TY - JOUR

T1 - Provoking Civilian Disruption against Popular Protests

T2 - The Myanmar Military’s Counter-Mobilisation Strategies

AU - Tran, Mai Van

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2023 Journal of Contemporary Asia.

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - While mass contentious movements face a wide range of state-led counter-mobilisation strategies, existing studies have mainly focused on repression by the security forces and violence contractors. Much less is understood about the impact of governments’ more deceptive strategies to provoke anti-protester hostility among the public, including labelling protesters as criminals and engineering widespread violent crimes. This article examines the effectiveness of these two types of strategy by juxtaposing two similar cases of popular protests under military-ruled Myanmar: the 1988 Four-eight Uprising and 2007 Saffron Revolution. The analysis leverages a novel qualitative dataset consisting of content from state media, authoritative secondary sources, as well as original interviews and written accounts by 109 civilians who witnessed or participated in the protest events. It is found that while anti-protester narratives were ineffective, orchestration of criminal activities targeting civilians on a large scale fuelled civilian distrust toward strangers, leading adult men to disrupt protest events by unfamiliar activists. This finding underscores both the crucial role of nurturing inter-group trust in order to grow a broad-based contentious front as well as the challenging conditions for doing so when a regime is steadfastly committed to crushing dissent.

AB - While mass contentious movements face a wide range of state-led counter-mobilisation strategies, existing studies have mainly focused on repression by the security forces and violence contractors. Much less is understood about the impact of governments’ more deceptive strategies to provoke anti-protester hostility among the public, including labelling protesters as criminals and engineering widespread violent crimes. This article examines the effectiveness of these two types of strategy by juxtaposing two similar cases of popular protests under military-ruled Myanmar: the 1988 Four-eight Uprising and 2007 Saffron Revolution. The analysis leverages a novel qualitative dataset consisting of content from state media, authoritative secondary sources, as well as original interviews and written accounts by 109 civilians who witnessed or participated in the protest events. It is found that while anti-protester narratives were ineffective, orchestration of criminal activities targeting civilians on a large scale fuelled civilian distrust toward strangers, leading adult men to disrupt protest events by unfamiliar activists. This finding underscores both the crucial role of nurturing inter-group trust in order to grow a broad-based contentious front as well as the challenging conditions for doing so when a regime is steadfastly committed to crushing dissent.

KW - Contentious movement

KW - counter-mobilisation

KW - military rule

KW - Myanmar

KW - protest disruption

KW - contentious movement

KW - counter-mobilisation

KW - Mayanmar

KW - military rule

KW - protest disruption

U2 - 10.1080/00472336.2023.2219683

DO - 10.1080/00472336.2023.2219683

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85162998096

JO - Journal of Contemporary Asia

JF - Journal of Contemporary Asia

SN - 0047-2336

ER -