In Burma the massacre continues in general silence – Pierre Haski

After the military coup of last February, Burma is experiencing constant repression, while all calls to exert international pressure against the junta have remained a dead letter.

The umpteenth stage of this descent into hell is the massacre of 35 people on December 24, pulled out of vehicles, killed and burned. Two employees of the international NGO Save the children who were inside one of the charred minibuses are currently missing.

This tragedy occurred near a village inhabited by the Christian minority in the state of Kayah, in the east of the country. The villagers were fleeing clashes between the military and a group of armed opponents.

The United Nations says it is “shocked” by the massacre, the most serious since the repression began ten months ago. Yet the organization’s deputy secretary general can only ask for a “thorough investigation” into the incident, which is essentially nothing.

Since overthrowing the government and putting Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, the military has failed to stabilize the situation. Despite the ferocious repression, in fact, the active and passive resistance of the population does not stop.

Even more worrying, thousands of young people have joined the ranks of long-existing ethnic militias, and today several hotbeds of armed resistance oppose the junta. This resistance has little chance of imposing itself in the short term, but at the same time the army is unable to crush it (as the history of the last few decades shows). Meanwhile, tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes.

In this total impasse, the military does not stop. In the coming days, the junta will announce the prison sentence for Aung San Suu Kyi, who despite everything remains the point of reference for the majority of the population.

“Burma will become a failed state,” Burmese-American historian Thant Myint-U writes in Foreign Affairs magazine. “New forces will take advantage of this failure to develop the already thriving methamphetamine (a synthetic drug) industry, cut down the forests that make up one of the world‘s great biodiversity areas, and promote the trafficking of wildlife, including those that may be behind it. the spread of the covid-19 pandemic “.

This grim prediction of the historian, grandson of UN Secretary General U-Thant from 1961 to 1971, should be enough to mobilize the countries of the region and the great powers to put out the Burmese fire as quickly as possible. But the countries of Southeast Asia are divided over the possibility and need for action, while the international community is polarized. All this makes any consensus impossible, especially considering the geographical proximity between Burma and China.

The worst part is the general indifference. Burma has now disappeared from the media agenda, except when a massacre goes beyond normal tragedies. This is the case today, but the fear is that nothing will change.

(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)