#WHAT IS HAPPENING IN MYANMAR FREE#

The change to the urban landscape was incredible to see as Yangon modernised as fast as its rickety infrastructure could bear. NGOs and international development agencies began to alleviate some of the nationвЂ™s direst poverty with direct intervention, but there was also great opportunity to open up mineral extraction, manufacturing capacity and new resource chains.

#WHAT IS HAPPENING IN MYANMAR FREE#

The great benefit to shedding its international pariah status had been the lifting of sanctions and plenty of free market liquidity. The Tatmadaw went from being the target of revolution in 2008 to enjoying stable electoral popularity in minority government by 2016, thanks to some old-fashioned bipartisan effort. It is also the direct source of MyanmarвЂ™s blood and soil nationalism). The new freedoms were contingent on their ability to re-rehabilitate the military as a political and cultural institution (it considers itself the spiritual vanguard to the nation. This arrangement was in the 2011 constitution that the military had written. The democratic government had, realistically, always existed at the pleasure of the nationвЂ™s ruling military elite. So in response to the February coup, based on those years I spent in Myanmar, it was my summation that the experiment in democracy had all the cracks at its foundation. Those sorts of racial attitudes were not at all shocking, it fit with their generation.

вЂњIf you were a chimpanzee, and an orang utan came to you and said, I am chimpanzee, and you could see they were not, what would you do?вЂќ, he responded cryptically. I asked the minister what the state media line was going to be on printing the word вЂњRohingyaвЂќ as the media came under increasing pressure to describe the minority as foreign вЂњBengaliвЂќ. I met one of the party seniors, Dr Pe Myint, when he became Minister for Information. The Lady always played her politics close to the chest вЂ“ her inner circle are all older, life-long party loyalists going back to the 1980s, and her feelings and thoughts were often made known through them. They chose to invest the peopleвЂ™s trust in the military, and it ultimately cost them everything.ДЇor Aung San Suu KyiвЂ™s part, she revealed herself to be one of the rarest political animals a committed democratic electoralist, yes, but for an ethno-nationalist state. Well, this year we found out that such a coup was not just possible, it might have been made inevitable when the will of the party was tested, and it declined the confrontation. If the National League for Democracy (NLD) did not lend its support, the argument went, they might have simply been removed from power. Some went on to rationalise the decision. I settled on the sad affirmation that despite the high hopes for the new constitutional order, they were unable and unwilling to break the chain of endless bloody warfare. Deep down it felt like the entire democratic project was being betrayed just as it was being realised. The civilian governmentвЂ™s endorsement of the military was unexpected. I stood for a while trying to process what I was feeling.

With that, the operations went on with broad public support. Then, the response of Aung San Suu Kyi, democratic stalwart, civilian government leader and many Burmese peopleвЂ™s personal hero, settled the issue reports of Rohingya woman survivors, she announced, were вЂњfake rapeвЂќ. We Myanmar watchers were hoping the slaughter could be quickly intervened with. It was an old chestnut of propaganda by the bellicose junta, the kind that had often been met with public derision. The papers were all dutifully towing the military line Islamic fundamentalism had finally boiled over into revolt and was being contained by the nationвЂ™s brave protectors. Rakhine clearance operations, what the Myanmar military (Tatmadaw) was calling their savage displacement of the Rohingya minority, was the dominating story.

I was strolling around the Yangon suburb of Bahan on a sunny afternoon in 2017 when I passed a newsstand and ran my eyes over the papers. I remember the moment MyanmarвЂ™s political trajectory fully came into focus for me. Conflict, a coup, military rule вЂ“ whatвЂ™s really going on in Myanmar? Former Myanmar-based reporter and editor and one-time Greens candidate Alec Wilmot shares his unique insights and thoughts on the situation there.

What is happening in myanmar