The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published on December 10, 1948, states, “No one shall be compelled to belong to an association.”
Myanmar’s military overthrew the elected government in violation of their own constitution in Myanmar on February 1, 2021.
As a result, many government employees stopped going to work through the Civil Disobedience Movement as they did not want to drive the dictatorship mechanism under the military junta.
There were more than 200,000 government employees who joined CDM, and most of them are still involved in CDM despite suffering on all sides, including their livelihood.
The military junta fired many CDM employees through threats and coercion and, on the other hand, enticed them to return to their jobs as bureaucrats.
However, the bureaucratic mechanism of the military junta has been in disarray for more than three years now, and it has not been able to function properly due to the CDM staff, who clearly rejected the bureaucratic life of the military dictators.
For this reason, CDM employees have faced the hostility of the military dictators and are facing the denial of human rights that every human being has the right to have.
“No one shall be compelled to belong to an association,” is clearly stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but for the CDM staff who do not want to become bureaucrats of the military dictatorship, this right is only texts on paper just to read.
Under duress, some CDM staff had to re-enter the bureaucratic life of the military junta against their will.
A female government employee from Mon State also faced this situation.
The woman has more than 20 years of experience as a government employee and has only worked as a government bureaucrat throughout her life.
When the military took over, she became ashamed of having to live as a dictator’s bureaucrat.
It was no longer like working under a government that was elected by people’s voting, and it was like working under the military that had seized power by terrorizing the will of the public, so she decided to join CDM.
She joined CDM in mid-February 2021 while working as a civil servant who did not belong to the military junta and was living in a room of the government where she was allowed to live.
Almost the entire department where she worked joined CDM, but after about a month, she faced the threat and coercion of the military junta.
The first thing she encountered was the threat of suspension from work for those who did not attend the office. She didn’t want to be a military bureaucrat and joined CDM, and she didn’t miss this fact.
However, the military junta continued to make threats and coercion one by one. She values and prides herself on honesty; thus, there was no such thing as wealth accumulated during her tenure as a government employee.
Even though she has more than 20 years of experience, she is not even a gazetted officer, and her salary is less than three hundred thousand (MMK 300,000) per month. She is a government employee, and the only residence for her is a rickety room that is twenty-forty feet, provided by the government.
Now that the country has been taken over by the dictators, she is only joining CDM, not resigning as a civil servant.
However, the junta said that the CDMs must be fired and removed from their quarters.
She was also threatened with being forcibly evicted if she didn’t move from her room. She was still adamant.
She was the only CDM employee left in the entire department. At the end of March 2021, she was contacted by a superior.
The superior started saying that she should sign a plea like other employees and go back to the office, and if she didn’t do that, she would be arrested under the Civil Service Personnel Law.
Her absolute desire did not want to be a bureaucrat for the vicious military junta.
She did not know about any activists or anyone; there was no land for her to run to in her motherland, so she was forced to become a bureaucrat of the military regime.
For three years, every time she heard the news of the military’s brutality and inhumanity, she felt ashamed of herself.
Now, near where she lives, she often hears gunshots and bombs from the revolutionary forces.
She was not afraid of those voices; she was even praying that they would come over quickly so that she would be freed from the life of a military bureaucrat that she had been forced into.
Just as a military bureaucrat who is forced into military service is also subjected to human rights violations, those who do not want to become military bureaucrats also face different human rights violations.
Following is stated in Article 23 of the International Declaration of Human Rights.
“Everyone has the right to work and to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work, and to protection against unemployment.”
(Ma) May Zaw (name changed) was a government employee who worked in Yangon during the previous civilian government. Outside of duty, she also worked as a clothing salesperson.
Even during the COVID-19 epidemic, she didn’t have much difficulty with savings she had accumulated and her salaries. However, when the military coup happened, everything started to change.
Her workplace had been taken over by the military junta, and it was no longer possible to see it as a fair and enjoyable workplace. Therefore, she had joined CDM starting February 1, 2021.
She had already opposed the junta, and it would attack their family for sure. Her parents have also joined CDM, and the junta issued a warrant for arrest in mid-March 2021.
As a result, she had to leave Yangon and move to a town with her family. However, as time passed, her family’s livelihood became difficult as the family no longer had a job.
The earnings from selling clothes in the past were also lost because they could not be collected while avoiding in the town.
Therefore, she returned to Yangon to look for a job, avoiding the checkpoints of the junta. Thanks to the support of fellow CDM employees, she got a job back in Yangon.
It was a food-selling job, but within months she faced losses and became unemployed again. She then became pregnant and had to rely on support to CDM workers until she gave birth.
She was a CDM employee, so it did not give her the opportunity to find a job independently.
She has always lived quietly so that the junta would not know that her family was in Yangon.
At that time, her husband was looking for a job while working as a day laborer, but he could not earn enough even the cost of milk powder for the newborn twins.
As the coup takes longer, their situation was getting worse. She worries every time there is a guest-registration inspection near where she lives and whenever the junta soldiers arrive.
Although she was a government employee, she was not protected from unemployment. She was not accepted as a military bureaucrat, so she was deprived of the freedom to work according to her choice.
But she is still strong as she listens to the news of the victory of the revolution that will root out the bureaucracy of the military dictatorship. She is worried about the cost of milk powder for her babies every day, but she is more worried about the country being in military slavery.
She also strongly believes that only when she is freed from military slavery will she be able to return to her birthright, the freedom to work.
Leaders of the CDM, who are more well-known than obscure CDM workers like (Ma) May Zaw (name changed), often face the malice, hostility, and persecution of the dictators.
(Ko) Phyo Wai Aung is an educational activist, and even under the previous civilian government, he actively led and demanded rights related to education.
During the military coup, he was among the leaders of the Civil Disobedience Movement.
Phyo Wai Aung is also a person who takes seriously the fact that “everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression” from Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
These rights include, ” to freely express opinions without interference, as well as to freely seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
However, the military junta only sees him as someone ruining their bureaucracy. Therefore, his rights have been oppressed and violated in various ways.
Article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the rights to life, liberty and the security of person.”
The military junta openly arrested and tortured and killed those who opposed them, but Phyo Wai Aung, who was seen as their enemy, had to flee from them to gain freedom and security of life.
Article 9 of the UDHR states that “no one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention, or exile”; the military junta never paid attention to it.
Phyo Wai Aung had to leave his motherland and flee to a small border town in a neighboring country to avoid being illegally arrested.
Although he had the life of a teacher educating children, his hands which was holding chalk became labor in other countries.
Because of the language barrier and the situation of not being in the motherland, there was no other job to make a living other than manual labor. He was an alien, and he must take things lying down and the problem of his legal status was behind him.
However, he feels more secure than under the military junta.
He was not allowed to sleep peacefully in the motherland, but he has been allowed to sleep peacefully in this country. He no longer has to worry about being arrested by terrorists at midnight.
However, Article 13 of the Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.” But his human rights are still being lost.
The international community has still failed to take effective action against the human rights violations and brutality of the military junta against the declaration of human rights that CDM employees like Phyo Wai Aung are facing.
The United Nations, which was formed with the aim of becoming a global organization, has declared the rights that every human being is entitled to but has not been able to effectively deal with similar issues around the world, including human rights violations of Myanmar’s military.
At the end of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it is stated that ” Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”
However, the Burmese military dictators still ignore it and commit oppression.
The United Nations has stated the following as the purpose of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which has been enacted for more than 70 years.
” Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.”
As the saying goes, in Myanmar, non-violent civil disobedience was unjustly suppressed by the military dictators, and people started to take arms and revolutionize them.
Similarly, nearly two hundred thousand CDM employees who did not accept as military bureaucrats in non-violent civil disobedience movement are still fighting with arms known as ‘CDM’, enduring human rights violations by the dictators.