#WhatsHappeningInMyanmar
A good article summarising the situation in Myanmar.
Part 1/3
Myanmar is on the brink of collapse: The generals are unable to impose their will on the country
April 17th 2021
It would be hours before Hla Hla Win felt any pain, which was just as well. It was the morning of March 27th and more than a thousand people, Ms Hla Hla Win among them, had gathered in Yangon to protest against the army’s coup. When security forces began firing automatic weapons into the crowd, she fled the scene, but not quickly enough to avoid being shot in the hand. Her father, waiting nearby on his motorbike, drove her to the nearest clinic. But as they drew towards it, they saw it was surrounded by armed soldiers.
Ms Hla Hla Win, a 17-year-old student whose name The Economist has changed for her safety, retreated home cradling her hand, which now resembled “a bag closed with a drawstring”. She did not receive treatment until mid-afternoon, at a monastery where doctors loyal to the resistance had set up a mobile clinic. But lacking the proper equipment, they could not set the broken bone. When the pain finally set in, says her mother, she cried and cried. It was four days before she had an operation.
Last November Myanmar held a general election that returned Aung San Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of Myanmar, and her government to power. On February 1st the army seized power in a coup, claiming without evidence that the poll, which its party had lost resoundingly, had been marred by voter fraud. The public disagreed, and hundreds of thousands of Burmese marched through the streets. But after two weeks, with the protests showing no signs of abating, the commander-in-chief, Min Aung Hlaing, put his foot down.
Since then, he has presided over a reign of terror. At night, shouting soldiers enter residential areas, conduct house-to-house searches, indiscriminately fire live rounds into buildings, and beat and arrest people suspected of opposing the coup. Over 3,000 people have been jailed; some have been tortured. By day, security services attack protesters and random passers-by with assault weapons and grenades; many have been shot in the head. No mercy is shown to medical staff and doctors, who have been beaten, arrested and killed. On April 9th the army massacred 82 people in Bago, a town in the centre of the country. Local activists say the Tatmadaw, as the army is known, is charging families 120,000 kyat ($85) to retrieve the bodies. The death toll now exceeds 700.
The junta thinks it can crush the protests using the tactics it deployed against ethnic insurgencies that have simmered in the remote borderlands for decades. To that end it has sent large contingents of battle-hardened troops into the country’s biggest cities, including the divisions allegedly responsible for atrocities in 2017 against the Rohingyas, an ethnic minority.
Since early March the army has set up bases in schools, universities and monasteries. Not only do such places make convenient billets, but occupying them deprives its opponents of places to congregate. Hospitals are especially soft targets. The security forces are arresting wounded protesters who seek medical treatment. Ms Hla Hla Win would have been captured by police at the hospital where she was operated on, if plucky nurses had not wheeled her to safety in the nick of time.
Part 1/3
https://t.me/Myanmar_News_Chat/255Part 2/3
https://t.me/Myanmar_News/38?comment=256
Part 3/3
https://t.me/Myanmar_News/38?comment=257
