In the early hours of the 1st of February, 2021, Myanmar’s democratically elected civilian government was overthrown in a military coup. Its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was arrested. Myanmar, or Burma, the two terms once holding different political connotations in the days of the junta are now used interchangeably, ended decades of oppressive military rule by holding its first free elections in 2015- elections in which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won a massive mandate. She was to Myanmar the daughter of a martyr and herself a messiah that suffered years of house arrest for the cause of democracy and freedom from tyranny while the Western post-cold war discourse found in her a hope for the hopefully inevitable spread of democracy and human rights in the developing world.
Aung San Suu Kyi
(Forbes)
But rose-tinted glasses cannot change cold facts. The military had ceded power but retained the right to nominate 25% of the members of parliament. Built into the new constitution, were safeguards for the military’s power. The constitution specifically prohibited an individual married to a foreigner from holding the Presidency, a clause almost certainly targeted at Aung San Suu Kyi who’d married an Englishman. She created for herself the position of State Councillor, naming someone else President. She was the most powerful person in the country but it was a power won out of concession and compromise. The military regime hadn’t been overthrown or even forced out- it had folded in and of itself, retaining, in the process, its trump cards.
And below even this half-baked democratic experiment were even deeper fissures of Burmese society. Fissures that turned into political and humanitarian earthquakes with the Rohingya genocide. The Rohingyas are a minority Muslim group in a largely Buddhist country, regarded as outsiders and treated with suspicion. The campaign of ethnic cleansing may have been perpetrated by the military but it was supported, at least tacitly, by the Burmese people. Suu Kyi’s silence and complicity during the genocide, not to mention her vociferous defence of Myanmar at the International Court of Justice made her even more popular in Burma while destroying her reputation internationally. Part of the reason the international condemnation of the coup has been relatively mild has been her endorsement of the murder, rape and pillage of the Rohingya people. Her supporters argue a counterfactual- even minimal pushback against the military got her deposed within 6 years, coming out strongly against the genocide would have her ousted even sooner and Myanmar once again left to the mercy of thuggish Generals; slow but steady reform would be the way, not words that would only make matters much worse.
The Rohingya Genocide
(The New York Times)
Regardless, the military wasn’t even ready to accept that slow pace of reform. Elections held late last year delivered an even bigger mandate for the NLD, the Burmese reposed faith in Suu Kyi despite vociferous international criticism, maybe even because of it. The military chief was due to retire, his five-year extension would soon elapse, and another one wasn’t granted. Suu Kyi had, during the elections, promised reform in the military and reduction, on a gradual basis, of its outsized role in Burmese politics.
None of that happened. In a script reminiscent of the days of the cold war, an inconvenient civilian government was simply done away with. General Min Aung Hlaing, the commander in chief of the army, is now the de facto head of Myanmar. A state of emergency has been declared for a period of one year. Social media sites like Twitter have been banned to curb dissent and Myanmar’s democratic leaders including Suu Kyi have been arrested.
General Min Aung Hlaing
(The BBC)
The international geopolitical implications of this coup remain unclear. Both India and the United States have called for the restoration of the civilian government but neither has taken any coercive measure against the junta. Nor are they likely to do so. Aung San Suu Kyi, even at her zenith, wasn’t a leader whose release was a major priority for the world, now, at her nadir, it is even less likely. Behind the façade of calls for democracy, the world will, for better or for worse, engage with the new regime in Myanmar.
But perhaps the biggest learning about what happened in Myanmar doesn’t come from a history of Burmese democracy or the implications for its future, but rather from a video that has gone viral on social media. A woman performing aerobics while a coup takes place behind her. The veracity of the video is unconfirmed but it is a powerful example of what can happen while we aren’t looking. In countries around the world, as we turn a blind eye to racism, xenophobia, casteism and violations of human rights, we are, condemning ourselves, to the fate of the Burmese people. First, they came for the Rohingyas, and the rest didn’t speak. Now that they’ve come for the others, there’s nobody left to speak. Apply that same analogy to India or the United States or China or any other country. Apply it the weakest among us and those who spoke when they were targeted. Apply it to yourself, and see what your fate will be. And then do what you can to change it.
Written by: ANOUSHKA KOTHARI