BANGKOK – The Burmese military regime has decided to show only one witness again, his lawyer, the former de facto head of state Aung San Suu Kyi on video conference. It was connected by a courtroom probably in the capital Naypyidaw, where it has been kept segregated since dawn on February 1. According to lawyer Min Min Soe, she and President Win Myint appeared in good health and the Lady even smiled during the hearing, but said it was unclear if they were aware of the current situation in the country.
The lawyer explained that he was unable to inform them of the protests and that he was unable to meet them in person. Meanwhile, their hearing has been updated again, on April 12, with a further accusation for Aung San Suu Kyi already suspected of smuggling walkie talkies, violating anti-Covid rules and taking millions of dollars as well as gold bars in bribes. . Now the crime is that of violating secret acts, which includes up to 14 years in prison.
The farce trial is just the generals’ attempt to discredit the former West heroine, who had challenged them in the country’s leadership and even in privileged relations with its most powerful ally, China. The position of Beijing – so far faithful to the dogma of non-interference – is considered increasingly crucial in deciding the fate of the Myanmar Union, made up of numerous ethnic groups, many of which are of Chinese stock. Including some of those who have armed themselves with Made in China technology.
A federal army to challenge the coup generals, Myanmar slides into civil war
by Raimondo Bultrini
In recent days, several separatist groups had announced that they wanted to take sides with the young people of civil disobedience in Burmese cities, even some of those who initially seemed to side with the putschists. The concrete possibility of the creation of a “federal army” coordinated abroad by the “shadow government” of the NLD or Crhp, has greatly alarmed the generals. Trained groups of Kachin and Karen have already begun military attacks on army positions in their respective states as a sign of solidarity with the civil disobedience movement. The suspicious Burmese generals, however, fear the Chinese hand behind a possible vast ethnic armed alliance against them. Potentially – and utopically utopian – such an army could count on 100,000 men, capable of seriously engaging half a million Burmese soldiers on many fronts.
For this reason, yesterday evening the military junta announced that starting today, April 1st, there will be a month of unilateral ceasefire in the minority regions. It is a sort of invitation to the discussion table to reduce as much as possible the number of possible allies of the anti-dictatorship movement in the event of a civil war feared by the United Nations itself. How the message of the truce will be received by the so-called ethnic armed organizations is too early to know. The past is full of breaches of promises and today, just hours after the announcement, Burmese soldiers attacked a rebel base of the local Independence Army in the northern Kachin state. In the Karen State, on the other hand, the air force returned to strike after the bombings of recent days with thousands of displaced people, attacking a gold mine managed by a brigade of KNU separatists.
With the announcement of the ceasefire in minority areas, the military regime also wanted to renew the threats to young people and activists who continue to protest with daily victims of repression. The only exception to the ceasefire concerns those who carry out “actions that interrupt the security and administrative operations of the government”. That is the rebels of the cities, both Burmese and minorities. Not at all frightened, numerous demonstrators in Sanchaung, Inya Lake, Yangon, Amarapura, Meikhtila in Mandalay even burned copies of the military constitution, just declared virtually void by the movement’s leadership, the so-called “shadow government” or CRHP which holds the contacts with the movement and with foreign countries.
A federal army to challenge the coup generals, Myanmar slides into civil war
by Raimondo Bultrini
The difficulty of finding an international agreement to avoid further bloodshed was also evident in the last meeting of the United Nations Security Council, where no agreement was found on possible more aggressive actions towards the generals. The Chinese representative would have asked for time to verify a possible – and unlikely – agreement on sanctions with Beijing. But the cautious line, often decidedly hostile to the Burmese populations, is not only on the Chinese or Russian side. India, which has several strategic and economic interests in the Myanmar area – often opposed to Chinese ones such as accessing the Indian Ocean in Arakan – today made a diplomatically compromising gesture. If the news of the The Assam Tribune will be confirmed, yesterday there was the first deportation to the country under a coup of a 14-year-old Rohingya Muslim girl who had sought refuge on Indian territory.
The young woman was in a center run by an NGO and wanted to return to her parents who have lived for years in a refugee camp in Cox Bazar in Bangladesh. But apparently 8 policemen took her across the border and handed her over to the Myanmar military authorities from which her family had escaped. Hundreds of other refugees, mainly Rohingya, who fled after the military coup are collected in temporary detention centers. They could soon be deported to Myanmar as the 14-year-old.
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