Last week, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, gave an impassioned speech to the 51st Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, in which he strongly pressed the international community to “rethink what is clearly not working, and set a new course of action.”
Meanwhile on the ground in Myanmar the military junta is conducting farcical peace talks, while simultaneously escalating conflict in Rakhine State and mercilessly continuing its all out war against the people of Myanmar.
While some fringe or military-aligned ethnic revolutionary organizations (EROs) have attended the junta-led “peace talks” in Naypyidaw in late September, 567 civil society organizations called on all EROs to not engage with the military junta’s sham peace talks.
The organisations said: “It is evident that it is a sham dialogue intended to divide and rule the resistance groups, namely the Spring Revolution forces, the people and ethnic armed organizations.” Similarly, the UN and international community must not buy into the military junta’s proclamations of “peace” or transition towards democracy through sham elections.
Not only does the military lacks genuine intentions to undertake peace talks in good faith with all relevant stakeholders but, according to pressure group Progressive Voice, they clearly don’t have a mandate to convene such talks, because they are an illegal terrorist organization under Myanmar law.
However, it is clear that the junta wishes to present these talks as if they had legitimacy, and thus to leverage the peace negotiations to buy time to strengthen their military and political position.
Progressive Voice says it is imperative the international community recognizes that this is farce, which the Myanmar military has repeated time and again. The declaration made by the junta leader Min Aung Hlaing that the year 2022 is “The Year of Peace,” is a complete joke given that he has continued his wanton destruction of communities, viciously targeting civilians amounting to crimes against humanity and war crimes.
Padoh Mahn Mahn, a spokesperson for Brigade 5 of the Karen National Liberation Army (KNLA) – the armed wing of the Karen National Union (KNU) – said to Myanmar Now: “They offer peace to one side so they can free up their troops to fight another. It’s not a sincere offer that might actually lead to a political solution. It is a call for surrender in the guise of peace. This is their old tactic.”
This echoes the fake peace professed by the junta during the past decade, in which donor countries pumped $100 millions of US dollars into a peace industry that left the people of Myanmar – particularly ethnic peoples – out in the cold.
While the so-called peace talks were being undertaken, the military junta inflamed conflict in Rakhine State in different ways. These included killing two children and injuring several others when they shelled a house in Na Ga Yar, Kyauktaw Township.
Once again, communities in Rakhine State, including the Rohingya, have had to flee their homes and villages, continuing the cycles of conflict and displacement in Rakhine State. For Rohingya people, the junta continues to devise living conditions calculated to bring about their physical destruction.
Such deliberate, systematic and widespread treatment to destroy the Rohingya population in whole or in part amounts to genocide.
The people of Rakhine State are still rebuilding their lives in the wake of the previous conflict between the Arakan Army and Myanmar military from 2018 – 2020. The resumption of full-scale aggression by the military junta in Rakhine State reaffirms their intention to terrorise people across the country.
Outside the peace talks, the military junta has been promoting its 2023 election plans as a PR offensive to induce the international community into believing they are genuine about a transition towards democracy.
The junta’s calculation is that if the international community recognizes the election, they are recognizing the junta as legitimate governing power in Myanmar. However, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing told Russian media in an interview during his recent visit to Russia, that elections slated for August of 2023 would depend on peace, economic and political stability.
Progressive Voice believes that they way forward has to place the people of Myanmar at the center of the solution to the crisis. The approach adopted should both actively support the National Unity Government and pro-democracy forces within the Spring Revolution and EROs, while simultaneously de-legitimising efforts by the junta to hold sham elections and fake peace talks.
As the Special Rapporteur put it to the Human Rights Council last week, the UN and member states must “back up words with actions.” At the same time, states must take strong measures to deprive the military junta of legitimacy, funds and arms. This has to include targeted sanctions on the junta and their affiliated businesses and cronies, as well as a global arms embargo.
As civil society has been calling for since the coup attempt on 1 February 2021, a UN-led global response is required to assist the people of Myanmar in taking down this military junta once and for all, and establishing a genuine federal democracy.
