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HomeOpinionFour years on from the Myanmar coup d’etat

Four years on from the Myanmar coup d’etat

Although many might regard it as an irrelevant backwater, it’s an emergency that should command the world’s attention

Benedict Rogers for UCA News

Over the past four years, Myanmar has been plunged into a human rights and humanitarian nightmare.

The commander-in-chief, General Min Aung Hlaing, seized power on Feb. 1, 2021, and ordered his soldiers to arrest most of the country’s democratically elected leaders.

Myanmar has since moved from a fragile, fledgling semi-democracy back into the darkest of dictatorships.

As we mark the fourth anniversary of the military coup that caused this crisis, the United Nations warns that the country is on the brink of further disaster, facing what it calls an unprecedented “polycrisis,” marked by economic collapse, intensifying conflict, complex climate hazards and deepening poverty.

“The coming year will test Myanmar’s resilience to its limits,” it warns, calling for urgent international engagement to prevent further suffering and complete collapse.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres — who has said little about Myanmar in the past four years — has called on the military to relinquish power and restore civilian rule.

On that February morning four years ago, a decade of fragile, fledgling opening and semi-democratic reform in Myanmar ended within minutes.

Armored vehicles rolled into Myanmar’s Orwellian capital, Naypyidaw — which means “Seat of Kings” and was built by the military — and the army overthrew a civilian-led democratically-elected government.

That government, headed by the country’s democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD), had won an overwhelming re-election mandate for a second term in the general election in November 2020.

The elected representatives had gathered in Naypyidaw, for Suu Kyi to begin appointing ministers. Instead, they ended up as political prisoners once again.

Today, Suu Kyi — who turns 80 in June — ought to be contemplating the end of her second term in government, and perhaps considering a succession plan. Instead, she is already in her fifth year in jail.

Having already endured a cumulative total of 15 years under house arrest under previous juntas, she now faces up to 27 years in jail on multiple fabricated charges. Unless the situation changes, she is likely to die in prison.

But while Suu Kyi remains Myanmar’s most prominent political prisoner, she is far from the only one. Since the coup over 28,000 people have been arrested, and more than 21,000 remain behind bars. And let’s not forget that three years ago, the junta brought back the death penalty — and began executing dissidents.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) — an organization I have known and profoundly respected for over 20 years — the regime has killed over 6,000 people since the coup. But the real death toll is much higher.

Among the highest casualties and worst violations of human rights perpetrated by Min Aung Hlaing’s junta are those in Myanmar’s ethnic regions. At least 3.5 million people have been displaced by the country’s renewed civil war.

The regime is perpetrating a campaign of aerial bombardment against civilians, bombing churches, schools, hospitals and homes, and raping, torturing and beheading people. As the UN says, the situation in Myanmar is in freefall, with nearly 20 million people — a third of the population — expected to need humanitarian aid this year.

These shocking atrocities and carnage of war are challenging enough. And so are the prevailing questions of long-term reconstruction and reconciliation, justice and accountability.

How can we allow such atrocity crimes to be committed with impunity? That has to be a fundamental question to grapple with.

But the immediate humanitarian and practical questions require even more urgent answers. According to the U.N., hunger has reached alarming levels, with 15 million people forecast to face acute food insecurity this year, an increase from 13.3 million last year.

The U.N. Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Myanmar Tom Andrews sums up the nightmare: “Junta forces have slaughtered thousands of civilians, bombed and burned villages, and displaced millions of people. More than 20,000 political prisoners remain behind bars.”

“The economy and public services have collapsed. Famine and starvation loom over large parts of the population,” he adds.

So what should we do?

Four years on from the coup, we must make a five-step plan.

To end military dictatorship and restore civilian-led democracy.

To help Myanmar’s people heal, restore, reconcile and rebuild.

To hold those responsible for heinous atrocities accountable.

And to end Myanmar’s humanitarian crisis by building an economy that draws on the natural resources and human talent of the country, without exploiting or enslaving it.

As I have said repeatedly over the past four years: we must also cut the lifelines to the regime and provide lifelines to Myanmar’s people.

That requires the international community to put Myanmar far higher up the agenda.

It needs new U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy, top-level representatives of the European Union and key member states, the foreign ministers of Canada, Australia, Japan, Korea, and key allies within the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to meet and coordinate a plan of action – and then to deliver that to the U.N. Secretary-General, to urge him to end his moral siestas and use his platform to jump-start the process. A process to recover, rebuild, restore, renew, and heal Myanmar.

I have walked through burned-out villages in Myanmar’s war-torn jungles dozens of times.

I have sat with former political prisoners or the families of current dissidents in jail in Myanmar and heard their heartbreaking stories countless times.

I have delivered workshops in crowded, sweaty apartments in Yangon, packed facilities in Mandalay, and precarious venues across Myanmar’s ethnic states.

I have traversed mountains, traveled with rebels, taken Western politicians with me, and crossed borders illegally over the years as part of my three decades of campaigning for a free Myanmar.

And I have been deported from Myanmar not once but twice.

For all these reasons I feel a deep love for the country — and a stake in its future.

Although many might regard it as an irrelevant backwater, given its geostrategic location — between China and India, as a gateway to Southeast Asia, as a hub in Beijing’s Belt and Road strategy, and with its moral, historical and relational links to the United Kingdom — it is a situation that ought to be of interest to us all, a crisis that should concern us all, and an emergency that should command the world’s attention.

On the fourth anniversary of the brutal coup in Myanmar, let us remember, reflect, and resolve to fulfill our moral obligations, fight for our values, interests, and responsibilities, and restore our hope for the future — for Myanmar and for freedom itself.

*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.

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