Today, Explained - The coup in Myanmar

Episode Date: February 2, 2021

Some would say the military has always been in control of Myanmar. On Monday morning, they made it official once again. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. The United States kicked off the year with an attempted coup. And Myanmar kicked off this month with a successful one. Myanmar's military has seized power in a coup against the democratically elected government there. Myanmar's military moved in. In Myanmar's capital, the bridge to parliament is blocked by police and the roads are lined with military. And moved the country's elected leader and her cabinet out.

Somewhere behind the guns, Aung San Suu Kyi is once more a prisoner of the generals. But even though the military swept a democratically elected leader out of power, this isn't quite a textbook takeover. Even before this coup happened, the military was really sharing their power with a civilian government. Dr. Van Tran studies social movements in Myanmar, so we asked her to explain why a military that already had plenty of power in Myanmar decided to take it all. During the general election that happened in November 2020,

the result was a landslide for the ruling party of that time, which was the National League of Democracy. The first official results are trickling in from Myanmar's general elections, giving three parliamentary seats to Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. Even before the final count is in, the party says it's confident of a landslide win. However, the military, they claim that there was widespread voter fraud and that there were millions of ballots that were missing. And they requested the ruling government, led by the National League of Democracy, the NLD, to investigate these claims of voter fraud. Now, what's also important to note is that there

are international as well as local election observers who've seen the entire process from the voter list to the day of election and they say that the election in Myanmar is free and fair. They have had talks and meetings with the NLD governments in the preceding days. However, those talks and discussions have not led to any kind of agreements between the two sides. And since they failed to reach any kind of agreement, it's very likely that there was a reason why they have decided to go forward with the coup right before a new parliament was supposed to convene. How did this get to the point of a coup? I mean, I know the military in Myanmar had been a strong presence already,

even, you know, throughout the leadership of Aung San Suu Kyi, but were there warnings that there might be a coup? So the relationship between the NLD party and the military has always been a complicated one. Back in 2010, when they decided to carry out a political liberalization, they didn't want to have all of the political power of the military to be stripped away. Even before a vote is cast, the result is ensured. 25% of seats will go to the military. Alliances with the current regime have been made to ensure political survival. In more than 40% of seats, the only contenders are candidates linked to the current regime or those not regarded as a threat. With the NLD government since 2015, they have been trying to tread very delicately in terms of how they deal with the military.

They try not to confront with the military on various policy issues out on the world stage this morning. Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi defending her country of Myanmar against genocide charges in the International Court of Justice. She's also standing up for the same military that kept her under house arrest for years. However, you know, like in the past year, as we got closer to the election in 2020, the Aung San Suu Kyi-led government and the different NLD MPs have also tried to propose these amendments to the constitution. To give a very, very obvious example, 25% of our representatives are not elected. And we believe that for a democracy to be wholly complete, all the representatives must be elected. And that would basically strip away a lot of these different powers and controls of the military and would strip away, you know, quite a few of this decision-making power.

That is something that the military also find to be quite worrying. Does that mean it wasn't really surprised, the coup? I would say it is always a surprise. Of course, when you look back, you could see various factors that could help you explain why the military decided to take over power, to conduct this military coup at this moment. But before it happened, everybody always had hope that people in Myanmar, or at least the majority of people in Myanmar, would still be able to continue enjoying their rights and their freedoms. Where is Suu Kyi now? Right now, she is still under arrest. I believe that the latest report say that she is still doing well and she's

healthy that's all that that we know however like quite a few politicians have been released we we might see more and more of those releases in the upcoming day as the military basically is now finishing up the formation of their own cabinet with different minister positions. Do you know how the people in Myanmar feel about this coup? I would say like from my observations on how people post on social media, as well as, you know, like my friends and people that I care about in Myanmar, the two words that would capture it would be painful and outrageous. So as imperfect as the political liberalization in the past 10 years has been, still many people have gained a lot more in terms of their political freedom, in terms of their rights, in terms of opportunities

to advance in education or in business opportunities. And after the military take over, a lot of them feel that their rights are being stripped away and their freedoms being stripped away. And this kind of fear actually is not unfounded, right? Just as we are talking now, the new minister of information in Myanmar has published a statement basically banning any type of statements on social medias that are in opposition to the political situation that might provoke people to go and mobilize against the coup. Now, I have to ask, what does this shift in power mean for the Rohingya people in Myanmar? Last year, almost a year ago to the day, we did an episode titled From Nobel Peace Prize to Denying Genocide, in which we talked about the International Court of Justice ordering Myanmar to protect the Rohingya people from genocide. But there was uncertainty over whether Aung San Suu Kyi

would heed the call. What does the military takeover of Myanmar mean for the Rohingya people? Overall, it is just despair for this Rohingya population in Myanmar, as well as the Rohingya refugees that are now on the Bangladesh side, right? I mean, even during the 10 years of political liberalization, that didn't really mean much for this population. They have endured so much in terms of, you know, like restrictions in terms of their freedoms and their rights. You know, I would say that it's not very likely things will get any better, as we all know, and things might get worse. That's something that we have to keep watching and observing and paying very close attention. I would say that right now, like the situation on the ground still has a lot of uncertainty.

I would say that at least like in the upcoming days or upcoming weeks, we're not going to see, you know, any kind of restoration of political freedoms or a political rise on the ground. Right now, what I and my circle of other researchers are just thinking is in terms of how bad things could go and also how quickly things could get worse. In terms of how much the new military government is going to strip away more political freedom and more pro-political rights.

In addition, how many more activists and civil society leaders are going to be arrested and have their voice silenced. After the break, there's a new president in the United States. What else might he want to say something to the military in Myanmar? I'll ask Vox's Alex Ward. Support for Today Explained comes from Aura. Aura believes that sharing pictures is a great way to keep up with family, and Aura says it's never been easier thanks to their digital picture frames. They were named the number one digital photo frame by Wirecutter. Aura frames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an Aura frame as a gift, you can personalize it.

You can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an Aura frame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids. And so we wanted to surprise her with the AuraFrame. And because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com

to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This. That's A-U-R-A frames dot com promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. Alex Ward, co-host of the Worldly podcast, a military coup in a foreign land that used to be the kind of thing the United States would have either sponsored, condemned, fought to overthrow. But President Trump sort of changed that, right? Yeah, pro-democracy stuff was never really Donald Trump's forte.

It was never really something he cared about. And frankly, the only things he did in the world were trying to punish Iran and push back on China. Outside of that, the world were trying to punish Iran and push back on China. Outside of that, the world was never his charge. And we can assume President Biden might take a different approach? Biden is a 180 degree turn from the Trump presidency. How has he responded to this coup in Myanmar? So I just got off the phone with State Department officials ahead of our recording here, and they have now called it a coup. So this is the old playbook. This is the Obama playbook. Now, it's possible that Trump and his State Department would have called it a coup. That is completely possible,

but he wouldn't have cared. Biden at least put out his own statement and said that, you know, the U.S. cares about this, we might even impose sanctions. And I think that's the difference. Where Trump's government and administration did things, even despite Trump, here you have the U.S. government doing things with Biden's very clear, explicit approval. You mentioned the Obama playbook. We made an episode about a year ago about Aung San Suu Kyi and what the U.N UN was calling ethnic cleansing going on in Myanmar under her watch. And of course, Barack Obama had a rather soft, friendly relationship with Aung San Suu Kyi. How might the Biden relationship with the country and the military and even potentially Aung San Suu Kyi change? Well, it's hard to do, but we have to put Aung San Suu Kyi's backing of the military's repression of the Rohingya aside for a moment.

She still is, despite all that, the pro-democracy leader in Myanmar. And what did just happen was the military, which has always been the strongest player in Myanmar, decided to end her pro-democracy movement and curtail it and end any power sharing that they had roughly for about a decade. And so I think when Biden is acting, he's acting in terms of the larger pro-democracy interests of Myanmar, not necessarily pro-Aung San Suu Kyi. She just happens to be the leader of that movement. And I know it's hard to separate because now we know who she really is. But if you're looking for Myanmar to not have a repressive military, if you're looking for them to move away from autocracy and towards a more democratic future, Aung San Suu Kyi is that democratic future, warts and all. Do we know if the military will care what the Biden administration thinks of its coup?

No question. We have evidence of this. The U.S. and the international community had placed sanctions on Myanmar's government for decades. And it was in the roughly 2000s that you had the junta go, man, we probably should do something about this because we're economically and politically isolated. And that's what led the government to release Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest and to allow a power sharing agreement, even though they had the most influence, you know, to somewhat have a quasi-democracy and share power. So it is possible that we're back to that square one, right? That said, I just got off the phone with state officials, and what they told me and other reporters was that the assistance the U.S. gives Myanmar's

government is, quote unquote, very little. So it's not like they're going to really be missing that much in terms of U.S. assistance. This is more a broader global coalition against Myanmar that right now the Biden team is really trying to form. I think that's going to be more the basis of its strategy than just saying it's a coup and we're taking money away. If the United States doesn't provide that much money to begin with, what more can it do down the road if, say, the military doesn't relent, if it doesn't release Aung San Suu Kyi. So two things. One is, and state officials made this clear on the call, is assistance to civil society groups, pro-democracy groups will continue. That is most of what the U.S. gives to Myanmar, right? It doesn't give much to the government because of its human rights abuses and repression. So in effect, the U.S. will continue its, you know,

assistance to the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar. That won't change. And the other aspect of this is we should recall the U.S. lifted sanctions on Myanmar's government in 2016 for its movement towards democracy, right? Aung San Suu Kyi's party had won elections in 2015. And so it seemed like, hey, Myanmar is finally on that pro-democratic path we've been asking for for so long. The Biden administration right now is reviewing whether or not to reimpose those sanctions or perhaps add others. So that is another thing, more economic isolation, more global isolation. And in the meantime, supporting a democracy movement in Myanmar once again.

So when I say we're back to square one, what I'm trying to say is like we've been here before. This has been the playbook for a long time. And it seemed for the last decade or so that it was working, sort of. And now it's very clear that it has been a failure and whether it works in the future is what we're waiting to see. You mentioned that we've been at this for a while and this isn't necessarily a new playbook. Is the United States' position compromised at all considering we just had our own coup on our own federal government here? I mean, it does rhetorically in the sense, right? It is hard for the U.S. to say, you know, we are the world's democracy champion and we've just had our issue. However, I think the Biden

team is making it an extreme priority for them to show that Trump was a blip and that America is still that pro-democracy champion. It's so clear that in every statement about Russian protests or this Myanmar coup that the Biden administration is coming out saying, we stand with the protesters, we stand with the pro-democracy government, whatever it is. It is trying to position not only this administration, but the United States writ large as that pro-democracy champion of yesteryear. So yeah, this is more rebuilding than it was just that was the U.S.'s position in the world. But I think if this is the trend that we're seeing, I would imagine those sort of early nightmares of can the U.S. really be that beacon of hope, that shining city on a hill? Yeah, battered, bruised, and beaten a little bit, but on the rebound.

So the strategy is in play. It is America of old again, if you will. Whether it plays out and continues this way is unclear. You know, it's early days. The enemy gets a vote. But at this moment, Biden is putting his playbook, the traditional American playbook, the what I think would in his mind would be the when America was great and frankly still is great playbook, the traditional American playbook, the, what I think would, in his mind, would be the when America was great and frankly still is great playbook, that is in effect. Alex Ward, he covers national security and foreign policy at Vox. I'm Sean Ramos-F him. It's Today Explained. موسیقی در موسیقی درسته Thank you.