Rainbow after a storm?

Arvind Narrain writes about why the fight for a democratic Myanmar matters so much for the LGBTQ community

In February of this year, the military in Myanmar seized power in a coup, jailed its elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and ended the fragile democratic experiment. The people of Myanmar did not quietly assent to this power grab with the protests on the ground being met with a brutal military response that killed over 700 persons. The fledging LGBTQ community in Myanmar has been very much a part of the resistance to the coup as seen by widely circulated protest images in which LGBTQ persons have joined the protests with rainbow flags. Why does the fight for a democratic Myanmar matter so much for the LGBTQ community?

Myanmar being an ex-British colony like India also has the infamous Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code on its statute book. Like India, Myanmar chose to retain the provision post-independence. Unlike India in which the law was overthrown after a seventeen-year battle fought both on the streets and in the courts, in Myanmar the law continues to oppress LGBTQ persons.

The reason India overthrew Section 377 owes much to the emergence of a movement on the ground aided in no small measure by the constitutional protection of the freedom of speech, expression and association. Myanmar by contrast for most of the post-independence era was under military rule where freedom of speech was a luxury and street protests were met with brutal repression. A ground-level movement against Section 377 remained a pipe dream.

However, with the gradual emergence of democracy in Myanmar in 2011, along with other social movements, LGBTQ activism also emerged in Myanmar. What marked the movement’s coming of age was the iconic Yangon Pride which included a film festival, drag show as well as a flotilla of boats on the Irrawaddy flying the Rainbow flag, to get past the requirement of getting police permissions for a rally! In 2019 the Yangon Pride was celebrated with the hashtag #love is not a crime, to make the case for the repeal of Section 377.

The coup of February 2021, has pushed the clock back on the struggle for LGBTQ rights in Myanmar. Myanmar is again being cut off from the world with internet and communication shutdowns being arbitrarily imposed by the regime. A community that was just beginning to be more public and beginning to assert its right to equality and dignity is being pushed back into the shadows.

In the fight for a democratic Myanmar, the LGBTQ community are full participants because human rights are ‘indivisible, interdependent and interrelated.’

(The author is a lawyer & writer based in Bengaluru. He is the co-editor of Law like love: Queer perspectives on law.)