The escalating crisis in Myanmar

Almost thirty years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi made a prophetic forecast: ‘We have to choose between dialogue or utter devastation.’ Aung San Suu Kyi, then 50 years old, was speaking to the New York Times in July 1995, soon after her temporary release from house arrest. Daughter of the Burmese independence leader Bojoke (General) Aung San, who founded the Burmese army, Aung San Suu Kyi is now 79 years old and is currently in solitary confinement, condemned by the army generals to 27 years in prison. Her country, Myanmar, is now in a state of utter devastation. Every opportunity for meaningful dialogue has been rejected.

Myanmar, known as the ‘Golden Land’ because of its thousands of gilded temples, is blessed with abundant natural wealth and beauty but cursed with poor leadership. It was once the ‘rice bowl’ of Asia. With its then top education system and respected universities, it was set in the 1950s to outpace all the ‘Asian tigers’. Today, Myanmar has a population of 56 million generous, hospitable and self-reliant people, with deep roots in Theravada Buddhism and a widespread practice of meditation. The country also has abundant natural resources (jade, rubies, sapphires, gold, silver, teak, oil, natural gas and water). And yet, Myanmar is now the poorest and, except for North Korea, its people are the most oppressed of Asia. As Sean Turnell, the ‘special economic consultant’ to Aung San Suu Kyi who was himself imprisoned for 22 months following the coup, put it: ‘Burma had begun the 20th century as the richest country in Southeast Asia and entered the 21st century as the poorest.’

More than four-and-a-half million Burmese have been forcibly displaced: one million in Bangladesh and over 3.4 million internally displaced, driven from their homes by artillery, bombings and arson. Millions have crossed borders to Thailand as refugees or migrant workers, to Bangladesh as refugees, and close to 100,000 are taking refuge in India. In the last year alone, tens of thousands of young people have left for Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and other countries to escape the new conscription laws that are being enforced for men 18 to 35 years old and women 18 to 27 years. Doctors aged up to 45 must serve for three years, and men up to the age of 65 are conscripted ‘to protect towns against rebels’. Others go abroad to find work so they can send something back to help their families survive.

Over the past three years, up to 174 schools have been destroyed by bombing, and many churches, Buddhist monasteries and hospitals have been hit. Not just people, but their community life and culture are being attacked. Aerial bombings have increased fivefold in the last year, says the UN. In 2024, the junta unleashed a barrage of deadly airstrikes across Shan, Karen and Karenni states and Sagaing Region. In early September, the junta launched airstrikes targeting civilians in Chin, Shan and Karenni States and Magwe, Sagaing and Mandalay Regions, killing innocent civilians including a dozen children. In late October in Lashio, the northern Shan State capital which is held by the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the junta conducted four consecutive days of airstrikes.

Russia makes a profit in Myanmar, selling weapons. China talks to everyone but in the end still enables the junta. Recently China has sold jet bombers to the junta and seems to have relaxed its attitude to the criminal scam centres that the junta tolerates. India allows arms to reach the Myanmar army and keeps channels of communication open.

Pope Francis has been the only global leader repeatedly calling for peace and justice in Myanmar. In his recent visit to Asia, he stated: ‘The future of your country must be peace, based on respect for the dignity and rights of all, on respect for a democratic order that allows each person to contribute to the common good.’

'Many foreign governments continue to insist that all ‘stakeholders’ must be present in the dialogue, implying that the military must remain a partner in future reconstruction. They see the military as a legitimate stakeholder. The military’s seizure of power was not conducted legally according to the constitution they themselves had devised. What makes them a legitimate stakeholder? Is it simply because they claim to hold power at the present moment?'

Pope Francis made an appeal for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been in prison since 2021 after the military coup: ‘I called for the release of Mrs Aung San Suu Kyi and received her son in Rome. I offered the Vatican as a place of refuge for her.’ After his renewed appeal for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, the Pope reached out to Myanmar scholastics studying in Jakarta: ‘Right now, the lady is a symbol, and political symbols are to be defended. Do you remember that nun kneeling with her hands raised in front of the military? Her image went around the world. I pray that you, young people, will be brave like that. The Church in your country is courageous.’ He was referring to Sr Ann Rose Nu Tawng of Myitkyina, a sister from a local congregation, named after St Francis Xavier.

And during a Sunday Angelus address in November, Pope Francis made an appeal for peace in Myanmar, saying: ‘I express my closeness to the entire population of Myanmar, particularly to those who are suffering for the ongoing fights, especially my closeness to the most vulnerable: to the children, the elderly, the sick, and all refugees, including the Rohingya. To all parties involved, I make a heartfelt appeal: let the weapons fall silent, and may a sincere and inclusive dialogue begin, capable of ensuring lasting peace.’

From the coup of 1962 to the coup of 2021

In the 1950s, the politics of this young nation was in disarray. In 1962, General Ne Win used the opportunity to stage a coup, arguing that the army would save the state from disintegration. The army claimed then, and continues to do so even now while they are destroying the lives of the people, that only they can preserve the unity of the State.  

Before his assassination, General Aung San had promised levels of autonomy and self-government to some of the ethnic minorities, of which there are seven or eight major groups. These promises were not honoured by the military government of Ne Win, so the ethnic groups developed armies and fought for their demands. In some cases, these ethnic armies, of which there are now at least 20, were financed by local mining operations or activities such as the cultivation of opium. The senior ranks of the Myanmar army were increasingly recruited exclusively from the Bamar majority ethnic group. As education levels, industry and the economy continued to decline, unrest became common.

From the time Ne Win put senior military personnel in governance positions and introduced what he called the Burmese Way of Socialism, the country’s economy began to decline. But the military had already set up a profit-making corporation for its own benefit, so it could survive any economic crisis and remain independent. That corporation continued to diversify and take root in every sector of Burma’s economy, greatly enriching its shareholders, namely army officers and their cronies. Although Ne Win’s efforts at a socialist government attempted to opt out of the international economy, Burma was as susceptible to world economic trends as states that were thoroughly integrated.

After 26 years of Ne Win’s brutal mismanagement, 1988 saw a full-scale eruption of protests, led by university students, of whom it is believed between 3000 and 10,000 were killed in the military action to suppress their demonstrations. 

Aung San Suu Kyi appeared on Burma’s political stage in 1988. Her mother had suffered a stroke in early 1988 and Suu Kyi left her home and family in Oxford, UK, to return to Burma to care for her mother. She agreed to speak out against the mass slaughter of protesters and against the rule of military strongman Ne Win. The enthusiastic response she received led her to begin a nonviolent struggle for democracy. She co-founded the National League for Democracy (NLD) together with some former military who were opposed to Ne Win. 

Ne Win stepped down, but the generals who succeeded him faced increasing domestic and international pressure. They were forced to call a general election, which was held in 1990.  Suu Kyi campaigned but was put under house arrest on 20 July 1989 and forbidden to stand. Despite this constraint, the NLD swept 392 out of the 492 contested seats, garnering over 82 per cent of the vote. The dictatorship did not recognise the results of the election and refused to hand over power on the grounds that there was no constitution on which to base a civilian government.

Suu Kyi’s husband Michael Aris was an Oxford don, a professor specialising in Bhutanese and Tibetan Buddhism. In 1997 he was diagnosed with cancer and asked the Myanmar government for permission to visit his wife one last time — he had not seen her since Christmas 1995. The government refused, instead urging Suu Kyi to join her family abroad, but she knew that if she left Myanmar she would not be allowed to return. Aris died in March 1999.

In 2000 Suu Kyi was again placed under house arrest until being released in 2002 with freedom to travel within the country — which she did, holding meetings where tens of thousands of people turned out to see her. Presumably the generals had hoped that with her long detention the people would have forgotten her and her support would have waned.  Quite the opposite was true; she only grew in popularity as a focal point for the hope of change.

In the 20 years from 1990 to 2010, Suu Kyi spent around 15 years under house arrest.

Years later, a constitution was finally drafted and approved after a sham ‘referendum’ of handpicked delegates held in the wake of Cyclone Nargis in 2008. The 2008 constitution gave the military wide-ranging powers to appoint key cabinet members, take control of the country in a state of emergency, and occupy a quarter of the seats in parliament.

Cyclone Nargis was a disaster for the country killing at least 140,000 people and leaving over 50,000 missing. The military regarded any foreigner coming to help the victims of the cyclone as a security threat.

In 2010 an election was held but with Suu Kyi under house arrest again the NLD decided not to participate. A proxy party of the military and the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won the election, and a former general, Thein Sein, was named as ‘civilian’ President. The new ‘semi-military’ government formally annulled the results of the 1990 election. Six days after the election, Suu Kyi was released, and she was free to travel within the country and abroad. She went to Norway to receive the Nobel Peace Prize that she had been awarded in 1991 and numerous other human rights awards. When a by-election was announced in 2012, NLD decided to compete, winning 42 of the available 45 seats. Suu Kyi was elected easily for a Yangon seat and became a member of parliament.

The country began to open up during the Thein Sein government, controls were relaxed, foreign investment grew cautiously, tourism developed, and social communications expanded. New elections were scheduled for 2015, for which NLD campaigned vigorously and won convincingly with almost 80 per cent of the vote.   

According to the new constitutions, Suu Kyi was not eligible to stand for the presidency, so the NLD selected her close confidant Htin Kyaw as the party’s candidate, although Suu Kyi clearly indicated her intent to rule the country by proxy. The NLD won comfortably and Htin Kyaw was installed as president. From the beginning, Suu Kyi declared that she wanted to revise the 2008 constitution, which had given exaggerated power to the military.

A loophole in the constitutions enabled Suu Kyi to take the title of Senior Counsellor, which gave her a status akin to prime minister; she used that to govern as the head of state.   

The brilliant NLD lawyer Ko Ni, a Muslim, who had conceived this role, was assassinated in 2017 at Yangon airport. After returning from a leadership conference in Indonesia, Ko Ni gathered his two-year-old grandson into his arms when a hired assassin stepped up and shot him in the back of the head. Taxi drivers gave chase, one of whom was also killed. The hired assassin and three former military officers were sentenced in connection with the assassination, but the alleged mastermind, also a former military officer, was never apprehended. An article in the Reuters (13 December 2018) commented: ‘The killing underlined the grave risk of talk of taming the military.’ At the time the Muslim community, which included the Rohingya, was being increasingly vilified. Suu Kyi did not appear at the funeral, nor did she mention her debt to Ko Ni. This public silence may have been misinterpreted by the Muslim community, since Suu Kyi had made contact privately with Ko Ni’s family.

The five years of NLD government was a period of openness and growth for Myanmar: open borders, open communications, open for banks and business. A period in which social media was widely used. A recently published paper by Sean Turnell describes the role of the NLD’s reform program, of which he was one of the major architects. They aimed to ‘lay the foundations for liberal democracy, as well as reverse Myanmar’s five-decade retrenchment into oppression, disorder, and poverty.’ Turnell, however, describes the opposition that the reformers faced and affirmed that ‘broader change to the country’s political economy would be necessary to drive further growth’.

The 2017 expulsion of 700,000 Rohingya was a devastating event, and Suu Kyi’s lack of criticism of the army’s role and, even more so, her later defence of their actions at the International Criminal Court (ICJ), confounded observers. The Western press had placed her on a pedestal but it was a fragile role. ‘I am just a politician,’ she said in a 2015 interview. ‘I am not quite like Margaret Thatcher, no. But on the other hand, I am no Mother Teresa either. I have never said that I was.’ 

There was an overwhelming current of opinion quite hostile to Islam, and she appeared to go along with it. The Rohingya Muslims had always been one of the most persecuted minorities in Myanmar. They had hopes that the NLD could assist them. This trust was misplaced. While Suu Kyi was not responsible for the military crackdown in Rakhine state in August 2017, she said nothing to condemn it. She even asserted that the military’s actions were an appropriate response to a Rohingya militia uprising. Her personal defence of the army's actions at the ICJ hearing in the Hague was a new turning point for her international reputation. As subsequent events would prove, the reconciliatory approach adopted by Suu Kyi over the Rohingya expulsion in no way eased tensions between her and the military. Nonetheless, within Myanmar loyalty to Suu Kyi remained steadfast.

Covid struck in 2020, and it was managed admirably by the NLD government.

The 2021 coup d’etat and the end of civilian rule

For the reformers, political transition was inexorably snail-paced, but it still made many generals nervous. When the NLD won the election of 2020 by another huge majority (83 per cent) the generals feared all would be lost. Even with a political system rigged heavily in its favour, the military sensed it was losing institutional power under democratic reforms. The immense network of military-owned business monopolies that had been enriching generals and their cronies for generations was threatened. There had been massive international pressure following the Rohingya tragedy. But it seems that the commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, had not expected he would be targeted personally by international demands for justice. Moreover, Suu Kyi was apparently unwilling to raise his approaching mandatory retirement age. He had accumulated considerable wealth and was thought to want to keep his rank, not only to fulfil ambition but also to protect his financial interests. Suu Kyi’s earlier statement was a prophecy: ‘It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.’

The 2008 constitution reserved 25 per cent of parliamentary seats for active military personnel and allowed the military commander-in-chief to independently hold three key ministries, Defence, Border Affairs, and Home Affairs. But it was becoming clear that with this new electoral victory, the NLD was gaining greater authority and could possibly soon find a way to curtail or even end military dominance. 

On the morning of 1 February 2021, just as the Myanmar Parliament was to swear in the newly elected members, Senior General Ming Aung Hlaing led a coup d'état. President Win Myint and State Counsellor Suu Kyi were detained, along with ministers, their deputies and many members of parliament. Those elected members who could escape did so and formed, together with some leaders from the ethnic organisations, the National Unity Government (NUG), which is now a government in exile. The military established the State Administrative Council (SAC) to handle government functions during the state of emergency.

The first reaction of the people was to turn out by the hundreds of thousands in peaceful demonstrations in the cities and towns across Myanmar. A civil disobedience movement arose involving hundreds of thousands of civil servants, especially nurses, doctors and teachers, who refused to work for the illegal government of the generals. When the State Administrative Council, as the junta now called itself, gave the order to soldiers — published for all to know — to ‘shoot in the head or the chest’, an enduring armed resistance began called the ‘Spring Revolution’. Where the 8888 uprising of 1988 had failed, the participants of the Spring Revolution vowed to continue to the death, determined that the military must not continue to ruin their country. A young generation had tasted what was possible. Social media had opened possibilities. Within a year the political upheaval and ongoing fighting had brought about a humanitarian crisis, and the country’s economy had begun to spiral out of control. Most foreign companies left, tourism stopped, and many local businesses shut down.

Armed resistance groups sprang up around the country, at first armed with makeshift weapons such as traditional flint-lock hunting rifles. Young people from the cities went to be trained and armed by the ethnic armies and formed Peoples’ Defence Forces. They are now estimated to number about 60,000 soldiers. This was new. In 1988 when the Bamar students sought to join the Karen and other ethnic armies, they were treated with deep distrust. This time it was clear all had united for a common goal against a common enemy: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’

The resistance movement turned into a revolutionary force and has continued to gain strength. In October 2023 three of the armed ethnic groups united in an alliance to dismantle several massive criminal organisations protected by generals, running scam centres in the northeast of the country. The three ethnic armies had the support of China because Chinese citizens were being trafficked into these centres and the centres were targeting Chinese. The astounding success of this operation gave impetus to other revolutionary initiatives. Numerous military and police stations were overrun and weapons captured in northern Shan State, Kayah State, Kachin and Rakhine. Then in August the Northeastern Command in Lashio was overrun by anti-junta forces. The loss of a major city, the strongest and best equipped of the military’s 14 strategic regional command centres, signalled a major blow for the beleaguered army.  

A revolution of the heart

As is invariably the case, the revolutionary actors most feared by the military government are the poets, artists, photographers and journalists. Their highly effective weapons are the mind and the imagination. Kat Thi, a poet who used to be an engineer, took up cake-making to support his poetry — poetry which so enraged the junta that 100 soldiers were sent to arrest him. They called his family the next day to collect his tortured body. One of his most well-know and provocative lines was: ‘They shoot in the head, but don’t realize that revolution is in the heart.’

A collection of poems and essays published in English is titled Picking off new shoots will not stop the Spring, meaning that the Spring Revolution is more enduring than the individuals eliminated. One of the poets published there, K Za Win, wrote these lines:

‘O people

the day has arrived! 

It’s time you

enhance your sumptuous feast

with justice flavour!

K Za Win was shot in the head in 2021 when security forces fired into a crowd of protestors in Monywa.

Residents of Lashio were assured by the occupying Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA), the armed resistance group from the Kokang region which has driven the junta out of Lashio, that services of electricity and water would be free until Christmas, so many returned home. Then the army began an intensive four-day campaign of shelling and bombing Lashio, and returnees had to turn around and seek safety again. These ethnic armies have become strong in fighting in jungles, but once they capture a city or town they must administer it. The political challenges of victory are staggering.

Dialogue or devastation

Suu Kyi predicted 30 years ago that there would be devastation if there was no dialogue. Who has tried dialogue?

Su Kyi herself tried by forming a political party and seeking support for reforms that would lead the country to democracy. Through the party she founded and in her writing and speeches, Suu Kyi promoted democracy and non-violence, which she saw as ‘positive action. You have to work for whatever you want … Some people think that non-violence is passiveness. It's not so. I know it is the slower way, and I understand why our young people feel that it will not work. But I cannot encourage that kind of attitude. Because if I do, we will be perpetuating a cycle of violence that will never come to an end.’   For her, armed struggle — ‘he who is best at wielding arms, wields power’— is counter-productive in the struggle for democracy. Love and truth are more powerful than any form of coercion. Her main goal is democracy, by which she means the resolution of problems through political means.

The generals, while they have invited parties for talks, have used the promise of talks as a strategy for control. In recent months, perhaps pushed by China, they have proposed to hold talks toward reaching a political solution to the civil war.

The NUG refused. Whether they knew it or not, they were following Carl von Clausewitz’s maxim, ‘War is a mere continuation of politics by other means’. By military action they seek to bring their adversary to the negotiating table. The NUG had earlier in the year paved the way for a negotiated political solution if the army agreed to its conditions: terminating the military’s involvement in politics; placing all armed forces under the command of an elected civilian government; promulgating a new constitution embodying federalism and democratic values; and establishing a new federal democratic union and instituting a system of transitional justice.

The first condition, terminating the military’s involvement in politics, is surely unimaginable for the generals. One still hears the claim that only the army can preserve the unity of the State. Yet most of the people of Myanmar would hold that the SAC is by its crimes against humanity destroying the state and has abrogated its right to engagement in politics.

An early response to the coup came from Brunei, the ASEAN chair in 2021, and called for ‘dialogue, reconciliation and the return to normalcy’ in Myanmar, citing the ASEAN Charter’s democratic principles. Although there was international pressure to recognise the NUG, ASEAN invited the Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing to an emergency meeting that issued the following five-point consensus: (i) immediate cessation of violence, (ii) constructive dialogue to seek a peaceful solution, (iii) a Special Envoy of ASEAN will facilitate mediation of the dialogue process, (iv) ASEAN shall provide humanitarian assistance, and (v) the Special Envoy shall visit Myanmar to meet with all parties concerned.  No part of this so-called consensus has been implemented, except perhaps the creation of an ASEAN humanitarian assistance body, which accepts the restraints of the SAC about delivering humanitarian assistance to the displaced people.

ASEAN has proved itself unable to assist in the Myanmar crisis, even if member countries are aware that the conflict seriously impacts their economies and regional security. Given their own political histories, some countries are reluctant to intervene, thus weakening the coordinated response. In the Cambodia-Vietnam and Cambodia-Thailand conflicts, ASEAN dealt with critical Southeast Asian issues. But in the Myanmar situation, the junta obdurately refuses to respond to ASEAN initiatives.

In April 2024, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Julie Bishop, a former foreign minister of Australia, as his Special Envoy on Myanmar, succeeding Noeleen Heyzer of Singapore. It is important that the UN be present in the attempt at dialogue, despite the resistance of the SAC.

Many foreign governments continue to insist that all ‘stakeholders’ must be present in the dialogue, implying that the military must remain a partner in future reconstruction. They see the military as a legitimate stakeholder. The military’s seizure of power was not conducted legally according to the constitution they themselves had devised. What makes them a legitimate stakeholder? Is it simply because they claim to hold power at the present moment?

There is surely a time and place for dialogue. Much effort and money has been wasted, especially by the Europeans, on peace and reconciliation projects between 2011 and 2021. A long-time commentator and scholar of Burmese affairs, Bertil Lintner, makes this scathing comment:

The foreign peacemakers, who descended on Myanmar in droves during the period of relative openness from 2011 to 2021, held seminars and workshops on catchy topics such as ‘peacemaking’, ‘dialogue patterns’, ‘good governance’, and ‘reconciliation’, which had little or no relevance to the bitter realities on the ground in the conflict areas. Millions of dollars were wasted on fatuous exercises, suggesting inapplicable solutions modelled on entirely different kinds of peace processes elsewhere in the world. In the end, those efforts raised false hopes, caused confusion, and have only served to aggravate already existing problems and conflicts. (The Irrawaddy, July 2024)

In Christmas 2021 Cardinal Charles Bo responded to an invitation to meet the Senior General. Although he was urged not to accept, he apparently felt his role was to seek every opportunity for reconciliation. The Cardinal was photographed shaking hands and smiling with the Senior General. That photo only served to damage the credibility of the Cardinal.  The night before, 37 people had been cruelly massacred in Hpruso, a predominantly Catholic village near to Loikaw. News of this massacre reached social media at the same time as the photo of the ‘cake-cutting’. The following year, the oldest Catholic church in the country was destroyed.

Although each situation is different, a clear pattern has emerged in the search for healing and reconciliation following conflicts in many countries such as El Salvador, South Africa and Timor Leste. Reconciliation is only possible after justice has been acknowledged; justice can only be acknowledged after the truth is revealed. Truth, justice, reconciliation: a long and painful but necessary process. There is no way to reach reconciliation by short-circuiting this process. And the process can hardly commence while violence still reigns.

Who can speak truth to power in Myanmar? Perhaps, as Pope Francis claimed, the example of Sr Ann Rose Nu Tawng of Myitkyina is the most powerful example.

Even as violence shatters daily life in Myanmar, there remains space, however constrained, for solidarity and support. Australians can provide meaningful relief by contributing to non-governmental organizations delivering aid on the ground, subscribing to publications like The Irrawaddy to stay informed, or reading the latest work by economic analyst Sean Turnell. Beyond direct assistance, engaging political representatives is essential: asking how they plan to tighten sanctions on the junta or coordinate with partners in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States is a simple but necessary step. Recognizing the National Unity Government and extending humanitarian shelter to fleeing refugees would bolster a resistance committed to reshaping the country’s political future.

Such actions may not dismantle the junta overnight, but they keep crucial lines of hope open, particularly as ASEAN’s peace efforts falter and foreign powers hesitate. There is no shortcut: reconciliation depends on truth and justice, neither of which can flourish while bombs fall and ordinary citizens flee their homes. Still, the example of Sr. Ann Rose Nu Tawng, kneeling in silent plea before armed soldiers, reminds us that moral courage resonates in even the darkest times. The resilience, art, and determination of those demanding genuine democracy in Myanmar offer a stirring counterpoint to the brutality of military rule. In this, they, and we, echo the words of Aung San Suu Kyi: choose dialogue or devastation. If the world does not yet heed her warning, the groundswell of humanity and conscience emerging from within Myanmar may one day make it impossible to ignore.

The name of the author is known to the editors, but has been left anonymous to protect the author's identity and safety. 

Main image: Tires burning at a barricade erected by protesters to stop government forces crossing a bridge on March 16, 2021 in Yangon, Myanmar. (Photo by Stringer/Getty Images)