Myanmar military implausibly plays the Rohingya card

ASIA TIME

BERTIL LINTNER

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

Coup regime bids to deflect rising international condemnation by suggesting it may allow Rohingya refugees to return home

Rohingya refugees scuffle as they wait to receive aid in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh September 25, 2017. Image: Agencies

CHIANG MAI – After grabbing power in a February 1 coup that has been resisted by massive demonstrations and condemned by the US, EU and UN, Myanmar’s military regime would appear to have few cards to play to win acceptance.

But one the coup-makers amazingly think they can play is the plight of Muslim Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, who were driven across the border during brutal military campaigns in 2016-17, and those who have remained behind in Myanmar.

Shortly after overthrowing Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government, the new military regime sent a letter to Bangladesh’s government through its ambassador in Myanmar to explain their reasons for the coup, namely unsubstantiated allegations of fraud at the November 2020 election Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) resoundingly won.

Myanmar: UN office expresses ‘strong concern’ at use of force against demonstrators

UN News

Peace and Security

9 February 2021

                       Unsplash/Kyle PetzerA pagoda at dawn in downtown Yangon, the commercial hub of Myanmar.

The United Nations in Myanmar has voiced strong concerns over Tuesday’s reported use of force by security forces against demonstrators protesting the military takeover and arrests of elected leaders and politicians.

I call on the security forces to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression”, Ola Almgren, UN Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator in Myanmar, said in a news release. 

“The use of disproportionate force against demonstrators is unacceptable”, he added. 

The UN office in the country cited reports from capital Nay Pyi Taw, Mandalay and other cities, of numerous demonstrators having been injured, some of them seriously, by security forces in connection with the ongoing protests. 

Myanmar’s Generals Reshape Regional Political Dynamics

THE I DIPLOMAT

Luke Hunt
February 10, 2021

Min Aung Hlaing’s seizure of power in Myanmar has shaken up the region’s diplomatic balance.

The third coup d’etat in Myanmar since the country’s independence in 1948 has installed a leader who is already named for an alleged genocide and a long list of atrocities linked to the ethnic cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya four years ago.

Sen. Gen. Aung Min Hlaing is the type of leader ASEAN can do without. Hearings into the atrocities at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) are continuing and this is just one factor regional leaders are struggling with since his rise to power through the barrel of gun.

Promises that this junta will be “different” from its predecessors and that multiparty elections will be held in a year just don’t cut it. New Zealand has already suspended high-level contacts and imposed a travel ban on its military leaders.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is demanding the coup be reversed.

Regional dynamics have changed since Myanmar’s generals enacted political reforms in 2011, backed by then U.S. President Barack Obama, and the new junta is now threatening to re-write the region’s diplomatic playbook.

Military coup in Myanmar

HAWK NEWSPAPER

Devin Yingling

February 9, 2021

What is the recent political history of Myanmar? 

After gaining independence from Britain in 1948, Myanmar, then known as Burma, was ruled by military forces until 2012. In 2015, former State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi’s, National League for Democracy (NLD) won a landslide election, ushering in a civilian-led government. 

Myanmar held a general election on Nov. 8, 2020, continuing the democratic electoral process. One thousand one hundred seventy one national, state and regional seats were up for election, according to the Myanmar Times. Suu Kyi’s government won in a landslide victory. The NLD’s primary opposition in the election was the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). 

How China has Tightened its Grip on Myanmar’s Economy

NEWS18

FEBRUARY 09, 2021

While China Was Rapidly Making Inroads Into Myanmar, Indian Economic Presence In Myanmar Has Been More Or Less Limited To The 2010 Trade Statistics Level, A Bilateral Trade Over 11 Times Smaller Than China.

The bilateral trade between Myanmar and China in 2010 was US$1.22 billion. China’s share in Myanmar’s imports was 19.81%, while it accounted for just 2.93% of Myanmar’s exports. Back then, Thailand was the biggest trading partner with US$3.65 billion in bilateral trade. But it was largely export driven with 35.83% share of Myanmar’s total exports, while Singapore was at number three with US$1.58 billion of bilateral trade, according to the World Bank data.

India’s bilateral trade with Myanmar stood at US$1.12 billion and it was largely import driven. Myanmar’s import share with India was just 3.32%, while India’s share in Myanmar’s export was 10.80%.

Beijing wins when democracy is extinguished

The Telegraph

 CON COUGHLIN
DEFENCE EDITOR

10 February 2021

Burma’s military coup plays into the hands of a Chinese regime intent on expanding its influence

First Hong Kong, now Burma. There is an alarming new tendency that, whenever an Asian country seeks to embrace the values of democratic rule, it invariably ends with pro-democracy activists being imprisoned and abused.

Burma’s experiment with democracy is a relatively new phenomenon, dating back only to the country’s 2008 constitution, under which the military junta agreed to permit a limited form of democratic rule. Now even these modest reforms, under which the veteran campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi held the quasi-presidential position of “state counsellor”, have been extinguished after the military, responding to her National League for Democracy’s (NLD) clear victory in last November’s elections, once again seized control of the country.

A new Biden

ahramonline

Abdel-Moneim Said,

Tuesday 9 Feb 2021 

A week ago, on her nightly CNN interview programme “Amanpour & Company”, Christiane Amanpour interviewed the director of a Moscow-based political think tank. The subject was Alexey Navalny, the political dissident who has just returned to Russia from Germany where he was treated for poisoning allegedly administered at the order of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Enumerating the mass demonstrations that have erupted around the country in support of Navalny, Amanpour asked whether this was a tipping point for Russian public opinion. Striking a rather aloof pose, the Russian political scientist did not deny the wave of demonstrations, but he stressed that it reflected only a small sliver of Russia’s population of almost 150 million.

Amanpour then asked his opinion on the global outcry against the Russian authorities and Putin personally, censuring their treatment of Navalny and crackdown on the opposition. Amanapour’s guest countered that the statements of condemnation did not come from the “world” but rather from the handful of countries that make up the Western coalition. In fact, he said, most other countries of the world were either sympathetic to Russia or preferred to remain silent on a matter about which, according to him, the available information is inaccurate and biased.

ၿမန္မာ အာဏာသိမ္း စစ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြအေပၚ အေမရိကန္ ဒဏ္ခတ္မႈေတြ ခ်မွတ္လိုက္ျခင္း

VOA

ဗြီအိုေအ (ျမန္မာပုိင္း
11 ေဖေဖာ္၀ါရီ၊ 2021

ၿမန္မာႏိုင္ငံမွာ အာဏာသိမ္းယူခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ စစ္တပ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြအေပၚ အေမရိကန္ျပည္ေထာင္စုက ဒဏ္ခတ္ပိတ္ဆို႔ အေရးယူလုိက္ေၾကာင္း အေမရိကန္သမၼတ ဂ်ဳိးဘုိင္ဒန္က ေဒသစံေတာ္ခ်ိန္ ဗုဒၶဟူးေန႔ မြန္းလဲြပိုင္းမွာ ေၾကညာပါတယ္။

ဒါ့အျပင္ ျမန္မာ့တပ္မေတာ္က လက္ရွိသိမ္းယူထားတဲ့ အာဏာကို အျမန္ဆုံး ျပန္စြန္႔လႊတ္ဖို႔ကိုလည္း သမၼတ ဘုိင္ဒန္က ထပ္ေလာင္း တုိက္တြန္းလိုက္ၿပီး ၊ ႏိုဝင္ဘာ (၈)ရက္ေန႔မွာ ျပည္သူေတြက သူတို႔ဆႏၵအတုိင္း ထုတ္ေဖၚမဲေပးခဲ့ၾကတဲ့ ေရြးေကာက္ပဲြ ရလဒ္ကို အသိမွတ္ျပဳ ေလးစားလုိက္နာဖို႔ကိုလည္း သမၼတ ဘိုင္ဒန္က တိုက္တြန္းလိုက္ပါတယ္။

စစ်အစိုးရအပေါ်ပိတ်ဆို့ဒဏ်ခတ်မှုသမ္မတဘိုင်ဒင်ကြေညာ

လွတ်လပ်တဲ့အာရှအသံ ( RFA )

မြန်မာဌာန | သတင်းများ
နန္ဒာချမ်း
2021-02-10
မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ အာဏာသိမ်းစစ်ခေါင်းဆောင်တွေကို အမေရိကန်က ပိတ်ဆို့ဒဏ်ခတ် အရေးယူမှုတွေ စတင် လိုက်တဲ့အကြောင်း အမေရိကန်သမ္မတ ဂျိုး ဘိုင်ဒင် (Joe Biden) ကိုယ်တိုင် ကြေညာလိုက်ပါတယ်။

Biden announces US will sanction Myanmar's military leaders following coup

CNN

By Jennifer Hansler,
February 10, 2021

Washington (CNN)President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced that the United States will sanction Myanmar's military leaders after last week's coup in the country.

In brief remarks, the President said he had approved a new executive order allowing the United States to "immediately sanction the military leaders who directed the coup, their business interests as well as close family members." He said they would identify targets of those sanctions this week.

"The US government is taking steps to prevent the generals from improperly having access to the one billion dollars in Burmese government funds held in the United States," Biden noted.

Rohingya children too deserve a meaningful future

Financial Express

Rezaul Karim Chowdhury
February 08, 2021

While visiting a few Rohingya camps in Cox’s Bazar recently, this author met a young man there. He used to go to a Bangladeshi university a few years back but had to leave studies due to financial constraints when a new influx of Rohingya refugees took place in August 2017. The youth is currently working in Rohingya camps with hundreds of others of his age through a network to educate the Rohingya children.

We found a few Rohingya girls who can speak English quite well and are working to protect rights of Rohingya girls and women in the camps where their compatriots have been provided with shelter.

Throgh activities on Twitter,we have been in regular contact with 10-15 well-educated Rohingya youths. They live in the camps and regularly post updates on the current situation. This author also knows a few Rohingya youths who can take pictures like professional photographers. Some even write poems and stories that are published in international magazines.

Rohingya Continue To Suffer Even After Escaping To Supposed Safe Land – OpEd

eurasiareview  

Bahauddin Foizee
February 9, 2021

Displaced Rohingya in Myanmar. Photo Credit: Tasnim News Agency

The horrible scenes of hungry, tired and almost lifeless Rohingya refugees entering Bangladesh shocked the world in 2017. Even today, many Rohingyas are attempting to make the journey from Myanmar to Bangladesh, believing that a foreign land (Bangladesh) would be safer than their homes (Myanmar). Although they aren’t migrating in large numbers now unlike what they did in 2017, their journey today is as unsafe, horrifying and terrible as it was three years earlier.

It is important to remind the international community, global civil society – as well as those human rights groups and humanitarian organizations not associated with the Rohingya crisis – about how horrible and terrible the journey was.

Singaporean Withdraws From Myanmar Military-Linked Tobacco Venture

THE I DIPLOMAT

By Sebastian Strangio
February 09, 2021

A week on, the military coup is exacting an increasingly steep economic cost.

The Singaporean businessman Lim Kaling has become the latest foreign investor to cut his ties to Myanmar’s military following the latter’s coup d’etat on February 1.

Lim, the co-founder of Hong Kong-listed gaming group Razer, was a minority shareholder in Virginia Tobacco Company through RMH Singapore Pte Ltd, which owns 49 percent of the Myanmar firm. The rest of Virginia Tobacco is owned by Myanmar Economic Holdings (MEHL), one of two tentacular conglomerates run by Myanmar’s military, or Tatmadaw.

In a statement issued Tuesday, Lim announced that he would divest himself of his holding in Virginia Tobacco because of “grave concern” over the political situation in the country. He added that he was “exploring options for the responsible disposal of this stake.”

Why Burma matters

philStar Global
Veronica Pedrosa
(The Philippine Star )
February 9, 2021

Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people are gathered and marching in towns across Burma/Myanmar as they did in 1988 and then in 2007. They did not succeed in their protests then, and they may not succeed this time, but they are here, now.

Perhaps, by the time this is published, the situation will have been resolved in some way. What began with a coup by the head of the military has rapidly developed from a few demonstrations calling for a civil disobedience campaign into a nationwide uprising, spreading wider with more and more people joining the crowds that are bringing together people of all backgrounds and professions.

They demand the release of all those detained; they reject the military coup; to achieve true democracy they demand the establishment of a federal democratic union and the abolition of the 2008 constitution that was supervised by the military as a step towards the so called “roadmap to democracy.”

And so in war-torn Kachin state which borders with China’s Yunnan province, young people are marching, dressed in black to signal that the movement isn’t only about the ouster of the National League for Democracy (the party of ousted State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi), but also the need for a radical change to the political system itself.

စစ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှု နဲ့ နိုင်ငံ့ရှေ့ရေး

VOA 

ဗွီအိုအေ (မြန်မာဌာန) 
ဦးကျော်ဇံသာ
10 ဖေဖော်ဝါရီ၊ 2021

A police officer (C) aims a gun during clashes with protesters taking part in a demonstration against the military coup in Naypyidaw on February 9, 2021. (Photo by STR / AFP)

ဒီတပတ်မြန်မာ့အရေးသုံးသပ်ချက်အစီအစဉ်မှာ အခုတလော မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ ဖြစ်ပွားနေတဲ့ စစ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှု နဲ့ ပတ်သက်ပြီး မြန်မာနိုင်ငံဆိုင်ရာ အမေရိကန်သံအမတ်ဟောင်းလည်းဖြစ်၊ အမေရိကန် NDI (National Democratic Institute) ခေါ် ဒီမိုကရေစီဗိမာန်ရဲ့ အကြီးအကဲလည်းဖြစ်တဲ့ Derek Mitchell နဲ့ ဦးကျော်ဇံသာတို့ ဆွေးနွေးသုံးသပ်ထားပါတယ်။

ဗိုလ္ခ်ဳပ္မွဴးၾကီးမင္းေအာင္လွိဳင္၏အာဏာသိမ္းမိန္႔ခြန္း

ၿမဝတီမီဒီယာ
08.02.2021

Blinken holds first call with Chinese counterpart

THE HILL
Tal Axelrod -
02/05/21

CARLOS BARRIA/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke with his Chinese counterpart Friday, the first conversation between the two diplomats amid an adjustment in the relationship between Washington and Beijing.

Blinken had a phone call with Chinese Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi to extend his best wishes for a happy lunar new year, according to a readout of the call from the State Department. The secretary of State pushed Yang on reports of human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and the crackdown of civil rights in Tibet and Hong Kong, among other security-related issues.

Resistance to coup grows despite Myanmar's block of Facebook

 abc NEWS

The Associated Press
5 February 2021,

Myanmar’s new military government has blocked access to Facebook as resistance to Monday's coup surges amid calls for civil disobedience to protest the ousting of the elected government and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi

YANGON, Myanmar -- Myanmar’s new military government blocked access to Facebook as resistance to Monday's coup surged amid calls for civil disobedience to protest the ousting of the elected government and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Facebook is how most people access the internet in Myanmar and the company urged that it be restored.

The military seized power shortly before a new session of Parliament was to convene on Monday and detained Suu Kyi and other top politicians. The takeover has been criticized by President Joe Biden and others internationally who are pushing for the elected government to be restored.

Indonesia, Malaysia seeking ASEAN meeting on Myanmar after coup

REUTERS

By Maikel Jefriando, Stanley Widianto
February 5, 202 

JAKARTA (Reuters) - The leaders of Indonesia and Malaysia on Friday said they were seeking a special meeting of Southeast Asian nations to discuss the situation in Myanmar, where an elected government was overthrown in a coup this week. 

Throwing a wedge in Myanmar’s transition to democracy, the military took power on Monday, alleging irregularities in a November election won in a landslide by the party of Aung San Suu Kyi.

After meeting visiting Malaysian Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, Indonesian President Joko Widodo said their foreign ministers had been asked to talk to Brunei, the current chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to try to set up the special Myanmar meeting.

Muhyiddin referred to the coup as being “one step backward in the process of democracy in that country”.

How America could build global opposition to the coup in Burma

THE HILL

By George Lopez and David Cortright,

opinion contributors —

 02/04/21 

 

President Biden is in a difficult position as his team develops options to respond to the military coup in Myanmar. Strong condemnations of the coup have been timely and a solid first step. But the options to impose punishing sanctions are limited. The United States already has targeted financial and travel sanctions on the generals who led the coup because of their atrocities against the Rohingya people. The painful bite of more sanctions has been rendered toothless as American security assistance and efforts with the Burmese military has slowed to a trickle.