Top Myanmar General Says Military Rule Will Continue Into 2023
Six months to the day after Myanmar’s
military staged a coup and imposed a reign of terror over the country, the
junta’s leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, said on Sunday that a national
state of emergency would be extended for another two years.
The move, announced in a televised address,
effectively ruled out any return to democracy before 2023 for Myanmar, which
only last year was seen as a rare case in which an authoritarian regime had
peacefully handed over some power to an elected government. It also
contradicted the generals’ assurances, soon after the coup, that they were
serious about bringing political freedoms back.
Later Sunday, the State Administration
Council, as the junta calls itself, announced the formation of a new caretaker
government with General Min Aung Hlaing as prime minister.
“From the beginning, we knew that they would
not keep their promises and that they would get the political environment they
wanted,” said Ko Aung Thu, a leader of the nationwide resistance to the coup.
“If they extend the state of emergency until August 2023, we must continue to
protest until they somehow fall.”
Since the Feb. 1 putsch, at least 940
people have died at the hands of Myanmar’s security forces, according to a
tally kept by a monitoring group that closely tracks the killings. More than
5,400 people are in detention, including all of Myanmar’s senior elected
leadership.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s
76-year-old civilian leader, has been charged with various crimes, including
sedition, that could keep her imprisoned for the rest of her life. Her National
League for Democracy party, which won two overwhelming mandates from the public
during the short period in which the army shared power with civilians, was
ordered to dissolve.
Myanmar is also being consumed by the
coronavirus, a health disaster that has been exacerbated by the junta’s
obduracy. The military has monopolized oxygen supplies, stalled vaccinations
and kept lifesaving treatments from those who have opposed its rule.
A private trade in oxygen was made illegal.
Bodies are piling up at crematoriums, witnesses said, even as the national
health authorities, under the control of the junta, report suspiciously low
death tolls each day. Officially, Myanmar reported 4,725 coronavirus cases and
392 deaths on Saturday.
Last week, the military announced on its
television network that it was building a crematorium that would be able to
burn up to 3,000 bodies a day.
Among those who have died of Covid-19 is U
Nyan Win, one of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s closest confidants and a spokesman for
her party, who was jailed after the coup. The virus has ripped through
Myanmar’s inmate population; in one of its most notorious prisons, Insein,
political detainees staged a protest on July 23 that soldiers quickly put down
with force.
In his speech on Sunday, General Min Aung
Hlaing, dressed in civilian clothes rather than his army uniform, said he was
concerned about the pandemic. “Nothing other than individual life is of crucial
significance,” he said. “That’s my policy.”
The junta, however, has all but halted a
vaccination campaign and has reserved injections for its soldiers. In contrast,
some ethnic armed groups in Myanmar that have fought the military for decades
have carried out mass inoculations in territory that they control.
Representatives of some of those ethnic
groups have joined members of Myanmar’s ousted elected government, along with
civil society leaders, to form what they call the National Unity Government,
which is operating in hiding.
Despite a climate of fear created by the
military crackdown and the raging virus, a nationwide protest movement has
sustained itself for half a year. Each day, across the country, people gather
for demonstrations, often lasting just a minute or two, before dispersing to
stay ahead of the soldiers. Images from the flash protests are uploaded onto
social media, to continue the resistance on a virtual battleground.
Wary of political fallout from operating in
a country under financial sanctions, which Western nations have imposed because
of the violence, a number of multinational companies have pulled out of
Myanmar, including the Norwegian mobile operator Telenor.
The American Embassy said on Sunday that
the United States remained “firmly committed to supporting the people of
Myanmar in their aspirations for a democratic, inclusive future,” saying they
had shown “remarkable courage and conviction” since the coup.
General Min Aung Hlaing confirmed on Sunday
that the military had annulled the results of the national elections held in
November, claiming that the National League for Democracy, which badly beat the
military’s proxy party, had committed electoral fraud. He also repeated his
assurance that elections would one day be held again, though he gave no
indication of when.
“Collective solidarity among all national
peoples can overcome the Covid pandemic,” the general said in his speech. “And
building a genuine, disciplined multiparty democratic system will be successful.”
Protesters said they would persevere
against the junta.
