Myanmar coup and Western impotence: The death of freedom and justice

The Buddhist establishment and a vast majority of Buddhists in Myanmar have practiced anything but Buddhism in the way they have treated the Rohingya people

The UN Deputy Human Rights Chief and the independent expert on Myanmar have called for targeted sanctions against the leaders of what they both described as the coup that took place in the country last week, as the Human Rights Council met in special session on Friday to discuss the ongoing crisis

While the US and its allies gang against Sri Lanka, which incidentally is run by a President, a Prime Minister and a Cabinet of Ministers, elected by the people, a Parliament elected by the people,  overwhelmingly one might add in all the elections, and a Parliamentary Opposition elected by the people, these countries led by the US, and the UN Security Council, are uttering meaningless words without backing their so-called condemnation of the brazen military coup in Myanmar with something tangible than empty words. It clearly demonstrates their impotence and sense of priorities. 

More than 80 people have been killed so far in riots against the Military and scores of people have been detained for taking a stand on democracy, freedom and liberty. The human rights champion, the UNHRC is yet to say anything about the deprivations imposed on a free people, and the human right taken away from them by the Military.

A freely elected political party, an election supervised by the Military no doubt, was ousted because the Military claimed the election was not fair and was rigged. If this were true, then it is the Military that failed because they controlled the conduct of the election. It is a reflection on them that they did not do their job. 

The ardent and vociferous democratic citadels led by the US are all aware why the Military did what they did. It is because their own plan to rig the election in favour of the puppet political party they created to win enough seats to form the next government along with the 25% of the seats that are allocated to the Military anyway, failed and backfired on them. The puppets only needed another 25% of the seats, and the Military was banking on fraud and rigging to get them past that point. 

Despite this fraud and rigging, the people of Myanmar saw through this and decided to increase the party position of the NLD led by Aung San Suu Kyi.

So, now the Military has coined together a Goebbellian version of their own, and promising the world they will have “free and fair” elections within a year. If the world does not have the guts to call the military’s bluff now, would they ever have any power over the military to make sure there is a “free and fair election”? One can bet all their wealth and take a safe punt on this. That is, the result of the “free and fair election” will be the election of the military backed puppets, and them forming a government with the Military. That will be the outcome.

That will be the end of democracy and the short lived breath of fresh air Myanmar enjoyed for a brief period. Unfortunately for Myanmar and for Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, their treatment of the Rohingyas will not help the cause of democracy in the country. The shabby and disgraceful treatment of human beings by human beings, all of whom did not have any identity at the time of their birth but acquired society’s labels, where, someone of the stature of Aung San Suu Kyi did not offer any sympathy or concern or empathy for a group of people so horribly being treated, sadly removed the glowing lustre that Aung San Suu Kyi had till then. 

It is well known that it is the Military that forced her hand to comply with what they were doing to the Rohingyas, and her own safety, and the security of her government may have been compromised had she said anything in empathy of the Rohingyas.

Who are the Rohingya people?

In a well-researched commentary in Wikipedia, it says the Rohingya people are a stateless Indo-Aryan ethnic group who predominantly follow Islam and reside in Rakhine State, Myanmar.  Before the displacement crisis in 2017, when over 740,000 fled to Bangladesh, an estimated 1.4 million Rohingya lived in Myanmar. Described by journalists and news outlets as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world, the Rohingya population is denied citizenship under the 1982 Myanmar nationality law. They are also restricted from freedom of movement, state education and civil service jobs. 

The legal conditions faced by the Rohingya in Myanmar have been compared to apartheid by some academics, analysts and political figures, including Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu. The most recent mass displacement of Rohingya in 2017 led the International Criminal Court investigating crimes against humanity, and led to the International Court of Justice investigating genocide. 

The Rohingya maintain they are indigenous to western Myanmar with a heritage of over a millennium and influence from the Arabs, Mughals and Portuguese. The community claims it is descended from people in precolonial Arakan and colonial Arakan; historically, the region was an independent kingdom between Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. 

The Myanmar Government considers the Rohingya as colonial and postcolonial migrants from neighbouring Chittagong/East Bengal respectively Bangladesh. It argues that a distinct precolonial Muslim population is recognised as Kaman, and that the Rohingya conflate their history with the history of Arakan Muslims in general to advance a separatist agenda. In addition, Myanmar’s government does not recognise the term “Rohingya” and prefers to refer to the community as “Bangali”. This account in the Wikipedia outlines the sad state that history and interpretations of it have placed some half a million Rohingya people in abject poverty, stateless, and dehumanised by the Military in Myanmar. 

What is the future of Myanmar?

The Buddhist establishment and a vast majority of Buddhists in Myanmar have practiced anything but Buddhism in the way they have treated the Rohingya people. There is no Metta, Karuna, Muditha nor Upeksha extended to the Rohingya people, and sadly Aung San Suu Kyi did not either. 

Now, unfortunately, she is no longer on the high pedestal she was in when she became the de facto leader of Myanmar in 2016. She cannot rally the world to come to the defence of democracy and freedom in her country as she would have been able to if not for the Rohingya crisis.

However, it is not Aung San Suu Kyi who is an issue here. It is what she represented, the future of Myanmar, its democracy and its freedom. It is bigger than her and it is bigger than the unfortunate blotch on her arising from the Rohingya people crisis. If for a moment, one gives some thought to who benefited most from that crisis, it is impossible to say Aung San Suu Kyi did. In fact, the reality is the opposite. 

Who then did? If one extends this thought to the possibility that the entity that benefited most orchestrated the crisis to trap her and lesson her influence internationally, then that entity certainly achieved that. 

If hypothetically, the Military was indeed that entity and they achieved the latter, the next step would have been to form the next government with their puppet party. But, knowing the popularity of Aung San Suu Kyi, they would have had to plan to win it in whatever way, including by rigging the election in their favour and not in a genuinely free and fair election.

What probably disrupted such a plan would have been their inability to have rigged the election sufficiently and the overwhelming vote of confidence that Aung San Suu Kyi got from the people who not only voted for her and her party, but also safeguarded the voting process.

The option planned by the Military, not their preferred option, as that would have been to form a government with their puppet party, would have been to stage a Coup on the pretext of the election not being “free and fair” and that they would conduct such an election. That is what has happened and the jig saw is complete now. It’s no longer a puzzle.

Of course they have to eliminate Aung San Suu Kyi from the electoral process as a diminished standing internationally, has had a reverse effect in Myanmar with her popularity going up even further. Trumped up charges against her are unfolding before the world, and her personal safety is at serious risk. The Military is capable of doing anything to make sure their plan succeeds and they take formal, “democratic” control after the planned “free and fair” election. 

Unfortunately, the Military might still prevail as there is no kudos to be gained for the US and its allies by restoring Aung San Suu Kyi’s weakened international position. The democratic citadels playing just lip service and showing feigned outrage at the Military and taking token positions rather than any decisive action to make the Military back down will not happen. They will not send any strong messages to China, urging them to get the Military to restore democracy without pre conditions. Instead, they will work towards the “free and fair” election that the Military has promised, and they will then announce they will accept the people’s verdict at that “free and fair” election in which the Military puppets will win the election by means anything but free and fair. 

Democracy and freedom will be extinguished in Myanmar until the next Aung San Suu Kyi emerges at some distant date. The US, and its allies perhaps do not realise that their impotence would have delivered Myanmar lock, stock and barrel to China.