No peace in Myanmar after one year of military rule

The army coup in Myanmar a year ago, which deposed Aung San Suu Kyi, not only thwarted the country’s budding democratic transition, but it also sparked a startling level of popular resistance, which has grown into a low-level but persistent insurgency.

On the morning of February 1, 2021, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the commander of Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, took control, arresting Suu Kyi and top members of her government and ruling National League for Democracy party, which had won a landslide election victory in November 2020.

The military’s use of lethal force to maintain control has intensified confrontation with civilian opponents to the point that some observers call the country a civil war.

Security forces have killed around 1,500 people, arrested almost 8,800 people, tortured and displaced an unknown number of individuals, more than 300,000 people while the military razes towns to root out resistance.

Other ramifications are also important. Transport, banking services, and government offices were all impeded by civil disobedience, crippling an economy already reeling from the coronavirus outbreak. As the public health system had crumbled, the war against COVID-19 had been put on hold for months. Higher education came to a halt as sympathetic faculty and students who boycotted classes or were imprisoned.

According to Thomas Kean, an analyst of Myanmar issues consulting for the International Crisis Group think tank, the military-installed government was not prepared for the magnitude of opposition that arose.

The army has responded to the uprising by using the same violent techniques against ethnic minorities in the country’s rural heartland as it has used against ethnic minorities in border areas for years, which critics say amounts to crimes against humanity and genocide.

Its violence has reawakened empathy for ethnic minorities like the Karen, Kachin, and Rohingya, who have long been victims of army abuses and with whom members of the Burman majority are now forming a unified anti-military cause.