Unión de Myanmar/Birmania

A protester at the center holds up a sign showing a cartoon image of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Myanmar military chief Sr. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing during a demonstration against the military coup in front of the Chinese Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar, on Feb. 11, 2021. Ye Aung Thu / AFP via Getty Images

MundoAsia,

The writer Joan Didion famously observed, “We tell ourselves stories in order to live”. So do nations. China, for example, invents stories to delete or rewrite uncomfortable history like the Tiananmen uprising (not unlike U.S. President Donald Trump trying to erase Jan. 6) or the horrors of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. On the global stage, China is telling the world stories about its vision for a post-American world order that bear little resemblance to its actual policies in Asia—especially, and most egregiously, in their war-torn neighbor Myanmar.

The Chinese story goes like this: America’s hegemony has been oppressive and unipolar; China’s rise will open up the world to a more just and equal order.…  Seguir leyendo »

Protesters hold posters with the image of detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a demonstration against the military coup in Naypyidaw on February 28, 2021. Four years after the military coup of February 1, 2021, Myanmar is still in the grip of a bloody civil war. | Photo Credit: AFP

MundoAsia

Four years after the military coup on February 1, 2021, Myanmar, ‘the sick man of Southeast Asia,’ continues to traverse a dismal path. The nation is fragmenting; there is no peace and stability; the economy is in ruins; the people are suffering; and the international community has other headaches to worry about. Myanmar’s deepening crisis has been forgotten or ignored by most nations, except perhaps the member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and neighbours such as China and India.

A stocktaking

The past four years have brought armed battles to homes, villages, and cities, with government troops fighting against their own people, represented by a variety of ethnic armed organisations (EAOs) and people’s defence forces (PDFs) in all parts of the country — north, south, east and west, not excluding the heartland where the majority Bamar community lives.…  Seguir leyendo »

A CNA soldier surveys the damage in a building in Thantlang town. The neglected Chin State in Myanmar has been the site of fierce clashes between the military junta and local resistance groups. September 2024. CRISIS GROUP / Richard Horsey

MundoAsia

Midway through 2024, Myanmar’s military regime appeared to be teetering, as rebels had seized large tracts of the uplands as well as key military bases. Since then, China, fearing a disorderly collapse, has thrown military leader Min Aung Hlaing a lifeline. But the junta still faces determined resistance. A vote in 2025, if it proceeds as planned, will bring further bloodshed.

The civil war that has torn Myanmar apart since the military seized power in 2021 has set the country back decades: More than 3 million people are displaced internally, health and education systems have crumbled, poverty has skyrocketed and Myanmar’s currency, the kyat, has crashed.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Rohingya man decorates for a wedding at a refugee camp in Ukhia, Bangladesh, on Sept. 11. Munir Uz Zaman/AFP via Getty Images

MundoAsia,

Sitting on the floor of a rented room in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Karim recalls the pain and grief he sustained during a bombing in Myanmar’s Rakhine state in August, severely injuring him and killing his 7-year-old daughter. “She died on the spot”, he said in an interview in September. (Karim is identified only by his first name for security reasons.)

Karim blames the Arakan Army, an ethnic armed group fighting against the Myanmar military, for the attack. At the time, he was waiting to flee for Bangladesh—as more than 1 million Rohingya refugees have before him. The majority arrived in 2017, as the Myanmar military committed crimes against humanity while violently expelling some 740,000 Rohingya after militant attacks against police posts.…  Seguir leyendo »

Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with the Secretary-General of ASEAN, Dr. Kao Kim Hourn and other dignitaries, during the 21st ASEAN-India Summit, in Vientiane. | Photo Credit: ANI

MundoAsia,

The 44th ASEAN Summit held from October 6 to 11 in Vientiane, Laos, highlighted mounting regional concerns, especially Myanmar’s worsening crisis. Since the military coup in 2021, Myanmar has been in turmoil, and despite multiple efforts, including ASEAN’s Five-Point Consensus, there has been little progress towards stability. The civil war is not only ravaging Myanmar, but also challenging ASEAN’s credibility as a regional bloc committed to peace and stability.

The situation in Myanmar

Myanmar remains engulfed in a brutal civil war between the military junta and various resistance groups, including Ethnic Armed Organisations (EAOs) and the People’s Defence Forces (PDFs). The junta, which forcibly took control after toppling the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, faces widespread armed resistance.…  Seguir leyendo »

Myanmar’s junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, arrives to give a speech to thousands of soldiers in which he blamed the country’s growing armed resistance movement for preventing long-promised elections. March 27, 2024. STR / AFP

MundoAsia

More than three and a half years since launching a coup deposing Aung San Suu Kyi’s popularly elected National League for Democracy government, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing is struggling. While he has concentrated decision-making authority in his own hands, the military under his command is suffering humiliating defeats to its adversaries. In the process, it is losing control of most of the country’s borders. Min Aung Hlaing has repeatedly reshuffled the military’s top brass, while also prosecuting senior officers for ostensible command failures or insubordination – perhaps in part to head off potential plots against him amid rising criticism. The only exit strategy from emergency rule that he seems to have contemplated is the one he set out at the time of the coup but has so far failed to act on: holding elections.…  Seguir leyendo »

A Karen National Liberation Army soldier carrying an RPG launcher on the outskirts of Myawaddy, Myanmar, April 2024. Athit Perawongmetha / Reuters

MundoAsia

The conflict in Myanmar, now in its fourth year, has claimed thousands of civilian lives and displaced more than three million people. Since toppling the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, the military junta under General Min Aung Hlaing has failed to consolidate its authority. Over the last seven months, the military has suffered a succession of humiliating defeats at the hands of opposition forces.

Myanmar is undergoing fragmentation: large parts of the country, including most of Myanmar’s international borders, are now under the dominion of various ethnic armed groups. These groups are expanding control of their ethnic homelands and building autonomous statelets.…  Seguir leyendo »

Myanmar's junta chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, March 2021. REUTERS

MundoAsia

Since a military coup in 2021 toppled Myanmar’s democratic government, the country’s army has found itself contending with a tenacious and committed rebel insurgency. The military junta’s opponents are varied and various, including armed organizations representing Myanmar’s many ethnic minorities and militias loyal to the ousted government. Many observers had written off such resistance groups as too fractious and weak to present a genuine challenge to the junta. But that all has changed in recent months. Rebels have been strikingly successful in an offensive against the junta in the northern Shan State—which borders China—called Operation 1027, named for the day it started, October 27, 2023.…  Seguir leyendo »

La junta militar de Myanmar está perdiendo poder

MundoAsia

En tanto los líderes autocráticos ganan influencia, si no poder, en más países de los que los defensores de la democracia están dispuestos a considerar, Myanmar es una excepción notable: su junta militar parece insostenible. De hecho, el pueblo de Myanmar está arriesgando su vida para quebrantar el control del poder de los generales y recuperar su futuro.

Después de casi medio siglo de dictadura militar, que comenzó en 1962, vino una década de liberalización política, reforma económica y progreso del desarrollo, que duró de 2011 hasta 2021. Pero el general en jefe Min Aung Hlaing le arrebató el poder al gobierno civil reelecto de Myanmar el 1 de febrero de 2021, lo que desató una guerra civil en la que los jóvenes, los ejércitos de minorías étnicas, los líderes civiles y una población desafiante han venido combatiendo al régimen.…  Seguir leyendo »

China’s President Xi Jinping speaks at the “Senior Chinese Leader Event” held by the National Committee on US-China Relations and the US-China Business Council on the sidelines of the APEC summit in San Francisco, California, U.S., November 15, 2023. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/Pool

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Can we stop things falling apart? 2024 begins with wars burning in Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine and peacemaking in crisis. Worldwide, diplomatic efforts to end fighting are failing. More leaders are pursuing their ends militarily. More believe they can get away with it.

War has been on the rise since about 2012, after a decline in the 1990s and early 2000s. First came conflicts in Libya, Syria and Yemen, triggered by the 2011 Arab uprisings. Libya’s instability spilled south, helping set off a protracted crisis in the Sahel region. A fresh wave of major combat followed: the 2020 Azerbaijani-Armenian war over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave, horrific fighting in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region that began weeks later, the conflict prompted by the Myanmar army’s 2021 power grab and Russia’s 2022 assault on Ukraine.…  Seguir leyendo »

Myanmar’s Resistance Is Gaining Ground, but It Needs U.S. Help

MundoAsia

For decades, Myanmar’s military junta has withstood both foreign pressure and an array of armed rebel groups opposed to its dominance of the country. But over the past two months, the generals’ aura of invincibility has been significantly dented at home. Resistance forces galvanized by the junta’s coup in 2021 — which seized power from a democratically elected government — have made unprecedented gains, seizing a growing number of towns, more than 400 military outposts and the strategic initiative.

These gains, achieved without significant international support, bring Myanmar to a critical point in the long struggle to throw off the yoke of the junta.…  Seguir leyendo »

Members of the rebel group Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army are seen with weapons purportedly seized from the Myanmar army, in the town of Chinshwehaw in Shan state on Oct. 28. The photo was distributed by Kokang Media, a rebel-affiliated news outlet. (Kokang Media/AP)

MundoAsia

Nov. 8 marked the third anniversary of elections in Myanmar, whose results were overturned by a military coup on Feb. 1, 2021. The coup set in motion some of the largest, most diverse protests in the country’s history, which subsequently led to a brutal crackdown on pro-democracy activists. Today, the junta is prosecuting a war of terror, marked by airstrikes against civilians, the blocking of humanitarian aid to the most vulnerable, and the arrests of thousands of political prisoners.

In recent weeks, however, the junta is facing serious military setbacks, especially in the country’s north, at the hands of an alliance of fighters composed of the country’s ethnic minorities.…  Seguir leyendo »

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President’s Take: Hot Spots Near and Far

The year 2023 has seen peace and security challenges both far from the EU’s borders and closer to home. The latter, especially, have heightened in recent weeks and months, which have seen fighting in the South Caucasus and Kosovo, even as a second year of war in Ukraine stretches on. While the three crises are very different in nature, all suggest a worrying inclination on the part of some governments to seek solutions to disputes through force of arms. Insofar as this jarring trend involves a proliferation of new wars, large and small, it flies in the face of the decades of energy that the EU has invested in turning the page on past conflagrations in Europe and its neighbourhood.…  Seguir leyendo »

Demonstrating against Myanmar’s military coup in Yangon, Myanmar, February 2021. Stringer / Reuters

MundoAsia,

Ever since the Burmese military seized power in a coup in early 2021, the country has been caught in a deadly tailspin. What began as peaceful mass protest against the junta flared into armed resistance, with much of the country descending into renewed civil war. The conflict has since turned into a protracted insurgency, with newer pro-democracy forces fighting alongside ethnic armed groups that have battled central authorities for decades. Amid growing signs of a strategic stalemate, both the junta and the resistance appear determined to fight on. Neighboring states have tried to mediate, but a negotiated peace is not in sight.…  Seguir leyendo »

Protesters wave the flags of groups opposed to Myanmar’s military during a protest in Yangon in 2021 against the coup that took place three weeks earlier. USUAF

MundoAsia

When the military seized power in a coup on the morning of Feb. 1, 2021, I grabbed some clothes and other essentials and stumbled out onto the streets of Yangon. I haven’t returned home since.

I lead a group of activists opposed to military rule of Myanmar, and I knew then that the soldiers would soon be coming for me. Since the coup, my colleagues and I have played cat and mouse with security forces in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city. We organize nonviolent protests — small, quick demonstrations to remind the military that it is not in complete control and to give hope to our citizens.…  Seguir leyendo »

Why Inclusion Matters for Myanmar’s Resistance

MundoAsia,

“You’ve messed with the wrong generation”.

In the days after Myanmar’s military staged a coup in February 2021, sparking mass protests across the country, this became a regular refrain for those opposing the military takeover, appearing on banners, placards and social media posts. Younger people – Generation Z and millennials – were the main driving force behind popular opposition to the power grab, not only on the streets but also within the Civil Disobedience Movement and online. They orchestrated boycotts of military-linked goods, launched fundraising drives for anti-coup activities, and organized “social punishment” campaigns aimed at pressuring individuals to cut ties with the regime.…  Seguir leyendo »

Burmese protesters hold up pictures of detained Burmese civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a demonstration outside Myanmar’s embassy in Bangkok on Dec. 19, 2022. Jack Taylor/AFP via Getty Images

MundoAsia

Myanmar’s military dictatorship brought 2022 to an end in just as inhumane and brutal a manner as it had attempted to rule the country throughout the year: by sentencing democracy leader and former de facto head of government Aung San Suu Kyi to another seven years in prison on sham charges of corruption, taking her total sentence to 33 years. The 77-year-old Nobel laureate, who has been jailed over the past 18 months on 19 false charges, faces the prospect of spending the rest of her life behind bars.

Aung San Suu Kyi and her party, the National League for Democracy, won an overwhelming victory in November 2020 elections and were poised to begin a second term of government.…  Seguir leyendo »

U Kyaw Min Yu, his wife, Daw Nilar Thein, and their daughter after the couple’s release from prison in Yangon, Myanmar, in January 2012. Soe Than Win/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MundoAsia

We apologized to our baby daughter before she was born.

My husband, Kyaw Min Yu, a writer and activist known across Myanmar as Ko Jimmy, would lean down to my swollen belly, recite Buddhist mantras of love and say we’re sorry for the life we had chosen. We had spent years campaigning for a democratic Myanmar, were repeatedly imprisoned for that, and were painfully aware that our little girl, Phyu Nay Kyi Min Yu, whom we nicknamed Whitey (“Phyu” means white in Burmese), would not enjoy a normal childhood.

Fifteen years later, our worst fears have come true. My husband is dead, executed in July by Myanmar’s military junta, which overthrew a democratically elected civilian government and seized power in February of last year.…  Seguir leyendo »

Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, head of the military council, inspects officers during a parade to commemorate Myanmar's 77th Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, on March 27. (Aung Shine Oo/AP)

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The United Nations acted decisively in response to the crisis in Ukraine. The Security Council voted on a condemnation resolution within 24 hours of the Russian invasion. When Russia predictably used its veto to block the resolution, the General Assembly promptly established a process to subject future use of the veto to greater scrutiny. The secretary general visited Ukraine and brokered an agreement to prevent global food shortages due to the conflict. U.N. agencies mobilized under his leadership to see the agreement implemented.

Ukraine has shown that the United Nations can act in a crisis. Unfortunately, the same does not apply to a comparably dire situation in a country on the other side of the world: Myanmar.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Estoy en el que llamamos «Hospital en la Colina» de Médicos Sin Fronteras (MSF) en Bangladesh. Desde aquí, desde este cerro en Bazar, se divisa parte del mayor campo de refugiados del mundo. Bazar, un destino turístico de playas kilométricas en el sureste del país, alberga hoy un millón de refugiados rohingyas.

A pesar de haber estado dos años trabajando en este lugar, me sigue sorprendiendo su enorme escala. Es un caos organizado, una mezcla de precarias cabañas de bambú y plástico construidas con la misma rapidez con la que se taló el bosque. Una apariencia de orden jalonada de caminos y desagües que, como cicatrices, recorren las cimas y las laderas de las colinas, todo ello contenido dentro de un kilómetro tras otro de vallas de alambre de espino.…  Seguir leyendo »