By Benedict Rogers
Two years ago today, the Commander-in-Chief of Myanmar/Burma’s military, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, shattered the dream of a democratic, free Myanmar and plunged the country back into bloody, brutal repression. When he seized power in a coup d’etat on 1 February 2021, overthrowing the country’s democratically elected civil leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD)-led government, he tore up a decade of the military’s own reform process and returned Myanmar to pariah status in the international community.
The coup unleashed a new war on this beautiful but benighted country that has already endured 76 years of civil war. The impoverished country which had been beginning to emerge into the world economy, attracting foreign investment as it liberalised politically, has been consigned to even harsher levels of poverty, and a humanitarian and human rights crisis even more severe than under previous military regimes.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), 17,492 people have been arrested in the past two years since the coup, and 13,689 are still in prison. The junta has killed at least 2,894 people, including 282 children. At least 143 people have been sentenced to death, including 42 in absentia. But these are only the figures recorded – the real death toll, taking into account the military’s offensives in the ethnic regions, is likely to be much, much higher. Indeed, in his September 2022 report, the United Nations special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar Thomas Andrews estimated that more than 13,000 children have been killed, while 1.3 million people have been displaced and 28,000 homes have been destroyed. He said Myanmar’s crisis was spiralling from ‘bad to worse to horrific.’
Continue reading “Two years after the coup, we must do all we can to stop the carnage in Myanmar”
