Watching Myanmar coup from England: An exile’s dilemma

It was surreal “watching” the elements of Myanmar coup, a crime in the eyes of any democrat, being narrated as it were by a fellow Burmese exile through my quiet chat box, as the clock approached 10 pm in England.

While the Burmese military’s agents were raiding select homes and monasteries of the pro-democracy Burmese supporters, monks and lay activists, in Mandalay, Yangon, Taunggyi and other major cities in the wee hours of 1 February I was up in England watching bits and pieces of Internet information that I got in my chat box – who was arrested when, from where.

Another Burmese friend in Washington posted, “Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, detained at 2:30 am.”

I started composing a series of tweets saying I believed the coup was taking place as I typed. And I went to bed at 3:30am. Several hours later I got up to read the news reports that confirmed my “more than 50-50 possible-coup” tweets.

Over my first cup of coffee, I was processing the news of this un-expected turn of events in the Burmese politics on the ground. Only 5 years ago, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing was emphatic when he answered a Burmese reporter’s question, “General, now that the (military-backed) Union Solidarity and Development Party was defeated by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD in a landslide win, will you intervene to reverse this with a coup?” “Not even thinkable,” shot back the Commander-in-Chief.

What changed this time?

As the NLD’s election win was expected as Aung San Suu Kyi remained – and remains – the most popular politician with the firmest grip on the electorate. While she fell from grace in the global public opinion because of her progressively strident defence and denial of Myanmar’s genocidal persecution of Rohingya Muslims, her public support had only grown stronger among the overwhelming majority of Burmese voters at home and Burmese diaspora globally.

Some of us Burmese knew that her categorical denial of Rohingya genocide – and in effect – in defence of Myanmar as a state party to the Genocide Convention in the Gambia vs Myanmar case at the International Court of Justice – was in part genuine and in part an act of political calculation. It was a performative act designed to impress upon Myanmar military leaders that as the daughter of the Father of the Armed Forces, she would stand up for them – even at the clear risk of squandering her own moral stature in the world. “The world may crucify me, but as Aung San’s daughter, I am going to stand with my father’s (foster) sons in the country’s hours of need.” SHE MUST INTERNALLY HAVE JUSTIFIED HER INDEFENSIBLE STANCE. As a nationalist, Suu Kyi closed ranks with the murderous military leaders.

The problem is the Burmese military leadership has never trusted her intention or bought into her offer of “genuine affection” for the solders whom she openly called “my father’s sons”. The military has institutionalised the view that however sweet her words may be Suu Kyi’s intention is to dislodge them from power. On her part she contributed to this pervasive view among the military, particular those in the commanding positions.

She may be broad-minded enough to bury the hedges and move on to cooperate with the generals who locked her up for nearly 15 years for the sake of nation-building and national reconciliation But the generals are not prepared to give up their unchallenged control over vast sectors of Burmese national economy and playing the unchallengeable ultimate power-holders. Not for the love of the daughter of the army’s founder nor for the common good.

In the 2020 elections, Suu Kyi and her party practically dealt a crushing defeat to the military’s political proxy, the USDP party of ex-generals and other ranks of veteran – taking nearly 400 seats out of a total of 476 contestable seats for the NLD, while USDP secured less than 10% of NLD’s seats (33 seats).

The original aim of the military leaders who ushered in this fundamentally anti-democratic Constitutional framework for the country was to make sure Ms Suu Kyi and NLD never had such commanding position in the legislature. And the two election cycles proved that the military will never be able to accomplish their strategic objective of playing – and winning – the game of elections with their most-distrusted but most popularly revered politician in Burmese politics.

For several months, the military’s proxy USDP party and smaller ethnic and pro-democracy parties had taken a leaf out of Trump’s “stop-the-steal” playbook and cried “fraud”. The military leaders saw a golden opportunity to strike at Ms Suu Kyi and her NLD party.

Having absolutely no commitment to genuine democratisation of the country’s politics nor ever embraced liberal democratic values at any point in their military career, the generals saw a way to use this Trumpian narrative of (empirically groundless) widespread voter frauds.

Why keep on playing the electoral game with the arch-opponent whom you don’t have the slightest possibility of winning against?

The rest is history as they say.

For the last 10 years, I have publicly cried foul about this farcical nature of Burmese military’s top-down democracy or reforms breaking ranks with most of the Burmese and Burma specialists who helped sell the big democracy farce as a welcome “baby step”. It would be dishonest to say that I did not have a schadenfreude as I “watched” the coup progress in the wee hours of this past Monday.

What is really painful is this: many of my friends and acquaintances are among the coup-makers and coup-victims.

For instance, the Vice President Myint Swe, a powerful ex-general who was my host when I gave up my political asylum in the USA and returned “home” to Myanmar as “a state’s guest”, was seen on Myanmar State TV performing the constitutionally required ritual of officially reading out the transfer letter which spelled out (bogus) justifications for the coup and declared his military junior Senior General Min Aung Hlaing to be the head of the military junta, with all the combined powers from judiciary, legislative and executive branches vested in the latter.

I saw a handful of prominent dissidents and pro-democracy monks as well as the NLD leaders whom I have known, respected and loved.

At the same time, I realise this is the coup that was launched by the generals that perpetrated crimes against humanity and genocide against Rohingya people against the Burmese democrats who cheer-led, denied and defended the generals’ genocide.

As a principled dissident who has earned the title of “enemy of the state” in Myanmar and “national traitor” – because I spoke out for the Muslims of Arakan, I am rather torn as to whether to condemn the coup against a democracy that never was and feel sorry for my former dissident colleagues and friends, or gloat that Karma is a bitch.

Maung Zarni is co-founder of the Forces of Renewal Southeast Asia (www.FORSEA.co), a grassroots network of pro-democracy scholars and rights activists, and a Burmese exile.