Myanmar Junta Chief Embarks on First China Visit Since Coup

THE | DIPLOAMT
By Sebastian Strangio
November 06, 2024

Min Aung Hlaing’s visit to Kunming seems to mark a watershed in Beijing’s policy toward the country’s civil war. 

Credit: Depositphotos

The head of Myanmar’s military junta embarked yesterday on an official visit to China for regional meetings, his first trip to the country since the coup of February 2021.

Myanmar state media reported that Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing will attend summits of the Greater Mekong Subregion and the Ayeyarwady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Cooperation Strategy during the two-day state visit. He will also join a meeting with counterparts from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

Tracing Myanmar Junta’s Repeated Governing Body Shakeups Since Coup

The Irrawaddy
September 28, 2023

Top from left: Air force chief General Maung Maung Kyaw, Lieutenant General Moe Myint Tun, Lieutenant General Soe Htut, Thein Nyunt, Khin Maung Swe Middle: Dr Kyaw Tun, Dr Aung Kyaw Min, Sai Lone Saing, Maung Ko, Pu Gin Kam Lian Bottom: Saw Daniel, Aye Nu Sein, Dr Banyar Aung Moe, Jeng Phang Naw Taung, Moung Har

 

Myanmar’s junta boss Min Aung Hlaing has reorganized the regime’s governing body, the State Administration Council (SAC), at least five times since the 2021 coup.

Fifteen SAC members, including three generals, have been removed over the past two years.

Min Aung Hlaing formed the 11-member SAC on February 2, 2021, a day after the coup.

China Doesn’t Want Myanmar’s NLD Dissolved: Informed Sources

The Irrawaddy

27 August 2021

Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and Myanmar’s detained State Counselor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (left) at the launch ceremony for events to mark the 70th anniversary of China-Myanmar diplomatic relations in Naypyitaw in January 2020. / Myanmar State Counselor’s Office

China has voiced concern over the Myanmar military regime’s plan to dissolve the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party that won the junta-annulled 2020 general election in a landslide, several informed sources told The Irrawaddy. Chinese officials have conveyed to the regime’s leaders Beijing’s message that it wants to see the NLD continue to exist as a political party, they said.

Politicians close to the NLD and several China-Myanmar watchers said the Chinese recently told Myanmar officials that China will continue to support Myanmar and maintain border trade and infrastructure projects on one condition: that the junta keeps the NLD alive.

The Coup And The Crisis In Myanmar

OWP
The Organisation for World Peace
Evelyn Elliott
August 14, 2021

Myanmar, a nation whose young democracy began only a decade ago, is currently facing a threat it may not recover from. On February 1st of 2021, the military of Myanmar staged a coup d’état in the Southeast Asian country, overthrowing the democratic government and issuing a year-long state of emergency. Orchestrated under the idea that the nation’s November election was fraudulent, a claim that lacks any substantial evidence, the armed forces took control and arrested senior members of the elected National League for Democracy (NLD) party. The situation was exacerbated by the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, a pro-democracy activist and Nobel Prize winner, who led the NLD. The country’s state of emergency has been extended for another two years under the direction of Min Aung Hlaing, a leading army general who declared himself to be the nation’s prime minister at the beginning of August. Now, after months of violence and oppression, Myanmar is confronted with the same military regime that it suffered under previously.

New Great Game rages in post-coup Myanmar

ASIA TIMES
Bertil Lintner
June 12, 2021

China and US on opposed sides in Myanmar's escalating civil war while Japan, India and ASEAN struggle to strike a middle ground

Anti-coup protesters show their support for Myanmar's National Unity Government. Photo: Jose Lopes Amaral / NurPhoto via AFP

CHIANG MAI – China has declared its support for Senior General Min Aung Hlaing’s military-coup government in Myanmar. The United States and the European Union have implemented sanctions and declared their support for the people’s power movement agitating against the dictatorship.

India and Japan are keeping quiet because they don’t want to push Myanmar further back into the clutches of China. Thailand is too dependent on natural gas imports from Myanmar to dare to condemn or even criticize the coup.

The rest of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, has once again demonstrated that it is wholly incapable of resolving regional crises. 

‘Now We Are United’: Myanmar’s Ethnic Divisions Soften After Coup

The New York Times

By Hannah Beech
May 3, 2021

Amid the resistance to military rule, some are saying that democracy can’t flourish without respecting the minorities that have been persecuted for decades.

A student protest against military rule in Yangon, Myanmar, earlier this month.Credit...The New York Times

The Myanmar military’s disinformation was crude but effective.

Army propagandists claimed an ethnic group called the Rohingya was burning down its own villages and wanted to swamp Buddhist-majority Myanmar with Islamic hordes. The Rohingya were spinning tall tales, the military said in 2017, about soldiers committing mass rape and murder.

The truth — that troops were waging genocidal operations against Myanmar’s ethnic minorities — was perhaps too shocking for some members of the country’s Bamar ethnic majority to contemplate.

But as Myanmar’s military seized power this year and killed more than 750 civilians, Daw Sandar Myo, an elementary-school teacher, realized that the decades of persecution suffered by the Rohingya and other minorities was real, after all.

Myanmar ethnic divisions soften after coup

Bangkok Post

WRITER: BY HANNAH BEECH, NEW YORK TIMES
PUBLISHED : 1 MAY 2021 

University students take part in a march against the military coup in Yangon on April 11. (New York Times Photo)

The Myanmar military’s disinformation was crude but effective.

Army propagandists claimed an ethnic group called the Rohingya was burning down its own villages and wanted to swamp Buddhist-majority Myanmar with Islamic hordes. The Rohingya were spinning tall tales, the military said in 2017, about soldiers committing mass rape and murder.

The truth — that troops were waging genocidal operations against Myanmar’s ethnic minorities — was perhaps too shocking for some members of the country’s Bamar ethnic majority to contemplate.

More Bloodshed in Myanmar as Crackdown on Coup Protests Continues

The New York Times

By Richard C. Paddock
April 11, 2021

The death toll has passed 700, with more than 80 killed on Friday in one city alone, a rights group said.

University students marching against the military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, on Sunday.Credit...The New York Times

The Myanmar military’s bloody crackdown on the nationwide resistance to its rule showed no sign of easing on Sunday, with a human rights group reporting that the death toll across the country had passed 700.

The security forces killed 82 people in a single city on Friday, according to the group, the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which has been documenting the bloodshed since the military’s Feb. 1 coup. Soldiers used machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades to attack an organized group of protesters who had set up barricades to defend part of that city, Bago.

CNN team confronts Myanmar’s military on deadly coup

CNN
April 8th, 2021

In an exclusive report from Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward, CNN shows a new look at life inside Myanmar’s coup and confronts the military junta about the violent suppression of protests taking place in the country.

CNN was the first international media organisation permitted to enter the Southeast Asian nation since the military unseated the civilian government in a coup on February 1. Since then, the military has waged a brutal clampdown on pro-democracy protesters, which has led to more than 500 deaths.

Ward confronted Major General Zaw Min Tun, a senior member of the military junta, about the intensifying violence taking place against civilians and peaceful protesters.

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.

Give peace a chance, Malaysia tells Myanmar

THE Star  

By ALLISON LAI
Friday, 19 Mar 2021

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia has called on Myanmar's ruling junta to change its course and choose a peaceful solution instead of violence against unarmed civilians.

Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin (pic) said all concerned parties should work together towards a peaceful settlement of this crisis.

"Violence begets violence, and the nation's future may be plunged into irreversible destruction.

"The military leadership in Myanmar is strongly urged to change its course, and choose a path towards peaceful solutions.

Violence Continues In Myanmar As Police Enforce Curfew And Occupy Hospitals

NRP

MATTHEW S. SCHWARTZ
March 7, 2021

Protesters in Yangon run from police Sunday after they fire tear gas during a demonstration against the military coup.STR/AFP via Getty Images

More than a month after the military orchestrated a coup against the country's democratically elected leader, Myanmar police are continuing to use violence against peaceful protesters. The death toll is continuing to rise — and it now includes a local official from the deposed leader's political party.

The BBC reports that the body of U Khin Maung Latt, who campaigned for candidates from Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party in recent elections, was released to his family on Sunday. Police reportedly took him by force from his home late Saturday. Witnesses reported seeing him being kicked and beaten. Police told the family he died after fainting. The pro-democracy activist was buried on Sunday.

Myanmar Military Fires U.N. Envoy Who Spoke Against Its Coup

The New York Times

By Richard C. Paddock
Feb. 27, 2021

The regime fired the ambassador, U Kyaw Moe Tun, who called for international help in restoring demo
cracy and gave the three-finger salute of the protest movement.



An image released by the United Nations shows U Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s ambassador to the U.N., pleading for international action in overturning the military coup in the country.Credit...United Nations Tv, via Reuters

BANGKOK — Myanmar’s month-old military regime fired the country’s ambassador to the United Nations on Saturday, a day after he gave an impassioned speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York, pleading for international help in restoring democracy to his homeland.

The ambassador, U Kyaw Moe Tun, ended his speech with a three-finger salute, a gesture from the “Hunger Games” films that has become a symbol of pro-democratic defiance for protesters in Myanmar and, before that, in neighboring Thailand.

State television announced his firing, saying he had “betrayed the country and spoken for an unofficial organization which doesn’t represent the country and had abused the power and responsibilities of an ambassador.”

Myanmar is Experiencing a Digital-Age Coup – Tech Companies Must Push Back

JUST SECURITY
Allie Funk
February 16, 2021 

Service providers and other tech companies have a duty to resist the Myanmar military’s desperate attempt to monopolize control over information.

On Feb. 1, Myanmar’s military seized control of the government, detained political leaders, issued a one-year state of emergency, and announced that its commander in chief, Min Aung Hlaing, would lead the country. What followed was a page pulled directly from the censorship playbook. Citing all-too-familiar concerns over national security, unrest, and rumors, the military has now ordered several temporary internet shutdowns and has blocked news websites and major social media platforms, including Facebook and Twitter.

Rohingya refugees condemn Myanmar coup - community leader

REUTERS
Monday, 1 February 2021 

DHAKA, Feb 1 (Reuters) - Rohingya refugees condemned the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Myanmar by the military on Monday, a community leader said in Bangladesh, where a number of them live after fleeing violence in the neighbouring country.

"We Rohingya community strongly condemn this heinous attempt to kill democracy," Rohingya leader Dil Mohammed told Reuters by phone. "We urge the global community to come forward and restore democracy at any cost." (Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. 

U.N. fears for Myanmar Rohingya after coup, Security Council due to meet Tuesday

REUTERS

Michelle Nichols
APAC
February 1, 2021

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United Nations fears the coup in Myanmar will worsen the plight of some 600,000 Rohingya Muslims still in the country, a U.N. spokesman said on Monday as the Security Council planned to meet on the latest developments on Tuesday.

FILE PHOTO: The United Nations logo is seen at the 2019 United Nations Climate Action Summit at U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 23, 2019. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson 

 

Myanmar’s military seized power on Monday in a coup against the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, who was detained along with other political leaders of in early morning raids.

A 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine State sent more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing into Bangladesh, where they are still stranded in refugee camps. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Western states accused the Myanmar military of ethnic cleansing, which it denied.

ျမန္မာျပည္စစ္တပ္ အာဏာယူအၿပီး ေရွ့အလားအလာ

VOA
ဗြီအိုုေအ (ျမန္မာဌာန)
မခင္ျဖဴေထြး
ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း
01 ေဖေဖာ္၀ါရီ၊ 2021

 

 ျမန္မာျပည္မွာ စစ္တပ္က အာဏာယူတာဟာ ဖြဲ႔စည္းပံု နဲ႔ အညီျဖစ္တယ္လို့ဆိုေပမဲ့ ဖြဲ႔စည္းပံုနဲ႔ ကိုက္ညီဖြယ္ မရွိတဲ့ အခ်က္တခ်ိဳ႔ အျပင္ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲက်င္းပမယ္လို့ စစ္တပ္က ထုတ္ျပန္တာဟာ စိုးရိမ္ဖြယ္ျဖစ္တဲ့ အ ေၾကာင္း ဦးသန္းလြင္ထြန္း ကို မခင္ျဖဴေထြးက ေမးျမန္းေဆြးေႏြးထားပါတယ္။

 

 

Link : Here

Myanmar military allays coup fears, says it will protect constitution

REUTERS

Shoon Naing
APAC
January 30, 202

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar’s military said on Saturday it would protect and abide by the constitution and act according to law, a move that could allay concerns that the armed forces might attempt to seize power. 

The statement comes a day after United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Western embassies in Myanmar expressed serious concerns about the possibility of army intervention in Myanmar, a country ruled by the military for 49 years after a 1962 coup.

The military, known as the Tatmadaw, said recent remarks by its commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, about abolishing the constitution had been misinterpreted.

“The Tatmadaw is protecting the 2008 constitution and will act according to the law,” it said. “Some organisations and media assumed what they want and wrote as Tatmadaw will abolish the constitution.”

UN, embassies fret over Myanmar coup talk

Bangkok Post 

AFP
29 Jan 2021

Supreme Court postpones decision on military-linked party's claim of electoral fraud

Myanmar is just a decade out of nearly 50 years of military rule. (AFP Photo)  

YANGON: More than a dozen embassies, including the US and EU delegations, on Friday urged Myanmar to “adhere to democratic norms”, joining the United Nations in a chorus of international concern about a possible military coup.

Political tensions eased slightly on Friday when the Supreme Court postponed considering allegations of electoral misconduct by President Win Myint and election commission chairman Hla Thein.

 
The submissions filed by the military-linked Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) would be “reserved for judgement", the court said.

U.N. voices alarm about Myanmar after military threats, coup fears

 REUTERS

Shoon Naing, Poppy McPherson
APAC
January 29, 202

 

FILE PHOTO: Myanmar's Army Chief Min Aung Hlaing salutes during the Martyrs' Day ceremony in Yangon on July 19, 2020.Ye Aung Thu/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo 

YANGON (Reuters) - The United Nations and Western governments voiced alarm on Friday over threats by Myanmar’s military that have stirred fears of a coup in the aftermath of an election the army says was fraudulent.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was following with “great concern” developments in Myanmar, where the army has said it would take action if complaints about the election are not addressed. An army spokesman on Tuesday declined to rule out the possibility of seizing power.

Australia, Britain, Canada, the European Union and United States, and 12 other nations, in a separate statement urged the military to “adhere to democratic norms”.