Retributive or Restorative Justice toward Education and Health Non-Civil Disobedience Movement (Non-CDM) Participants in Post-Conflict Myanmar
Through qualitative interviews with Myanmar's Mae Sot diaspora, this study reveals a preference for a nuanced, victim-centered justice framework that distinguishes between retributive prosecution for high-level collaborators and conditional restorative reintegration for low-level non-CDM civil servants, while introducing the concept of "Pha-Yel-Thee" workers to challenge binary transitional justice theories.
Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer
In the wake of a military coup, a nation often faces a difficult question: how do you rebuild a society when the very people who run its schools and hospitals are divided? Some of these workers refused to serve the new military rulers, resigning their posts to join a resistance movement. Others stayed behind, continuing their jobs under the new regime. In the study of how societies heal after conflict, known as transitional justice, there is usually a clear line drawn between the guilty and the innocent. The guilty are those who committed violence, and the innocent are those who suffered. But in the messy reality of a civil service, many people fall into a gray area. They stayed at their jobs not because they loved the dictatorship, but because they had no money, feared for their families, or felt a duty to keep patients and students from suffering. The challenge for a recovering nation is to figure out how to treat these workers without punishing the innocent or letting the guilty walk free.
A researcher named Minn Myoh Minn Oo set out to understand how ordinary people, specifically those displaced from Myanmar and living in a border town in Thailand, view this problem. The study focused on teachers and doctors who did not join the resistance movement. The researcher interviewed fifteen people, including displaced civilians, leaders of community organizations, and experts who had spent years working in these fields. The goal was not to count votes or run statistics, but to listen to the stories and moral reasoning of those who had lived through the trauma. The researcher wanted to know if these communities wanted strict punishment for everyone who stayed, or if they saw a more complicated path forward.
The findings revealed that the community did not want a simple, one-size-fits-all answer. They rejected the idea that every teacher or doctor who stayed should be jailed, but they also refused to let everyone off the hook without consequence. Instead, they proposed a system based on what the person actually did. For those who actively helped the military regime—such as school principals who reported resistance students to the police, or hospital administrators who diverted medicine to soldiers—the community demanded formal legal trials and permanent bans from public service. This view was strongest among those who had direct evidence of harm, such as a family member who died because a doctor refused to treat them. However, for the majority of workers who stayed simply because they were poor, threatened, or felt they had to care for vulnerable people, the community favored a different approach. They believed these individuals should be allowed to return to their jobs, but only after admitting what happened, apologizing to the victims, and proving they did not actively support the violence.
One of the most significant discoveries in the study was the identification of a specific group that existing theories had missed. The researchers found that many people stayed in their jobs while secretly helping the resistance. In the local language, these individuals are called "Pha-Yel-Thee," a term that roughly translates to "watermelon," describing someone who is green on the outside but red on the inside. These workers might have appeared to serve the military regime, but they were secretly passing information to the resistance or diverting supplies to underground clinics. The study found that the community recognized this dual nature. They understood that punishing these people like ordinary collaborators would be unjust, yet simply welcoming them back without checking their secret actions would be dangerous. This created a new category of accountability that does not fit the standard boxes of "criminal" or "victim." It requires a special kind of investigation that weighs both the harm they caused by staying and the good they did by secretly resisting.
The research also challenged a common assumption that doctors and teachers should be treated differently. In many discussions, doctors are often seen as heroes for keeping hospitals open, while teachers are sometimes viewed more harshly. However, the people interviewed did not make this distinction. Whether a person was a doctor or a teacher, the community judged them based on their specific actions and the evidence of their conduct. If a doctor had denied care to protesters, they were seen as guilty, just as a teacher who reported students was. The focus was always on the individual's behavior, not their profession. Furthermore, the community did not agree on whether this issue should be solved immediately after the conflict ends. Some argued that schools and hospitals must be cleaned up right away so people can trust them again. Others felt that the new government needed to secure peace first before tackling these complex personnel issues.
Ultimately, the study suggests that rebuilding a broken society requires more than just choosing between punishment and forgiveness. It demands a nuanced approach that listens to the victims and looks closely at the specific choices made by each individual. The community in Mae Sot showed that they are ready to move beyond simple labels. They want a system that can distinguish between a person who stayed out of fear and one who stayed to help the enemy, and a system that can recognize the hidden bravery of those who served two masters at once. By centering the voices of those who suffered, the research offers a roadmap for how a nation might heal its civil service without repeating the mistakes of the past.
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