Coup? What coup? A year on, Myanmar’s people suffer as the world just looks on

A year on from the military coup in Myanmar and one of the most striking things is just how little the world has even tried to do — let alone done — to stop the carnage and repression inflicted by the military that has sent the country spiralling into the worst civil war for 50 years.

On that and every other metric — economic, humanitarian and moral — the coup has been a colossal failure. The generals have not regained control of the nation from their democratically elected partner, the National League for Democracy (NLD). Nor has the West dealt with their overthrow of the NLD.

There have been some sanctions on military leaders by the United States and the European Union, but summing up the ineffectualness of these and other responses, United Nations human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said at the weekend: “It is time for an urgent, renewed effort to restore human rights and democracy in Myanmar and ensure that perpetrators of systemic human rights violations and abuses are held to account.” 

But that, or anything like that, is a long way away.

Since independence from Great Britain in 1948 there have been multiple civil wars, generally at the periphery of mainland South-East Asia’s geographically largest nation. Most recently, pre-coup, there was an all-out battle in the northern states of Kachin and Shan that has in recent years spread westwards.

What is most remarkable about the latest coup is that it is one of the few times since the military seized power in 1962 that the ethnic Bamars who occupy the centre of the country are finding common cause with the ethnic minorities who populate the west, north and east of a land once the jewel of British India.

At present, the military — known as the Tatmadaw — is up against a loose alliance of at least 50 anti-coup and largely social media-led rebel groups from the majority Bamar ethnic group called “People’s Defence Forces”, as well as myriad ethnic armed groups who have waged decades-long wars for improved self-determination.

Fighting, including air strikes, has been stepped up against established rebel groups in Kayah, Chin, Shan and Kayin states. It is expected to increase over coming weeks during the so-called “fighting season” ahead of monsoon rains in May.

On January 17, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that some 349,000 people have been internally displaced by military clashes, on top of 340,000 who were already living in displacement camps before the coup, mainly in the north and Rakhine states.

The agency estimates that 2200 houses and civilian properties had been burnt or destroyed since the coup. Almost 1500 civilians have been killed and more than 11,000 arrested in the post-coup crackdown. These figures are only verified events and the real numbers are much higher, observer groups say. 

During the last serious internal ructions in the 1980s, hundreds of thousands fled into neighbouring Thailand. But this time, Bangkok’s own junta is having none of it.

Already South-East Asia’s poorest country, the World Bank estimates the Myanmar economy has probably shrunk by 18% in the past year and is forecast to grow by just 1% this year. Its neighbours are expecting a rapid rebound.

Problematically, the coup came in the midst of the COVID pandemic. Myanmar’s health system was at best threadbare before the coup for anyone but the military and monied elites; the turmoil has hidden from the world the extent of the devastation that the virus has wrought.

A range of people with friends and relatives in the country who spoke to Crikey all said they knew many who had died or been seriously ill. The junta has promised vaccines but the situation has become so dire a shadow health system has been set up by health professionals.

And after all these horrors the world has largely sat by and watched. The UN is hamstrung by having China and Russia, both arms sellers to the Tatmadaw, as veto members. A certain amount of chaos in a country that is its gateway to the Indian Ocean certainly suits Beijing. This alone should be turning Australian government minds — but does not seem to be.

Low-level sanctions aside, North American and European countries have tended to outsource the Myanmar problem to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-country group that once aspired to be something like the EU but which has become in recent years something of a dictators’ club with some democratic hangers-on.

Australia, once a real mover and shaker when major upheavals occurred in the neighbourhood, has put far too much store in ASEAN and has remained, apart from the odd “statement”, generally mute. This is despite the fact that Australian Sean Turnell is one of the junta’s more prominent foreign captives.

Turnell was an economic adviser to deposed Aung San Suu Kyi — who is in the midst of her own string of criminal trials aimed at locking her away or at least removing her from the politics permanently — and seems destined to be imprisoned until they are finished with her.

Whatever the Australian government thinks it is doing to help him, it is clearly not working. Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne has been largely invisible on the issue. But some parliamentarians have at least stood up, led by Western Australian Liberal Senator Dean Smith and Labor MP Peter Khalil. The Joint Standing Committee into Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade held hearings about the coup last year and produced a set of recommendations. These have by and large been ignored.

There is more Australia can do. It could, for instance, cancel the visas of family members and associates of the military here.

Many observers are calling for a special envoy to be appointed to look hard at Australian interests in Myanmar in the same way as been done before, including to the Balkan states during the turmoil of the 1990s.

The government can also engage, as Smith and his colleagues have done, with the National Unity Government in exile.

But the Australian government, overwhelmingly obsessed with China, continues to drop the ball on South-East Asia — and Myanmar in particular.

Perhaps Suu Kyi’s fall from grace as she stood mutely by during the attempted genocide of the Rohingya people from 2017 has made it easier for the West to turn its back.

Should Australia take a harder stance on Myanmar? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name if you would like to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say column. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.