Towards Home #18 The Reins of Mercy

November 2011


I do believe that justice will prevail in the end. But don’t forget that justice … has always to be tempered with mercy. So when your side prevails, don’t be unmerciful to your opponents because there’s none of us who could do without mercy. – Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, 1999


Conjunction function

After college, I joined the Jesuit Volunteer Corps (JVC), a kind of domestic peace corps sponsored by the Jesuit order of the Catholic Church. JVC is rooted in four core values: spirituality, simple living, community, and social justice. For a year, I lived with seven other volunteers in a run-down house in Houston, Texas. During various retreats and workshops, we tried to learn how to work and live in a community in a respectful and compassionate way. To that end, we learned a few tricks for keeping the peace. One was “I statements.”

     Stop combing your hair all over the place. You’re driving me crazy!

We reflected on the way that such a statement puts people on the defensive and fails to acknowledge one’s own part in said craziness. Instead, we were encouraged to try this:

     When you comb your hair near the kitchen table, I get worried some hair will get into the food and I feel agitated that you don’t see that or aren’t also worried about that.

An “I statement” like that can get you somewhere, such as into the bathroom where you can comb your hair without annoying others. Another recommended linguistic trick was, in disagreements, to avoid using “but” and throw in an “and.” Consider this:

     You like yellow, but I like green.

The subtext of such a sentence is “Yellow sucks. Green rocks.” Or at least, “I don’t respect the fact that you like yellow.” In contrast, how does this sound:

     You like yellow, and I like green.

Oh, the difference a good conjunction makes. It says “Yellow is alright…maybe for you. Green is my thing.” Less judgment, almost no judgment really. There’s a reason I like green, and that implies some judgment of yellow – I like green more than I like yellow. But the “and” somehow softens the judgment enough to acknowledge the reasonableness of liking yellow even though I like green more.

This is what Burma needs right now, a conjunction that functions as a connector, not a separator. Burma needs an “and.”

Justice reining mercy

In 1999, some activists smuggled out a video address by pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. The above quote is taken from that video. In it, she reiterated a common theme of her views about the military in Burma: that because they are at the heart of the problems in Burma, they must also be part of the solution. Involving them in the solution, then, means engaging with them and not threatening them with revenge. Her consistent offers to engage in dialogue give lie to the attempts to cast her as a rigid hardliner, unwilling to compromise. Her recent decision to register her political party, the National League for Democracy, and become a candidate in the upcoming by-elections caught many of us by surprise, but we should have predicted it based on her past statements.

Her flexibility is rooted in Buddhist faith. The seemingly contradictory valuing of both mercy and justice is, in fact, a nearly universal inclination. It is there in Buddhism as well as in other major religions. The Book of Micah in the Old Testament promotes a compassion that is absent in much of the rest of the fire and brimstone-laden textt

     He has showed you, O man, what is good.

     And what does the Lord require of you?

     To act justly and to love mercy

          and to walk humbly with your God.

     (Micah 6:8)

The justice + mercy concept is also seen in the New Testament, in the Koran, and in humanist philosophies – it is simply a human impulse toward decency. 

The syntax of Aung San Suu Kyi’s quote that opens this essay is important. In it, justice is the core concept, and it must be acted upon, to be tempered, by mercy. Justice is the horse, and mercy is the reins. Justice here seems to be cast as the natural impulse, slipping towards revenge. But let us not mistake justice for revenge. Justice is a broad concept related to fairness, equality, and yes, punishment. It is also a term that evokes the rule of law, courts, and trials. As an anthropologist, I balk at the implication that justice is primarily a legal concept, and I prefer to understand the term in a broader social context, one that relies on the rule of law not for its own sake, but to counter discrimination and favoritism, to promote social equality, and to bring satisfaction to people who have been harmed.

In a recent video prepared for my organization’s work on peace and justice, a survivor of the Sierra Leone war – a former child soldier whose parents and brothers had been killed by the rebels – had this to say:

In Sierra Leone, there was a time when there was a big discussion – what would people do if you capture somebody like Foday Sankoh, who was the guy responsible for the Revolutionary United Front. And people had all kinds of suggestions about what to do to him to appease their sense of justice. Some people said, “Oh, we just dig a big hole and put him in there and everyone goes and throws stones at him.” And then somebody said, “Well by the time I get there, he may be dead. I would not be able to make him feel my stone.” You know? There is nothing that is going to be enough to make sure that this guy would really pay for what had happened to all of us. So the only thing that can be done is to make sure that we set an example so that nobody else can do the same thing that he did. And this is to put him in jail forever. And actually, perhaps, we’ll even allow him to witness this country grow peacefully so that he can see that what he had had in mind about how this would go was not right.


This survivor recognized that the sense of justice among other survivors longed to be appeased, the horse was champing at the bit. He also recognized that the harm that had been done was so great, and a single human being is, in fact, so small that no amount of justice (in this case a vengeful justice marked by inflicting some harm) would be enough. His appeal for satisfaction, to watch the rebel leader as he observes the country – the Sierra Leone he tried to destroy – grow and prosper, is also a form of justice.


Notice the difference between these two sentences:


     Victims have a right to justice, but reforms are underway.
     (Subtext: We need to push aside those victims’ rights for now.)


     Victims have a right to justice, and reforms are underway.
     (Subtext: These two declarations are not mutually exclusive.)


At present, many people – both Burmese and outsiders – promote a false choice between engagement and penalty. The government that came to power after tightly-managed elections in 2010 has taken a series of surprising steps toward genuine reform, including the release of around 200 political prisoners, amending the election law to allow the NLD to register and participate, relaxation of some restrictions on media, the suspension of a controversial dam in Kachin State, and acknowledgment of the severe economic challenges the country faces. Just today, the government and two major armed groups announced an informal ceasefire after decades of fighting. These changes have been largely implemented at the behest of the president, Thein Sein, but some members of parliament have also pushed a reform agenda.


From where I sit on the Burma border (a biased vantage point, I admit), I don’t hear anyone on the pro-engagement side saying “and.” I hear and read the argument that international policy should not embolden the spoilers by putting the reformers in an impossible position. Put another way, the reformers should be supported and given as much cooperation as possible, to create the space for them to carry out their reforms, unhindered by any scrutiny of the international community. As the argument goes, it is the wrong time to talk about accountability, lest we disturb the fragile control that reformists have gained.


Critics of this view, myself included, worry that an elitist trickle-down reform model is emerging. It is a recipe for the type of unrest that led to the Arab Spring. Unharnessed engagement focused especially on economic development would likely lead to a transformation of the military elite into a political and business-class elite, leaving the vast majority of people without an improvement in their lives, both in terms of economics but also fundamental freedoms. Burma’s 2008 constitution leaves the military untouchable by any justice measures and free from civilian control.


On the road from dictatorship to democracy, a point of no return, a “transitional moment,” has not taken place in Burma. Opposition groups are understandably skeptical of the initial and potential reforms and so are insisting on standards and benchmarks. There is near universal satisfaction that a controversial dam in Kachin State has been postponed and that some political prisoners have been released. In contrast, innumerable theories try to explain why the government took these actions: sincere reformists are gaining ground, the government wants to quiet the din of international criticism, or the government wants to avoid domestic unrest. Whatever the reason, the skepticism could also use the conjunction, “and.”

“Dozens of political prisoners have been released, but over a thousand remain in jails” versus “… and over a thousand remain in jails.” The difference is not just semantics. The “but” in the first sentence diminishes the release. If critics want to diminish the significance of the prisoner release, then by all means “but” away. However, after making the release of political prisoners a core demand, when some are released, no matter how cynical the motive, some praise is due. The Myitsone Dam has been postponed and we must work to ensure it is cancelled irreversibly. Regardless of the government’s motives, “and” is the conjunction I would use.


Changes are taking place in Burma, and we must make sure that impunity for gross human rights violations and international human rights crimes is addressed. These two approaches go together and, if managed well, could be mutually reinforcing. With reforms underway, is it wise to engage with leaders absent any accountability for past violence? Will donors be so blinded by the fervor of sudden access as to ignore the lack of controls on corruption and abuse of power? The conjunction, “and,” is needed now more than ever.


Justice and Mercy
I’ll end where I began, with Aung San Suu Kyi. In a 1995 interview with Alan Clements, she responded to a question about justice and human rights in a potential transitional period:

In many countries where dictatorships have fallen and democracies have arisen, you will find that it’s not always possible to take full legal action against those who have perpetrated injustices. For various reasons there have had to be compromises. So if one talks about "justice," it might give the wrong impression that everything that has happened must be tried in a court, and that justice must be done in the legal sense. I would rather say that something must be done to satisfy the victims and the families of those victims.[1]




Will the changes that are taking place in Burma satisfy the displaced villagers from the over 3,000 villages that the military has destroyed? Do Christians and Muslims feel satisfied that their right to worship is guaranteed and that the end of harassment and discrimination is imminent? And what of the over 1,000 political prisoners who remain in jail, and what of those who have been released but are barred from continuing in their professions because of a criminal record? How can those prisoners whose health has been permanently compromised from the torture inflicted on them gain some peace of mind and body? Will the men and women who have lost limbs to landmines be satisfied? Throughout Burma, many communities have been left without proper access to healthcare, education, and drinking water because of neglect and discrimination. On the current path that Burma is on, how will the survivors of all these atrocities gain satisfaction for their suffering?


Perhaps it is time, for their sake, to temper all this mercy with a dose of justice

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[1] Conversations with Aung San Suu Kyi, Alan Clements, Shambala Sun, September 1997.