{"id":38898,"date":"2014-01-27T12:00:45","date_gmt":"2014-01-27T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=38898"},"modified":"2015-05-05T22:20:02","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T21:20:02","slug":"myanmar-leaders-and-their-34-concrete-ways-of-control-deception-and-manipulation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/01\/myanmar-leaders-and-their-34-concrete-ways-of-control-deception-and-manipulation\/","title":{"rendered":"Myanmar Leaders and Their 34 Concrete Ways of Control, Deception, and Manipulation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Myanmar's<\/a>

Myanmar’s military leaders<\/p><\/div>\n

My advice to anyone who attempts to analyze, write about, or simply understand Burma or Myanmar:<\/p>\n

Assume the worst when it comes to the regime. They are far worse than you think humans are capable of in terms of sinking to depravity and ruthlessness.<\/p>\n

Here is MY list of concrete, empirically verifiable acts the Burmese generals and ex-generals have been engaged in over the past 50 years since General Ne Win introduced the military rule on 2 March 1962. These acts are a given, irrespective of which general is in charge. They are getting worse.<\/p>\n

Ask yourself this: do these acts suggest they are ‘nation-builders’ ‘reformers’ ‘democratizers’, ‘sincere leaders’, ‘patriots’, ‘nationalists’, etc.?<\/p>\n

1) a long trail of broken promises, lies, deceptions, and distortions;<\/p>\n

2) cheats;<\/p>\n

3) loots;<\/p>\n

4) personal manipulations;<\/p>\n

5) mass murders;<\/p>\n

6) rape and gang rapes with impunity (that is, as a matter of policy NOT to prosecute soldier-\/officer-rapists);<\/p>\n

7) wanton destruction;<\/p>\n

8) pillage;<\/p>\n

9) theft;<\/p>\n

10) robbery;<\/p>\n

11) forced labor;<\/p>\n

12) forced evictions and relocation;<\/p>\n

13) Made-in-UK Four Cut terror campaigns (first used by the British troops in the then colonial Malaya against the anti-British Communist resistance);<\/p>\n

14) cooptation;<\/p>\n

15) threats and intimidations;<\/p>\n

16) blackmail;<\/p>\n

17) summery execution;<\/p>\n

18) outsourced mass violence;<\/p>\n

19) incubate, stoke and mobilized ethno-religious racism;<\/p>\n

20) promoting neo-Nazi ideas (that an entire group should be shipped out, interned or otherwise eradicate);<\/p>\n

21) discrimination as a matter of policy;<\/p>\n

22) fostering ethnic divide and rule;<\/p>\n

23) commercial\/resource\/business enticement and charm offensives;<\/p>\n

24) tortures;<\/p>\n

25) life and long years of imprisonment;<\/p>\n

26) breeding civil wars;<\/p>\n

27) planting bombs to create a climate of fear;<\/p>\n

28) extortions;<\/p>\n

29) land and resource grab;<\/p>\n

30) intellectual impoverishment of the public as a matter of policy;<\/p>\n

31) deliberate destruction of health care system for the public at large;<\/p>\n

32) the use of ‘nationalism’ as a smokescreen\/ideological shield;<\/p>\n

33) creation of cronies as the military and generals’ wealth\/portfolio managers (for in neo-Feudal Myanmar it is power that generates WEALTH, not the other way around); and<\/p>\n

34) consolidation of the military’s grip on power, wealth and population while barking ‘reforms’, ‘transition’, ‘human rights’, ‘zero tolerance’, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘harmony’, ‘interfaith’, and every other well-worn buzz word which pleases the Western ears, resonates with the shallow and stupid international mass media, and gives self-interested external players – governments, UN, EU, ASEAN, corporate, think-tanks, etc. – a cover for their dodgy agendas in Myanmar.<\/p>\n

________________________________<\/p>\n

Maung Zarni<\/i>, Associate Fellow, the University of Malaya. Dr. Maung Zarni is a <\/em>member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment,<\/i> founder and director of the Free Burma Coalition (1995-2004), and a visiting fellow (2011-13) at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit, Department of International Development, London School of Economics. His forthcoming book on Burma will be published by Yale University Press.<\/em> He was educated in the US where he lived and worked for 17 years. Visit his website www.maungzarni.com<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/i>Go to Original \u2013 maungzarni.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here is MY list of concrete, empirically verifiable acts the Burmese generals and ex-generals have been engaged in over the past 50 years since General Ne Win introduced the military rule on 2 March 1962. These acts are a given, irrespective of which general is in charge. They are getting worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38898","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38898","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=38898"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38898\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}