Over the last six-decades of murderous, racist and economically predatory rule – or misrule – the Defense Services of Myanmar has come to be popularly mocked as That - Ma - Daw or Mass-Murderous Military by the Burmese public. Aung San was then a 27-year-old Marxist revolutionary, who was patronized and helped by WWII Japan's Imperial Naval Intelligence to found the Tatmadaw, which was used by the Japanese fascists as a local proxy against the British rule in Burma. People's sentiment and respect for the military, originally founded as an anti-British colonial revolutionary organization, has diminished seventy-eight years after it was founded by Aung San Suu Kyi's father Aung San. The Tatmadaw or Burmese military has lost its veneer of patriotism or central mission of national defense and protection of the people who pay their salaries.
It prevented elected representatives from taking the oath of office and discharged their popularly mandated mission of running the country's affairs. Myanmar's coup leaders led by genocidal General Min Aung Hlaing have vastly underestimated the strength and ferocity of popular revolt, especially the youth, against the blatant violation of the fundamental principle of representative self-governance of a people. Their movement has grown out of the shadows of an iconic politician and her party, namely Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NDL). One of the most encouraging features of the anti-coup protests unfolding in small towns, cities and villages across Myanmar is the emergence of Generation Z on the streets.
#People in myanmar free#
The writer is the Burmese coordinator of the UK-based Free Rohingya Coalition and a fellow of the Genocide Documentation Center in Cambodia