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National Restoration, Regional Prestige: The Southeast Asian Games in Myanmar, 2013

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2014

Simon Creak
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“Myanmar is telling Asia ‘we are coming back!’ This is the time. Watch out! We are coming back. After the SEA Games, we will host ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations]. Big things are happening in our country.” “Kyaw,” an amiable rig coordinator in his early thirties, was relaxing on the ground drinking beer with his wife, passing the time prior to Myanmar's opening men's football match of the 2013 Southeast Asian or SEA Games. Fifteen days later—after a glorious opening ceremony, a slew of gold medals, and a celebratory closing ceremony—his assessment seemed prescient. The government newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar, boasted: “With the honor of hosting the Games that returned to the country after a 44-year long wait, Myanmar successfully hosted the biggest regional sporting event.” Thailand's Nation concurred: “The country failed to overhaul Thailand as overall winners, but its symbolic triumph as host was far more important.” “Myanmar has basked in its host status and a rare moment in the international limelight after years in isolation under military rule,” declared Agence France-Presse in a widely syndicated article. “Some local and international observers thought Myanmar could not host the SEA Games. They were wrong,” boasted triumphant presidential spokesman U Ye Htut.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 73 , Issue 4 , November 2014 , pp. 853 - 877
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2014 

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References

1 “SEA Games Success,” New Light of Myanmar, December 23, 2013.

2 “Rehearsal Over, Myanmar Must Now Step onto Global Stage,” Nation, December 24, 2013, http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Rehearsal-over-Myanmar-must-now-step-onto-global-s-30222777.html (accessed August 27, 2014).

3 Agence France-Press, “Myanmar's New Face at Games,” Bangkok Post, December 23, 2013, http://www.bangkokpost.com/lite/.../386262/myanmar-new-face-at-games (accessed August 30, 2014).

4 Emma Von Zeipel, “Countdown to the SEA Games,” Democratic Voice of Burma, September 5, 2013, https://www.dvb.no/news/countdown-to-the-sea-games-naypyidaw-sport-burma-myanmar/32202 (accessed August 27, 2014).

5 For the political significance of sports festivals in different Southeast Asian contexts, see Simon Creak, Embodied Nation: Sport, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, forthcoming), and “Rituals of the Masculine State: Sports Festivals, Gender and Power in Laos and Southeast Asia,” in Routledge Handbook of Sport, Gender and Sexuality, eds. Hargreaves, Jennifer and Anderson, Eric (London: Routledge, 2014), 112–20Google Scholar.

6 Taylor, Robert, “Myanmar in 2012: Mhyaw ta lin lin or Great Expectations,” Southeast Asian Affairs 2013: 191–203Google Scholar.

7 Dayan, Daniel and Katz, Elihu, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994), 39–40Google Scholar.

8 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1992), 7Google Scholar.

9 For a conceptual elaboration of regional community in the context of the SEA Games, see Simon Creak, “Eternal Friends and Erstwhile Enemies: Sport, Community, and Regional Public Culture in the Southeast Asian Games,” paper presented at the inaugural Association of Asian Studies-in-Asia Conference, Singapore, July 18, 2014. On regional identity more generally, particularly in view of the critique of ASEAN, see Thompson, Eric, “In Defence of Southeast Asia: A Case for Methodological Regionalism,” TRaNS: Trans –Regional and –National Studies of Southeast Asia 1, no. 2 (2013): 281–302CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Mega-events can be defined as “large-scale cultural (including commercial and sporting) events which have a dramatic character, mass popular appeal and international significance.” Roche, Maurice, Mega-Events and Modernity: Olympics and Expos in the Growth of Global Culture (London: Routledge, 2000), 1Google Scholar.

11 Keys, Barbara, Globalizing Sport: National Rivalry and International Community in the 1930s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 3Google Scholar.

12 This formulation is adapted from Roche's notion of “international public culture.” Roche, Mega-Events and Modernity, op. cit. note 8, 21.

13 Creak, Simon, “Representing True Laos in Postcolonial Southeast Asia: Regional Dynamics in the Globalization of Sport,” in Sports Across Asia: Politics, Cultures, and Identities, eds. Bromber, Katrin, Krawietz, Birgit, and Maguire, Joseph (London: Routledge), 95–120Google Scholar. Also see Simon Creak, Sport, Masculinity, and the Making of Modern Laos (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, forthcoming), chap. 5.

14 In the 1930s, the golden land motif was incorporated into Thai irredentist claims. Creak, Embodied Nation, op. cit. note 3, 147. While other countries had their own nationalist interpretations of Suvarnabhumi, in the 1950s the term's translation as “golden peninsula” reflected a new “regional perspective” with Thailand implicitly as leader. See Winichakul, Thongchai, “Trying to Locate Southeast Asia from Its Navel: Where Is Southeast Asian Studies in Thailand?” in Locating Southeast Asia: Geographies of Knowledge and Politics of Space, eds. Kratoska, Paul, Ruben, Remco, and Nordholt, Henk Schulte (Athens: Ohio University Press), 116Google Scholar.

15 Creak, “Rituals of the Masculine State,” op. cit. note 3.

16 Thant, U (Labmozwe), “Kyunswè aye-agin” [The peninsular incident], in Aye-agin patipetka-mya hnin dimogarezi taikpwè-mya [Conflicts and democracy struggles] (Yangon: Labmozwe Press, 2013), 158–61Google Scholar. I thank Nick Cheesman for alerting me to this source and Thein Than Htay for translating it.

17 Datuk Sieh Kok Chi (secretary of the Olympic Committee of Malaysia and member of the SEA Games Federation Council), interviewed March 24, 2014.

18 By contrast, the first games in Thailand cost 3.5 million baht, or less than US$200,000, a lot at the time but of a different magnitude to recent SEA Games.

19 Creak, Simon, “Sport as Politics and History: The 25th Southeast Asian Games in Laos,” Anthropology Today 27, no. 1 (2011): 14–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 I thank Philip Taylor for helping me to clarify this point. The recent involvement of China in funding the SEA Games in Laos and Myanmar is changing and perhaps threatening the status quo.

21 These days it is uncommon for participating countries to host events larger than the SEA Games. This was not always the case: the Philippines (1954), Indonesia (1962), and Thailand (1966, 1970, 1978, 1998) hosted past Asian Games, while Indonesia (1963) and Cambodia (1966) hosted the short-lived Games of the New Emerging Forces. Vietnam was awarded the 2020 Asian Games (which Indonesia also bid for), but relinquished them in April 2014 due to concerns over costs. It will, however, host the 2021 SEA Games.

22 In addition, in 2015 Singapore will host its first games since 1993, while Cambodia is scheduled to host its first-ever games in 2023.

23 Datuk Sieh Kok Chi, interviewed March 24, 2014.

24 The following summary of the 2009 SEA Games in Laos is adapted from Creak, “Sport as Politics and History,” op. cit. note 17. Also see Creak, Embodied Nation, op. cit. note 3, chap. 8. For the Beijing Olympics, see Brownell, Susan, Beijing's Games: What the Olympics Mean to China (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)Google Scholar.

25 Vientiane Games, December 2, 2009, 1.

26 Lengsavad, Somsavat, “Interview Given by H.E. Mr Somsavat Lengsavad, Standing Deputy Prime Minister, Chairman of the 25th SEA Games Organizing Committee,” Target no. 40 (2009): 28–33Google Scholar.

27 Edward Thangarajah, “Landlocked Laos Ready to Perform its Sporting Miracle,” Bangkok Post, August 30, 2009, http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/sports/22948/land-locked-laos-ready-to-perform-its-sports-miracle (accessed August 30, 2009).

28 The following paragraphs are modified from Simon Creak, “Mixing Politics and Sport,” Inside Story: Current Affairs and Culture from Australia and Beyond, November 10, 2011, http://inside.org.au/mixing-politics-and-sport/ (accessed August 27, 2014).

29 Indonesia was following the lead of Thailand, which hosted the 1995 and 2007 SEA Games in Chiang Mai and Nakhon Ratchasima respectively. Although Indonesia's reasons are not clear, the OCT took this decision to promote investment in new sporting infrastructure beyond Bangkok. Charouk Arirachakaran (general secretary of the Olympic Committee of Thailand), interviewed September 14, 2012.

30 See Aspinall, Edward, “A Nation in Fragments: Patronage and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Indonesia,” Critical Asian Studies 45, no. 1 (2013): 27–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 For the ethnographic character of sports festivals, see MacAloon, John, “The Theory of Spectacle: Reviewing Olympic Ethnography,” in National Identity and Global Sports Events: Culture, Politics, and Spectacle in the Olympics and the Football World Cup, eds. Tomlinson, Alan and Young, Christopher (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), 15–39Google Scholar.

32 Thuzar, Moe, “Myanmar: No Turning Back,” Southeast Asian Affairs 2012: 203–19Google Scholar.

33 U Khin Maung Lwin (joint secretary-general of the Malaysia Olympic Committee), interviewed December 19, 2013.

34 Wai Moe, “Junta Builds Stadium in Bid to Host 2013 SEA Games,” Iraawaddy, January 20, 2010, http://www2.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=17618 (accessed August 27, 2014).

35 “SEA Games, Great Opportunity to Shape New Nation that Regains Deserved Position in International Community,” New Light of Myanmar, November 3, 2012.

36 These objectives are reflected in the Ministry of Sport's slogan, “Myanmar Sports—the World to Conquer,” and its “three affirmations”: “Promotion of sports amounts to the defense of the country; success in sports reflects the level and status of the nation's development; achievement in sports indicates the national prestige and status.” See the Ministry of Sport's website: http://www.mosports.gov.mm/index.php/en/2012-05-27-05-31-9/ministry-of-sports.html (accessed August 27, 2014).

37 Bale, John, “The Spatial Development of the Modern Stadium,” International Review for the Sociology of Sport 28, no. 2/3 (1993): 132CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Gaffney, Chris and Bale, John, “Sensing the Stadium,” in Sites of Sport: Space, Place, Experience, eds. Vertinsky, Patricia and Bale, John (London: Routledge, 2004), 25–38Google Scholar; Creak, Simon, “Sport and the Theatrics of Power in a Postcolonial State: The National Games of 1960s Laos,” Asian Studies Review 34, no. 2 (2010): 200–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 A few years after SEA Games in Laos, much of the controversial stadium complex in Laos was no longer used, with the Olympic swimming pool full of algae and tropical vegetation reclaiming other parts of the complex.

39 For comparison, see Scott, James, “The High Modernist City: An Experiment and a Critique,” in Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1998)Google Scholar, chap. 4.

40 U Khin Maung Lwin, interviewed December 19, 2013.

41 Seekins, Donald, State and Society in Modern Rangoon (London: Routledge, 2011), 6Google Scholar.

42 U Yan Naing Oo (director-general, Department of Fine Arts), interviewed December 13, 2013.

43 I thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out precedents to the SEA Games in this sense.

44 “Myanmar Has ‘Open Cheque’ for SEA Games,” The Republic of the Union of Myanmar, Ministry of Sports, January 28, 2013, http://en.myasoc.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=478:myanmar-has-open-cheque-for-sea-games&catid=44:seagf-council-second-meeting (accessed August 27, 2014).

45 Tim McLaughlin and Aung Si Hein, “SEA Games: Breaking Myanmar's Budget?” Myanmar Times, December 24, 2013, http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/in-depth/3657-sea-games-breaking-the-budget.html (accessed August 27, 2014).

46 “Burma: Cronies Launch New Soccer League,” June 12, 2009, Cable: 09RANGOON355_a, U.S. Embassy, Yangon, Burma, http://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09RANGOON355_a.html (accessed August 27, 2014).

47 Wai Moe, “Junta Builds Stadium,” op. cit. note 29.

48 Tim McLaughlin and Aung Si Hein, “Residents Fight SEA Games Venue,” Myanmar Times, January 28, 2013, http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/3934-residents-fight-sea-games-venue.html (accessed August 27, 2014).

49 Tim McLaughlin, “SEA Games Spotlight China Grip in Myanmar,” Myanmar Times, February 20, 2013, http://www.mmtimes.com/index.php/national-news/4170-sea-games-spotlight-china-grip-in-myanmar.html (accessed August 27, 2014).

50 Aung-Thwin, Michael and Aung-Thwin, Maitrii, A History of Myanmar since Ancient Times: Traditions and Transformations (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 17Google Scholar.

51 Nay Lin Aung, “SEA Games Awareness Campaigns to Be Held in Three Cities,” Myanma Freedom, November 26, 2013.

52 Chinlone was elevated to medal sport status as a discipline of sepak takraw, a very different rattan ball game that was standardized as a sport in the 1960s and is played throughout Southeast Asia. For the history of chinlone as a “national sport,” see Aung-Thwin, Maitrii, “Towards a National Culture: Chinlone and the Construction of Sport in Postcolonial Myanmar,” Sport in Society 15, no. 10 (2012): 1341–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 For countries such as Thailand, the Philippines, and Malaysia, which believe the games should primarily serve as preparation for the Asian and Olympic Games, the inclusion of chinlone and other obscure sports undermines the main purpose of the games. Other countries, meanwhile, believe the games should promote the traditional sports of member nations, explaining why vovinam and pencak silat (Vietnamese and Indonesian martial arts, respectively) were also included.

54 “Myanmar Needs to Remember Games Is an Asean Event,” Nation, January 27, 2013, http://www.nationmultimedia.com/opinion/Myanmar-needs-to-remember-Games-is-an-Asean-event-30198750.html (accessed August 27, 2014).

55 These billboards were subject to scorn among English-speaking onlookers due to the grammatical inconsistency of the slogan emblazoned across them, “Clean, Green, and Friendship,” though this error was probably lost on most observers.

56 Geertz, Clifford, Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; for my adaptation to the ritual structure of the Olympic-style sports festival, see Creak, “Sport and the Theatrics of Power in a Postcolonial State,” op. cit. note 32, 204.

57 Dayan and Katz, Media Events, op. cit. note 5, viii and 5.

58 U Yan Ngain Oo director-general of the Department of Fine Arts, Ministry of Culture, interviewed December 13, 2013.

59 Dayan and Katz, Media Events, op. cit. note 5, 20–21.

60 U Khin Maung Lwin, interviewed December 18, 2013.

61 U Khin Maung Lwin, interviewed December 18, 2013.

62 MacAloon, John, “Olympic Games and the Theory of Spectacle in Modern Societies,” in Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals toward a Theory of Cultural Performance, ed. MacAloon, John (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1984), 252Google Scholar.

63 These comments are based on informal discussions with international broadcasting professionals working at the SEA Games, who requested anonymity.

64 “Cartoon of the Day,” Daily Eleven Newspaper, December 14, 2013. I thank Phyo Win Latt for bringing this cartoon to my attention and Thein Htan Htay for translating it.

65 Further research of Facebook posts during the SEA Games would help to reveal the shape that such debates took among the broader population.