Why Myanmar’s massacres shame the world

ZAWYA

SECURITY|
By Yossi Mekelberg, Arab News
03 APRIL, 2021

To a large extent we have arrived at this point due to the past failures of the international community to hold Myanmar’s military accountable for their crimes

Members of the armed forces stand guard during a protest against the military coup, in Yangon, Myanmar March 27, 2021.REUTERS/Stringer

When representatives of all UN member states met in 2005 for the World Summit, billed at the time as the “largest gathering of world leaders in history,” and passed a resolution that set out the parameters for the Responsibility to Protect populations (R2P) from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, there was an air of togetherness and optimism that the journey toward eradicating these horrific phenomena had begun.

ျမန္မာ့အေရး ကုလလုံျခဳံေရးေကာင္စီကို မေစာင့္ဘဲ ‘ယခုပဲ အေရးယူေဆာင္ရြက္သြားရန္’ နိုင္ငံတကာမွ ကၽြမ္းက်င္သူ မ်ား တိုက္တြန္

Mizimma

05 April 2021

ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံတ၀န္းရွိ ျပည္သူမ်ားက ေန႔စဥ္ေန႔တိုင္း ျပသထားခဲ့သည့္ ဦးေဆာင္မႈႏွင့္ စိတ္ပိုင္းျဖတ္လုပ္ေဆာင္ေနမႈတို႔ေၾကာင့္ အဆင့္လယ္ဗယ္တိုင္းရွိ နိုင္ငံတကာအသိုင္းအဝိုင္းအေနျဖင့္ ျမန္မာ့အေရးအေပၚ ထိေရာက္သည့္ အေရးယူေဆာင္ရြက္မႈ လုပ္ေဆာင္သြားေစေရးအတြက္ စိတ္ပါ၀င္စားမႈ ရွိသင့္ေနၿပီျဖစ္ေၾကာင္း ကုလသမဂၢ၏ ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးဆိုင္ရာ အထူးစုံစမ္းစစ္ေဆးေရးမႉး တြန္ အန္ဒ႐ူးစ္က ၿပီးခဲ့သည့္ရက္ပိုင္းက ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့သည့္ အြန္လိုင္းစကားဝိုင္းေဆြး‌ေႏြးပြဲ (webinar) တစ္ခုတြင္ ေျပာသြားခဲ့သည္။

U.N. Official Warns Of 'Bloodbath' In Myanmar If Coup Isn't Reversed

WISCONSIN PUBLIC RADIO
Scott Neuman
Thursday, April 1, 2021,

Protesters, wearing red makeup to simulate tears of blood, making the three-finger salute during a demonstration against the military coup in Hlaing Township, Yangon, Myanmar, on Thursday in a photo taken from a screenshot from AFPTV video.

AFP via Getty Images

The United Nations special envoy on Myanmar has issued a stark warning that the country is heading for a likely "bloodbath" if the international community doesn't do more to stop violence against anti-junta protesters.

The remarks by Christine Schraner Burgener during a closed-door session of the U.N. Security Council, come as Myanmar's deposed leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, faced new, more serious charges brought by the junta to mark two months since her Feb. 1 ouster.

Burgener on Wednesday told the Security Council that if "collective action" isn't taken to reverse the coup, "a bloodbath is imminent." She warned of a "multi-dimensional catastrophe in the heart of Asia," according to testimony obtained by The Associated Press and Reuters.

When Internal Becomes International: ASEAN’s Role in Myanmar

CSIS

Diego Lingad

April 1, 2021

All eyes are on Myanmar following the country’s February 1 coup d’état. The international community is calling on The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to help find a solution. But ASEAN members are far from agreement on what role the grouping should play. Escalating violence in Myanmar, meanwhile, is pushing member states to make uncomfortable decisions.

Following the coup, Brunei, as the grouping’s current chair, quickly issued a statement calling for a return to “normalcy” in Myanmar. But Indonesia has emerged as the most vocal member of ASEAN, convening others to discuss the crisis. Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei have appeared to support these efforts while others were more muted. Cambodia, Thailand, the Philippines, and Vietnam initially called the situation in Myanmar an internal affair. And Laos has taken a wait-and-see approach, calling for stability while expressing support for ASEAN. Myanmar itself, represented in ASEAN meetings by the new junta-appointed foreign minister Wunna Maung Lwin, further complicates the discussions. The group failed to produce a joint statement on the coup at an informal ministerial meeting on March 2. The best it could do was a chair’s statement calling for “all parties to refrain from instigating further violence” and saying the group is ready to assist with reconciliation.

Why Britain should champion UN action on Myanmar

politics.co.uk

Yasmine Ahmed
Friday 2 Apr 2021

Myanmar police enforcing the military junta’s crackdown on protesters stopped an ambulance in March, dragged four paramedics out of the vehicle, and beat at least three of them bloody, then hauled them off to jail.

The shocking attack on paramedics is just one example we have seen of the junta’s brutality as it struggles to crush protests against the military’s February 1 coup and subsequent jailing of the country’s democratically elected leaders. Everyday Myanmar security forces arbitrarily arrest, beat, and kill more protesters and political opponents; and violence by the authorities is on the rise. On March 27 alone, security forces killed at least 114 people, among them children.

Myanmar Soldiers, Aiming to Silence Protests, Target Journalists

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Richard C. Paddock
April 2, 2021

Covering a protest battle in Yangon, Myanmar, on Sunday. Three photojournalists have been shot and wounded while taking photographs of the anti-coup demonstrations.Credit...The New York Times

Ten days after seizing power in Myanmar, the generals issued their first command to journalists: Stop using the words “coup,” “regime” and “junta” to describe the military’s takeover of the government. Few reporters heeded the Orwellian directive, and the junta embraced a new goal — crushing all free expression.

Since then, the regime has arrested at least 56 journalists, outlawed online news outlets known for hard-edge reporting and crippled communications by cutting off mobile data service. Three photojournalists have been shot and wounded while taking photographs of the anti-coup demonstrations.

Islamic Zakat donations reached millions of refugees in 2020

TRT WORLD
02 April 2021

Compared to four years ago, Zakat funds increased in record numbers last year, helping more than two million refugees across the world, according to UNHCR.

The latest Islamic Philanthropy report of the UNHCR has shown that Islamic Zakat donations in 2020 saw a big increase compared to previous years, amounting to $61.5 million, reaching more than two million displaced people across the world.

Compared to the period of 2016-2018, when Islamic donations had reached more than 34,000 people, last year, both Zakat and Sadaqah, along with Sadaqah Jariyah, which are other forms of religious donations, helped nearly 2.1 million people in total.

India: Rising detentions spark panic among Rohingya

AA

Ahmad Adil 

NEW DELHI

01.04.2021

4 more Rohingya held by authorities in Indian capital, community says more than 12 detained over past week

At least four Rohingya refugees were detained in New Delhi on Wednesday for not having “proper documents,” giving rise to further apprehensions among community members living in India’s capital.

“There were four of them and they were sent to the Foreigner Regional Registration Office,” Rajendra Prasad Meena, a senior police officer, told Anadolu Agency, without sharing any further details.

Another cop, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, also gave a short response, saying the Rohingya refugees were detained because they did not have “valid documents.”

'How Can a Human Being Be Illegal?': Lawyer for Rohingya Questions India's Deportation Plans

THE WIRE
Ismat Ara
01/APR/2021

A large number of Rohingya refugees have been detained over the last month and the threat of deportation looms over them.

Rohingya children playing in a camp in Delhi. Photo: Ismat Ara

New Delhi: Indian authorities are preparing to deport Rohingya refugees currently lodged in detention centres made for undocumented migrants. Close to 300 Rohingya were detained across India just in the month of March 2021.

In 2017, thousands of Rohingya people had fled Myanmar, either by foot or sea, after the Myanmar army’s targeted violence against the community. However, the Rohingya had been fleeing Myanmar to take shelter in neighbouring countries including India for years before that too.

Ethnic armed groups and how they've responded

THE STRAITS TIMES
APR 2, 2021,

YANGON • Unrest in coup-hit Myanmar has thrown the spotlight on some of the country's armed ethnic groups, as three of them threaten the junta with retaliation for its deadly crackdown on protests. Some analysts are warning that the crisis could spiral into even more conflict if the insurgents follow through on their threats. Here's a breakdown of some of the myriad armed groups.

WHO ARE THE REBELS?

Independence from British colonial rule in 1948 left a complex patchwork of cultural, ethnic and linguistic groups in Myanmar. In the decades since, a messy struggle has worn on in different regions over autonomy, ethnic identity, drugs, jade and other natural resources.

Column by Mahfuz Anam: The trouble with our only other neighbour

The Daily Star
Mahfuz Anam
April 02, 2021

Global response focuses on the coup, ignoring the Rohingya problem

File photo of demonstrators protesting the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar. Photo: Reuters/Stringer

Myanmar is our only other neighbour, with India being the overwhelming first. To the credit of our policymakers, we have tried our best to maintain good relations with Myanmar notwithstanding their treatment of Rohingyas, forcing nearly 300,000 of them upon us thirty years ago, in the early nineties.

We really wanted to have a cordial relation, if not a warm one, with them. We thought if the whole world could trade with them, why couldn't we (especially after the withdrawal of western sanctions)? Thus, we reacted to the Rohingya influx of the nineties very softly. The tactics appeared to work when more than 230,000 of the 250,000 refugees from the first influx were repatriated, with the UNHCR playing an active role in the process. With about 20,000 remaining, we heaved a sigh of relief hoping that the rest would also be repatriated in time.

China to support ASEAN mediation on Myanmar crisis

AA

Riyaz Ul Khaliq 

ANKARA

01.04.2021

China on Thursday said it supports the idea that leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) hold a “special meeting as soon as possible to mediate” in Myanmar, which is witnessing mass demonstrations against the military coup launched last on Feb. 1

“Myanmar is a member of the ASEAN family, and a close neighbor to China. We all hope different forces in Myanmar can start a dialogue as soon … to solve divergence under the framework of the law and the constitution and promote hard-won democratization,” Wang told a news conference alongside visiting Malaysian Foreign Minister Hishammuddin Hussein in China’s eastern Nanping city.

BURMA: STICK TO NON-VIOLENCE

KASHMIR TIMES

Gwynne Dyer. 

Dated: 4/2/2021

“Federalism is the ultimate political heresy in Burma. The army’s self-assigned task ever since independence has been maintaining the hegemony of the ethnic Bamar majority (about two-thirds of the country’s 54 million people) over the Karen, Shan, Mon, Chin, Kachin, Rakhine, Rohingya and Karenni minorities.”

The non-violent democratic resistance in Burma (or Myanmar, as the army renamed it in 1989) is living through terrible times, but statistics are on its side: most non-violent movements eventually win. But it’s hard to stay non-violent when you are up against a force as ruthless and brutal as the Tatmadaw.

Burma is at a crossroads

NEWAGE 

Dmitry Mosyakov
Apr 01,2021

— New Eastern Outlook

THE events occurring in Burma, where numerous street demonstrations have not subsided against the military, which took power into its own hands on February 1, 2021, continue to attract intense attention. The fact is that although a change from civilian to military power has taken place, it is absolutely unclear how events will further develop: whether the military will be able to retain power or, under the pressure of mass demonstrations and a split in its own ranks, Aung San Suu Kyi and her party members will return to power.

Defusing Myanmar Requires More Than Western Sanctions

Bloomberg
Clara Ferreira Marques
1 April 2021,

The junta’s violence has killed hundreds of protesters and put insurgent groups on a war footing. Time is running out to avert a cataclysm.

Protesters prepare Molotov cocktails.Source: Getty Images

Myanmar has long been a textbook example of sanctions failure. Years of isolation battered the population but didn’t loosen the grip of the Tatmadaw, as the armed forces are known. When they ceded ground a decade ago, they did so on their own terms — and even that, as February’s coup proved, was all too easily reversed.

Myanmar junta offers ceasefire to some, as UN envoy warns of 'bloodbath'

CNN
Richard Roth, Caitlin Hu and Taylor Barnes,
April 1, 2021

UN envoy says a 'bloodbath is imminent' in Myanmar 04:51

(CNN)As the United Nations Security Council discussed Myanmar's military coup on Wednesday, the country's junta declared a "ceasefire" -- though it said it would continue to respond to "actions that disrupt government security and administration."

The ceasefire appeared to refer to actions taken against ethnic armed groups, where fighting has increased since the junta's seizure of power in a coup on February 1. The statement, carried on Myanmar's state television MRTV, called on ethnic armed groups to "keep the peace" and said the military would "suspend its operations unilaterally from April 1 to April 30."

Excluded from the peace, however, are those who "disrupt" government security.

US ratchets up pressure on Myanmar’s military after its bloodiest weekend since the coup

VOX

Alex Ward@AlexWardVoxalex.ward@vox.com 

Mar 29, 2021,

Reports indicate Myanmar’s junta killed about 140 people over the weekend. The Biden administration is responding with trade restrictions.


A relative cries during the funeral of a protester in Myanmar on March 29. AFP via Getty Images

The Biden administration is stepping up its actions to punish Myanmar’s ruling military junta in the wake of a bloody weekend targeting civilians protesting against the February military coup.

On Saturday, the military commemorated Armed Forces Day by killing about 140 people — including six children — in 44 cities and towns amid nationwide peaceful protests, according to local reports and activists. One of the children, 11-year-old Aye Myat Thu, was buried with her drawings and toys as her family mourned beside her.

World must not forget Myanmar's ethnic minorities

NEKKEI ASIA

Denis D. Gray
March 31, 2021

Escaping Karen villagers, pictured on Mar.28: more than 10,000 members of the ethnic minority have been driven from their villages. © Karen Teacher Working Group/Reuters

Denis D. Gray is a former Associated Press correspondent. He has reported on Myanmar's ethnic minorities since the 1970s.

The world's attention has been focused on atrocities taking place in Myanmar's central heartland: the towns, cities and villages largely populated by the ethnic Burman majority, where pro-democracy demonstrators, enraged by the Feb. 1 coup, are being gunned down by the junta's forces.

But on the country's edge, ethnic minorities making up about 40% of the population are also being brutalized. The new push by Myanmar's military to target ethnic rural areas has opened up a dangerous front in the junta's bid to "pacify" the population, which has soundly rejected the power grab by Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

Myanmar's Armed Groups Shifting Loyalty To China?

THE ASEAN POST

Maria Siow

29 March 2021

This file photo shows Rakhine ethnic people attending an ANP (Arakan National Party) event in Yangon for the Myanmar general election. (AFP Photo)

After weeks of silence as Myanmar ’s military cracked down on civilians protesting against the 1 February coup, the Arakan Army (AA), a major player among the country’s more than two dozen ethnic armed groups, this week announced it was on the side of the people.

“The current actions by the Burmese army and police are very cruel and unacceptable,” AA spokesman Khine Thu Khahe said on Tuesday (23 March), adding that “the oppressed ethnic people as a whole will continue to fight for their freedom from oppression”.

The AA’s statement was significant, as it comes just weeks after Myanmar’s junta removed the militia from its list of terrorist groups as a means of establishing peace across the nation of 55 million.

Myanmar’s Arakan Army, Allies Set to Resume Fight Against Tatmadaw Over Civilian Killings

THE IRRAWADDY 

30 March 2021

Arakan Army (AA) soldiers at their Kachin State headquarters in April 2019. / The Irrawaddy

The Arakan Army (AA) and its two partner ethnic armed groups in the Brotherhood Alliance said they are ready to join forces with all ethnic people in fighting against the Myanmar military regime if its brutal killing of anti-coup protesters continues.

The tripartite Brotherhood Alliance, which groups the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA); Ta’ang National Liberation Army (TNLA); and the AA, condemned the military junta on Monday after the civilian death toll from its lethal crackdown on anti-regime protesters rose to at least 510 nationwide.