Suu and the President Mynit have been ‘taken into custody’ after the recent election by the military. Apparently this is legalIsh under their constitution... which was mainly written partly by the army. Normal stuff - ‘FAKE ELECTION’ and there was plenty of ‘fraud.’ Also, if I remember correctly, it was the military doing the genocides in Rohingya
Myanmar Coup
- Thread starter Trunkage
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The previous government was bad and presumably the military's administration will also be bad. But we'll see, I guess.
The military is much closer with the more radical Buddhist sects that have been carrying out genocide there. This isn’t an “also bad” scenario. This is a fascist coup scenario. If there isn’t a wide escalation of the genocidal acts that have already occurred in Myanmar I will be very surprised.
Myanmar's military staging a coup and putting Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest? Hey I've seen this one!
Aung San Suu Kyi has always been seen as a victim in western media b/c of her house arrest but the massacre against the Rohingya did occur under her auspice, even defending the military's actions at the ICJ. It brings into question how 'innocent' Suu's NLD really is and if Myanmar haven't continued being a military junta but under a different faction. This includes the 'disappearance' of critical journalists.Suu and the President Mynit have been ‘taken into custody’ after the recent election by the military. Apparently this is legalIsh under their constitution... which was mainly written partly by the army. Normal stuff - ‘FAKE ELECTION’ and there was plenty of ‘fraud.’ Also, if I remember correctly, it was the military doing the genocides in Rohingya
Parallels with western democracies don't really add up b/c Myanmar was never a democracy to begin with.
I'm imagining a Burmese version of movies like Commando and Rambo First Blood II on endless repeat
With rules in place, like how the military must have at least a 25% presence in Myanmar's government, and how it is technically legal for the military to declare a state of emergency, and take over, and how the main political opposition party is basically a front for the military, im surprised that a coup didn't happen sooner.
Seems like a massive conflict of interest to me, but I guess there isn't really much you can do when a bunch of guys with guns tell you they are taking over.
Hopefully it all works out well in the end.
Seems like a massive conflict of interest to me, but I guess there isn't really much you can do when a bunch of guys with guns tell you they are taking over.
Hopefully it all works out well in the end.
I do expect it will get worse, but it was already pretty bad.
Not like here, then.
The Myanmar government has existed at the whim of the military, and she may have been in a position where she either backed them or they threatened to roll up the government and take over again - in which case they'd exterminate the Rohingya anyway. Potentially, she chose what she hoped was a lesser evil.
Propaganda is the obvious reason. It's also a potential source of income: viewers, advertisers, etc.
Autocrats, oligarchs, juntas etc. don't just run their country, they also seek to profit from them by giving themselves assets. Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines amused himself by forcing business owners to sign over their companies to him or be executed. Russia is essentially a kleptocracy where the government destroys businesses and the owners that oppose it and hand the remnants to its supporters. The East German Stasi created a load of companies to employ themselves when they realised the Berlin Wall would fall. The Iranian Republican Guard is thought to own or control about 20% of the Iranian economy through various subsidiaries, agencies, etc.
Put simply, why just accept the salary from the state when they can use the power of the state to enrich themselves through the private economy too?
I don't think her motives are that sincere. She tried to distance herself from any ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya by first denying it ever happened, then reframing it as a military attack against an 'uprising' to even denying Rohingya existed followed by sabotaging inquiries and framing journalists who crticized her regime. Huge refugee crisis with rape, murder etc that she fastidiously tried to cover up. Her role was too large and consistent with her general disdain to just be considered a puppet of the military. The NLD was also co-established by former military officials so you can question how much there was a separation of powers to begin with. The relation between Suu and the military was already very diffuse with the outcome of the elections depending on that internal power struggle between the different factions.
She is not a puppet of the military. But she was a leader of a government that existed at the whime military. If she wanted to go out and say the military are evil, genocidal maniacs, they would delete her life's work of an elected government before she finished her speech. This is a massive dilemma the likes of which most of us would never have to face. Condemn a genocide and condemn your people to totalitarianism, or ethically compromise yourself and have a chance of keeping your nascent democracy. It's easy for armchair moralists in the West to opine: they don't have to deal with the consequences of another 50 years of military junta.
My point is that, all in all, whilst she made an ethically grubby choice, I'm not sure it was the wrong choice.
The aim of the military was obviously to create a government that could not seriously challenge their rule. They kept hold of many of the levers of power, loaded the legislature with their own appointees, and manipulated the political parties to suit themselves. Even then, the military's official party of flunkies couldn't hold the 26% of seats they needed for a majority (plus the 25% of military appointees): the minute another party could usefully stand against them in 2015 the political party of the military was annihilated in the legislature.
When in 2020 the military's pet party somehow shrank even further, the military needed to make their opinions known. They may be as crude as to just hand over power to a favoured party, or perhaps rig elections to make sure their party has enough seats, or maybe it's just a reminder to the NLD of who's boss and they'll let them back in a few months. It took Turkey 80 years for civilian government to finally defang the military. The strategy open to Myanmar democrats is likewise to tread lightly until they can gradually diminish the power of the military.
I mean I don't see why the military didn't just step in and run the elections correctly if there were legit concerns about a corrupt election.
Juntas install elected governments to give the image of popular legitimacy, but the more they openly interfere in the government, the more they undermine that image of legitimacy.
It's a nice theory but what do you base that on? Every reported fact indicates she didn't just defend the military but was actively engaged in open denial of the genocide, frustrating inquires and silencing opposition by framing journalists. It's one thing to not actually distance from the military's actions it's something else to facilitate these actions and then feign plausible deniability at the international court of justice. As far as I know they even revoked her nobel peace price.
That you postulate that Suu deliberately martyred all of her moral values and reputation for Myanmar's greater good seems really farfetched to me and incongruent with the facts and just her general attitude in international relations particularly the UN. You wouldn't accept this from Putin when all of Russia's more questionable actions were attributed to the FSB by his supporters all so he could just pay the pensions in time. I guess in Suu's case it's difficult to accept a fomer peace dove is now a war criminal.
I think you can easily make the comparison with the 2011 Arab Spring and Egypt. These countries are ostensibly 'democratic' but actually run by a military deep state. I mean, the protestors got rid of Hosni Mubarak but he was then replaced by general al-Sisi. The protests effictively only made things worse for the Egyptians by the deep state just dropping it's pretense altogether. It's not unlikely a similar scenario unfolded in Myanmar, although here by a more divided military.