National League for Democracy (NLD)

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Description: "This week, the Myanmar military regime’s propaganda machine went into overdrive over the arrest of an ex-NLD lawmaker accused of planning attacks against the junta, even as coup leader Min Aung Hlaing was shunned from two more international summits. It also sentenced 21 young people to death and claimed to support the media despite its record of persecuting journalists, among its other activities. Regime steps up propaganda after arrest of ex–NLD lawmaker The military regime has intensified its smear campaign against the civilian National Unity Government (NUG), its legislative body the CRPH and its armed wing the People’s Defense Force (PDF), following the arrest of former National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker U Phyo Zeya Thaw, who allegedly masterminded deadly attacks on regime targets in Yangon, along with dozens of civilian resistance fighters. “Terrorists from the CRPH, NUG and PDF terrorist groups are destroying schools, hospitals, government offices, public buildings, houses, roads and bridges, in addition to the brutal killings of Buddhist monks, teachers, civil servants and innocent civilians across the country,” reported the junta-controlled English-language newspaper Global New Light of Myanmar in an issue from this week. Other state-owned newspapers Myanma Alinn, Kyemon and military mouthpiece Myawady have been featuring daily updates on what they call the “list of casualties caused by terrorist attacks.” So far the list includes the names of some 240 people the regime says were teachers, Buddhist monks, ward administrators and clerks. The newspapers also feature a separate list of some 500 education and health facilities and markets allegedly damaged by the PDF, and another list of some 400 roads and bridges, detailing when, where and how they were blown up. Yet another list published on Nov. 26 included the names of 26 state-owned banks and 41 private banks the regime claims were attacked with improvised explosives by PDF groups. The headlines of the reports misleadingly state that the attacks occurred between Feb. 1 and late November, but the NUG and PDF were not even formed until some two-and-a-half months after the coup. Coup leader shunned from China-ASEAN Summit, Asia-Europe Meeting Coup leader Min Aung Hlaing was excluded from the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) on Nov. 25, marking the third time in two months he has been sidelined from an international summit. Prior to ASEM, he was barred from attending the China-ASEAN Summit on Nov. 22 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of bilateral relations between China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. He was also excluded from an ASEAN summit after he failed to implement the regional bloc’s five-point consensus. China wanted to invite Min Aung Hlaing to the annual China-ASEAN summit but the regional grouping objected. His exclusion cost Min Aung Hlaing an opportunity to present his narrative of the military takeover to Chinese President Xi Jinping and other regional leaders, and, more importantly, an opportunity to claim legitimacy for his regime. On the other hand, his absence saved state leaders from regional countries from having to listen to a lot of nonsense, thus enabling them to focus on other important issues. The regime said nothing about their leader’s absence from the China-ASEAN Summit. Junta files corruption charge against former investment minister The military regime brought a corruption charge against U Thaung Tun, who served as minister of investment and foreign economic relations under the ousted civilian government, on Nov. 23, alleging that he rented government-owned land in Yangon to a company at below the market rate. U Thaung Tun, who was also a national security adviser and chairman of the Myanmar Investment Commission, has been detained since the Feb. 1 coup. He served as Myanmar’s ambassador to Washington, Geneva, New York and Brussels under the former military regime. Following the coup, the regime named U Aung Naing Oo as the new head of the Investment and Foreign Economic Relations Ministry. Coincidentally, the ex-military officer served as the ministry’s permanent secretary under U Thaung Tun, under the ousted civilian government. Regime convenes Security, Peace and Stability and Rule of Law Committee State Administration Council (SAC) chairman Min Aung Hlaing chaired the sixth meeting of the Security, Peace and Stability and Rule of Law Committee on Nov. 23. At a glance it seems the SAC just held a regular meeting on security affairs. But it is important to note that the meeting was held five days after the arrest of former National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmaker U Phyo Zeya Thaw. Significantly, junta media only published a summary of the meeting; after other high-level meetings, they have reported every word uttered by the coup leader. However, given the latest developments, there can be no doubt that the meeting discussed ways of stepping up the junta’s fight against urban guerillas and PDF groups. Young people accused of killing junta-appointed administrators sentenced to death In an attempt to threaten potential opponents, junta tribunals on Nov. 23 sentenced to death 21 anti-coup activists who allegedly killed administrators and an alleged military informant in Yangon’s South Dagon Township and Dagon Seikkan Township, where the regime has imposed martial law. In April, the regime handed its first death sentence since its February coup. Nineteen people—18 men and a woman—from Yangon’s North Okkalapa Township were given the death sentence for allegedly attacking two junta soldiers. Junta leader claims to recognize Fourth Estate while oppressing media Hypocritically, the junta leader, who has ordered bans on several independent media outlets and arrested dozens of journalists, said on Nov. 24 that he recognized the media as the Fourth Estate of the country, as the new members of the Myanmar Press Council took oaths before him. Just one month after the coup, the regime revoked the publishing licenses of five media outlets. Some media agencies were raided and dozens of journalists were detained at their offices or homes or while covering anti-regime protests and some were charged with high treason and terrorism for doing their jobs. Currently, some 50 journalists remain under detention with press freedom being increasingly restricted. The regime has reconstituted the Press Council since its coup. New chairman U Ohn Maung, a poet who goes by the pen name Myinmu Maung Naing Moe, is a former lieutenant colonel and won several national literature (poetry) awards under the previous military regimes. The new vice chair, U Myo Tun, a poet and writer going by the pen name Maung Sein Naung (Lewe), was formerly a captain at the Directorate of Public Relations and Psychological Warfare of the Defense Ministry. However, general readers are unlikely to have heard of these two so-called men of letters. KNU organizes military training with NUG support, junta says The regime’s Myawady TV said on Nov. 25 that Myanmar’s oldest autonomy-seeking revolutionary group, the Karen National Union (KNU), had organized military training for civilian resistance forces with the support of the country’s shadow National Unity Government in areas under the group’s control in the southern part of the country. Based on information extracted during interrogation of 20 people arrested for attacks on regime targets, it said the brigades 1,2,3,5 and 6 of the KNU’s armed wing, the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA), offered the training, gave shelter to those evading arrest by the regime and supplied arms to groups engaged in urban guerrilla warfare in a number of cities and towns in the country. The KNU signed a peace deal with the government in 2015 but denounced this year’s coup and, following the military’s crackdowns on protesters, launched attacks on regime bases in the country’s south. The junta retaliated with air strikes, causing thousands of civilians to flee. The regime’s official naming of the KNU as supporters of a civilian resistance movement against it may herald more attacks on the Karen armed groups in the near future, as the junta has been intensifying its crackdowns on the civilian resistance..."
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
2021-11-29
Date of entry/update: 2021-11-29
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Description: "Under the previous military regime, Myanmar was known as a “diplomatic graveyard”, chiefly for the UN’s failed missions to the country on issues ranging from humanitarian assistance to national reconciliation between the junta’s old boys and their democratic opponents—primarily the now ousted and detained leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. That bad reputation persists for the country, which has been undergoing a new bout of military rule since February. Just ask Christine Schraner Burgener! On Tuesday, the 58-year-old, who has been the UN’s special envoy for Myanmar since 2018, acknowledged that she is the latest diplomat to be consigned to the graveyard, tweeting that her efforts to facilitate an “all-inclusive dialogue in the interest of the people were not welcomed by the military,” confessing that her months-long attempts, in the wake of the takeover, to persuade the coup leaders in Naypytaw to engage in dialogue to settle the ongoing political and social turmoil caused by the coup had failed. Her term will end soon. “I regret this clear lack of will for a peaceful solution which could have prevented other stakeholders from feeling they have no choice but to seek violent means,” the Swiss diplomat wrote. She is right to feel regretful, especially after her “several talks” and “long conversation” over the phone with the regime’s second in charge in Naypyitaw, in which she urged him to engage in dialogue, bore no fruit. Another blow to her efforts was dealt by Myanmar’s shadow National Unity Government (NUG) with its recent declaration of revolt against the regime. The parallel government largely made up of elected lawmakers from the Daw Aung San Suu Kyi-led ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) government and its ethnic allies reasoned that it had no option but to resort to armed resistance due to the “diplomatic failure” to pressure the regime to stop its arbitrary killings and arrests of civilians, among other atrocities, and restore to the NLD the political power it seized through the coup. For someone who lobbied for a “peaceful solution” in Myanmar, nothing could be more depressing than learning that a majority of Myanmar’s people heartily embraced the NUG’s call to arms. Myanmar people have good reason to support the NUG’s declaration. By the time Schraner Burgener pressed “Tweet” on her apologetic post about her failed Myanmar mission on Tuesday, 1,089 people had been killed by the regime since February. Another 6,477 had been detained. As they have had firsthand experience of successive regimes’ brutality following coups in 1962, 1988 and now in 2021, many in Myanmar are skeptical of the nonviolent or peaceful approaches favored by the international community, because those means have historically proved ineffective in taming the rogue soldiers who hold power in Myanmar. As the UN special envoy to Myanmar, Schraner Burgener first talked to the regime’s No. 2 leader three days after the takeover. During her phone call to Vice Senior General Soe Win, she warned him that the world’s nations and the UN Security Council “might take huge strong measures” against the regime and that Myanmar would become isolated. “We are used to sanctions and we survived those sanctions in the past. We have to learn to walk with only a few friends,” the special envoy quoted him as saying, during a press conference in March. Since then, the diplomat said, she has spoken several times with the deputy commander-in-chief, whom she described as “always open for my request for meeting” to have “frank and open discussions.” She tried to get the regime’s permission to visit the country, but in vain. At the same time, the regime’s killing spree continued. Despite its condemnation of the coup and subsequent atrocities, the UN proved to be toothless on the Myanmar issue, as China and Russia stood against any resolutions proposed at the Security Council that were critical of the regime. In her effort to find a peaceful solution to the political crisis in Myanmar through dialogue, Schraner Burgener reached out to every stakeholder. She said the country’s ethnic armed organizations “were in the majority very positive of this idea” while the NUG members were “interested in the idea but clearly would have pre-conditions to start such a dialogue.” When she presented her idea of an inclusive dialogue during her long conversation with the regime’s second leader Soe Win in July, “I didn’t receive an answer: not a positive, not a negative,” she recalled during a briefing to journalists in August. Despite the regime’s rebuffs, she refrained from making harsh criticisms of it until now, apart from condemning its crackdowns on protesters. When the junta said no to her request to visit Myanmar, she never took it as a message that they didn’t want to talk to her anymore. “But I assumed that people on the ground would be very encouraged by my presence in the country and that’s something the army doesn’t want to see,” she said, as if she knew the thinking of the regime. Probably her several talks with Soe Win over the months made her think so. It would be interesting to see what she thought of the second-most-powerful person in the Myanmar regime—a moderate or a hardliner?—as the meetings must have left her with some impression of him. With Tuesday’s tweet, Schraner Burgener has made public her view that the Myanmar regime clearly lacks the will to find a peaceful solution to the country’s crisis through dialogue. But she must have seen the writing on the wall before that. She said in August when Senior General Min Aung Hlaing appointed himself prime minister that he would seek to maintain his grip on power. The junta’s annulment of the results of the November 2020 election, which was won by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, prompted the UN diplomat to express her fear that the NLD would soon be disbanded. Bertil Lintner, a Swedish journalist who has covered Myanmar for decades, said the call for daialogue was doomed to fail from the beginning because the junta is interested only in maintaining power, not in engaging in talks or to compromise with its adversaries. “So it’s hardly surprising that people in Myanmar have resorted to armed struggle against the junta,” he said. As recently as last month, the Swiss diplomat was still hoping that the recent appointment of an ASEAN special envoy on Myanmar would bring an all-inclusive dialogue, as the regime approved the appointment. The ASEAN envoy called for a truce in Myanmar. But, with the NUG’s declaration of war and the regime’s ongoing attacks on civilians in the country, Erywan Yusof’s call for a truce was thrown out of the window. It took Schraner Burgener nearly seven months to see the Myanmar military rulers’ true colors. Coming to her senses, she finds herself in the diplomatic graveyard. “Never Waste Your Time With the Generals in Naypyitaw!” would make a perfect epitaph for her. Yusof will no doubt be her neighbor soon..."
Source/publisher: "The Irrawaddy" (Thailand)
2021-09-16
Date of entry/update: 2021-09-16
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Description: "Since Burma embarked on its transition from a military government to a nominally civilian-led one in 2010, ?national reconciliation? has become a ubiquitous concept amongst its politicians and advocates for peace. The 2010 election was seen as an important opportunity for dialogue and cooperation, as well as a potential catalyst for peace in a country torn apart by more than 60 years of civil war. With the National League for Democracy?s (NLD) historic electoral win in 2015, hope was further renewed for rebuilding Burma into a genuine democracy and uniting its fragmented society....."
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Source/publisher: Teacircleoxford
2018-01-18
Date of entry/update: 2018-01-19
Grouping: Individual Documents
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