Protesters against the military coup won’t be helped by threats. They need support to press for change from within
Protests against the military coup continue in Myanmar; aerial images of the hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who converged in towns and cities in recent days have helped show the scale of animosity towards the country’s military, which now faces the fallout of a nationwide strike. These events highlight the fragility of Myanmar’s political landscape. But they have also prompted a reckoning with the shortcomings, if not worse, of western engagement in Myanmar, a decade on from the start of a transition away from authoritarian rule that saw Myanmar held aloft as a success story in liberal-democracy promotion and “meaningful intervention” in Asia.
The 1 February coup triggered a course reversal from western governments and institutions. Praise for November’s democratic elections, which handed victory to Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, has since turned to condemnation of the generals and promises of action to coax – if not force – them from power. The US state department framed new sanctions as a means of “promoting accountability” and alluded to “additional policy levers we can pull” to return Myanmar to democratic government, while Boris Johnson stated that the UK would “ensure those responsible for this coup are held to account”. The UN and G7 blocs have meanwhile denounced an “unacceptable” situation.
Gabrielle Aron is an independent analyst with specialism in Myanmar, and was based in the country between 2013 and 2018
Francis Wade is the author of Myanmar’s Enemy Within: Buddhist Violence and the Making of a Muslim Other
Continue reading...This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
