Written by Myra Dahgaypaw
International observers may be forgiven for believing that Burma’s violent military dictatorship is unassailable under the constant barrage of horrific news about the country’s civil conflict. Just seven years after a horrific slaughter caused nearly a million Rohingya civilians to leave the nation, a new report released this week by human rights activists warns that the long-persecuted Rohingya ethnic group in Burma is once again in danger of being genocidally murdered by the military.
The juntamas are killing civilians, dragging unwanted youths into the military, and escalating ethnic tensions amongst various factions that are retaliating to restore Burma’s democracy, according to other recent news.
Even while these stories are truly alarming, the foreign media shouldn’t be duped into believing that the junta is showing strength. In actuality, they demonstrate the military’s desperation to hold onto power at all costs.
I ought to be aware. I have dedicated my entire life to advocating for democracy and human rights in Burma, where I was born.
The nation is commonly referred to as Myanmar; I call it Burma. To erase the horrors of the past, the Burmese military regime changed the name. I therefore agree to the junta’s rule the moment I begin using that term. It is never going to occur. Here’s why:
The fact that the junta is an illegitimate government is now undeniable. For decades, they have attempted to stifle Burma’s democracy. They even went so far as to overthrow the nation’s elected civilian administration in February 2021, only because they were unhappy with the results of the popular vote. The military-backed political party suffered a serious setback when it lost over half of its parliamentary seats in the general election held in November 2020.
The junta launched a scorched-earth assault on the nation’s civilians in reprisal. But Burma’s people have never given up in the face of military brutality and frequent airstrikes against civilian targets. Their authority was peacefully protested by hundreds of thousands of people. The National Unity Government (NUG), an international organization, is the current civilian government.
To protect their villages and overthrow the regime, several armed opposition groups—erroneously referred to as insurgents by numerous media outlets—are active in Burma. They just won a brief win over the junta, freeing the town of Myawaddy, which is close to the Thai border. The town later returned to the military’s control, but the event demonstrated that the forces’ balance on the battlefield is far from stable.
The military recently used a long-standing forced conscription rule to compel its own victims to join them in response to its losses on the battlefield. In the same military that is restricting their freedoms, they are making young people endure pain and death. Young people in Burma are reluctant to leave, and many are seeking to do so in secret.
In a similar vein, the junta is attempting to sow discord among various factions of the resistance movement by inflaming ethnic divisions. The long-persecuted Rohingya ethnic group is currently the focus of the junta’s conscription effort. In other words, they are making Rohingya civilians serve in the same military that just a few years before committed a genocide against them.
By doing this, the military hopes to incite conflict between the Buddhist Rakhine and the Muslim Rohingya, two ethnic communities that share a state in western Burma. This is all a part of the military’s well-known divide and conquer tactic, according to Rohingya activist Tun Khin of the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK.
Sadly, it seems that certain segments of the resistance movement are succumbing to this tactic. Even though the Arakan Army and the Rohingya have a common enemy in the junta, reports from recent weeks suggest that the Arakan Army in Rakhine has targeted or forcibly expelled Rohingya civilians. The military only benefits from such interethnic warfare.
Similar to its efforts to force people to enlist, the military’s tactics to sow division should not be interpreted as displays of might. Instead, the fact that they must rely on such technologies demonstrates the lack of support from the Burmese populace and the drastic tactics they are forced to take as their performance on the battlefield deteriorates.
Therefore, even while the junta may appear to be well-established to certain foreign observers, this image is misleading. In the view of the Burmese, they are a paper tiger that cannot maintain any legitimacy on its own. This explains why they use terror and deceit so extensively to maintain public order.
Therefore, if the international community will intervene, particularly by enforcing a worldwide embargo on the junta for jet fuel and weapons, there is a genuine chance to overthrow the military.
To this purpose, the U.S. government has taken some action. However, many of these restrictions are meaningless without comparable actions from peer countries, and the current sanctions do not go far enough. To guarantee that no more weapons and aviation fuel reach the junta, U.S. leadership must work with its allies and apply diplomatic pressure.
The international world and media need to acknowledge that the junta is not a good choice for the nation’s leadership. For a little bit longer, they might attempt to enforce strict rules across the nation. However, the only regime that would be compelled to use such obviously terroristic tactics in the first place would be one that has no support from the populace.
Human rights advocate Myra Dahgaypaw hails from Karen State in Eastern Burma. She presently serves as the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee’s (UUSC) Senior Partnership Officer for International Justice and Accountability.
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