Will Myanmar’s Militias Relinquish Control After Victory?

zenith
Analysis
by Philipp Peksaglam
04.03.2024
Politics

Paul Vrieze / Voice of America

Myanmar’s junta has been on the back foot for quite some time now. The militias waging a civil war against the central government are gaining ground and start to plan the post-war order. Yet one ethnic minority remains marginalized.

Myanmar’s generals do not have much to celebrate these days. February 1st did present an occasion for any Putschists in a particularly festive mood: the three-year anniversary of the military coup. The 2021 takeover of the elected government of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi permanently ended the generals’ brief flirt with democratic governance. Ever since, the conflict between the Tatmadaw, as the military is known, and regional ethnic insurgents dominates life in Myanmar.

In defence of Aung San Suu Kyi

theinterpretor
Derek Tonkin
Published 22 Feb 2024 

Many in Myanmar have condemned what they perceive asseriously flawed Western criticism of the Burmese ex-leader. 

On 18 October 2023, the Brighton and Hove City Council in the United Kingdom revoked the Freedom of the City awarded to Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi in 2011. Their special meeting lasted only 18 minutes, with Councillor Bella Sankey, the Labour leader of the Council, stating that it was not right to honour a person who “presided over the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Muslim Rohingya community” and was “an enabler to racial and religious discrimination and ethnic cleansing”. Sankey was supported by all 50 or so of the Council members present.

264 Myanmar border, security force members now in Bangladesh: BGB

Dhaka Tribune
Tribune Desk
Publish : 06 Feb 2024,

Myanmar Border Guard Police (BGP) members are seen talking to Border Guard Bangladesh members in Bangladesh after seeking refuge due to an attack by rebels on February 4, 2024. Photo: Dhaka Tribune

 

A total of 264 members of Myanmar's border and security forces are now taking shelter in Bangladesh amid clashes between the Myanmar military and the armed rebel group, Arakan Army, Bangladesh Border Guard (BGB) has said.

‘Still my people’: Myanmar diaspora supports democracy struggle back home

Aljazeera
25 Sep 2023

Spurred to action by the February 2021 military coup, Myanmar nationals living abroad are helping to sustain a movement with limited international support 

Myanmar nationals in Japan have held protests calling on Tokyo to deny legitimacy to the Myanmar coup leaders [File: Issei Kato/Reuters]

Until recently, Myanmar was little but a distant memory for Bawi Tin Par. The 26-year-old left her native Chin State when she was nine and was resettled as a refugee in the United States city of Indianapolis.

ကွဲပြားသည့်ရှုမြင်ပုံများကြားက ကမ္ဘာ့တရားရုံးရောက် မြန်မာ့အရေး

Frontier
MYANMAR
December 10, 2019 

လွန်မင်းမန် နှင့် အင်ဒရူးနာခမ်ဆန် ရေးသည်။ 

နိုဘယ်ငြိမ်းချမ်းရေးဆုရှင် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်သည် နယ်သာလန်နိုင်ငံ၊ သည်ဟိတ်ဂ်မြို့ ၌ အ ပြည် ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာတရားရုံးကြားနာပွဲများကို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံကိုယ်စား ဦးဆောင်နေသည်။ ယင်းသည် မြန်မာနိုင် ငံ၏ ဂုဏ်သိက္ခာကို အဖတ်ဆယ်ခြင်းဖြစ်နိုင်သကဲ့သို့ ၎င်း၏ပုံရိပ်ကိုလည်း ပြန်လည် မွမ်း မံ ခြင်းဖြစ်နိုင် သည်ဖြစ်ရာ နိုင်ငံတကာသုံးသပ်သူများနှင့် ပြည်တွင်းရှိ လူထုအကြားတွင် အမြင်အ မျိုးမျိုး ဖြစ်ပေါ် လျက် ရှိသည်။

ရခိုင်ပြည်နယ်အတွင်းရှိ ရိုဟင်ဂျာများကို မျိုးတုန်းသတ်ဖြတ်သည်ဟု စွပ်စွဲကာ မွတ်စလင်နိုင်ငံတစ်ခုဖြစ်သည့် ဂမ်ဘီယာနိုင်ငံက အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ အစ္စလာမ်မစ်ပူးပေါင်းဆောင်ရွက် ရေးအဖွဲ့ကိုယ်စား နိုဝင်ဘာလ ၁၁ ရက်က အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာတရားရုံးတွင် မြန်မာကို တရားစွဲဆိုခဲ့သည်။

ရခိုင်ပြည်ရဲ့ အလှည့်အပြောင်း စမှတ်များ ( ၂၀၂၂- မှတ်တမ်း အချို့ )

 

• ရခိုင်ပြည်ရဲ့ အလှည့်အပြောင်း စမှတ်များ
  DMG ၊ စက်တင်ဘာ ၁၀
  (Review/ဆောင်းပါး) 

  
                                                                          

Good reason to tread carefully on Rohingya crisis

THE STRAITSTIMES
Opinion.
Tan Hui Yee
Thailand Correspondent

Published 15 Dec 2016

 
Layers of hatred and distrust in Myanmar need to be picked apart with care - and gradually

 
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak broke with the spirit of Asean camaraderie by joining a recent march protesting against Myanmar's treatment of its beleaguered Rohingya, a Muslim minority group within the predominantly Buddhist country. "We want to tell Aung San Suu Kyi enough is enough!" he told the leader of the fellow Asean member, in reference to alleged atrocities some have condemned as "genocide".

 
In contrast, former United Nations secretary-general Kofi Annan, tasked by Ms Suu Kyi with heading an advisory commission on the situation in Rakhine state where the Rohingya live, urged caution in using the word "genocide". Visiting Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi, meanwhile, offered humanitarian assistance without a public rebuke.

 

Good reason to tread carefully on Rohingya crisis

Jarkata Post
Tan Hui Yee

15.12.2016

 

 In this May 12 file photo, ethnic Rohingya sit at a refugee camp north of Sittwe, western Rakhine state, Myanmar. The long-persecuted Rohingya, many of whose families arrived in Myanmar generations ago, are treated as illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh and virtually excluded from the political process. (AP/Gemunu Amarasinghe )

Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak broke with the spirit of Asean camaraderie by joining a recent march protesting against Myanmar's treatment of its beleaguered Rohingya, a Muslim minority group within the predominantly Buddhist country. "We want to tell Aung San Suu Kyi enough is enough!" he told the leader of the fellow Asean member, in reference to alleged atrocities some have condemned as "genocide".

The Rohingya Crisis: Suu Kyi’s False Flag and Eth-nic Cleansing in Arakan By Md. Mahmudul Hasan

UN Security Council Adopts First-Ever Resolution on Myanmar

The Irrawaddy
By AFP 22 December 2022

A general view shows a United Nations Security Council meeting during a vote on a draft resolution on Myanmar at the UN headquarters in New York on Dec. 21, 2022. / AFP

UNITED NATIONS—The UN Security Council on Wednesday called for Myanmar’s junta to release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi as it adopted its first-ever resolution on the situation in the turmoil-ridden Southeast Asian country.

The 15-member council has been split on Myanmar for decades and was previously only able to agree on formal statements about the country, which has been under military rule since February 2021.

In Myanmar, Grief and Fury After an Attack on a School

The New York Times  

By Sui-Lee Wee
Sept. 23, 2022

 Eleven children died when soldiers fired on the school, where they said rebels had taken cover. “This is a war crime,” said a U.N. expert.

Damage from the Sept. 16 attack on a school in Let Yet Kone village, in the Sagaing region of central Myanmar. Credit...Social Media, via Reuters

 

 It was the noon hour, and children were playing outside the school, squeezing in their last few minutes of fun before lessons began. Suddenly, there came the roar of helicopters overhead.

Bhone Tayza, 7, looked up. His cousin shouted at him to run, and both of them dashed to hide in a hole in the trunk of a tamarind tree. Then Bhone Tayza remembered he had left his school bag in his classroom and ran back to get it. Soldiers started firing rockets.

Aung San Suu Kyi shares responsibility for Rohingya’s misery

TheJakartaPost
Kornelius Purba (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta
Wed, August 31, 2022

Looking for safety: Scores of Rohingya refugees, including women and children, were stranded in the waters off Aceh on Dec. 27, 2021. (The Jakarta Post/Amnesty International Indonesia

In a recent discussion to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the genocidal acts against the Rohingya minority by Myanmar’s military, civil society groups and Myanmar’s government in exile, the National Unity Government (NUG) urged Indonesia and ASEAN to take tougher actions against the Myanmar junta for the safety of the Rohingya people.

Myanmar coup: Week from March 30 to April 17, Opponents of junta unveil Suu Kyi-led unity cabinet

NIKKEI ASIA 

Nikkei staff writers
April 17, 2021

Group seeks recognition as 'legitimate government'; ASEAN summit rumblings intensify

Myanmar's detained leader Aung San Suu Kyi is named state counselor on her followers' list of new National Unity Government members.

YANGON/BANGKOK -- Myanmar's military on Feb. 1 detained State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint in the country's first coup since 1988, bringing an end to a decade of civilian rule.

The Suu Kyi-led National League for Democracy had won a landslide in a general election in November. But the military has claimed the election was marred by fraud.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI 'ATTACKS ON MUSLIMS NOT ETHNIC CLEANSING' - BBC NEWS

BBC News
24 Oct 2013

Aung San Suu Kyi has denied that attacks on Muslims in Myanmar amount to ethnic cleansing. But she says Myanmar has a long way to go before becoming fully democratic.

 

 Link : Here

Sanctions Won't Hurt Myanmar's Brutal Leaders, Activists Say. Here's What Could

TIME
CHAD DE GUZMAN
FEBRUARY 1, 2022 

Protesters hold banners and shout slogans while marching past Myanmar military soldiers who arrived to guard the Central Bank overnight on Feb. 15, 2021 in Yangon, Myanmar. The U.S. Embassy in Myanmar told Americans in Myanmar to "shelter in place" in an announcement after military movements and reports of possible interruptions to telecoms. Armored vehicles were seen on the streets of Myanmar's capital, but protesters turned out in force despite the military presence. Hkun Lat—Getty Images

The U.S. imposed new sanctions on senior leaders of Myanmar’s military junta on Monday—the eve of the one-year anniversary of their overthrow of the country’s democratically elected government and imprisonment of its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

The U.S., joined by the U.K., and Canada, announced sanctions on officials who helped prosecute Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of the National League for Democracy. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was arrested in the Feb. 1, 2021 coup. Myanmar courts have sentenced her to a total of six years in prison as of Jan. 10—but she faces additional charges.

ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်၏ သူရဲကောင်း ပုံရိပ် အဆုံးသတ် သွားသော နေ့ရက်များ

ဧရာဝတီ
By David Scott Mathieson
23 November 2018

၂၀၀၇ စက်တင်ဘာလ ဖိလစ်ပိုင်နိုင်ငံ မနီလာမြို့တော်ရှိ မြန်မာသံရုံးရှေ့ ဆန္ဒပြပွဲတွင် ဆန္ဒပြသူတဦးက ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်ပုံကို ကိုင်ဆောင်ထားစဉ် / Reuters

 မြန်မာခေါင်းဆောင် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်လောက် လူ့အခွင့်အရေး ဂုဏ်ပြုဆုနှင့် ချီးကျူးမှုများခံရသည့် အာ ရှ ခေါင်းဆောင် မရှိသလောက်ပင်။ အလားတူ လူ့အခွင့်အရေးနှင့် ဒီမိုကရေစီ သူရဲကောင်း ပုံရိပ်မှ လူသားမျိုး နွယ်အပေါ် ကျူးလွန်သော ရာဇဝတ်မှုများအလယ်တွင် မာရေကျောရေရှိပြီး ထီမထင်သော ခေါင်း ဆောင်အဖြစ် ရုတ်တရက် အရာကျသွားသူလည်း မရှိပေ။

ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာကိစၥ နိုင္ငံေတာ္အတိုင္ပင္ခံကို တရားစြဲနိုင္သလား အခ်က္အလက္ ရွာေဖြေရးအဖြဲ႕ဝင္နဲ႔ ေမးျမန္းခ်က္

 B B C

ဘီဘီစီၿမန္မာပိုင္း
၂ စက္တင္ဘာ ၂၀၁၉

အရပ္သားအစိုးရဝင္ေတြ လုပ္တာ တာဝန္ခံရမယ္ဆို

ျမန္မာျပည္ အေနာက္ပိုင္းက ရိုဟင္ဂ်ာေတြ သိန္းခ်ီ ထြက္ေျပးခဲ့ရတဲ့ကိစၥ ျဖစ္ခဲ့တာ ႏွစ္ႏွစ္ ရွိခဲ့ပါၿပီ။ လူ ခုနစ္ သိန္းေက်ာ္ အိုးအိမ္စြန္႔ခြာ ေျပးခဲ့ရၿပီး လူ တေသာင္းေလာက္ သတ္ျဖတ္ ခံခဲ့ရတယ္လို႔ ဆိုပါတယ္။

မႏွစ္ကစၿပီး ကုလသမဂၢ ဖြဲ႕ေပးတဲ့ အခ်က္အလက္ ရွာေဖြေရး အဖြဲ႕ က ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္ကို လူမ်ိဳးတုံးသတ္ ၿဖတ္မႈေတြ က်ဴးလြန္တယ္ ဆိုၿပီး စြပ္စြဲခဲ့ပါတယ္။

ဒီရွာေဖြေရးအဖြဲ႕က သူတို႔ လုပ္ငန္းစဥ္ေတြ အၿပီးသတ္ ေနခ်ိန္မွာပဲ ျမန္မာ အရပ္သား ေခါင္းေဆာင္ ေဒၚ ေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္ကို တရားစြဲေရး ျဖစ္လာနိုင္သလား ေျပာဆိုတာေတြ ရွိလာပါတယ္။

Argentine court to hear Myanmar Rohingya genocide case

FINANCIAL TIMES
John Reed, south-east Asia correspondent
28TH NOVEMBER 2021

Matter brought under universal jurisdiction allowing grave crimes to be tried anywhere

Rohingya refugees protest before the UNHCR office in Jakarta this month against the Myanmar military’s crackdown © BAGUS INDAHONO/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Argentina’s judiciary has agreed to open a genocide case brought by Rohingya victims of atrocities committed by Myanmar’s military, in a move hailed by victims and their advocates as a historic step toward bringing the country’s ruling generals to justice.

 The case was brought in Buenos Aires by a UK-based Rohingya group and six female survivors of the military’s 2017 crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where security forces killed thousands, committed rapes and drove about 750,000 members of the long-persecuted minority into Bangladesh.

The Rohingya's Quest for International Justice

THE WIRE
ANAYLIS

Saumya Uma
30/AUG/2021

This is the third in a series of articles on the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Rome Statute creating the ICC entered into force on July 1, 2002 and the court is now in its 20th year. To mark the occasion, The Wire is publishing a series of articles evaluating its performance over the past two decades. Read the first part here and the second part here.

The situation faced by the Rohingya is once again in the spotlight with the Bangladesh government reportedly commencing the COVID vaccination drive for Rohingya refugees on one hand and the Indian government terming them “a threat to national security” on the other. Last month, the Human Rights Watch minced no words in asking the Indian government to release the detained asylum seekers.

Rohingya to give testimony to Argentine court in push for Myanmar Army probe

BuenosAires Times

17 August 2021

Rohingya refugees expelled from Myanmar in a bloody crackdown are to testify before Argentine court. They will use the principle of "universal jurisdiction" to urge a full judicial investigation into allegations of war crimes committed against them. 

TUN KHIN, PRESIDENT OF THE BURMESE ROHINGYA ORGANISATION UK, PREPARES TO GIVE TESTIMONY. | TWITTER.COM/TUNKHIN80

Rohingya refugees expelled from Myanmar in a bloody crackdown are to testify in court for the first time Tuesday to urge a full judicial investigation into allegations of war crimes committed against them.

A military campaign in Myanmar in 2017 is believed to have killed thousands and forced some 750,000 members of the Muslim minority to flee to refugee camps in Bangladesh, bringing accounts of rape, murder and arson.