International community must stop enabling the military rulers ahead of sham elections
By Benedict Rogers in Nikkei Asia
In a cafe in the Thailand-Myanmar border town of Mae Sot, a middle-aged woman sat across the table from me, her eyes filled with tears. She had led a successful career as a respected lawyer who argued cases at Myanmar’s Supreme Court and once owned a profitable construction business. But after the coup on Feb. 1, 2021, the military confiscated her company and threatened her with arrest. Although she had not directly participated in anti-coup protests, she had provided material, financial and transportation support to protesters. When one of her friends was given a 20-year prison sentence, she fled to Thailand, becoming a refugee.
Now, she devotes her time to looking after refugee children. “There are so many orphans, so many traumatised children, so many children without access to education in Myanmar,” she told me. “It is heartbreaking.”
In the past, she recalled, whenever she heard an airplane fly overhead, it reminded her of her overseas travels and triggered vicarious excitement. “But the kids I look after, whenever they hear a plane,” she said, “they run away and hide because it reminds them of the military regime’s airstrikes.”
Toward the end of our conversation, she looked me in the eye and asked: “Why won’t the international community help the people of Myanmar in the way they help Ukraine?”
Similar stories and appeals were recounted to me by dozens of Myanmar exiles over the course of two weeks last month, which makes the recent decisions by the U.S. to both cut aid and lift sanctions all the more poignant, perplexing and painful.
Myanmar’s brutal military, which overthrew a democratically elected government four years ago, is committing mass atrocity crimes across the country daily. The United Nations has reported over 600 airstrikes and artillery attacks against civilians in the past four months alone, since the devastating 7.7-magnitude earthquake that killed thousands and displaced thousands more, despite multiple military-declared “ceasefires.” An estimated 4 million or so people have been displaced by conflict, and more than 100,000 homes destroyed, alongside hospitals, schools and places of worship. More than 22,000 political prisoners remain in jail, enduring dire conditions in which torture is widespread, severe and systematic.
Tom Andrews, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, is right to condemn the Trump administration’s decision to remove sanctions from individuals and companies that have provided arms to the military as a “shocking” major step backwards. “It is unconscionable to undermine these efforts by rolling back sanctions on Myanmar arms dealers and junta cronies,” he said in a statement.
It follows a decision earlier in the year to dramatically cut aid, a decision Andrews also warned was “a catastrophe” that is “unnecessary” and “cruel.”
During my visit to the Thai border, the consequences of these cuts were apparent, as the end of food rations for most refugees was just days away. As Mercy Chriesty Barends, an Indonesian legislator and chair of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, put it, “This is not about budget cuts; it is a collapse of humanity. We are abandoning people who have already been abandoned by the world too many times.”
In the long term, the Thai authorities’ recent decision to grant the estimated 90,000 refugees in nine camps in Thailand the right to work offers a very welcome solution. Many of the Myanmar refugees have, after all, lived in the camps on the Thai border for decades. But even with this decision, there is a need for immediate humanitarian assistance to prevent disease and hunger.
Meanwhile, emboldened by the U.S. withdrawal, global apathy, and the support it receives from China and Russia, Myanmar’s military chief Gen. Min Aung Hlaing plans to hold new “elections” to strengthen the regime’s legitimacy. Yet it is abundantly clear that these will be a total sham.
The National League for Democracy (NLD), which overwhelmingly won the last two elections and should be in government today, is banned, and its leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is serving a 27-year prison term. Other pro-democracy and ethnic parties are also restricted. Civil society and independent media face severe repression, with courageous journalists and activists working undercover or from areas outside the military’s control. Attempts to disrupt the elections will be punishable by harsh prison terms or, in some cases, execution, the regime has announced.
The military recently lifted a four-year state of emergency and rebranded itself as the “National Security and Peace Commission.” Myanmar’s military dictatorships have a long history of Orwellian titles — previous incarnations were the “State Law and Order Restoration Council” (SLORC) and the “State Peace and Development Council” (SPDC). Yet this is an army that for more than 75 years has been a threat to peace, security, development, and law and order.
Min Aung Hlaing’s elections should not be accepted by the international community. They should be dismissed as the illegitimate sham that they are, seeking legitimacy for an illicit, murderous regime that the world has refused to recognize. It will not be a general election — instead, it will be a fake election of generals.
Moreover, the international community should heed the warnings that exiled pro-democracy and ethnic groups expressed to me. In the words of one ethnic Karen leader, these elections represent a “very dangerous situation” that “will bring only negatives” and “lead to more violence.”
So the U.S. and the rest of the world need to rethink their position on Myanmar. Now is not the time to be lifting sanctions on those financing an illegal, criminal, murderous regime and those who provide it with weapons. Nor is now the time to be cutting aid to the people victimized by that brutal regime. And it is certainly not the time to give any credence to fake elections.
On the contrary, it is time to act to support the people of Myanmar in their pursuit of true peace and freedom. As a Karen leader told me, “We need not only regime change, but system change.”
The international community should cut the lifelines to the military rulers through tougher, targeted sanctions, implementation of a global arms embargo and a ban on aviation fuel to impede the airstrikes. It should also provide a lifeline to the people, through aid, justice and accountability, and assistance for their bid to change the system and ensure genuine democracy and human rights for all.
This article was originally published in Nikkei Asia.