China is not happy about Myanmar’s coup

The Economist

Banyan
Jul 10th 2021

Yet it is betting that the generals will prevail

Almost as soon as the tanks rolled into Naypyidaw, Myanmar’s capital, in February, rumours began circulating on social media about how China would respond. It is a sign of its influence: China is probably the only country that could coax Myanmar’s generals to the negotiating table. The speculation was laid to rest only in June, when the Chinese embassy referred to Min Aung Hlaing, the Burmese commander-in-chief, as Myanmar’s “leader”. The next day, China convened a meeting of foreign ministers from asean, a club of South-East Asian nations, and included the military government’s representative. With their putsch, the generals are trying to wind the clock back to 2010, when they still ran the show. China appears to be adjusting its calendar.

Civilian Militias Flourish as Myanmar’s Post-Coup Turmoil Deepens

THE I DIPLOMAT

Sebastian Strangio
June 28, 2021

Recent months have seen the emergence of a raft of new armed civilian militias, further complicating the country’s political crisis.

Myanmar’s political crisis is entering a new and more complex phase as a raft of new armed militias arise to resist the country’s military junta, according to the latest report from the International Crisis Group (ICG). Since the military’s seizure of power on February 1, the junta’s crackdown on protesters and the broader civilian population has prompted violent resistance, including the formation of civilian militias in several corners of the country.

“The swift emergence of militias, and their capacity to evolve from loosely coordinated groups of local people into more structured, better armed, and sustainably funded forces, likely marks a new phase of Myanmar’s decades-old civil war,” states the ICG report, which was released yesterday.

Myanmar’s coup is uniting a country riven by ethnic divisions. Will it last?

Vox

Jen Kirbyjen.kirby@vox.com 

 May 12, 2021, 

Protesters and activists faced a reckoning about Myanmar’s past decade of civilian rule. Now they say they are fighting for a real federal democracy.

Protesters make the three-finger salute during a demonstration against the military coup in downtown Yangon on May 6. STR/AFP via Getty Images

Su Thit has a table in a corner by the window in her home. She no longer sits there at night. “You never know when the bullets will fly,” she says.

She fears the Myanmar military might shoot at random. At 8 pm, when people still bang pots and pans in protest, security forces will sometimes fire at the sounds — with slingshots, stones, bullets.

‘Piles of bodies’ seen in Myanmar as violence escalates: reports

NEW YORK POST

Kerry J. Byrne
April 10, 2021

Young protesters flash a three-fingered symbol of resistance in Yangon, Myanmar on April 10, 2021.AP

“Piles of bodies” were seen in one city in Myanmar after another gruesome attack by the country’s security forces against its own people.

Dozens of people were killed in the city of Bago Friday, “leaving piles of bodies in pagodas and on school grounds” in the deadliest single incident in Myanmar since a coup toppled the elected government Feb. 1, according to Radio Free Asia and other reports.

Myanmar’s post-coup civilian death toll tops 700

TAIPEI TIMES

AFP, YANGON, Myanmar 

Mon, Apr 12, 2021 page1

A security guard was wounded in a bomb blast outside a military-owned bank in Myanmar’s second-biggest city yesterday morning, as the civilian death toll from the junta’s brutal crackdown on dissent topped more than 700 at the weekend.

The country has been in turmoil since the military removed Burmese State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi on Feb. 1.

Myawaddy Bank’s biggest branch in Mandalay was targeted yesterday morning and a security guard was injured in the explosion, local media reported.

A demonstrator carrying a homemade weapon gives the three-finger salute at an anti-coup protest in Mandalay, Myanmar, yesterday. Photo: EPA-EFE

The bank is one of scores of military-controlled businesses that have faced boycott pressure since the coup, with many customers demanding to withdraw their savings.

US slaps additional sanctions on Myanmar over coup

THE HILL
TAL AXELROD -
04/08/21

© Getty Images

The Biden administration slapped additional sanctions on Myanmar on Thursday over the military junta’s February coup.

The Treasury Department said in a statement that its Office of Foreign Assets Control is instituting penalties on Myanma Gems Enterprise (MGE), a government-owned firm that oversees all gemstone activities in the country, a lucrative industry that helps fund the military regime.

“Today’s action highlights Treasury’s commitment to denying the Burmese military sources of funding, including from key state-owned enterprises throughout Burma,” said Andrea Gacki, director of the Office of the Foreign Assets Control, using another name for the country. “The United States will continue to work tirelessly, including with partners throughout the region and the world, to support the restoration of democracy and rule of law in Burma and to bring accountability to those who seek to undermine these values.”

ASEAN on Myanmar’s Coup: Revisiting Cold War Diplomacy on Cambodia

new mandala

DEEPAK NAIR - 

22 MAR, 2021

A battle for international recognition between Myanmar’s junta and Aung San Suu Kyi’s deposed civilian government is underway. The opposition in the incarnation of the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH) has urged the international community not to recognize the junta, while the junta has charged the CRPH as “illegal” and guilty of “high treason.”

The battle lines have been drawn with the extraordinary address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) by Myanmar’s Permanent Representative U Kyaw Moe Tun. In his speech, Kyaw Moe Tun broke ranks with the junta and delivered a message from the CRPH that urged international condemnation of the coup and denial of recognition for the junta-led State Administration Council regime.

Who is Myanmar's coup leader and what does he want?

NIKKEI ASIA
Nicholas Coppel

February 23, 2021 

Time the world started asking questions about General Min Aung Hlaing

The commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, pictured in July 2018: who is he, what is he like and what is he up to? © AP

Nicholas Coppel is a retired Australian diplomat who served as ambassador to Myanmar from 2015 to 2018.

In the Western world's rush to condemn Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi for the forced exodus of more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims from Myanmar's Rakhine State into Bangladesh, little was said about the role and responsibilities of Myanmar's commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

The Regional Implications of Myanmar’s Coup

Joshua Kurlantzick
Aspenia Online
February 12, 2021

Myanmar Commander in Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing salutes as he attends an event marking the anniversary of Martyrs' Day at the Martyrs' Mausoleum in Yangon on July 19, 2016. Soe Zeya Tun/File Photo/Reuters

The coup in Myanmar in early February, the country’s first in more than three decades, has reshaped Myanmar’s political landscape. The country had been on a shaky path toward some kind of democracy, following the 2015 election landslide for Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), and its repeat victory in the November 2020 national elections. Now, the coup has taken Myanmar back to some of its darkest days.

What Myanmar’s Coup Means For The Rohingya

WAMU

Ashley Westerman
NPR | FEB 11

Rohingya refugees walk at the Balukhali refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, on Feb. 2. Rohingya refugees from Myanmar living in camps in Bangladesh are condemning the military coup in their homeland and saying it makes them more fearful to return. A brutal counterinsurgency operation by Myanmar’s military in 2017 drove more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to neighboring Bangladesh.Shafiqur Rahman / AP

This month’s military coup in Myanmar has made an already dire situation for Rohingya refugees even worse, say human rights activists. Now, prospects are even more unlikely for hundreds of thousands to return to Myanmar from sprawling camps in neighboring Bangladesh.

“The coup is obviously good for no one,” says Matthew Smith, cofounder of the human rights advocacy group Fortify Rights. “But for the Rohingya, the risk is heightened. This is the military regime responsible for the atrocities over many, many years.”

Remarks by President Biden on the Administration’s Response to the Coup in Burma

THE WHITE HOUSE
SPEECHES AND REMARKS

FEBRUARY 10, 2021 

South Court Auditorium

Eisenhower Executive Office Building

BRIEFING ROOM

1:22 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you for being here on short notice. I’m going to be very brief, but I — because the Vice President and I are heading over the Pentagon for an extensive briefing and to make some comments, as we did at the State Department. So I’m going to be going from here to there, and you’ll get me there as well.

I want to say good afternoon, everyone. I wanted to give you an update on the latest regarding our response to the military coup in Burma.

As you know, the assault on Burma’s transition to democracy remains an issue of deep bipartisan concern. We’ve consulted at length, for example, with Senator McConnell, who’s had a very keen interest in this, and his team. And we welcomed their helpful insights.

What Myanmar’s coup could mean for the Rohingya and other persecuted minorities

Vox

Jen Kirbyjen.kirby@vox.com
Feb 2, 2021, 

The takeover is terrible for Myanmar. It may be worse for the country’s most vulnerable. 

Rohingya refugees are relocated to the flood-prone island Bhashan Char in Chittagong, Bangladesh, on January 30, 2021. Rehman Asad/NurPhoto via Getty Images

 

The Myanmar military overthrew its civilian government in a coup on Monday, ending the facade of democratic rule and creating an even more uncertain future for human rights in the country — especially the persecuted Rohingya and other ethnic minorities.

The aftermath of the coup is still unfolding, but human rights advocates and experts told me they are increasingly fearful of what might happen to anyone who challenges the regime.

“The options available to the Burmese people are very, very limited because I don’t think there’s much influence inside the country,” Mabrur Ahmed, founder and director of Restless Beings, a UK-based human rights group, told me. (Burma is the country’s former name; the military junta changed it to Myanmar in 1989, but many, especially those in the pro-democracy movement, still use the older name.) There is not much people can do besides protest, Ahmed said — though any protests, he added, would likely be met with violence from the military.