{"id":291687,"date":"2025-04-07T12:00:33","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T11:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=291687"},"modified":"2025-04-03T10:53:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T09:53:18","slug":"earthquake-hit-war-devastated-myanmar-needs-a-lasting-humanitarian-ceasefire-and-the-establishment-of-a-myanmar-fund","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/04\/earthquake-hit-war-devastated-myanmar-needs-a-lasting-humanitarian-ceasefire-and-the-establishment-of-a-myanmar-fund\/","title":{"rendered":"Earthquake-Hit, War-Devastated Myanmar Needs a Lasting Humanitarian Ceasefire and the Establishment of a Myanmar Fund"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Earthquake Damage Mandalay, 2025 – Wikipedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n

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Earthquake Relief and Reconstruction<\/em><\/p>\n

TRANSCEND member Dr Maung Zarni calls for the establishment of Myanmar Earthquake Relief Fund out of the $1 billion of Myanmar government assets in the US frozen by the then President Joe Biden in response to the February 2021 coup.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

3 Apr 2025\u00a0<\/em>–\u00a0The 28-March earthquake that struck Myanmar at 12:50 pm local time, left a number of cities, towns, villages in the heartland of ethnic majority Burmese or Bama, severely damaged. Sagaing, the closet to the epic centre, is reportedly 80% destroyed. And large segments of Mandalay, the second most populous city with roughly 2 million residents, are left in ruins.<\/p>\n

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Damage to apartment building in Naypyidaw after the 2025 Myanmar earthquake.<\/p>\n

Wikipedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

The earthquake didn\u2019t spare the junta\u2019s neo-totalitarian, fortress-capital, fitted with N. Korea-designed underground tunnels, said to be large enough to conceal fighter-jets. The head of the military junta, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, admitted to the local media, that he had to crawl under his office desk during the earthquake. And Vice Senior General Soe Win and other cabinet members including the Foreign Affairs Minister Than Swe have been rendered office-less by the earthquake.<\/p>\n

The land-locked capital was built out of Myanmar military leaderships\u2019 twofold-signature of xenophobia and paranoia: then ruling dictator Senior General Than Shwe feared the landing of the US marines in the old capital Rangoon situated by the Gulf of Martaban.<\/p>\n

Hand-picked by Than Shwe to lead the Armed Forces, the diminutive general named Min Aung Hlaing has pursued a self-fulfilling paranoia by staging the unnecessary \u2013 and universally unpopular \u2013 military coup against the re-election of Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s civilian leadership, already rendered severely impotent within the framework of the 2008 Constitution of, for and by the military. When virtually every constituency throughout the vast land of Southeast Asia\u2019s mainland country waged peaceful but determined anti-coup protests in February and March of 2021, the diminutive general \u2013 not known for his battle field courage or military leadership even against the poorly armed ethnic resistance troops responded by ordering his troops to sniper and slaughter young protestors, men and women in their teens and early 20\u2019s, who felt their relatively bright future in a slowly democratizing society and opening economy \u2013 if not the military-controlled politics \u2013 was taken away from them.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The result is the 4-year-old ferocious armed uprisings throughout the nation, as the urban and rural ethnic Bama youth from all walks of life took up arms to fight the national armed forces. That the majoritarian ethnic Bama society itself is engaged in armed revolt has completely demolished the raison d\u2019\u00eatre <\/em>of Min Aung Hlaing\u2019s national armed forces officially known as Tatmadaw <\/em>(or royal military).<\/p>\n

For whom does the Tatmadaw exist?<\/p>\n

In the eyes of the majority ethnic Myanmar public, the Tatmadaw and its leadership no longer represent either Myanmar as a state or a nation of Myanmar or Bama.<\/p>\n

Thousands of these men and women have significantly been assisted, in terms of sanctuary, guerilla training and arms supplies, by half-dozen seasoned ethnic resistance organizations (EROs) such as the Karen National Union, the Kachin Independence Organization, the Chin National Front, Karenni National Progressive Party, the Arakan Army and the United Wa State Army.<\/p>\n

This combination of the EROs and the multi-ethnic youth armed uprisings have been able to deal a blow after a blow to Min Aung Hlaing\u2019s poorly-led national armed forces.<\/p>\n

But the protracted civil war looms large.<\/p>\n

TO CONTINUE READING Go to Original – forsea.com<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

3 Apr 2025 – TRANSCEND member Dr Maung Zarni calls for the establishment of a Myanmar Earthquake Relief Fund out of the $1 billion of Myanmar assets frozen by then Pres. Joe Biden in response to the Feb 2021 coup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":281611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[2923,526,2479,101,100,1199,865,335,527,99],"class_list":["post-291687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-buddhists","tag-burma-myanmar","tag-civil-war","tag-cultural-violence","tag-direct-violence","tag-ethnic-cleansing","tag-genocide","tag-muslims","tag-rohingya","tag-structural-violence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291687","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=291687"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":291689,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291687\/revisions\/291689"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}