About a year ago, on February 1, 2021, tragedy struck in Myanmar.
The military staged a coup in opposition of the National League for Democracy’s (NLD) victory of the 2020 election. They detained many leaders of the party, most notably the state counsellor of Myanmar and leader of the NLD Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi and the NLD were accused of voter fraud (despite winning by a large margin), and the leader of the military Min Aung Hlaing took over.
It only took a few days for the people of Myanmar to start protesting in the streets of Burmese cities like Yangon. With only a few exceptions, the protests were mostly peaceful demonstrations led by people who wanted to participate in civil disobedience. Regardless, the Burmese military responded with violence, opting to use rubber bullets, water cannons, beatings, live ammunition, and fire to suppress protests. Some protesters, hoping to be on more equal footing with the military, started arming themselves. They formed local militias and referred to themselves as People’s Defense Forces (PDFs). This fighting of fire with fire made the military even more hostile.
An important word to know when talking about the situation in Myanmar is “junta.” A junta is defined as a military rule of a country after the military “takes power by force.” This is exactly what has occurred in Myanmar, and for the last year the military has had the country and its people in a chokehold. They are crushing any semblance of democracy the country used to have by overruling the votes of the people and using violence to suppress their voices.
Over the last year, it is reported that more than 1,350 people have lost their lives to the military’s brutal crackdowns (about 290 of these deaths were results of torture). At least 11,000 people have been arrested, and more than 8,700 of them remain jailed. The number of people displaced by the junta has exceeded 400,000 as of January. These are not small numbers, and what’s worse is that, a year later they still continue to rise.
As these numbers rise, so does the public’s opposition to the junta. The Burmese people are still fighting back thanks to brave civilian protesters and groups like the Karenni National Defense Force, other PDFs, and rebel forces. At this point, the situation resembles that of a country at civil war. I personally believe that the military will never be able to assert power over the country, because the citizens of Myanmar are unified in their resistance to the junta.
Before I wrap up this blog post, I want to explicitly address the situation of a certain demographic of people who are in some ways in more danger than others: the Rohingya people. In 2016 and 2017, the Burmese military persecuted the Rohingya people and killed over 6,700 and caused thousands of others to be displaced. Even with Suu Kyi in power, the Burmese government was never able to take full accountability for the genocide of the Rohingya people. Now, with the military back in power since 2021, the Rohingya people yet again face the magnified threat of danger. Additionally, due to the horrible state of the economy under the junta, many regions and populations (like the Rohingya) have fallen prey to poverty and lack basic human necessities.
It is incredibly disappointing that so many countries and organizations have not acted to stop the horrific junta, or its myriads of human rights violations. As the people of Myanmar complete one whole year of living in hellish circumstances (much longer for the Rohingya people), I wonder how many more days, weeks, and months innocent civilians will be arrested, injured, tortured, or killed for fighting for democracy.
Resources:
Myanmar’s coup: a year under military rule in numbers | Myanmar coup | The Guardian
Myanmar: What has been happening since the 2021 coup? – BBC News
Myanmar Is Mired in Conflict and Chaos a Year After a Coup – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
Rohingya Crisis in Myanmar | Global Conflict Tracker (cfr.org)