Myanmar Executions an Ominous Signal of More to Come

Beggared country slips further into civil war

Jul 27

By: Nava Thakuria

With more than 100 people sitting on Myanmar’s death row, most of them political activists, it appears likely that the junta that took power in a coup on February 1, 2021, will ignore the world’s revulsion and horror to continue executing its political enemies.

The military-run Global New Light of Myanmar on Monday reported that, as expected, four were hanged on July 26. A fifth, a former opposition National Democratic League leader Ko Hla Htoo, died this week during interrogation of a heart attack, according to the military, probably an indication he had been tortured to death.

The hanged, in Yangon’s notorious Insein Prison, were 41-year-old Phyo Zeyar Thaw, a former National League for Democracy lawmaker; 1988 pro-democracy uprising activist Kyaw Min Yu, 53; and Hla Myo Aung and Aung Thura Zaw, both accused of murdering a military informer. All were arrested last year and tried by the military court and sentenced under the country’s counterterrorism laws. None of the families were informed of the executions and didn’t receive bodies for necessary Buddhist rituals.

Nearly 14,000 people remain behind the bars on allegations of supporting terrorism against the regime in different parts of the underdeveloped country as the junta continues targeting common Myanmarese. More than 2,100 pro-democracy activists, political party workers and resistance group members have been arrested since last year’s coup. More than 100 young of both sexes have died due to the military aggression.

Progressive Voice, an umbrella body of civil society groups, asked for urgent international action against what it called the military dictator’s deplorable acts of terror. Kin Ohmar, chairperson of Progressive Voice, told Asia Sentinel the killings demonstrate the military’s blanket impunity over its campaign of terror against the people of Myanmar, demanding the Myanmar situation to be referred to the International Criminal Court.

Descent to Civil War

In the ensuing chaos, which is beginning to resemble civil war, hundreds of villages have been burned, compelling an estimated million people to take shelter in hideouts including those outside the country in Thailand, Bangladesh, India, etc. Despite universal condemnation by the world’s human rights groups and many governments, the situation has continued to play itself out with the military deploying maximum force via jet fighter aircraft, attack helicopters, armored vehicles, light and heavy artillery, missiles, and rockets supplied, according to Human Rights Watch, by Belarus, China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Korea, and Ukraine since 2018. China, Myanmar’s giant neighbor to the east, has come under particular condemnation for its role in supporting the junta.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations said it "denounces and is strongly disappointed" by the executions, as well as by their timing, just a week ahead of the bloc's next meeting. "The implementation of the death sentences just a week before the 55th ASEAN ministerial meeting is highly reprehensible," an Asean statement said, adding that it showed the junta's "gross lack of will" to support ASEAN's efforts to facilitate dialogue between the military and its opponents. However, so far ASEAN has stood aside, wringing its collective hands while the junta has continued to savage its domestic opponents, who almost unanimously want a return of democracy.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in a March 15 report said the military was deliberately targeting civilians, many of whom were shot in the head, burned to death, arbitrarily arrested, tortured, or used as human shields.

Given the junta’s overwhelming military superiority, it is unlikely that the rebel National Unity Government can make any significant progress in bringing down the junta. But civil wars have raged in Myanmar’s hinterland for decades without the military making significant progress. Some of the thousands of supporters of democracy who had backed Aung San Suu Kyi’s fledgling government have now joined them, making it unlikely that the conflict will end any time soon.

The state of affairs is thus a disheartening end to a fragile attempt at democracy which began in 2010 with an agreement that gave the military a seemingly unassailable political advantage to stay in power. But in November 2021, the National League for Democracy under the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi amassed such a stunning victory that the military was ousted from power, which resulted in three months of instability while the new government sought to work around an enraged military, which charged the election had been fixed.

Post the coup, most of the elected NLD representatives are behind bars on various bogus allegations including electoral fraud. The 76-year-old Suu Kyi herself was sentenced to two four-year terms and a third of five years on corruption charges deemed specious by human rights groups, and is being held in solitary confinement. The United Nations, most European countries, and the United States condemned the arrests, trials, and sentences as politically motivated.

A large number of close family members and relatives of security personnel have lost their lives in ensuing retaliatory violence by the anti-junta people’s defense force. Many anti-coup demonstrators and supporters of the National Unity Government formed in the wake of the coup by the opposition have been detained in unknown locations. Overcrowded prisons with no basic facilities have slowly turned into hell for the inmates. The military council has also arrested over 130 media persons, among them 25 Burmese journalists still under custody.

As expected, the war has beggared the nation although it hasn’t affected the junta leaders, secure in their wealth in their northern capital Naypyidaw. About 40 percent of the country are living below the poverty line. Withdrawal of international approval of the military government, combined with the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, had a dramatic effect on the economy, with GDP contracting by 18 percent in 2021, one of the worst contractions in the world, unwinding nearly a decade of progress on poverty reduction, according to The World Bank’s Myanmar Economic Monitor.

Although the economy is projected to grow by 3 percent in the fiscal year ending in September 2022, weak economic activity “is indicative of the range of constraints facing the Myanmar economy,” according to the World Bank. “These include a sharp rise in the prices of imported inputs and consumer goods, partly attributable to the war in Ukraine; elevated levels of domestic conflict; electricity outages; and persistent logistics and financial sector disruptions. Recent policy shifts have added to challenges for businesses.”

International condemnation

The United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, which vainly called on the regime to refrain from the executions, stated that the “cruel and regressive step” was an extension of the military's ongoing repressive campaign against its own people. Michelle Bachelet, the UN high commissioner for human rights, commented, “I am dismayed that despite appeals from across the world, the military conducted these executions with no regard for human rights.”

Tom Andrews, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said the victims ‘were tried, convicted and sentenced by a military tribunal without the right of appeal and reportedly without legal counsel, in violation of international human rights law.’

Human Rights Watch termed the executions an act of ‘utter cruelty’ carried out following ‘grossly unjust and politically motivated military trials’. HRW’s acting Asia director Elaine Pearson expressed anger that the news was ‘compounded by the junta’s failure to notify the men’s families, who learned about the executions through the junta’s media reports.’

The Southeast Asian MPs’ forum also denounced the executions, terming them ‘an act of judicial barbarism and demanded that the global community and all ASEAN members in particular “should take these cold-blooded assassinations as yet another wakeup call on the true nature of the regime of terror that the Myanmar military is attempting to impose in the country.”