Military seizes control in Myanmar
bbc.com
bbc.com
All Internet and TV, phone service, cut off. However fiber internet land lines are still working. Most ATMs are still working but very long lines.
Soldiers and tanks in many parts of city. City hall if full of soldiers.
I learnt about the Rohingya ethnic cleansing before going and how the leader wouldn't publicly condemn military actions. It now seems like she didn't want to ruffle some feathers.
What's the general attitude over there? Did anyone see this coming? I was able to meet a few locals and ate at the same three places for one month. The youth were optimistic. The city felt alive. Multinationals were investing.
Would be sad to see US sanctions followed by the populace getting the shaft, like some North Korea situation.
Given that I heard that it was probably coming in Western media a couple of days ago, I think the signs were probably there.
What has been your personal experience living in Myanmar all this while?
How do you see this situation playing out?
My personal experience is Myanmar is a wonderful country full of a wonderful people, and vibrant culture, despite living in the shadow of ethnic violence and a brutal military regime.
It’s hard to say how this will play out. For many here it’s a mystery why military did this, as they already had power over state business, 25% military appointed legislature, control of courts, etc. and the benefit of hiding behind fake democracy to get foreign investment. So people are confused as to what their motive is, as they already had the best of both worlds.
Economic prosperity for the populace is dangerous for a dictatorship. Myanmar is still a poor country which exports mainly things dug out of ground. If the situation changes and now the military is financed by businesses and tax-payer money, they'll have to answer to those.
This is bad news for the military leaders and their gang. They'd much better have a small income from these resources and a poor population than being ousted. (and probably face prosecution)
Do you believe that your consideration of the previous military power is widely understood and that the above quote explains the success of the NLD in the election?
Do you feel San Suu Kyi has been prevented from acting to protect ethnic minorities due to the influence of the military?
If so, is there reason to believe the military would perceive the beyond landslide victory in favor of the NLP as Likely to disrupt or erode their existing position of power?
[1] https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/myanmar-shattered-hopes-for-...
Almost everyone in Burma hates military and understands that civilian government can’t do everything they want.
Yet all the international coverage seems ignorant of these facts, condemning ASSK for things she doesn’t control, like military operations in Rhakine against Rohingya. They don’t understand that the reason she defended military at UN is only outcome of not defending them would be sanctions which just further harms civilian government and people. She had no choice.
People here in Burma are still confused as to motivation for coup, since military already had best of both worlds: ultimate power of law and courts, and no sanctions because of farcical democracy. Why they would risk sanctions to do this is a mystery.
Sorry for offering wild conjecture, but the first thing that comes to mind is some kind of a payout to generals from China, who is hoping for sanctions from the rest of the world so that they can be the sole influencer in the country.
Or some variation on that theme: influence from China.
Or perhaps just some power hungry generals longing for the old days <shrug>
3rd paragraph: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/world/asia/myanmar-coup-a...
Big Tech started banning Myanmar government officials from their services that they didn’t approve of. Now they cry about suspension of democracy? The claims of a rigged elections in Myranmar sounds eerily familiar...
At one point I would have thought of this as presumptive hubris, but now with a 100% correlation that would just be naive.
Only KNU (Karen army) so far has made statement opposing military coup.
Edit: That said, independence armies are all to some degree corrupt and many funded through drug manufacturing and smuggling.
Military has also taken over ASSK FB page and is posting false information.
Seems like a major weakness if your local government can somehow just log you out of your secure messaging platform.
Regardless, please avoid snark on HN. It does not add value to the conversation.
LoRa uses license-free sub-gigahertz radio frequency bands like 433 MHz, 868 MHz (Europe), 915 MHz (Australia and North America), 865 MHz to 867 MHz (India) and 923 MHz (Asia).
If a country has gotten to the point that you would be targeted just for having an app installed, just changing to usernames wouldn't be enough, as users could be easily detected through network logging (thanks AWS and Google for killing domain fronting [0]). Your usecase sounds like it needs an app like Briar.
It's pushed as a secure messaging client, and so when it doesn't meet the standards for that people will mention it so potential users have the information needed for a risk assessment.
Usernames: Signal needs to store your social graph (in a privacy preserving fashion) on a central server.
So, paradoxically, phone numbers were the easiest and most secure option to start with.
Actually, there must be methods for distributed routing. How does TOR finally map a hidden service to an IP address?
Maybe there can be a dynamic DNS service for user accounts on an anonymous messaging network?
I think officially it’s just (2) and (1) is just a side effect, but I think it’s secretly more about (1)
I don't see this sim lockdown being a problem unless you want to create a new account or for some reason your account has been logged out requiring 2FA. In my understanding, telegram also asks for SMS for 2FA on re-login. Though the 2FA code will be simultaneously sent to any other device you've logged the account in.
Have there been any cases where the people have spoken out against such regulations, and they have been reversed?
Sometimes you can get logged out going from wifi to LTE/mobile data on either of those apps, I have had that happen, and this can create issues like this which means you will have to create another account and may not have your contact list etc... which is impossible if you're trying to use your mobile number you use.
It's kind of crazy that all of our over-paranoid back ups and ad-hoc solutions have been so damn necessary for even the normal person in the last 10 years, be it PgP, burner sms numbers, cryptocurrency, apps like TG and Signal etc...
As some have mentioned Moxie said he wants to move away from phone based accounts, and now that Elon sent him a ton of new users from all walks of Life that this may need to be accelerated, which from what I garnered from his podcast with JR it's just not well staffed and is in need of some your guys' talents.
Some eBay traders will sell activated SIMs but you are essentially trusting a third party.
Agreed, to an extent.
But not if you know how to do the legwork; I have 4 active Telegram/Signal accounts on sveral devices using apps that allowed me to register and acquire a US/EU based mobile number.
I completely lost al ofl those passwords and access to those old numbers (didn't use them after activation years ago) but it certainly is possible if you do the legwork.
So I'd assume accidentally with something about the cell phones changing making Signal and Telegraph want to re-authenticate.
Or the person has cleared their phone for obvious reasons which also logged them out.
If you are afraid of government interferance and too lazy to usw xmpp/Matrix why wouldn't you configure at least signal securely?
[0]: https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/01/16/myanmar-democracy-rohin...
[1]: https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2021-02/militaerputsch-m...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/31/world/asia/myanmar-coup-a...
[3]: https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-is-alarmed-by-reports-of-mi...
[4]: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2021-01-31/myanma...
>Aung San Suu Kyi could not have ordered the military to stop their operations against the Rohingya, and it was legitimate to fear that the military would reverse the transition toward democracy ...
Now we see just how little control she had over the generals.
"But now that the military establishment has moved to accommodate the Burmese pro-democracy movements in the country, oppression of so-called Muslim foreigners like the supposedly Bengali Rohingya is perfectly acceptable along the path toward building an exclusionary Buddhist nation-state."
It was a shambles. Military is making way too much as it stands. Peasants working with cyanide, dumping into rivers.
Absolute disaster
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/02/landsl...
[0] https://www.globalwitness.org/en/all-countries-and-regions/m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naypyidaw
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/myanmar...
But in general, the notion creating a new remote capital free of the existing concentrated power structures of the biggest cities is an old idea.
It was the motive behind the build up of Washington DC, which at the time was not very populated and mostly swamp land. The motive was to be free of the unfair influence of any one state. Brasilia copied that idea (it's amazing how visually similar it is in many ways to DC). ...and you might say Constantinople was the original. Similarly, most US state capitols are intentionally NOT their largest city (ie NYC is not the capital of New York State). ...even Vermont chose Montpelier instead of Burlington.
In contrast to Brasilia (which is perhaps the most well-known recent-ish create-a-new-capital-from-scratch initiative), it is far less dense and less occupied. Contrasting to most of the other newer similarly-situated capitals, Naypyidaw is clearly pretty poorly populated and some of its infrastructure is laughably oversized compared to what use it would actually get (Why do you need that road with 10 lanes in each direction? It goes from nowhere to nowhere...).
Myanmar has been a quasi-dictatorship for decades.
Many regimes that have been dictatorial for decades have fallen. It’s easy to name them. South Korea is a particularly good example where its history is marked by alternating periods of democratic and autocratic rule and now they are a stable and wealthy democratic country. The last few years in Myanmar was a hopeful surprise as they made inroads towards a constitutional democracy, albeit with a lingering junta in the shadows. That did not happen without international pressure. The world is different today, where events are seen worldwide in an instant and movements are inspired in an instant. Many countries expressed shock at what happened on Jan 6 and the four years of isolationism preceding. It will be harder today to call out Myanmar for what the autocrats are doing. The reply will be scorn about our hypocrisy. The madmen are stepping out of the shadows of shame.
Where you specifically implied that Trump's actions emboldened the authoritarians that seized power in Myanmar. As someone who lives in this part of the world (close to Myanmar), your comments are a bit silly and self-centered.
You are quoting an article which has flawed view points of a couple of people, almost all foreigners without a vested interest and much skin in the game..
And in 2018.
Would there be an insurgency? Would they be able to train a local and loyal military force to protect democracy?
I guess it would end up like Iraq all over again. Local military leaders would just become terrorist leaders. However because they are mostly Buddhist it feels like it would be harder for them to attract jihadists. And the Muslims are the ones being persecuted.
After all the money we spent on Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems like it would have been better spent liberating a country like this once and for all.
Funny to think how the reaction would be to a Biden government going to war with a tiny military dictatorship. Would people protest it and on what grounds?
Could a modern day colonialism work? With modern liberal ideals of the US it seems like it would be dramatically different from times past. US would just setup and defend a constitution and ensure fair elections and provide military. Minus the exploitation this time.
PS. Not seriously advocating for any of this, just interesting to think about.
—
Also, I think we take it so much for granted that the most powerful military in the world who could easily take control of the whole country overnight is 100% loyal to a civilian elected by the people.
I wonder how much free choice people have in this scenario anyway. It would seem obvious to blame the military leaders and their soldiers who are the ones who enable all this. But how much does a regular soldier rely upon his salary to survive.
I don't even know where to begin and neither do I feel qualified to provide anything approaching a basic education on this long list of topics, considering my own ignorance. Not that it would fit in a single post.
Here's a rough list anyways:
- Insurgents aren't the same thing as terrorists. I don't think you want to suggest the Burmese military response to US military occupation will be to target their own civilian population.
- Your use of the word jihad(-ism) doesn't make sense in either its arabic meaning or in how it is commonly used in the west.
- Please don't try to define people by their religion, or ascribe a religion to them. The only ones who get to do that is the people themselves.
- Especially since religion is at best tangential to this whole situation.
- You seem to think Myanmar is some "tiny" country with an equally small military. It is not. Their current 'new' government is also not without potential allies. China doesn't appear to care who's at power in Myanmar, but they do depend on it being stable and probably won't just tolerate half a million US troops landing in their backyard to 'liberate' it.
- Colonialism is diametrically opposed to the idea of liberation.
- Neocolonialism (or "modern day colonialism") is also explicitly about everything but riding in with your military.
Everyone would have to pick a side. Look at Vietnam.
> jihadism
TBH, I have just read about what jihad means now and it was interesting. Jihadism is definitely a commonly understood term in the west meaning religiously motivated military movement. It looks like there are many types of Jihad - and one is "jihad of the sword" which is what is understood in the west.
Non-violence is especially central to Buddhism. In practice is this the case...maybe not. But it certainly has that "image".
If you send forces to a sovereign nation, some might think you are violating their sovereignty politically. But if your justification is religious - like it was with the Taliban - in a sense that it offends their deity - then this is going to have a much deeper and long-lasting resistance - as the US saw. This was my point. There seems more religious motivation to resist occupation in Islam than there is in Buddhism. But in terms of who is violent and non-violent - I don't think that is a good point.
Thanks for the thoughts - I learned a few things.
One has to admit that it is probably one of the most difficult things to do, many have tried throughout history and failed.
Look at WW2 as a great example of the US’s inaction and disinterest in upholding its values causing huge amount of destruction and casualties.
In terms of net benefit in the long run from the Iraq war, it doesn’t look great right now. But there are many things that were done wrong that led to the insurgency.
I bought the line of it’s only for oil/power/stock-prices for a long time, but I don’t believe that is a great enough sole motivation for a bunch of men who were already rich and powerful. People care about legacy - and if you can say you ejected a life long dictator as president it’s a pretty great legacy - unless an unexpected insurgency cancelled that out.
This link gives some insight into how they are going as a country and it is not flattering reading:
http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p102401/mobile...
What conclusion can be drawn, then, regarding Myanmar’s growth experience from independence in 1948 up to the end of the 1990s? If we wish to be unkind, we can say that Myanmar is a subsistence agricultural economy, relying on a few commodities, with a pre-industrial economic structure, which has no shock absorbers to cushion the impact of events originating within and outside the country. Natural and human-made disasters, therefore, windfalls from the bounty of nature and commodity booms that resulted from such events as the Korean War largely determined the state of the economy, rather than factors such as the GDI/GDP ratio.
Such unkind views can, however, no longer hold with the official data for Myanmar’s economic performance coming into the new millennium. In biblical times, it was possible for a country’s economy to enjoy seven fat years in a row and then to suffer seven lean years in a row. Not anymore! Global warming, a growing menace, has brought with it climate change that has made weather volatile and erratic. There is no way a country can expect to have seven consecutive years of good harvests in the twenty-first century.
That was written back in 2005 and it looks like their GDP predictions have turned out to be correct with a big drop in their GDP since 2005.
At a glance it looks like their GDP went from around 12% down to 6.5% on average which is about a 50% drop in GDP.
It is also represents 12 consecutive years of GDP lower than that last 2008 peak.
For instance - in colonial states the "authority" is the colonial administrator - who are almost totally separate from the "society" of the country. I should have been more clear with terms in my first post. Trying again:
Strong human rights protections help guarantee that the administrative power of a state spends some time including all the people within its borders. Once those rights fall away, the chance of the state becoming more exclusionary and focused on the rights of a limited subset of the people within its borders seems high.
A military junta, for instance, is primarily concerned with keeping the military in power and doesn't devote attention or resources to much else.
This is why many of us internationals get concerned about American politics, because where America goes, others soon follow. Just like some countries used the "war on terror" branding to suppress democratic movements, it was only a matter of time before other authoritarians used "election fraud" to overthrow election results they didn't like. In Myanmar's case the junta's fraud issue is more likely to be that they didn't rig the system enough to their liking.
Election fraud can be a real issue. The question is, like "weapons of mass destruction", getting the evidence rather than going on suspicion.
(Prior to 2020, there were real concerns from security experts: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/04/securing_elec... ... but everyone assumed it would be rigged in favour of the Republicans)
Trump's attack on the integrity of the 2020 election was irresponsible, as was the Democrats' on the 2016 election. I don't think Americans generally understand how fragile legitimacy is, and how important it is
Russian diplomat turns meeting to support Belarus into an attack on Estonia
"...After representatives had expressed concern for the situation in Belarus one after another and Estonian Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Reinsalu proposed the creation of an international mechanism for investigating crimes against peaceful protesters in the country, it was the turn of the Russian representative.
"...Polyanskiy went on to say that claiming that a country's elections saw bias and fraud is not a rare occasion, giving the example of presidential elections in the U.S. Polyanskiy asked why potential election fraud in America is not a subject of discussion and referred to different treatment of elections in USA and Belarus as garish double standards.
"'Is there a list of bad countries somewhere regarding which colleagues in the West silently support anti-government actions and protests and 'good' ones where the powers that be are always in the right? Why are you paying exaggerated attention to such phenomena only in certain countries, while ignoring them in France, UK, Germany and, as it happens, also Estonia?' Polyanskiy asked."
https://news.err.ee/1608084259/russian-diplomat-turns-meetin...
Are you talking about the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US elections?
I genuinely can't tell how much of this perceived trend is real, and how much of it is a shift in my own perspective. And even then: am I just becoming more aware of how the world has always been, or is an increase in media sensationalism to blame (either for my perspective shift, or for an actual shifting reality?) Does it all come down to the impact of social media, or other technologies enabling oppressors? Is it the increasing concentration of global wealth? Was the latter half of the 20th century just an anomaly where much of the world was turned off to authoritarianism by the second world war, and we're at a point now where that's worn off and we're getting back on with the normal trajectory? Was it just my American information bubble telling me that things were ever somewhat better, even for a few decades?
I don't know what to think, but what it feels like is that this train is going off the rails.
Media sensationalism and bubbles are driven by several cooperating incentives: consolidation of traditional media ownership into fewer and fewer corporations all which have similar goals; more competition from non traditional outlets; suspension of traditional journalistic principles; cozy relationships among journalists, politicians and academics that tend to a very narrow Overton Window; a climate of fear regarding cancel culture.
Fortunately, alternative perspectives are easier to find than ever before.
They killed far more than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesian_mass_killings_of_19... 1965–1966, 500k - 1m
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Laos
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Cambodia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_activities_in_Myanmar
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_squads_in_El_Salvador "The paramilitaries committed the vast majority of murders and massacres during the civil war and were heavily aligned with the United States-backed government"
But, in general, I do have a sense it was a uniquely optimistic decade for many people in the former First World, mainly because the Cold War ended and there was a sense that we had "won". Western Europe in particular demilitarized a lot as a result, the EU was formalized, the Good Friday Agreement was signed, Oslo Accords happened, end of apartheid etc.
For Americans I think 9/11 derailed things again.
Outside of the former First World, I'm not sure they'd see the 90s the same way.
but yeah it wasn't that great anywhere south of cancun or cairo
The long steady progress happening in many countries just doesn't provide any headlines.
Bit of both really. I'm a decade older and therefore able to remember both the sense of imminent doom that hung over the Cold War - the risk that the two world powers might just obliterate each other with an hour's notice and billions dead - and also the "end of history" period in the 90s. The optimism after the Soviet Union collapsed ...
... and then the gradual back-filling of everywhere east of the Iron Curtain with capitalist corrupt states. 9/11 happened, and the world went mad with vengeance in ways that it hasn't really recovered from.
Even in the past decade we've gone from "social media and the internet enables revolutions and democracy" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_revolution_of_2011 , almost exactly a decade ago), to "you get a revolution whether you want it or not, and revolutionaries are often terrifyingly illiberal".
The big one is of course China, which has seen a complete transformation in material conditions without transitioning to even the slightest bit of liberal democracy.
- Only outcome of not defending military at UN would be sanctions or civilian government losing some of the little power they have, which would only harm situation more.
- ASSK does not want genocide or anything like that. She is slandered by ignorant press.
Isn't failure to educate international press still a (big IMHO) failure?
Personally the result for me has been that she was once a kind of freedom hero, than became a kind of mass murderer and should have her Nobel prize revoked.
Then I read today that she's been almost a hostage of the military for all this time and she's getting some of my sympathy back again. However the trade she accepted to do feels bad and the signaling of being a hostage was totally missing.
What is she supposed to do? Come out and denounce the military publicly, effectivey destroying what little relationship and understanding they’ve built with the military? That doesn’t accomplish anything. She already did that and sat in prison for 15 years.
Nobel peace prizes and moralizing westerners don’t help Burma. There’s little reason for her to care about what they think.
She’s been public about her strategy. She’s always said the only way forward is to build understanding and relationship with military. To work with the scraps given to them. To work through peaceful means. It’s either that or nothing. Rising up won’t really work, they tried that in 1988 and the military just murdered and jailed people until they stopped.
She had two choices: 1) Say publicly that military are bad people, and erode what little power military affords NLD and fragile relationship between civilian government and military. Or 2) Have the press hate her for not saying words, and maintain the fragile understanding and peacemaking process with military.
She chose the least bad option, in support of civilian rule, democracy, and peace building. Publicly condemning military for Rohingya doesn’t accomplish anything for anyone.
"In 2012, she told reporters she did not know if the Rohingya could be regarded as Burmese citizens."
"However, she said that she wanted to work towards reconciliation and she cannot take sides as violence has been committed by both sides."
"State crime experts from Queen Mary University of London warned that Aung San Suu Kyi is "legitimising genocide" in Myanmar."
"Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a fellow peace prize holder, also criticised Suu Kyi's silence: in an open letter published on social media, he said: "If the political price of your ascension to the highest office in Myanmar is your silence, the price is surely too steep"
"In early October 2018, both the Canadian Senate and its House of Commons voted unanimously to strip Aung San Suu Kyi of her honorary citizenship."
She has been trying to build relationship with generals, and is not going to publicly denounce them just to achieve some kind of moral pageantry. Angering the military so she can appease people who don’t do anything for Burma is pointless.
If ASSK was in charge Rohingya situation would not happen. But she’s not in charge. Holding her to some impossible ideal is ridiculous. Blaming her for genocide is offensive. It’s just part of a game western academics, journalists, and moralizers like to play.
Her actions are completely understandable if you understand the political situation, and its history.
And for most Burmese the lack of support for her fledgling civilian government by the nations and journalists that condemn her has created deep resentment. Nobody here cares at all what they think.
Imagine how it feels to have people, who don’t even know the name of the generals, how the government works, or where Myanmar is on a map, tell us how evil ASSK is. The person who has sacrificed her whole family and life for peace and reconciliation.
The fact is is that what's happening to the Rohingya is a a genocide - and ASSK says nothing or even worse, tries to dismiss it or make excuses. As Desmond Tutu said in the statement I quoted, if the price of her position is silence, that's a price too high.
And Desmond Tutu’s letter is patronizing and ridiculous. She has no power over the Rakhine situation. None. The only power she had was negotiating with the military. She doesn’t need to be told that people don’t deserve to be victims of war and ethnic strife.
We stand with Aung San Suu Kyi until the end.
I suppose the Gies family should have walked outside and told the Nazi soldiers they were pieces of shit. That would be the morally right thing to do!? Get a grip. Sometimes speaking truth to power is just fucking dumb.
Do you think Burmese aren’t in the streets protesting because they approve of the government, or because they know they will get shot?
The obsession with defaming ASSK over the evil actions of the military is pathetic. It is so so low and pathetic how the international media relentlessly implies ASSK is secretly a supporter of genocide because she won’t tell the military off in public. All it accomplished was emboldening the military and damaging relations with the civilian government. Just so all the “journalists” could pat themselves on the back for being so courageous.
Doesn't mesh well with washington kissinger pastiche though
Most middle-eastern countries do not have this either...
> but Myanmar is still richer than us.
but I am willing to bet they are richer than both Nepal and Myanmar. It seems what Myanmar has over Nepal is natural resources, (just like the middle eastern countries). This is nothing to be proud of.
China has a heavy influence in Nepal, and the tourist trade gives everyone a bad taste for Western anything.
I would agree with your statement otherwise.
It's a terrible reason, but that is their justification.
Conflict with the Northern provinces have been a constant for decades.