Since February 1 more than 700 people, including many women and children, have been shot by soldiers carrying out orders from Myanmar’s junta to disperse demonstrators as brutally as possible. Their tactic is to target the heads of those on the streets, splitting them open with a ruthlessness intended to intimidate everyone near by. Fatalities, injuries and arrests are rising rapidly: on Friday at least 82 people were killed by soldiers using machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades to attack protesters who had set up barricades in Bago, a city near Yangon. But far from quelling the protests, the junta’s butchery has brought ever larger crowds on to the streets, while a growing number of soldiers are refusing to open fire and are deserting. Myanmar looks set for civil war.
That is also the assessment of outsiders. An adviser to the International Crisis Group said that the military’s actions were creating conditions for “state failure” when the country could become ungovernable. Myanmar’s former ambassador to the United Nations has called on the security council to impose an arms embargo and a no-fly zone. Britain and the United States have already announced new sanctions, and both governments have denounced the coup launched by military hardliners who have never accepted their retreat from power and who said that recent elections won by the party of Aung San Suu Kyi were fraudulent.
So far all outside denunciations and proposed sanctions have been ignored by the clique around Min Aung Hlaing, the military commander-in-chief who has long been one of those resenting earlier concessions to democracy. He has already received international condemnation for his role in the military’s attacks on ethnic minorities, including the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims. The US and UK, in response, have imposed sanctions on Myanmar’s two military conglomerates, which control large sections of the country’s economy. The US treasury has also blocked assets and transactions with the state-run gem company, a main source of income for the junta.
Little of this seems to alarm the coup leaders since they have the tolerance of the one country that matters to Myanmar: China. Following its general practice of never making a judgment on the morality or legality of a foreign government, Beijing has been happy to back Myanmar’s military governments as long as they gave China what it needs: access to the country’s ports to speed up exports and energy imports as well as a reliable base that China can add to its “string of pearls” around the Indian Ocean. The Chinese suffered a setback when the last junta stepped back from power a decade ago: profitable Chinese participation in energy projects was delayed or rescinded. Already Chinese-owned factories have become the target of demonstrators angry at Beijing’s backing for the coup.
More worrying for the junta are military defections. Some 300 police have fled to India. Many more soldiers are revolted at having to shoot protesters: they, too, have friends and families angered by the coup. But most are confined to barracks, and know that defecting will lead to reprisals against their families. Senior officers may start to waver if they know that the coup leaders will face international tribunals. The West must therefore aim to widen the splits within the military and increase the costs of upholding the junta. Only then can this appalling clique be dislodged.
