27th March 2021
The message below was broadcast to the sound of soothing, tinkling piano music on the eve of Armed Forces Day (used to be revolution day).
Translation “This isn’t anything like video games you play, your heads or backs would be shots just like your friends who died recently, and lesson learnt by protesting”.
The Irrawaddy, as usual, sums up the situation the best.
Myanmar’s military regime has unwittingly admitted its policy of targeting protesters with fatal gunshots to the head and back, while issuing a warning to young people — who have played a major role in anti-regime protests across the country since the February coup – to stay off the streets.
In a thinly veiled threat aired on state-run Myanmar Radio and Television on Friday night, the regime said young people had been misled by “foreign henchmen” and attributed their eagerness to join protests to a mistaken belief that it was like playing a video game.
“You should take lessons from earlier ugly deaths, that you could be in danger of getting shot in the head and back,” it said, before adding the warning “Don’t be misled, boys and girls!” and urging parents to prevent their children from getting involved in protests.
It was the regime’s first acknowledgement of the high incidence of fatal head and torso gunshot wounds among the protester casualties. Prior to Friday, it had simply repeated the claim that “combined forces [i.e., soldiers and riot police] use minimum force to quell protesters” and have been forced to deploy “riot gear to defend themselves only when rioters tried to attack them.” It previously said “live rounds were not allowed to be used” and that riot-control projectiles including rubber bullets could only be used on protesters “below the waist.”
Pictures and video captured on the ground portray a very different picture, though.
In reality, the military’s “minimum use of force” turns out to include spraying protests and residential neighbourhoods with live ammunition, as well as arbitrary killings during raids on homes. Empty bullet casings gathered by civilians after each deadly crackdown have shown that the regime’s claim not to be using live ammunition is a lie.
As of Saturday morning, at least 350 civilians, including a 6-year-old girl, had been slain since Feb. 1. Many sustained visible gunshot wounds to the head and back—just as the regime unwittingly confirmed on Friday.
Source the Irrawaddy 27th March 2021.
In 2015 many of the ethnic organisations signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA). Co-operation between these EAOs is now increasing.
Yawd Serk, chairman of the Shan armed rebel group the Restoration Council for Shan State (RCSS), said on the eve of Armed Forces Day, which falls on Saturday. The junta is illegal and unconstitutional, and all 14 members of the State Administrative Council (SAC) should be indicted for their complicity in the unnecessary deaths of more than 300 innocent, unarmed civilians, he said.
The Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military) has shown its true colours, he said, describing them as “terrorists” and accusing the military of breaching the peace pact it signed with the RCSS. The Shan leader said his group had suspended all senior-level contact with the military since the coup on Feb. 1 and would not be attending the Armed Forces Day parade in Naypyitaw on Saturday, though they had been invited. “We told them we’re unavailable,” quipped Yawd Serk.
Most of the other ethnic groups that signed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) with the U Thein Sein government in October 2015 have also opted out of the Naypyitaw event.
The Karen National Union—the other major ethnic group amongst the NCA signatories—has also just released its response to the junta’s invitation, which is even more hard-hitting, demanding that the military withdraw troops from civilian areas, release all prisoners, roll back all laws and changes introduced by the coup leaders that violate human rights, return to the barracks and renounce politics, commit to the creation of a Federal Union, and allow international intervention to mediate a transfer of political power to a unity government.
One of the major non-signatories to the ceasefire pact, the Kachin Independence Organization, is also not attending. This is a significant blow to military leaders’ efforts to portray themselves as the saviours of the country, and casts doubts on their claim to be able to bring peace to the country in the next 12 months, during the military government’s declared state of emergency.
The RCSS has not broken off relations entirely with the junta; the liaison office in Taunggyi continues to operate and there are the usual bilateral talks on technical issues, such as troop movements, skirmishes and disputed boundary demarcation. But political discussions and talks have been suspended till further notice, he said. There have been no high-level telephone calls or exchanges. The Shan leader has even refused to take telephone calls from the junta’s top generals: Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and Vice Senior General Soe Win.
At issue is the fact that the Myanmar military has breached the NCA, something that requires a response, he said. “The NCA is not dead yet,” he said, adding that the breaches need to be addressed and punished.
Yawd Serk went on to explain the key breaches of the NCA: since seizing power illegally, the military has begun killing unarmed civilians, which is unacceptable and contravenes the NCA, and cannot be allowed to happen with impunity; furthermore, the peace agreement specifically prohibits troops being stationed or quartered in temples, a provision the Tatmadaw has also ignored.
In a comment that should worry the Tatmadaw there are discussions being held about a federal solution without the Tatmadaw.
The Shan leader said that while he understands the present time is volatile and fraught—made all the more difficult because of COVID travel restrictions and the regime’s disruption of the internet and mobile phone communications—he recognizes that a new era may be dawning in which the ethnic groups and Myanmar’s pro-democracy political parties can craft a new constitution that could lead to a genuine federal democracy.
Source the Irrawaddy 26th March 2021.
The federation may or may not happen, but one thing is certain – this will get bloodier by the day. All pretence of the coup being for the safeguarding of the nation and the public has gone. The current response of the Tatmadaw has been to celebrate Armed Forces Day with a big parade in Nay Pyi Taw and engage in mass slaughter of its citizens – over 100 today and rising.
The creative struggle goes on, papier mache models are a popular tourist souvenir from Myanmar and they have joined the Barbies in the CDM.
Finally, an interesting political move:
The Civil Disobedience Movement that has sprung up in Myanmar since the military coup has been nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, a Norwegian academic said Friday.
Kristian Stokke, professor of sociology at the University of Oslo, said the movement represents an exemplary peaceful response to the power grab by Myanmar’s army on February 1.
“The civil disobedience movement is an important mass mobilisation for democracy in Myanmar that is taking place, so far, with non-violent means,” he told AFP.
Source the Frontier 27th March 2021.
This message from the US ambassador says it all.
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