Figure 1: Federation of General Workers Myanmar (FGWM)
staging a strike in Hlaingthaya, industrial satellite of Yangon in
February 2021
Source: Facebook, Federation of General Workers Myanmar (FGWM).
The General Strike Committee of Nationalities (GSCN) emerged23 as
another early organizer to mobilize minority peoples living in cities such
as Yangon. Youths belonging to the GSCN pleaded with ethnic leaders
to condemn the coup and not to cooperate with the leadership of the
SAC, which sought to co-opt ethnic minority parties by offering them
The GSCN was founded on 11 February. It brought together members of
twenty-nine nationalities under four goals: (1) to abolish dictatorship, (2) to
abolish the 2008 constitution, (3) to establish a federal democratic union, and
(4) to free all those arrested for opposition to the coup. One of its powerful early
gestures was to reclaim the word taingyintha, a term with negative connotations
toward minorities not indigenous to Burma. The GSCN claims that it will use the
term lumyosu instead of taingyintha, regarding the latter as a legacy of the Burma
Socialist Programme Party era (1962–88).
23
9
21-J07648 01 Trends_2021-7.indd 9
28/4/21 9:34 AM