Six months after the military coup of February 1st 2021, in Myanmar, the regime is almost universally reviled and has not been recognized as a legitimate government of the people of Burma by the international world. The military authority, named as the State Administration Council (SAC) at the time of coup, is only a continuation of an illegal terrorist group of military officers embedded and deeply steeped in their ‘coup culture’ in Myanmar for the past 60 years, ever since Myanmar had gained independence in 1948.
Every time the military had taken over Myanmar, the country faces disasters such as in the 1962 first coup by General Ne Win who ordered the bombing of the Yangon university’s student union building where hundreds of students were killed. He then introduced the One Party Policy (Burma Socialist Program Party) which nationalized and controlled every sector of the economy and national political power. At that time, in the 1960s, Burma was one the booming countries in Southeast Asia with every sector developing into world-class status. General Ne Win’s mismanagement of the economy reduced it to the world’s poorest nation in 1988.
Throughout the years since General Ne Win’s coup there have been successions of generals following the same pattern. When the National League for Democracy (NLD) won the majority of votes in 1990 election, then dictator Than Shwe viewed the NLD’s leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as a threat to the military regime and put her under house arrest, and threw other NLD leaders in jail. The military dominated the political and business sectors from 1988 to 2011by establishing a massive business empire under the control of the military and their family members. Military expansion and import-exports were controlled by the regime. The national economy under the regime created one special class of elite rulers and the military became the protector of its vast economic holdings. The lucrative system of this crony capitalism and the manipulative ways of the military, honed to perfection for 70years, must be exposed and stopped.
The military also changed the name of Burma to Myanmar in 1989. This promoted the notion that one ethnic group, the Bamar, could control the country. The outcome of the regime’s ethnocentric policy is the root cause of the war on ethnic nationalities and has promoted the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya minority. The military’s attack on the Rohingya, begun in 2017, that forced more than 800,000 of this minority group to flee Myanmar, amounts to one of the most humiliating and disgraceful chapters in the history of the country. Tens of thousands were killed and almost a million of this Muslim minority had to flee to neighboring Bangladesh creating the largest refugee state in Asia. The latest coup created a national economic devastation splitting the nation into two classes; one the ruler with wealth and power and the rest of the nation, a powerless working class.
While General Thein Sein’s was in power, the NLD returned to politics and won the 2015 election and formed a nominally-democratic government. The military retained control of many key seats in parliament and 25% of the seats were reserved for the military. According to the 2008 constitution drawn up by the previous regime, three ministerial posts; national defense, interior and border control fell under the military.
Since 2015, under the NLD government, the country opened up its economic policies and foreign investment flowed in which stimulated the economy. In five short years, Myanmar became one of the fastest growing nations in Asia with national economic growth at a respectable level. The military viewed much of this investment as a threat to their self-interest as the private sector gained strength. Due to a loosening of restrictions that included more free speech and an ability to invest in new sectors, the people of Myanmar were advancing socially and economically just outside the military’s narrow political and social ideology.
The NLD participated in the November 2020 election. The NLD again won an overwhelming parliamentary victory winning more than 80% of the seats- a supermajority for another five-year term. The military leader General Min Aung Hlaing citing vote fraud did not agree to the election outcome and threatened to overturn the election- which he did in a coup. While the unjustly disputed November 2020 election was the immediate catalyst for the coup, it was actually the direct result of the decades-old power struggle between the Myanmar military and civilian leaders, a delusional paranoia view - (that civilians were incapable of governing a country) – that has been instilled into their military’s culture since General Ne Win’s coup.
On February 1st 2021, General Min Aung Hlaing led the third coup in Myanmar history. As in the past, since 1962, the military always has a one-sided plan and agenda to prolong their power. Each military coup has been well planned and premeditated. This third coup is the most devastating and destructive, and cruel to the people of Myanmar. General Min Aung Hlaing had carefully planned the coup some months before. Under the NLD government’s policy as a friendly nation to the world, General Min Aung Hlaing took the opportunity to visit Russia and China to purchase military hardware and to gain friendship, not for the country but for the sole purpose to promote the military as a pillar of stability. Prior to the coup Min Aung Hlaing had invited Russian Military General Sergey Shoigu and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, then visited and met with President Win Myint and Aung San Suu Kyi just two weeks before the coup. Whether Russia and/or China knew about the coup in advance is uncertain, but Min Aung Hlaing kept the political climate cool so he can plan from behind to execute his ambitious plan.
Following the coup, the people of Myanmar took to the streets in massive numbers and demonstrated peacefully in a non-violent way to show their outrage at the military’s actions. The military probably expected a docile public like in the past conflicts but was taken aback by the defiance on a scale unseen in decades. Min Aung Hlaing ordered the army to move into the cities including Yangon, Mandalay, and many others to crackdown brutally on the peaceful unarmed demonstrators using heavy weapons and armaments.
In the face of the coup and the military onslaught, the people of Myanmar established Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and refused to work for offices under the military authority. The CDM movement immobilized the government at national and local levels and the economy came to a standstill. Businesses barely functioned with banks closed, and with no productivity as employees refused to work, foreign-run companies withdrew and left the country. Since February 2021, the regime’s violent suppression of the people has killed more than 1000 people including children as young as 7 years old. More than 6,700 people have been arrested and detained. Shockingly, an entire village was burned down in June in the heart of the country. This is one of the many examples that the junta will do anything to hold on to power and it has no interest whatsoever for the wellbeing of the people of Myanmar.
While the Covid-19 pandemic was intensifying in Myanmar, the former NLD government was getting vaccine shots from India, and had ordered some millions more doses from Pfizer. The International Monetary Fund also gave a US$350 million assistance for Covid relief delivered just days before the coup. These hundreds of millions of dollars are now gone to purchase arms from Russia; therefore instead of vaccinating the public, guns were purchased to kill them. The military has now moved to a plan allowing the public to suffer and die from the Covid virus and saving bullets.
After the coup, many doctors, nurses, and healthcare workers did not agree with the military’s actions and joined the CDM. They have been arrested and killed, and many are in hiding. The few doctors left to operate their own private clinics have been denied access to life saving medical supplies - PPE equipment, Oxygen tanks and medicines.
Moreover military had taken over more than 50 hospitals and healthcare institutions in the country and strictly controlled treatment, leaving the doctors to treat only the selected few- the families of the military.
The new delta variant of the virus is rapidly spreading at an alarming rate and public health experts predicts that 50% of Myanmar’s 55 million will be infected within next three weeks. Thousands of political leaders and activists in the crowded jails during the worst outbreak of the virus are at risk with no treatment available on hand. The regime is using that situation as a tactic to eliminate its opposition.
One of the casualties is U Nyan Win, an elected NLD leader who was infected with Covid and passed away on July 22nd. Another senior political leader U Han Tha Myint, Yangon Chief Minister U Phyo Min Thein and his wife are also infected while under house arrest. Dr. Zaw Myint Maung, the vice chair of Mandalay NLD, is also in poor health in jail. These plans represent a carefully-thought-out biological warfare attack on the people. The military has ordered critical oxygen supply factories to shut down. It is attacking volunteer clinics where doctors and health-care workers attend to sick and dying people; the military has destroyed the health-care infrastructure of Myanmar to punish and kill political opponents.
These atrocities, using Covid 19 as a biological weapon against the people and its opponents in Myanmar by coup leader General Min Aung Hlaing and his military authority need to be stopped and they must be brought to justice. A person does not need to be an expert epidemiologist to predict the outcome if the virus is not controlled and contained. The UN with WHO and international institutions must not and cannot turn a blind eye to these atrocities because it will be no better than the holocaust when millions of Jews were executed by Hitler – and the World Kept Silent. While political leaders have been arrested and kept in isolation under house arrest, they are at the mercy of the brutal regime’s exposure to the rapidly spreading virus with no treatment available to them. This premeditated strategy of murdering the political opposition needs to be documented and submitted to the International Criminal Court along with many more past crimes against humanity and violations of UN’s basic Human Rights in Myanmar. History will show that this third coup will be the final downfall of the military power in Myanmar.
Myanmar’s neighbors and the international community urgently need to engage with the shadow government, the National Unity Government in order to restore the country’s stability and regain democracy to Myanmar.
Comments