The Arakan Dream: The Search for Peace in Myanmar’s Rakhine State on the Verge of Civil War

TERRORISM MONITOR
Jack Broome
April 9, 2021

  Publication: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 19 Issue: 7

On March 23, the Arakan Army (AA)—an ethnic armed organization (EAO) based largely in Myanmar’s Rakhine State—finally released a statement condemning the military’s seizure of power in the February 1 coup. AA spokesperson, Khine Thu Kha, said that the AA was “together…with the people” and would “continue to go forward for the oppressed Rakhine people” (Dhaka Star, March 23).

Up until this point, the AA had held back from issuing any kind of response to the coup, despite an increasing number of EAOs having already declared their support for the civil disobedience movement (CDM). Some groups, such as the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), which is one of the AA’s alliance partners, have even begun to carry out attacks against the military in retaliation (Kachin News, March 12). Similarly, when the State Administrative Council (SAC), Myanmar’s new military government, announced on March 10 that it had removed the AA from the list of terrorist organizations, the rebel group made no formal acknowledgement of the move (The Irrawaddy, March 11).

OPINION - Political calculations to settle Myanmar crisis

AA

Ramdhan Muhaimin
JAKARTA, Indonesia
06.04.2021

Myanmar’s military coup has put Association of Southeast Asian Nation at crossroads

The writer teaches at the Center for Peace and Defense Studies (PSPP), University of Al-Azhar Indonesia.

Since the military forcibly seized control and forced the exit of the National League for Democracy (NLD) from the government on Feb. 1, the socio-political conditions in Southeast Asian nation Myanmar have again moved towards uncertainty.

The coup, led by the head of Tatmadaw -- the national armed forces – Gen. Min Aung Hlaing shortly after Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD won the election, has become a nightmare for people in the country.

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.

What next for Burma?

LONDON REVIEW OF BOOK

Thant Myint-U
18 MARCH 2021

With their recent coup d’état the Burmese army hoped for a surgical shift in power that would leave everything else more or less untouched. Instead, the coup has sent the economy into freefall, raised the possibility of international intervention and triggered a political earthquake. The fight is no longer over elections and constitutional amendments. One path leads to dictatorship without end. The other to a revolution whose exact shape is difficult to see. A crumbling economy may send the lives of tens of millions of poor and vulnerable people spiralling into disaster. And what unfolds in Burma may be impossible for the region, perhaps the world, to ignore: a failed state between India and China, at the heart of 21st-century Asia.

Tension had been mounting for weeks. Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) and the country’s de facto ruler since 2016, won a thumping victory in last November’s elections. Taking more than 60 per cent of the vote, she was set to consolidate her hold over Burmese politics, vowing to push for constitutional changes that would limit further the army’s once limitless powers.

A fight is brewing over Myanmar's seat at the United Nations

CNN
Richard Roth and Caitlin Hu, CNN

March 3, 2021

Video Here

(CNN)The fight for control of Myanmar has now officially arrived at the United Nations.

In a letter seen by CNN, Myanmar's UN Ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun has told the international body that he still represents Myanmar, after making an impassioned speech last week rejecting the country's military takeover.

Meanwhile, a deputy ambassador to the UN from Myanmar will claim that he is now the man the military authorities want to represent the country.

Both sides have sent the UN letters to make their case on official letterhead.

Anti-coup crackdown takes fatal turn

Bangkok Post

LARRY JAGAN
A SPECIALIST ON MYANMAR
PUBLISHED : 1 MAR 2021
NEWSPAPER SECTION: NEWS

Protesters run to contain tear gas fired by security forces in an attempt to disperse them during a demonstration against the military coup in Yangon yesterday. AFP

Myanmar's security forces have unleashed a concerted crackdown on the country's peaceful protesters leaving 23 dead and thousands injured throughout the country in the last two days. In planned pre-emptive strikes, the police moved ruthlessly to disperse and arrest protestors preparing to join yesterday general strike. "They used teargas, stun grenades and fired live ammunition indiscriminately into the crowds," said Soe Soe, a young university student at a protest site told the Bangkok Post.

Down but not out

Bangkok Post
NEWSPAPER SECTION: NEWS
WRITER: ANUCHA CHAROENPO
PUBLISHED : 1 MAR 2021

NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained since Feb 1 but her whereabouts are still unknown. (Photo by Chanat Katanyu)

Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) par­ty, and tarnished de­mo­cracy heroine of that country, hit the headlines on Feb 1 when she was arrested and deposed by the Myanmar military, aka Tatmadaw, in its coup.

Ms Suu Kyi along with other members of her party was accused of taking part in the Nov 2020 general election "fraud". Myanmar police have pressed several charges against her following the coup led by armed forces chief Min Aung Hlaing, including breaching import and export laws, and possession of unlawful communication devices.

ကုလသမဂ္ဂဆိုင်ရာ မြန်မာသံအမတ်ကြီး ဦးကျော်မိုးထွန်း NLD အစိုးရကိုသာ ဆက်လက်ကိုယ်စားပြု

VOA
ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာဌာန)
26 ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ၊ 2021

သံအမတ်ကြီး ဦးကျော်မိုးထွန်: 

ကုလသမဂ္ဂဆိုင်ရာ မြန်မာသံအမတ်ကြီး ဦးကျော်မိုးထွန်းက ဒီကနေ့ကျင်းပတဲ့ ကုလသမဂ္ဂ အထွေထွေညီ လာခံမှာ NLD အစိုးရကိုသာ ဆက်ပြီး ကိုယ်စားပြုကြောင်း ပြောသွားပါတယ်။ သံအမတ်ကြီးရဲ့ မြန်မာလိုပြော ဆိုချက် အပြည့်အစုံကတော့ -

Why did the Myanmar military overthrow the NLD government?

The Daily Star

Mohammad Abdur Razzak
February 16, 2021

File photo of Min Aung Hlaing with Aung San Suu Kyi. Photo: AP

Myanmar started its democratic journey in 2011 with a quasi-civilian government headed by the retired General U Thein Sein. Before becoming President, he worked as a member in the military junta's State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) in 1997. Later, he was made the Prime Minister in General Than Shwe's cabinet (2007 to 2011). Ahead of the general elections in 2010, General U Thein Sein, along with 22 other military officials, were sent on retirement from the Army to form and lead the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). USDP won the majority in a controversially contested election in 2010. General U Thein Sein was sworn in as the 8th President of Myanmar on March 30, 2011.

Myanmar's ruling NLD party says military statement 'suitable explanation'

THE Star ONLINE  

Saturday, 30 Jan 2021

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's ruling National League for Democracy Party (NLD) on Saturday said it accepted a military statement on the situation in the country as a suitable explanation, after the armed forces said it would protect and follow the constitution.

Myo Nyunt, spokesman for Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling party, which won a November election in a landslide, told Reuters the party wanted the military to be an organisation "that accepts people's desire regarding the election".

(Reporting by Shoon Naing; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by William Mallard)

 

Link : Here

 

လူ႔အခြင္႔အေရးအေျခအေန တိုးတက္ေအာင္လုပ္ဖို႔ NLD ကို HRW တိုက္တြန္း

VOA
ဗြီအိုုေအ (ျမန္မာဌာန)
၀င္းမင္း
14 ဇန္နဝါရီ၊ 2021

 

NLD ပါတီ႐ံုးခ်ဳပ္ေရွ႕တြင္ ေအာင္ပြဲခံေနသည့္ ေထာက္ခံသူမ်ား။ (၉ ႏိုဝင္ဘာ ၂၀၂၀)

NLD အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီအဖြဲ႔ခ်ဳပ္ အစိုးရအေနနဲ႔႔ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြႀကီးႀကီးမားမား အႏိုင္ရထားတဲ့အခြင့္ အ လမ္း ကိုအသံုးျပဳၿပီး၊ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအေျခအေန ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ တိုးတက္ေကာင္းမြန္လာေအာင္ လုပ္သင့္ ၿပီလို႔၊ HRW ႏိုင္ငံတကာလူ႔အခြင့္အေရးအဖဲြ႕ႀကီးက ေတာင္းဆိုလိုက္ပါတယ္။

ျမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးကိုဖိႏွိပ္တဲ့ဥပေဒေတြကို ျပင္ဆင္၊ဖ်က္သိမ္းဖို႔နဲ႔ လက္ေတြ႔ ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္မူေတြ ဆက္မျဖစ္ေစဖို႔ လုပ္စရာ အမ်ားႀကီးက်န္ေနေသးတယ္လို႔လည္း HRW က ေျပာပါတယ္။

AA ရခိုင္လက္နက္ကိုင္အဖဲြ႔ ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးခဲ့တဲ့ NLD ပါတီ ဝင္ သံုးဦးနဲ႔ တပ္မေတာ္သား သံုးဦး

VOA

ဗြီအိုေအ (ျမန္မာပုိင္း)

01 ဇန္နဝါရီ၊ 2021 

 

AA ရခိုင္လက္နက္ကိုင္အဖဲြ႔ ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးခဲ့တဲ့ လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္သုံးဦးနဲ႔ တပ္မေတာ္သားသုံးဦး 

AA ရခိုင္လက္နက္ကိုင္အဖဲြ႔ ျပန္လႊတ္ေပးခဲ့တဲ့ လႊတ္ေတာ္ကိုယ္စားလွယ္သုံးဦးႏွင့္ တပ္မေတာ္သားသုံးဦး။ (ဓာတ္ပုံ -တပ္မေတာ္သတင္းမွန္ ျပန္ၾကားေရးအဖြဲ႕ - ဇန္နဝါရီ ၀၁၊ ၂၀၂၁)

Arakan Army blames NLD, UEC for election impasse

mizzima

By Mizzima
01 January 2021 

Photo: Myanmar State Counsellor Office

The Arakan Army and politicians blamed Myanmar’s ruling party and electoral authorities Thursday for the failure to hold elections in Rakhine State, as analysts warned that holding a vote will be critical to keeping a fragile ceasefire going into 2021, RFA reported.

Amid Fragile Ceasefire, Frustration Over Missed Election in Myanmar’s Rakhine State

Radio Free Asia ( RFA ) 

2020-12-31 

People wearing face shields and face masks to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus queue to vote at a polling station in Rakhine state, Nov. 8, 2020.

 

Rakhine’s ethnic army and politicians blamed Myanmar’s ruling party and electoral authorities Thursday for the failure to hold elections in the war-torn state, as analysts warned that holding a vote will be critical to keeping a fragile ceasefire going into 2021.

After a violent 2020 in Myanmar’s westernmost state, Rakhine residents were largely left out of voting in Nov. 8 general elections, with only a quarter of the state’s registered voters able to go to polls after authorities scrapped the election, citing security concerns.

AA နှင့်တပ်မတော်၊ တပ်မတော်နှင့် NLD ရိုဟင်ဂျာတို့အရေး

ရန်ကုန်ခေတ်သစ်
24 December 2020

 

 မြန်မာပြည်မှာ မျက်စိမှိတ်ပြီးတော့ အမှောင်ထဲမှာ ဗေဒင်ဟောရသလိုပဲ။ တပ်က AAနဲ့ တွေ့နေပြီ မူဆလင် ရိုဟင်ဂျာဆိုတဲ့ စကားလုံးကို စကားလုံးကို စသုံးတယ်။ ဆိုတော့ တပ်ကဘယ်လိုသွားမလဲ။ NLD အစိုးရက ဘယ် လိုသွားမလဲ။ ဗန်းစကားနဲ့ပြောမယ်ဆိုရင် ရွှီးနေတာလား"

အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ တရားရုံးICJ က ၎င်းတို့ချမှတ်ထားသော ကြားဖြတ်အမိန့်များကို အကောင် အထည်ဖော် ခြင်းရှိ၊ မရှိစောင့်ကြည့်စိစစ်မည့် ကော်မတီတစ်ရပ် (ad Hoc committee) ကို ဖွဲ့စည်းလိုက်ကြောင်း ICJ က ဒီဇင်ဘာလ ၂၁ ရက်နေ့က သတင်းထုတ်ပြန်သည်။

တပ္မေတာ္ႏွင့္ AA ပန္ဆန္းတြင္ ေဆြးေႏြး

ဧရာဝတီ

နန္းလြင္ႏွင္းပြင့္
10 December 2020

၂၀၁၆ ခုႏွစ္က မိုင္ဂ်ာယန္ တြင္ျပဳလုပ္ခဲ့ေသာ ညီလာခံသို႔ တက္ေရာက္ခဲ့ေသာ AA အဖြဲ႕မ်ား / ဧရာဝတီ

တပ္မေတာ္ ႏွင့္ ရကၡိဳင္စစ္တပ္ (AA) တို႔၏ ႏွစ္ဖက္ ကိုယ္စားလွယ္မ်ားသည္ “ဝ” ျပည္ေသြးစည္းညီညြတ္ေရး တပ္မေတာ္ (UWSA) ထိန္းခ်ဳပ္နယ္ေၿမ ပန္ဆန္းၿမိဳ႕တြင္ ဒီဇင္ဘာ ၉ ရက္ေန႔ကေတြ႕ဆုံေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကၾကာင္း သတင္းရရွိသည္။

ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ေအာင္ျမင္ျခင္းႏွင့္ NLD အနိုင္ရသည့္အ ေပၚ ျပည္ပနိုင္ငံအႀကီးအကဲမ်ားႏွင့္ သံတမန္မ်ားက ဝမ္းေျမာက္ ဂုဏ္ယူေၾကာင္း ေျပာ

မဇၩိမ
14 November 2020 

ဓာတ္ပုံ - သက္ကို/မဇၩိမ

အေထြေထြ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲ ေအာင္ျမင္စြာ က်င္းပနိုင္ခဲ့ျခင္းႏွင့္ အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္ (NLD) က အနိုင္ရသည့္အေပၚ ျပည္ပနိုင္ငံအႀကီးအကဲမ်ားႏွင့္ သံ႐ုံးမ်ားက ဝမ္းေျမာက္ေၾကာင္းႏွင့္ ဂုဏ္ယူေၾကာင္း သဝဏ္လႊာမ်ား ေပးပို႔ခဲ့ၾကသည္။

ျမန္မာနိုင္ငံဆိုင္ရာ ၿဗိတိန္ သံအမတ္ႀကီး မစၥတာ ဒန္ခ်က္က “‌အေထြေထြ ေရြး‌ေကာက္ပြဲမွာ အနိုင္ရရွိခဲ့တဲ့ ေဒၚေအာင္ဆန္းစုၾကည္နဲ႔ အမ်ိဳးသားဒီမိုကေရစီ အဖြဲ႕ခ်ဳပ္တို႔အတြက္ ကၽြန္ေတာ္ ဂုဏ္ယူပါတယ္။ မဲေပးသူ အေရ အတြက္ မ်ားျပားျခင္းနဲ႔ ေရြးေကာက္ပြဲအေပၚ စိတ္အားထက္သန္မႈေတြဟာ ျမန္မာ့ဒီမိုကေရစီ လမ္း ေၾကာင္း မွာ အေရးပါတဲ့မွတ္တိုင္အျဖစ္ အထင္အရွားက်န္ခဲ့မွာပါ” ဟု ေျပာသည္။

Suu Kyi's party says it won landslide victory in Myanmar polls

FRANCH 24  

Yangon (AFP)

09/11/2020

A car carrying supporters of the National League for Democracy wave flags in front of the party's office in Mandalay Ye Naing Ye AFP

 

Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) said Monday it was confident of winning a landslide victory in Myanmar as official results trickled in following the weekend's coronavirus-disrupted election.

Millions lined up for hours to cast their ballots on Sunday -- only the second national election since the country emerged from outright military rule in 2011.

Aung San Suu Kyi expected to keep power in Myanmar election

The Guardian  

Rebecca Ratcliffe
South-east Asia correspondent
Sun 8 Nov 2020

‘Mother Suu’ remains popular despite coronavirus, conflict in Rakhine state and genocide charges

Voters wearing protective face masks line up to cast their ballots at a polling station in Yangon, Myanmar. Photograph: Thein Zaw/AP

Voters across Myanmar have gone to the polls for an election that is expected to return to power the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, who remains hugely popular at home despite allegations of a genocide that have destroyed her reputation abroad.

Queues of people waited in line, in some cases for hours, to cast their ballots on Sunday in the country’s second general election since the end of full military rule. Most were wearing masks as a precaution against the coronavirus. The country has confirmed more than 60,000 infections, the majority of which were reported since mid-August.

Rohingyas Brace For The Worst During Myanmar’s Election As Suu Kyi Takes The Lead

Transcontinental Times
By Tanbirul Miraj Ripon
November 8, 2020

The future of democracy and the fate of the Rohingya refugees hangs in the balance

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

MYANMAR. Yangon: The country’s general election took place today. Due to COVID-19, voting has been completed in accordance with health regulations. Because of this, voting is still going on in some areas. A majority of 322 seats are needed to form a government. The National League For Democracy (NLD) and the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) have received the majority of the votes so far. Early results show the NLD have already secured 13 Seats, with 33,677 votes, and the USDP with currently zero seats, but 12,133 votes.