Earlier this month, CPCS released the latest in an important series of listening projects. Its title is Listening to Voices: Myanmar’s Foot Soldiers Speak. Looking inside the peace process, the report notes that fighters in frontline infantry units, the individuals Americans sometimes call grunts, are critical to lasting peace. It therefore sets out to capture the views of 100 rank and file soldiers in non-state armed groups. It is not clear when the study was undertaken. A little more than two years into the peace process, which dates from about September 2011, is the best guess.

The bulk of the respondents come from the armed wings of two key ethnic nationality groups: 41 of them link to the Karen National Union, and 21 to the Kachin Independence Organization. The remaining 39 are distributed across four smaller groups. The listening methodology adopts a list of about a dozen guide questions, and searches for key themes and messages in the responses. On this basis, it makes recommendations to the NSAG leaderships and the Myanmar government, and to NGOs and INGOs.

CPCS advises political elites to focus on trust, accountability, grassroots input, detailed preparation for demobilization and reintegration, and good governance of environmental resources. It advises NGOs and INGOs to support reintegration of soldiers through financial transfers and training, to provide neutral monitoring of ceasefire agreements, to assist with infrastructure development notably in education and healthcare, to facilitate sustainable natural resource management, and to help deliver basic human rights.

This attempt to “elevate the voices” of actors who typically play little part in peace talks is very welcome. The recommendations all make sense. At the same time, I was slightly disappointed by this 90-page CPCS report. A 2009 listening project on Myanmar civil society’s response to Cyclone Nargis ran to 215 pages. A 2010 listening project enabling ethnic people to speak extended to 350 pages. Each was filled with deep contextual analysis and abundant direct testimony. Still today, both are superb resources. In comparison, the current report seems a little thin.

Nevertheless, as Myanmar explores fresh ways to bring ordinary people into the policy process, listening projects remain an important tool. More use could certainly be made of them as the country attempts to reshape an authoritarian polity.

On Sunday afternoon I attended a screening of The Act of Killing at City University of Hong Kong – the second time in a month that the Southeast Asia Research Centre had shown the movie and hosted a follow-up discussion forum. Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer and anonymous collaborators, this two-hour documentary was released in 2012, and picked up a slew of awards in 2013 and 2014. Undeniably it is an important film. Whether it merits broad acclaim is not so clear to me.

The film focuses on Indonesia’s anti-communist purge of 1965-66, when at least half a million people, many of them Chinese, are known to have died at the hands of paramilitaries, gangsters and thugs. To probe how this could have happened, it invites a small band of mass murderers from North Sumatra to tell their stories however they wish. Remarkably, they agree to make a movie dramatizing the work of death squads, and over several years are depicted in kitschy scenes capturing the gothic horror of their gruesome pasts. Along the way, they talk about how good life was back then. “It was like we were killing happily!”

The film also addresses contemporary events. Pancasila Youth, active now as it was 50 years ago, holds rallies that keep squads of its 3 million members on and off the streets. A vice-president addresses a gathering. A deputy minister of youth and sport participates in the reenactment of a massacre. The surviving corps of executioners from the mid-1960s is shown in reduced circumstances of petty extortion, again aimed mainly at Chinese traders. In between, these old men display a variety of emotions about their savage lives: pride in a job well done, vanity, defiance, and some remorse.

Although the movie is banned in Indonesia, free downloads and bootleg DVDs are reportedly enabling many local people to comprehend for the first time what transpired in the early phases of the transition to Suharto’s New Order. This makes it a significant film, for it may open the door to a more truthful public history of a period that continues to be routinely whitewashed by the state. It could also resonate in other countries grappling with contentious issues from a brutal recent past.

But should this film be showered with praise? I don’t think so. It takes some of the worst criminals of the twentieth century, men with maybe 1000 deaths on their hands, and gives them a platform to review their lives. However they respond, and mostly their emotions are despicable, they remain vicious killers who have yet to face justice. Surely there are better ways to turn the spotlight on this dismal period in Indonesian history, as well as the pervasive culture of impunity that continues to disfigure this state.

I only recently became aware of the work of Jack Picone, a documentary photographer active in many parts of the world including the Thai-Myanmar border. This post is simply a shout-out – I feel sure others will be interested to see some of the material Jack has put together. A superb multimedia sequence compiled three years ago is 1200 Miles, ranging up and down the full length of the border. Still photographs from the same project, exhibited widely in Europe, Asia and Australia, can be accessed through Jack’s website. While we all know Myanmar is moving on in significant ways, there remains much truth in images captured just as the current reform process was set in motion.

There was a clear reminder this week that Myanmar’s democracy is intended by its creators and overseers to be discipline-flourishing. Speaking in Pathein on Monday, Tin Aye, chair of the Union Election Commission, argued for continuation of the present system of military-appointed legislators, and announced that he will constrain future polls by allowing candidates only to campaign in their own constituencies. The full story appeared in Wednesday’s Irrawaddy.

On the issue of when military appointees will be banished from elected assemblies, Tin Aye had this to say: “Only when democratic standards are high in the country.” That’s basically a tautology, and in any case is merely a private opinion since the current arrangement is written into the 2008 Constitution and will not be changed on the whim of a single official.

On the issue of future elections, Tin Aye made this comment: “Contestants need to say something like, ‘If you have nothing to do with my constituency, please stay away. This is my constituency and I will do my own campaign.’” However, according to the Irrawaddy he meant much more than that, for he also stated that he will set the campaign period and zones, and determine who is eligible to canvass in each constituency.

This is not merely a private opinion, but rather the public position of a senior official. As it happens, that official is also a former high-ranking general appointed to his current post by President-elect Thein Sein in February 2011. What he seems to want to do is write another “Daw Suu” clause into Myanmar’s democratic settlement.

By all accounts, Tin Aye is quite keen to ensure Myanmar’s electoral processes conform to international best practice in technical areas related to the integrity of the vote (for instance by sealing ballot boxes properly). By contrast, his declared aim to manipulate democratic procedure is wholly inconsistent with global standards.

This week’s twentieth anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide again focused attention on R2P. In ‘We the Peoples’: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century (also known as the Millennium Report), released in March 2000, then Secretary-General Kofi Annan posed a stark question: “if humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, to a Srebrenica – to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?” His challenge was picked up by the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which in December 2001 issued The Responsibility to Protect. Although the doctrine later adopted unanimously by UN member states at the 2005 World Summit turned out to be somewhat different, the close link with Rwanda remains.

In Myanmar, R2P is currently a critically important issue, but it would be hard to claim that the set of norms bundled up in the concept has broad domestic acceptance or even much local acquaintance. A great deal of grassroots engagement therefore needs to be undertaken to embed awareness. However, there is also a wider problem, which is that by a couple of measures R2P appears to have little real purchase in Asia. If R2P principles are to be implemented in Myanmar, this regional shortfall first needs to be addressed.

One measure is UN Security Council votes on issues informed by R2P. The successful resolutions on this list are not particularly revealing. In a total of 21 endorsed from January 2006 to February 2014 (helpfully assembled on a single webpage by GCR2P), 18 passed unanimously. The other three registered zero votes against, and only small numbers of abstentions. Most interesting is resolution 1973 on the situation in Libya, which on March 17, 2011 passed 10-0 with five abstentions. The five were China, Russia, Brazil, Germany and India. Alongside the Libya vote, however, stand three unsuccessful resolutions on Syria, all of which were vetoed by both China and Russia. There were no other negative votes on any of the three, but two registered abstentions: from Brazil, Lebanon, India and South Africa on October 4, 2011, and from Pakistan and South Africa on July 19, 2012. While there’s nothing definitive here, there does seem to be a certain reluctance among major Asian powers to embrace R2P.

A second measure, I think more telling, is Asian engagement with R2P support activities. In September 2010, the governments of Denmark and Ghana collaborated with GCR2P to launch R2P Focal Points. This initiative invites governments to make a senior official responsible for R2P promotion, and to join a global network committed to R2P principles. To date, 37 countries from the global north and south have appointed a national R2P Focal Point and become part of the network. Most are from Europe: 20 EU members plus six additional states. The rest are from Africa (4), Latin America (4), Australasia (2) and North America (1). Not one is from Asia.

For R2P to become meaningful in Myanmar, where pressing contemporary challenges make its core elements highly applicable, it has to gain a basic level of acceptance in the wider region. Working on that is a key task for GCR2P and affiliated advocacy groups.

Thomas Fuller published a terrific article in last week’s New York Times summarizing the current state of Thai politics. After five months of Bangkok street protests against Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s government, the focus is now shifting to courts and agencies willing to hand down judgments favourable to the movement. Making those judgments are individuals long opposed to the successful political parties and social coalitions built by the Shinawatra family over the past 15 years.

One instance is the National Anti-Corruption Commission, which at the end of March called the premier to testify in a case alleging negligence over fraud in a signature rice subsidy scheme. Fuller highlights two oddities. One is the speed with which an often cumbersome agency has acted on this occasion. The other is the major role in the commission of Wicha Mahakhun, who in 2007 was appointed by military leaders to a constitutional review committee formed after a 2006 coup ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. “We all know elections are evil”, Wicha said then. Conceivably, this process could result in suspension of Yingluck’s premiership.

Another instance is the Constitutional Court, which in recent months struck down a major infrastructure plan partly because high-speed rail is apparently not suitable for Thailand, and also rejected a constitutional amendment making the Senate a fully-elected body. An earlier decision to move from a wholly-elected to partially-elected chamber was taken during the same 2007 constitutional rewrite, and several members of the current tribunal were involved then. Relatedly, Sodsri Satayathum, also a member of the 2007 committee, made this comment at a seminar last month: “We used to suspend democracy by military coup. Military coups do not work anymore.”

A rather different instance is the treatment accorded to former Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban, now leader of the protest movement. Wanted on murder charges for his role in a crackdown that left dozens of “red shirt” Shinawatra supporters dead in 2010, he has ignored numerous requests to appear in court. Thus far, no action has been taken against him.

Clearly, Thai democracy is imperiled by an ongoing “judicial coup”. What also emerges from a profound political struggle is the sheer resourcefulness of this Southeast Asian nation’s politico-military elite. Direct power grabs are no longer a live option? Not to worry – there are plenty of other ways to negate the will of the people. At a time in Myanmar’s political development when the military leadership is becoming rather assertive, this neighbouring case has to be of great concern. In Myanmar, too, many people feel that another coup on the lines of 1962 or 1988 is now unlikely to happen. Even if that page has been torn from the establishment playbook, however, others can readily be added.

A survey of Myanmar public opinion published last week by the International Republican Institute provides an antidote to the disenchantment that shrouded Thein Sein’s recent third anniversary as president. From December 24, 2013 to February 1, 2014, IRI conducted 3000 in-person, in-home interviews with individuals randomly selected to reflect the demographic composition of the country. Broadly, the results are extremely positive.

Is democracy better than any other form of government? 76 percent said yes, 4 percent said no. How has Myanmar’s democratization fared in the past year? 62 percent said it had increased, 1 percent said it had decreased. Is the country moving in generally the right direction? 88 percent said yes, 6 percent said no. How has your personal economic situation changed over the past year? 40 percent said it was better, 16 percent said it was worse. How do you expect your personal economic situation to change over the next year? 57 percent said it would get better, 2 percent said it would get worse. Are key institutions and individuals doing a good job? Net scores came out at +89 for the president, +84 for the government, and +60 for the parliament. Other major institutions also had strongly favourable ratings.

In fact, the results are so uniformly good that you start to wonder what’s going on. Partly I would think Myanmar people are conscious that the reform process was always intended to build discipline-flourishing democracy, and therefore do not feel deeply deflated when it turns out that’s what they’re getting. Partly, though, there must surely be a framing effect here. When a polling organization funded by the United States Agency for International Development (did respondents know that?) shows up at your home and asks you a series of questions about matters that until recently were strictly taboo, is it possible to say what you really think? IRI did touch on this issue, asking whether people are afraid to express political views openly. 53 percent said yes and only 7 percent clearly said no. Could this hesitancy have shaped the other results?

On some detailed issues, the returns were interesting and plausible. Respondents saw economic and welfare issues as the major challenges facing the country. They gave the National League for Democracy a substantial lead over the Union Solidarity and Development Party on policies relating to women, young people and democracy. They favoured the USDP over the NLD on internal and external security. On the federal question, they opted for centralized control over regional and state autonomy by 57 percent to 35. They reported 40 percent household access to a mobile phone, and 5 percent individual access to the internet.

Perhaps the most significant feature of the IRI survey is the simple fact that it took place at all. In such a data-poor environment, a pioneering effort of this kind can only be welcomed.

The early months of 2011 saw the dissolution of an established military junta in Myanmar, and the collapse of a long-standing autocratic regime in Egypt. Both countries introduced measures to liberalize and democratize their political systems. Three years on, however, these two cases display clear signs of a revival of military leadership.

In Egypt, massive protests in January 2011 led to the demise of President Hosni Mubarak’s regime the following month. Faced with considerable uncertainty, the army stepped in to rule for six months until a general election was held. In June 2012, Mohamed Morsi became the first democratically-elected president in Egyptian history. In 2013, however, growing civil unrest led to warnings from the army, and finally to Morsi’s removal by Commander-in-Chief and Minister of Defence General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. In July 2013, El-Sisi became First Deputy Prime Minister alongside his existing duties. At the end of last month, he resigned from the army to run for president in elections scheduled for late May and, if necessary, mid-June.

In Myanmar, President Thein Sein assumed office in March 2011 and was soon hailed as a reformer domestically and internationally. He achieved unprecedented success through a visit to the US, President Obama’s November 2012 visit to Yangon, and the lifting of most western sanctions. However, support for him is deteriorating because of his refusal to convene a “big four” meeting with Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, powerful Union Parliament Speaker Shwe Mann, and top opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Issues that would certainly be on the agenda include key constitutional amendments, delayed peace negotiations with ethnic groups, and unresolved sectarian violence between Buddhists and Muslims in Rakhine State.

In a third-year anniversary speech delivered to Parliament on March 26, the president highlighted the importance of placing national reconciliation ahead of other political issues. He had previously initiated a “three-phase peace plan” beginning with ceasefires and liaison at the state level, moving to confidence building and political dialogue at the union level, and culminating in the signing of an agreement for eternal peace. Even though roundtable talks with ethnic leaders are ongoing, however, reported clashes between the military and ethnic armed groups are generating doubts about progress with the peace process. Moreover, the armed forces clearly remain key players in national politics. In his speech, the president bluntly declared that they will continue to play a role in the democratic transition.

At the same time Min Aung Hlaing, who stayed mostly out of the limelight and has been tightlipped for the past two years, is now making public appearances. In late 2013, a state-run newspaper devoted an entire page to four stories about him. One reported that while addressing graduates of Military Medical University he mentioned the importance of “human security” in implementing state security, which is unusual in Myanmar military doctrine. This fueled rumours that when he reaches retirement age next year he may decide to run for president. In his Armed Forces Day speech on March 27, he too argued that peace must precede political dialogue. He also recently accompanied Thein Sein on a visit to Kachin State, boosting his image as a man of peace and raising the possibility that the two are now working together in an informal alliance.

As in Egypt, Myanmar is not unfamiliar with military figures taking on political responsibilities. Notwithstanding the gradual transition of the past three years, personal conflicts and political instability could still result in a revival of the military’s role in government.

Su Mon Thazin Aung is a PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong.

The pattern of events in Rakhine State over just a few days at the end of last week and the beginning of this bears only one interpretation. Rakhine Buddhists are waging a systematic campaign against Rohingya Muslims, and by extension against institutions and individuals seeking to provide them with essential assistance. The clear aim is to ensure Rohingyas have no significant representation within the state. While the offensive can be traced across two years of sectarian violence (and has a pre-history stretching even further back in time), it is currently moving into a particularly ugly phase.

On Tuesday, Francis Wade posted an article on Asian Correspondent detailing the full extent of anti-INGO attacks in Sittwe in the middle of last week. More than 30 properties were attacked and seven warehouses were destroyed. Aid delivery infrastructure ranging from computers to vehicles to boats was wrecked. All foreign and non-Rakhine aid agency workers were evacuated. Rakhine aid agency staffers (“betrayers”) were subjected to open intimidation and warned by locals not to participate in humanitarian work. A small contingent of remaining UN workers was placed under heavy guard as soldiers turned the state capital into a militarized zone.

By the start of this week, it had also become apparent that the nationwide census launched on Sunday will not count Rohingyas. Bowing to intense and aggressive pressure from Rakhine Buddhists, and at the same time reneging on firm commitments previously made to UNFPA, the Myanmar government has instructed enumerators simply to pass on if they encounter a household claiming this ethnicity. In Monday’s Irrawaddy, presidential spokesman Ye Htut was quoted in these terms: “If we ask a family about their ethnicity and they say Rohingya, we will not carry out, [or] accept it.” Rohingyas thus have no place in the most important national documentation exercise conducted in recent decades.

One consequence is that aid agencies are warning of an unfolding humanitarian disaster as food and other supplies dwindle across the state, and access to basic healthcare is cut. Most exposed are undoubtedly some 800,000 Rohingyas living in IDP camps hosting at least 140,000 people, in the cordoned-off Aung Mingalar Muslim quarter in Sittwe, and in isolated towns and villages. The more frightening prospect that the ground is being prepared for large-scale ethnic cleansing or even genocide is also being spoken out loud (for instance by former US congressman Tom Andrews from advocacy group United to End Genocide), and certainly cannot be discounted.

The UN is now the indispensable institution in Rakhine State. On Sunday, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon phoned President Thein Sein to urge him to guarantee the safety of international aid workers in the state, and there have since been follow-up meetings. However, with almost all such workers already absent, and those who are left under close military supervision, events are in real danger of spiraling out of control. In these circumstances, the UN needs to look beyond mere assurances from the Myanmar government. It also needs substantially to boost its physical engagement in sensitive areas both to maintain aid supplies, and to save lives. It may need formally to consider the situation in Myanmar at the Security Council, Human Rights Council, or General Assembly.

To sustain its charge of “systemic failure” in UN operations at the end of the Sri Lankan civil war, the 2012 Petrie Report argued (in paragraph 16) that “The relocation of international staff out of the conflict zone made it much harder for the UN to deliver humanitarian assistance to the civilian population, to monitor the situation and to ‘protect by presence'”. Protecting by presence is an urgent requirement in Rakhine State.

Looking beyond the contest of ideas exemplified by the current Crimea crisis, I was chatting a couple of days ago with Grzegorz Ekiert about another lesson Myanmar might draw from Ukraine.

Grzegorz reminded me that this is a country that secured independence from the Soviet Union in 1991 and set about undertaking a transition to democracy. Little more than one decade later, it had fallen into such deep trouble that it experienced a peaceful Orange Revolution in 2004 and embarked upon a fresh democratic experiment. A little less than one decade on from that, it again found itself gripped by political convulsions that triggered the Euromaidan (or Eurosquare) revolution earlier this year.

Feeding this serial turmoil is an inability to engineer meaningful reform of a corrupt and decrepit state. As Stephen Sestanovich recently noted in the New York Times (while in fact writing about a different issue), “Ukraine’s institutions function poorly across the board, from its military to its police and border guards, from local government to political parties”. This has been the case ever since the collapse of Communism more than 20 years ago. In key respects, then, the country has made very limited political progress. It is not precisely where it was in 1991, but the distance traveled is deeply disappointing.

The moral of the story appears to be clear. It is essential to keep up the momentum of political reform, for once that begins to tail off it is difficult to avoid slipping back pretty much to where things originated – as has happened repeatedly in Ukraine over the period of a single generation. Then you have no choice but to undertake the difficult task of starting all over again. In particular, it is necessary to propel reform right into the heart of the state and institute real change there.

The third anniversary of Myanmar’s switch to quasi-civilian government at the end of last month saw others make parallel points. In Foreign Policy‘s Democracy Lab (and also in the Irrawaddy a few days later), Min Zin explained “why Burma is heading downhill fast”. He focused particularly on the country’s leadership crisis, and mounting social unrest. In the Irrawaddy, Aung Zaw argued that the “shine’s off the apple”. He held that across the society it is understood very clearly that power has scarcely changed hands at all since 2011.

The Ukraine case suggests that the Myanmar people have every reason to be worried about their country’s faltering reform dynamic. Unless there is renewed forward drive, everything could soon move into reverse.