[New post] February 1 2022 Anniversary of the Military Coup in Myanmar
jayofdollhousepark posted: " A Day of Silence and national strike made silent the cities of Burma today, in the face of threats of death and arrest by the regime of tyranny and state terror which has captured the state for a year now, after a morning of mass prote"
A Day of Silence and national strike made silent the cities of Burma today, in the face of threats of death and arrest by the regime of tyranny and state terror which has captured the state for a year now, after a morning of mass protests and defiant marches, and while these performances of liberty and guerrilla street theatre valorized resistance and democracy and unified the peoples of Burma in solidarity against those who would enslave them, liberation forces took the fight to the enemy in direct actions against police and military targets as demonstrations of the powerlessness of carceral states of force and control against a people not divided by sectarian and ethnic hierarchies of otherness and belonging or driven in to submission by learned helplessness and brutal repression, but united in the cause of liberty and refusal to submit.
Last night the enforcers of elite hegemonies of wealth, power, and privilege and the beneficiaries of fascisms of blood, faith, and soil could sleep secure from the will of the people and the reckoning of their victims, confronted by a protest movement of limited political goals and no true threats to the cabal of monarchists, oligarchs, and militarists which have ruled Burma since the fall of the colonial empire of Britain in 1948; today they awake to a new day in which all of this has changed forever, for the Revolution has come to Burma.
Democracy fell one year ago in Myanmar to a military coup by tyrants of brutal repression and theft of citizenship and perpetrators of genocide and ethnic cleansing in an ongoing campaign against ethnic and religious minorities, often tribal peoples living in areas the junta wishes to plunder of natural resources.
Here is a litany of woes repeated endlessly throughout history and the world, of the conquest of indigenous peoples and the inquisitions and holocausts of those whom divisions of exclusionary otherness and hierarchies of elite belonging dehumanize as monsters to be cast out.
Gathering forces of change have swept the nation this last year, mobilizing not only tribal armies of the Chin, Karen, Shan, Arakan, and other peoples but also mass protests in every major city organized by the Civil Disobedience Movement, national strikes- especially that of hospitals and doctors, a boycott of the military, the emergence of a National Unity Government, pressure from both Catholic and Buddhist organizations, actions of international solidarity by President Biden and Pope Francis, and the resurgence of the Communist Party of Burma's People's Liberation Army after thirty years.
This in resistance to state terror and tyranny, in which about 12,000 democracy activists have been arrested and about 1400 killed by the military and police since the coup, and a campaign of ethnic cleansing which in 2021 alone created 400,000 refugees and killed several thousand. We have seen death and state terror on this scale in Burma during the Rohingya Genocide in 2017, which in a few months killed 25,000 and drove a million refugees to Bangladesh and another million to North Africa.
But the use of social force obeys the Third Law of Motion, and for every act of oppression there are equal and opposite forces of resistance.
A regional democracy movement, the Milk Tea Alliance, has emerged to unify action in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, and Burma, and has now become a global liberation movement in the Philippine Islands, India, Malaysia, and Indonesia, with important networks and organizations in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and allied movements in Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, and Iran.
The three finger salute from The Hunger Games adopted by the Thai democracy revolution in 2014 was embraced a year ago in Burma, and one week after the coup was seen among the mass protests in Yangon. As the Thai democracy leader Sirawith Seritiwat described it in The Guardian; "We knew that it would be easily understood to represent concepts of freedom, equality, solidarity."
This is what we must offer the peoples of Burma now, and wherever men hunger to be free, all those throughout the world whom Frantz Fanon called the Wretched of the Earth, the powerless and the dispossessed, the silenced and the erased, and to whom our Statue of Liberty offers a beacon of hope to the world with the words of a poem written by a Jewish girl, Emma Lazarus, in reference to the Colossus of Rhodes;
"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Freedom, Equality, Solidarity; let us reclaim America as a guarantor of liberty and redeem our promise to the world and to the future of humankind.
As written by Myra Dahgaypaw in Common Dreams; "On the morning of August 25, 2021, I woke up on the floor with my lungs gasping for breath. My heart was racing, my hands and legs were shaking from adrenaline, and I was sweating from running. It took me about a minute to realize it was just a nightmare, one where I had to jump off a six-step ladder to run away from Burmese soldiers. Except it wasn't a nightmare.
It was January 28, 1995—the day I was forced to leave my beautiful village and never see it again. It's just a nightmare for me now, but it's a reality for so many people back home.
Since February 1, 2021, I have heard the words "February coup," "attempted coup," "civil disobedience movement," "People's Defense Force," and "National Unity Government" countless times. Every time these words are used, I only hear the sounds of war. Most importantly, I hear the screams of civilians, whether they are fleeing for their lives or crying for the loss of their loved ones. I feel as though the international community does not hear the desperate cries for help from Burma's civilians.
When I saw the picture of the Karen civilians carrying their belongings and their children while crossing the Moi River, I saw myself being carried on my mother's back when we fled in the late 1970s. When I saw the picture of the Karenni civilians that were notoriously burned to death on December 24, I saw my aunt hanging upside down and my uncle's skin was flayed and covered with salt and chilli after he was tortured to death. When I watched the news about Thangtlang burning as a result of bombings in Chin state, I saw my village and church burned to the ground when the Burmese military dropped bombs in late January 1995.
I did foresee a day like the February 1 coup. I felt hopeless at one point as I watched world leaders, including the United States, lift economic sanctions, the only leverage we had to bring Burma a step closer to a stable and inclusive democracy. Now, after a decade, we are back to square one. Our people are indiscriminately killed and used as human shields. Their homes are burned and landmines are planted in and around villages. The intense armed conflict forced civilians to flee for their lives, increasing the numbers of displaced people.
It's been almost a year since the Burmese military coup. We have greater than 320,000 displaced civilians in addition to 340,000 people already displaced due to conflicts prior to 2021. More than a million refugees are seeking refuge in neighboring countries. The most powerful international body, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), still condemns the Burmese military for its actions. However, condemnations only embolden the Burmese military to continue committing crimes with impunity. There is no accountability let alone justice for the victims and their surviving families. The junta is using all possible methods to wipe out anyone who fights back against its rule.
It's time for the international community to act decisively.
We ask that the international community stop selling weapons to the Burmese military. We implore the UNSC to refer the junta to the International Criminal Court and impose a global arms embargo and targeted sanctions, including gas revenue that brings in billions of dollars that the junta uses to buy weapons. And we ask that other nations follow the example of Argentina and bring forward universal jurisdiction cases against the junta.
Now the people of Burma, including all ethnic groups across the country, are fighting back to regain their rights. It is time for the international community to stand with us in our struggle instead of standing by. The people of Burma are not asking too much, only to hold the Burmese military accountable for the unspeakable crimes they have been committing. We ask the international community to help stop selling weapons to the Burmese military and to stop funding them."
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