyaw noted however that the public’s view of university students has changed due to their role in opposing the junta. “If democracy comes tomorrow, I believe it will be difficult for any government to marginalise students again,” he said, adding: “This group will be very politically influential and very important for the future of the higher education sector in Myanmar.”