Myanmar’s Bloodshed Reveals a World That Has Changed, and Hasn't

The New York Times

Published April 2, 2021Family mourners at the funeral of Ma Khine Zar Thwe, 25, a bank employee, who was shot and killed on Sunday amid a protest crackdown in Yangon, Myanmar.Credit...The New York Times

Myanmar’s rulers this week crossed a threshold few governments breach anymore: They have killed, by most estimates, more than 500 unarmed citizens of their own country.

Such massacres by government forces have, even in a time of rising nationalism and authoritarianism, been declining worldwide. This is the seventh in the past decade, compared with 23 in the 1990s, according to data from Uppsala University in Sweden.