The Present Peace Process Is Not for Ethnic People

At this juncture, the leaders of ethnic nationalities should have to talk with the Myanmar leaders most importantly based on their own national freedom and sovereignty. However, it is seen that almost all the leaders of ethnic armed groups who are taking part in political negotiation with the Myanmar Government have no intention to talk for their own freedom and sovereignty, but to be under the suppression of Burmans.

It is in the knowledge of all ethnic national leaders that in the past more than sixty years, the non-Burman ethnic people had been tremendously suffered in the hands of chauvinists Burmans, lost uncountable lives and properties including minerals, marginalized and treated as second citizens, human rights, and national rights had been denied and strangulated their economic by Burman leaders.

The ethnic people have persistently demanded to form a pure federal Union based on Panglong agreement of 1947 but the Burman leaders blatantly rejected their demand time and again by writing autocratic constitutions of the unitary government and ruled the ethnic nations with the iron fist of Burman leaders from Burma proper in the past more than six decades.

Demanding to implement the Panglong agreement was nothing wrong, but adamantly refusing to implement or destroying it. Moreover, the Burmans had done wrong to destroy the ethnic nations by burning down their villages, plundering their properties, and killing ethnic people. It is now crystal clear that the Burmans will never accept the federalism and neither implement the Panglong agreement. They have superseded it by holding 21st-century Panglong Conference instead.

Now, the ethnic people, therefore, have no choice but to jointly fight for their own freedom and build an ethnic union. Because the ethnic people are free people from time immemorial. No foreigners had interfered in their existence except the British Colonial rule for a time being (more than sixty years).

A union is built by signing a solemn agreement and treaty, but the agreement is destroyed or abrogated, there is no union. For instance, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) is no more since all states of the union declared withdrawal of the treaty in 1991 and became 15 independent nation states. The Burmans, not only refused to implement the Panglong agreement but also abrogated it, nullified it and superseded it. Therefore, there is no union in spirit and letter, but in name only.

Therefore, the ethnic people have full right to claim their own independence and build an ethnic union. That is possible for them, and this is the only alternative left for them for peace and development of their own.

But the present peace process is not for federation or independence of ethnic nations, but to be under the suppression of Burmans. It is not at all in the interest of ethnic people but only for the interest of Burmans alone.