{"id":181805,"date":"2021-03-29T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=181805"},"modified":"2024-07-02T08:49:41","modified_gmt":"2024-07-02T07:49:41","slug":"the-myanmar-military-is-destroying-its-public-image-politics-wont-be-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/03\/the-myanmar-military-is-destroying-its-public-image-politics-wont-be-the-same\/","title":{"rendered":"The Myanmar Military Is Destroying Its Public Image–Politics Won\u2019t Be the Same"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Anadolu Agency<\/p><\/div>\n

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26 Mar 2021 –<\/em>The images from the streets of Myanmar cities tell a brutal story<\/a>. Ordinary citizens are taking to the streets to protest the military coup of Feb. 1, and the armed forces, again and again, are opening fire. By now\u00a0more than 300 people<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 virtually all of them unarmed \u2014 have been killed around the country.<\/p>\n

This rampant brutality has led to widespread revulsion among the populace, in ways that are likely to reverberate for years to come. There are, of course, many elements in Myanmar society \u2014 especially among members of the ethnic minorities such as the Rohingya, Shan, Karen, Kachin along the country\u2019s periphery \u2014 who have never harbored illusions about the nature of the armed forces. The long years of military dictatorship<\/a>, and the corruption and crimes against humanity, war crimes and even genocide, all with total impunity, that went with it, saw to that.<\/p>\n

The sense of rage is palpable. Hundreds of thousands of social media comments and public speeches<\/a>,\u00a0group posts<\/a>, communal discussions and personal conversations attest to the deepening popular anger at the armed forces. It has become customary to refer to the troops as \u201cterrorists<\/a>\u201d or even as \u201cdogs of war,\u201d an especially harsh term in Myanmar-language discourse. A nationally acclaimed poet and educator, whose writings have been read by millions of children and adolescents in school,\u00a0recently posted a widely shared text<\/a>\u00a0on Facebook in which he described the military as a cross between a murderous mafia and a fascist-like occupier.<\/p>\n

On March 4, United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet\u00a0issued a blunt statement<\/a>\u00a0calling for an immediate end to murder, enforced disappearances and other crimes against humanity being committed against unarmed and peaceful protesters. She specifically condemned \u201cdocumented attacks against emergency medical staff and ambulances attempting to provide care to those who have been injured.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several defectors from the security forces have told English and Myanmar-language media outlets how their superiors ordered them to shoot to kill \u2014 including\u00a0targeting family members<\/a>\u00a0who oppose the coup. Commanders\u00a0describe<\/a>\u00a0neighborhoods and communities as \u201cfront lines\u201d and\u00a0refer<\/a>\u00a0to unarmed civilian protesters as \u201cdangerous enemies\u201d allegedly sitting on concealed caches of weapons in civilian homes, just waiting to attack.<\/p>\n

This erosion of the military\u2019s public image potentially has far-reaching consequences. Before the Feb. 1 coup, Aung San Suu Kyi \u2014 de facto leader of the civilian government and once lionized leader of the pro-democracy movement \u2014\u00a0had pursued a policy of grudging accommodation<\/a>\u00a0with the military. That included continuing recognition of the 2008 constitution, drawn up by the generals to enshrine a dominant political role for the military as they sought to step back from outright rule. As part of her pragmatic policy of reconciliation with the armed forces, Aung San Suu Kyi even referred to the generals as \u201cmy father\u2019s sons<\/a>,\u201d an allusion to her father Aung San, the military leader of the country\u2019s anti-colonial independence movement during and after World War II.<\/p>\n

Since the 1 Feb coup, ironically, she has been in the custody<\/a>\u00a0of that very same military, which has said that it will soon try her for alleged crimes during her time in office.<\/p>\n

Since the coup,\u00a0a group consisting primarily of deposed lawmakers<\/a>\u00a0from Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s own National League for Democracy has played a leading role in the protest movement. Sources close to this group told me they initially stayed within the framework laid down by their leader. They were to operate within Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s framework of reconciliation without justice, maintain distance from the armed organizations of the rebellious ethnic groups, to work for gradual constitutional change, and to ignore the ethnic identity of the Rohingya minority and the genocide committed against them by the military.<\/p>\n

Yet in recent weeks, reflecting the growing popular indignation over the role of the military, the group has issued a series of\u00a0statements<\/a>\u00a0that amount\u00a0to a complete break<\/a>\u00a0with Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s policy of accommodation.<\/p>\n

It is now clear that Myanmar society is burying for good the decades-old myth of the armed forces as the selfless defenders of national unity. If nothing changes, it looks as though Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s ruinous policy of accommodation with the generals is likely to meet a similar fate.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/em>A Buddhist humanist from Burma, Maung Zarni is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, former Visiting Lecturer with Harvard Medical School, specializing in racism and violence in Burma and Sri Lanka, and Non-resident Scholar in Genocide Studies with Documentation Center \u2013 Cambodia.\u00a0Zarni s the co-founder of <\/em>FORSEA<\/a>, a grass-roots organization of Southeast Asian human rights defenders, coordinator for Strategic Affairs for <\/em>Free Rohingya Coalition, and an adviser to the <\/em>European Centre for the Study of Extremism, Cambridge. <\/strong>Zarni holds a PhD (U Wisconsin at Madison) and a MA (U California), and has held various teaching, research and visiting fellowships at the universities in Asia, Europe and USA including Oxford, LSE, UCL Institute of Education, National-Louis, Malaya, and Brunei. He is the recipient of the “Cultivation of Harmony” award from the Parliament of the World’s Religions (2015). His analyses have appeared in leading newspapers including the <\/em>New York Times, The Guardian and<\/em> the Times. Among his academic publications on Rohingya genocide are <\/em>The Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar\u2019s Rohingyas (Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal), <\/em>An Evolution of Rohingya Persecution in Myanmar: From Strategic Embrace to Genocide, (Middle East Institute, American University), and <\/em>Myanmar\u2019s State-directed Persecution of Rohingyas and Other Muslims (Brown World Affairs Journal). He co-authored, with Natalie Brinham, <\/em>Essays on Myanmar Genocide.<\/p>\n

Originally published by<\/em> The Washington Post<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

26 Mar 2021 -The images from the streets of Myanmar cities tell a brutal story. The sense of rage is palpable. Hundreds of thousands of social media comments and public speeches, group posts, communal discussions and personal conversations attest to the deepening popular anger at the armed forces. It has become customary to refer to the troops as \u201cterrorists\u201d or even as \u201cdogs of war,\u201d an especially harsh term in Myanmar-language discourse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":121061,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[240,1692,1924,2410,393,276,609,558,100,487,651,780,2411,1243,1378,171,985,2437,99,124],"class_list":["post-181805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","tag-asia","tag-aung-san-suu-kyi","tag-authoritarianism","tag-burma","tag-coup","tag-democracy","tag-demonstrations","tag-dictatorship","tag-direct-violence","tag-human-rights","tag-justice","tag-military-intervention","tag-myanmar","tag-nonviolent-action","tag-protests","tag-revolution","tag-social-justice","tag-southeast-asia","tag-structural-violence","tag-united-nations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":265961,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181805\/revisions\/265961"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/121061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}