Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: For a country with a population of just 55 million, a hermit kingdom-like Myanmar has witnessed the death of over 1,500 pro-democracy protesters and detention of 8,800 people in military custody since the army coup on February 1, 2021, against the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, 76.
After decades of military dictatorship, the 1991 Nobel Laureate could remain in power only for five years (2016-21). The junta’s kangaroo constitution had made it impossible for her to become the Head of the State or Government. In the ousted government, Suu Kyi, married to a British, had to make do as State Counsellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Even after the coup, in which many of her top supporters, including the President, were slapped with fabricated court cases. Only last month, they sentenced her to four-year imprisonment on trumped-up charges.
Despite fervent efforts made by the United Nations and the ASEAN nations, the military junta has refused to budge an inch as it continued to crush country-wide daily demonstrations for the restoration of democracy. Except for China, no other country supports the military junta.
At least 11,787 people were unlawfully detained in a year-long protest against the coup in Myanmar, including 8,792 who remain in custody, UN Human Rights spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said, according to the media reports this week.
Unofficially, the death toll in the relentless protests could be far higher than 1,500. They possibly killed thousands more in the armed conflict, the UNHR office said on Tuesday.
At a UN briefing in Geneva, Shamdasani said the military junta, besides killing the protesters, had arbitrarily detained thousands: “This is for voicing their opposition to the military, whether in peaceful protests or through online activities even.”
“We have documented 1,500 people who have been killed, but this is only in the context of protests,” she said, adding that they included 200 “killed due to torture in military custody.”
“This figure of 1,500 does not include people who were killed because of the armed conflict…We do understand that they are in the thousands,” Shamdasani said.
Myanmar (formerly Burma) is a Southeast Asian nation of over 100 ethnic groups, bordering India, Bangladesh, China, Laos, and Thailand. Despite its membership of the Association for South-East Asian Nations, Myanmar has refused its request for a return to democracy from the ASEAN co-members.
At a recent meeting with representatives of ASEAN, Myanmar junta leader Min Aung Hlaing said they will only hold fresh elections in the country once the situation returns to ‘normal’. Earlier, the junta had said it will hold fresh elections within two years.
Last summer, over 15,000 people, including police officers, fled their chaotic nation to take shelter in Mizoram, India’s northeastern state sharing borders with Myanmar, to avoid the military junta’s repression. The junta also rejected Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla’s recent request to meet the detained leader Suu Kyi and help sort out the mess.
Many Mizoram people have close ethnic links with their counterparts in Myanmar, with extended families often strung across both sides of the international border. To help it cope with its influx, the state had also sought help from New Delhi.
Several thousand villagers had also fled from fighting in eastern Myanmar into Thailand since the coup, the media reported.
Myanmar’s economy paralyzed since the military ousted Aung San Suu Kyi’s government in February 2021, accusing it of fraud during the 2020 elections, and claiming its leaders were “terrorists”.