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Catalonia's bid for independence from Spain explained

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Catalonia's bid for independence from Spain explained

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Catalonia's independence movement is back in the headlines after Spain's Supreme Court jailed nine separatist leaders, prompting days of protests.

The crisis first flared in October 2017, when a banned independence referendum was met with a heavy police crackdown.

Madrid imposed direct rule on the region shortly after.

It is the country's biggest political crisis since democracy was restored in 1975, after the death of military dictator General Francisco Franco.

What's the context?

Catalonia is one of Spain's wealthiest and most productive regions and has a distinct history dating back almost 1,000 years.

Before the Spanish Civil War it enjoyed broad autonomy but that was suppressed under Gen Franco.

When Franco died, the region was granted autonomy again under the 1978 constitution and prospered as part of the new, democratic Spain.

A 2006 statute granted even greater powers, boosting Catalonia's financial clout and describing it as a "nation", but Spain's Constitutional Court reversed much of this in 2010.

The 2008 financial crash and Spanish public spending cuts fuelled local resentment and separatism.

There is a widespread feeling that the central government takes much more in taxes than it gives back.

But the complexity of budget transfers makes it hard to judge exactly how much more Catalans contribute than they get back from investment in services, such as schools and hospitals.

How did we get here?

Following a symbolic referendum in November 2014, outlawed by Spain, separatists won the 2015 regional election.

Catalonia's pro-independence leaders then went ahead with a full referendum on 1 October 2017, which was also declared illegal by Spain's constitutional court.

Organisers said 90% of voters backed a split. But turnout was only 43% amid a boycott by unionists.

In a febrile atmosphere the separatist majority in the Catalan parliament declared independence on 27 October.

Using the Article 155 emergency powers, Madrid dissolved parliament, sacked its leaders and called a snap election for 21 December.

Separatists won a slim majority. The following May, Catalonia's parliament swore in Quim Torra as their new president, after Madrid blocked several other candidates. Mr Torra vowed to continue fighting for independence.

The sight of Spanish national police beating voters, and politicians being jailed, revived disturbing memories, for some, of the Franco dictatorship.

Carles Puigdemont - then Catalan president - fled abroad with several other leaders. Many who remained were arrested and charged with treason.

Spain's Supreme Court finally sentenced nine of the arrested Catalan leaders in October, sparking the latest unrest.

Former vice president Oriol Junqueras was handed a 13-year prison sentence for sedition and misuse of public funds. The other eight receive sentences of between 12 and 9 years.

Demonstrators took to the streets in fury and have repeatedly clashed with police in some of the worst street violence to hit Spain in decades.

If the separatists do ever manage to split away, it would be hard for Catalonia to win recognition internationally.

New states mostly emerge from situations where ethnic groups have been victims of genocide or other major human rights abuses.

Kosovo was a huge humanitarian crisis for Europe - even so, many countries refuse to recognise it as independent.

Catalonia has its own language and distinctive traditions, and a population nearly as big as Switzerland's (7.5 million). It is one of Spain's wealthiest regions, making up 16% of the national population and accounting for almost 19% of Spanish GDP.

It's also a vital part of the Spanish state, locked in since the 15th Century.

Barcelona has become one of the EU's best-loved city-break destinations, famed for its 1992 Summer Olympics, trade fairs, football and tourism.

Generations of people from poorer parts of Spain have moved there for work, forming strong family bonds with regions such as Andalusia.

During this crisis, the Catalan economy has suffered. Thousands of businesses, including major banks and energy firms, have moved their headquarters out of the region.

The EU has treated the crisis as an internal matter for Spain, deaf to the separatists' pleas for support.

However, there have been warnings that the issue is damaging Spain's democratic credentials.

In 2017 the Economist Intelligence Unit, which compiles an influential annual democracy ranking, said Spain risked being downgraded from a "full democracy" to a "flawed" one over its handling of the situation.

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Catalonia's bid for independence from Spain explained

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The drive by separatists to break away and the efforts by Madrid to stop them.

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Identity Crisis: Ethnicity and Conflict in Myanmar

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Identity Crisis: Ethnicity and Conflict in Myanmar

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What's new? Ethnicity has become central to citizenship, basic rights, politics and armed conflict in Myanmar. Efforts to categorise and enumerate the peoples of this hugely diverse country have been attempted from British colonial times to the latest 2014 census. These efforts have created an unworkably convoluted and ultimately meaningless classification system.

Why does it matter? The results of putting ethnicity at the centre of public life are toxic. Inter-ethnic relations have become dominated by zero-sum thinking that hardens ethnic divides and drives the proliferation of armed groups, with deadly consequences. In many ways, violent conflict in Myanmar can be seen as the militarisation of ethnicity.

What should be done? Charting a more inclusive future for the country will require a national debate including some difficult reflection. Communities should be free to celebrate their ethnic heritage and cultural identity. Citizenship and rights should be delinked from ethnicity, however, and politics and the peace process should not cement ethnic division.

Ethnicity and conflict are inextricably linked in Myanmar, creating a vicious cycle of violence that continues to escalate. The state's inability to address ethnic minority grievances or provide adequate security to communities has created a literal arms race among minority groups. As a result, the country now has scores of powerful non-state armed groups around most of its periphery. Underlying these conflicts are outdated, deeply engrained essentialist notions of ethnicity that have come to further dominate Myanmar's political, economic and social spheres due to the country's liberalisation starting in 2011. To begin breaking the cycle of ethnic conflict, Myanmar should launch a reform process addressing citizenship, the country's administrative structure and the peace process with the aim of making ethnicity less central to the political and legal domains. Myanmar's leaders can begin with more manageable changes, such as the language and narratives they use when discussing ethnicity and conflict.

Since independence in 1948, Myanmar has struggled to forge a national identity that is reflective of its ethnic diversity and to deliver on the aspirations of the many peoples within its borders. Building on the legacy of the colonial period, national leaders have perpetuated dangerous notions of ethnic identity that divide rather than unify its "national races". These notions also exclude those deemed to be insufficiently "indigenous" from full participation in politics and state institutions and from full protection under the constitutional bill of rights. Despite paying lip service to equality, the state has privileged the majority Burmans, creating deep grievances that have pushed many minorities to question the fundamental compact between them and the state.

The new political system introduced through the 2008 constitution, which came into force in 2011, has some features that acknowledge Myanmar's ethnic diversity, such as ethnic affairs ministers and self-administered areas. But against a backdrop of longstanding essentialist ideas about ethnic identity, and due to the fact that larger minorities are accorded greater rights than smaller ones, the system has reinforced a competitive, zero-sum dynamic among minority groups. Ethnic minority grievances toward the state have perpetuated some of the world's longest-running armed conflicts. Mistrustful of the Burman elite who control most levers of power, scores of minority groups have taken up arms since independence. Myanmar's moves toward greater political liberalisation since 2011 have done little to address minority grievances or build a more inclusive national identity.

Since independence in 1948, Myanmar has struggled to forge a national identity reflective of its ethnic diversity.

As militarisation and insecurity proliferate in minority areas, the state's failure to protect minority communities has driven tens of thousands of people to take up arms - both for and against the state, and both allied with or acting against armed groups representing rival ethnicities. As a result, ethnically diverse areas of the country such as northern Shan State today have a patchwork of ethnicity-based armed groups, each fighting both for their communal rights and to protect their own economic rents. Ethno-nationalism is at the core of all these groups, a characteristic that often sets them against their neighbours.

Myanmar's liberalisation after five decades of military dictatorship presented an opportunity to craft a more inclusive national identity and move the country away from its toxic legacy of ethnicity-based conflict. In the absence of an alternative vision from Myanmar's leaders, however, longstanding notions of ethnicity as the key determinant of identity have actually grown stronger in this new era, becoming ever more central to politics, the economy, armed conflict and questions of citizenship and human rights.

The eruption of vicious fighting between the military and the Arakan Army in Myanmar's western Rakhine State since 2018 underlines the dangers of ethnicity's growing social and political salience. The strength of the Arakan Army, which has inflicted severe damage on the military, is built on its ability to harness the Rakhine people's ethno-nationalism and capitalise on their legitimate grievances over the failures of electoral democracy and against state institutions they perceive as representing only the majority Burmans. Non-Rakhine minorities in Rakhine State have found themselves caught between two warring groups, neither of which they can rely on for protection. The insecurity that such conflicts generate only encourages the creation of ever more armed groups, a phenomenon that has recurred over and over in Myanmar's modern history.

Although it will not be easy, the opportunity exists for Myanmar's leaders to reframe how ethnicity is understood. The aim should not be to suppress social and cultural expressions of identity, but rather to remove ethnicity as a central determinant of citizenship and other rights and legal protections, and to reduce its dominant role in party politics. This process will require extensive national reflection and debate. As a first step, and a marker of intent, government officials can begin to change the language and narratives they use to discuss ethnicity and ethnic relations, which often echo those employed by assimilatory and oppressive past regimes, and ring hollow in light of ethnic minorities' lived experiences.

Myanmar's administrative structure needs to change to grant meaningful autonomy to subnational units that are not based around ethnicity.

Legal and policy reforms will likely be needed in three key areas: citizenship, the country's administrative structure and the peace process. Citizenship should be delinked from ethnicity by amending the 1982 Citizenship Law as well as removing ethnic and religious identifiers on national identity cards and other government documents. These changes would help reduce the centrality of ethnicity in public life, ensure that all in Myanmar have access to citizenship and basic rights, mitigate discrimination against minorities, and begin creating a more inclusive national identity.

Myanmar's administrative structure needs to change to grant meaningful autonomy to subnational units that are not based around ethnicity, rather than privileging those ethnic groups with larger or more geographically concentrated populations. This step would help reduce the zero-sum dynamic among minority groups. Likewise, at present, the peace process gives more negotiating power to around twenty ethnic groups represented by an armed organisation, driving those without an ethnic army to build one. To remove this incentive and create a more diverse and inclusive process, the political negotiations over the future shape of the state should be resolved through a broader mechanism than the peace process, not one dominated by ethnic armed groups.

Such changes will be deeply controversial. But if Myanmar is to resolve its decades-old armed conflicts, which are all now structured along ethnic lines, its national leaders will need to take bold, visionary steps to shake off the divisive legacies of the past and shape a new and inclusive vision for the country.

Yangon/Brussels, 28 August 2020

Myanmar is home to some of the longest-running armed conflicts in the world, some dating back more than 70 years and others much more recent in origin.Following independence from the British in 1948, many of the conflicts were ideological in nature - with a number of political factions taking up arms on behalf of different socialist and communist visions for the country's future. But there was always a racial or ethnic dimension, which became dominant over time as the Cold War's ideological divides faded, and as a result of minority groups' grievances over lack of autonomy and perceptions that the state was not honouring promises of equality and autonomy for ethnic minorities and tolerance for religions other than Buddhism.

Today, there are scores of powerful armed entities in Myanmar's periphery that identify themselves primarily by their ethnicity rather than their political or ideological goals (see Appendix B for a map showing the complex and overlapping presence of ethnic armed groups in the country). These include:

Some twenty "ethnic armed groups" that have political and well as military wings. These generally include their ethnic affiliation in their name (for example, the Karen National Union or the United Wa State Army), and their stated objectives are some form of greater autonomy for their community.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, of armed militias that range from small village defence forces to entities with thousands of fighters, more powerful than many of the ethnic armed groups. Nearly all these militias are drawn from a particular ethnic community, although they do not always include an ethnic identifier in their name. Militias are generally formed by, or allied with, the Myanmar military (the Tatmadaw) and are nominally under its command - although the degree of actual Tatmadaw authority over these groups varies.While some receive weapons from the Tatmadaw, most must obtain these themselves, and raise their own funds. Militias generally do not have political objectives, and the more powerful groups are key actors in the illicit economy.

Twenty-three Border Guard Forces, made up of ex-insurgents or militias from particular ethnic communities, who have been brought more formally under Tatmadaw control and operate in areas close to Myanmar's international borders. These groups are nominally under the Tatmadaw's command and include army officers among their senior ranks, but in practice often act with a high degree of autonomy. Many are also key actors in the illicit economy.

lumyo (လူမျိုး) - literally "type of person", which could be translated as either ethnicity or race, but usually is used in a way that is closer in meaning to "race" (except that many people from minority faiths will cite their religion as their lumyo).

taingyintha (တိုင်းရင်းသား) - historically translated as "indigenous race" or "national race", now often as "ethnic nationality" or "ethnic group", but as with lumyo, conceived in an essentialist way that is closer to the English "race".

This report examines the historical understanding of ethnicity in Myanmar, how it became central to national identity, citizenship, politics and armed conflict, and the negative consequences of that centrality. The report is based on research conducted in Myanmar between May and July 2020. Given the constraints during this period on travel within Myanmar due to COVID-19, the research was conducted remotely via telephone, using pre-existing networks of contacts in the conflict areas concerned, with important contributions from a local researcher who was able to identify and interview additional key sources.

There is no objective way to define and count ethnicities.

For colonial administrators tasked with conducting censuses, finding a systematic basis for ethnic categorisation was more difficult. Attempts at a physiognomic approach were found unsatisfactory and language came to be the preferred basis.Thus, the last colonial census in 1931 identified approximately 135 different groups, determined mostly by language (see Appendix C for a colonial "race map" based on the results of this census).This number of 135 language/race groups appears to be the origin of the idea, widely repeated in Myanmar since the 1990s, that the country has 135 distinct ethnic groups - even though the contemporary list of groups contains numerous entries that do not correspond to those on the original colonial-era list of languages.

This colonial bureaucratic exercise to classify its new subjects was misguided and ultimately futile. As the noted anthropologist Edmund Leach observed of Burma 30 years later, ethnic categories are fluid. He wrote:

[T]he contrasts of culture and language which have led to the conventional classification of "tribes and peoples of Burma" have no intrinsic permanence. Any individual can start as a member of one category and end up in another.

While in some other places views on ethnic identity may be mainly of academic interest, in Myanmar ethnic categories have become central to conflict, politics, citizenship and rights (see Sections II.C, III and IV below).

B. Those Who Belong and Those Who Don't

The colonial period left deep scars in Myanmar society. From 1886 until 1937, the country was ruled as a province of British India in ways that took no account of huge cultural differences with the sub-continent and a separate political identity.The lack of any internal immigration boundary led to large-scale movement of Indian labourers and businessmen to more prosperous Myanmar, and the British administered the province using mostly Indian civil servants rather than training Myanmar officials. Many of the Indians who came were Muslims, but there were also Hindus and adherents of other religions among them. This unchecked migration led to enormous social tensions, with anti-immigrant riots in 1930 and 1938 that left hundreds of Indians dead.

Indians also became targets of the growing Burman nationalist movement.A popular song from the 1930s had lyrics saying Indians were "exploiting our economic resources and seizing our women" and warning that "we are in danger of racial extinction" - strikingly similar to the terms in which the present-day nationalist agenda is framed.The independence movement of that period was based on the principle of "Burma for the Burmans" (in the sense of "all the indigenous peoples of Burma", not just the majority ethnic Burman group) and the slogan "let him who desires peace prepare for war".One of the movement's young leaders was Aung San, father of Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar's current de facto leader. He and other prominent nationalists, known as the Thirty Comrades, went on to establish the Burma Independence Army in 1941 with support and training from Imperial Japan; the Army formed the backbone of the post-independence armed forces.

The removal of the perceived outsiders happened in stages. The independence constitution emphasised indigenous races in its definition of citizenship but also allowed that some long-term residents from other parts of the British Empire could be citizens. Many of those residents, however, left during World War II or after independence. Many more were expelled by the military government in the 1960s or, in the case of the Rohingya, more recently.

The 1948 citizenship law specified that, to count as indigenous, a group must have made its permanent home in Myanmar prior to 1823 (the year before the first Anglo-Burmese War started).While the concept of "indigenous races" had become politically central by this point to the national narrative of who belonged, no list of which groups counted as indigenous was provided in law or regulation. State authorities often referred to the major groups that had their own eponymous states, along with unspecified "others".But did the Rohingya, some of whom had undoubtedly been present in the country prior to 1823, count as an "indigenous race"? What about the Kaman, another Muslim minority in Rakhine State, descended from former palace bodyguards including Afghan archers? When an official list was finally published in the 1990s (see Section II.C below), the Kaman were included, but not the Rohingya.

In 1962, General Ne Win took power in a coup and set about a radical, quasi-socialist transformation of the country and its economy.Given his focus on the unity of the masses as the way to achieve collective benefits, his tenure might have been a moment when the country moved away from ethnicity being politically central. Instead, the opposite happened. Ne Win seized on the idea of indigenous races to justify his nationalisation of most of the economy (in 1962, the Indian community controlled some 60 per cent of trade and commerce, so the impact of nationalisation on the assets of indigenous communities was comparatively small).To bring cohesiveness to the fractured nation, he also created the (false) idea of a pre-colonial Myanmar nation where all the indigenous races had been united in a common purpose, "through weal and woe" - a narrative that continues to feature prominently in many government leaders' speeches.

Today, ethnicity remains at the heart of conceptions of citizenship and its legal basis under the 1982 citizenship law. This law maintains the designation of "indigenous races" from the 1948 law (again without any enumeration), but is more restrictive by introducing three tiers of citizenship affording different entitlements - citizen by birth or descent, associate citizen and naturalised citizen.Only members of ethnic groups present in Myanmar prior to 1823 are eligible for citizenship by birth. While it is legally possible for people who are not members of those groups to obtain full citizenship by descent after three generations in Myanmar, in practice and due to discrimination, many people from such communities - including the Rohingya and those of Indian or Chinese origin - are restricted to the lower tiers of citizenship or denied citizenship altogether. The constitution frames its bill of rights as applying primarily to citizens.

There has never been a transparent process - or seemingly any meaningful process at all - by which the post-independence state decided which groups met the criteria for being indigenous and which did not. After the 1982 law reinforced the primacy of indigeneity, government leaders started speaking of "135 national races". The first known reference was by a military leader in a 1989 press conference, and the list was published in state media the following year.Government officials have said the list was drawn up on the basis of old census records and expert advice. But while the list repeats many of the entries from the 1931 census, numerous others are different.The resulting list is an odd mixture of ethnic groups, languages, clans, village names, outright errors (such as the same group appearing twice with different spellings) and exclusions (such as the Panthay and the Rohingya). Yet this amateurish list drawing on dubious 100-year-old colonial sources continues to be the basis for determining citizenship, the franchise and other rights in contemporary Myanmar, with potentially deadly consequences.

Myanmar's political liberalisation from 2011 brought much greater political and social freedoms. But it has done little to reduce the centrality of ethnicity in politics and society. Rather, in the absence of any serious attempt to reframe the essentialist and exclusionary narrative surrounding race and identity, and in an environment of newfound freedoms and a political system that fails to reflect the country's complex ethnic landscape, as discussed below, liberalisation has led to strengthened ethno-nationalism.This ethno-nationalist sentiment has affected the country's electoral dynamics, its economy and activities such as the 2014 nationwide census. Worryingly, such sentiments appear to be stronger than ever today, and are likely to drive greater tribalism, division and conflict, undermining long-term prospects for peace and the stability of the country.

Several aspects of the political system have cemented the centrality of ethnicity in Myanmar.

Ethnicity has been a central feature of electoral politics since the military regime convened the first general elections in a generation in 2010. Although some ethnic leaders boycotted the vote, others seized upon it as an opportunity to redress decades of suppression of ethnic minority political representation and participation. Of the 47 parties that applied for registration, almost two thirds were directly tied to particular ethnic minority communities.This trend has continued, with 54 of the 97 registered parties seeking to represent the interests of a specific ethnicity.Although these ethnic parties struggled to challenge either the military-established Union Solidarity and Development Party in 2010 or Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in 2015 (the overwhelming victors in those elections), their relatively poor performance reflects structural features of Myanmar's first-past-the-post electoral system rather than voters' lack of identification with ethnicity.

Several other aspects of the political system have cemented the centrality of ethnicity. The most politically and numerically dominant ethnic groups have their own eponymous states (see Section II.B above) and the constitution grants six other ethnic groups with geographically concentrated populations their own self-administered areas. Myanmar's constitution also provides for a small number of elected seats in state and region parliaments to be reserved for ethnic groups without a self-administered area that meet minimum population requirements.These legislators also become ex officio ethnic affairs ministers in their state or region government. These positions provided part of the rationale for the 2014 census to attempt a controversial count of ethnic populations, sparking deadly clashes (see below). The states named after ethnic groups, self-administered areas and ethnic minister positions also reinforce a widely held notion in Myanmar that ethnic groups are attached to a specific piece of territory; the reality, however, is one of fluid, overlapping habitation of land.

These aspects of the political system, although not uncommon in other ethnically diverse countries, have a toxic effect in Myanmar because they create a hierarchy of power between different ethnic groups. They reinforce ethnic divisions by sending the message that group size matters; they result in zero-sum competition in which ethnic minorities compete for entitlements; and they create perceived winners and losers in arbitrary and unfair ways. Some groups have conducted informal censuses of their populations in attempts to boost their purported numbers, and made demands for reserved ethnic seats and new or expanded self-administered zones, often pitting themselves against other minority groups.

Economic reforms since 2011, coupled with political liberalisation, have also turned the economy into a forum for asserting ethnic minority rights.

Myanmar's ethnic groups - including the majority Burmans - have taken advantage of recently acquired greater freedoms to express their identity beyond the ballot box and campaign trail. New laws, policies and technologies have enabled ethnic communities to celebrate their religion, culture and languages in ways that were impossible for decades. Formerly banned ethnic "national days" have returned to the calendar, and minority languages are back in state school classrooms. Minority groups have used these new freedoms to publish newspapers in their own languages, form civil society groups based around ethnic identity, and employ ethnicity as a rallying cry to both protest perceived injustices and push for greater recognition and rights. Widespread mobile internet access and the popularity of platforms such as Facebook have also enabled minorities to communicate in their own languages, connect with diasporas and share information - not always reliable - about their culture and history.

Econom

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Identity Crisis: Ethnicity and Conflict in Myanmar

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Ethnicity and conflict are tightly linked in Myanmar, as communal groups take up arms to press grievances for which they have found no other recourse. The problem calls for dialogue and deep reform, but meanwhile authorities can take smaller steps to indicate their positive intent.

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Fidesz and Faith: Ethno-Nationalism in Hungary

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Fidesz and Faith: Ethno-Nationalism in Hungary

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Fidesz and Faith: Ethno-Nationalism in Hungary

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“The protection of Hungary’s self-identity and its Christian culture is the duty of all state organizations” says one of the new provisions that were adopted on 20 June to change the country’s Fundamental Law of 2011. Besides its potential to limit fundamental rights, what are the possible consequences of this constitutional change, in legal, cultural and political terms?

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The Rise of the Right: Populism in Hungary - BBC News

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The Rise of the Right: Populism in Hungary - BBC News

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The Rise of the Right: Populism in Hungary  - BBC News

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Gen Juan José Zúñiga’s storming of the presidential palace revives memories of military rule.

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Thousands have taken to the streets of La Paz in the three days since Añez took office, some resulting in confrontations with police and soldiers who patrol the perimeter of the national assembly. Tear gas, motorcycles and riot vehicles have been deployed to disperse the crowds calling for Añez to return her seat to Morales. On Wednesday, Bolivian Air Force planes flew over the protests.