Four years ago, Myanmar’s fragile, nascent quasi-democracy was snuffed out after less than a decade of experimenting with limited reform and opening. In the early morning of 1 February 2021, armoured vehicles rolled down the capital’s absurd 20-lane empty highway. Adding to the surreal quality of the day, an aerobics instructor filming an exercise routine unwittingly captured the unfolding coup d'état in the background of her video.
The army arrested most of the country’s democratically elected leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, General Min Aung Hlaing, seized power, plunging Myanmar into yet another era of repression, poverty and war.
Do we remember our moral and historical responsibility to Myanmar, or wash our hands of it?
Since its independence in 1948, Myanmar – or Burma as it was previously known – has endured over 75 years of near-constant conflict and more than half a century of direct military dictatorship. It has only known civilian-led, democratic government in two brief windows: the first ten years after independence, and the period of Suu Kyi’s first government from 2015 to 2020.
Neither was the epitome of stability, but that is because genuine democracy was never given the chance. Throughout its post-independence history, a succession of ruthless military dictators have either wielded power or lurked menacingly in the shadows.
Min Aung Hlaing’s regime has taken the levels of brutality to new extremes. Over the past four years, Myanmar has been engulfed in a human rights and humanitarian crisis that far exceeds what went before. Over 28,000 people have been arrested in the past four years for opposing the coup, and over 21,500 remain in jail today.
Among them is Suu Kyi herself, who led her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), to victory in the November 2020 elections and was poised to form a second-term government when she was overthrown in the coup. She has been in jail ever since, serving multiple sentences totalling 27 years. In June this year she turns 80, and with grave concerns about the conditions of her imprisonment and her health, it is highly likely that she will die in jail.
Suu Kyi had led the democracy movement in Myanmar since 1988 and won the admiration of the world throughout her years of house arrest under previous military regimes. She lost international support during her time in government, however, as a result of some of her comments and actions in response to the human rights crisis in the country – in particular, the genocide of the Muslim-majority Rohingyas. But whatever one may think of the decisions she took in office, she should not be in jail today.
Suu Kyi’s power-sharing coalition with the military failed because in reality, under Myanmar’s military-drafted constitution, the military held the real power at the cost of her perceived moral authority. For example, under the constitution, the army held direct control of three key ministries – defence, home affairs and border affairs – and a quarter of the seats in parliament were reserved for it.
But Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s thousands of other political prisoners are not the only victims of the current junta’s inhumanity. The crisis in Myanmar’s ethnic states is one of the world’s forgotten tragedies. It is no exaggeration to say that it is Asia’s Ukraine – except the invader of these lands is a criminal domestic regime, not a foreign state.
According to the United Nations, at least 3.5 million civilians are displaced in Myanmar as a consequence of the conflict. The junta is conducting a campaign of air strikes against villages, bombing schools, hospitals and places of worship, raping, torturing and beheading villagers. The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Myanmar, Thomas Andrews, reported: ‘Victims have been tortured, raped and beheaded, and their bodies burned.’ Hunger is reaching ‘catastrophic levels’.
So on this fourth anniversary of Min Aung Hlaing’s brutal coup, what do we do? First, we should severely intensify the pressure on the illegal junta. According to one of the key representatives of Myanmar’s government-in-exile Dr Sasa and the former US senator Sam Brownback, the country is at ‘a pivotal moment’. The military regime is on the back foot – with significant losses of troops and territory. Thousands have defected from the military, which reportedly now controls less than 20 per cent of the country’s territory and only 33 per cent of the population.
We must step up: with sanctions against the military and its enterprises; with a ban on the provision of aviation fuel to Myanmar’s air force in order to end the airstrikes; with enforcing arms embargoes and sanctions against those who facilitate the junta’s repression – including Xi Jinping’s China and Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
We must use every tool available to us to impede Myanmar’s junta from bombing, shooting, raping, torturing and killing its people. We must also step up support for Myanmar’s pro-democracy resistance and increase humanitarian aid for those in most urgent need. Cut the lifelines to Myanmar’s generals – and provide a lifeline to Myanmar’s people.
In London, Keir Starmer and David Lammy must pick up the phone to world leaders to mobilise action to free Suu Kyi, end the war, provide aid to its people and establish a mechanism to hold the generals to account for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. In Washington, President Trump and the new Secretary of State Marco Rubio must be more flexible with their suspension of foreign aid: it should not penalise the world’s most vulnerable people, including those in and around Myanmar’s borders, jungles and war zones.
We have choices to make. Do we turn a blind eye to one of the world’s most grotesque human rights and humanitarian crises, or do we act to resolve it? Do we allow our disagreements with some of Suu Kyi’s positions to blind us to the injustice of her imprisonment, or do we act to free her? And do we remember our moral and historical responsibility to Myanmar, or wash our hands of it?
If we make the right choices, we can not only free and help rebuild Myanmar, we can stay true to our values and revive the free world. If we choose wrongly, we will accelerate its demise. The choice is ours. Myanmar is a test case, precisely because it is perceived as an irrelevant backwater – yet it is geo-strategically vital. And for those who love it, as I do, it is a heartbreaking Shakespearean tragedy for which justice and peace is long overdue.
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Written by Benedict Rogers
Benedict Rogers is chief executive of Hong Kong Watch and an advisor to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). His new book, ‘The China Nexus: Thirty Years In and Around the Chinese Communist Party’s Tyranny’, will be published later this year.

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