Looking at the dire situation on the ground, she said, the number of displaced people has increased from 370,000 to 589,000 since the military takeover, the number of people needing humanitarian assistance has jumped from 1 million to 3 million, and the health system and banking system have collapsed.īut unlike the coup in 1998 when people were killed or put in prison or gave up, and the Tatmadaw took over and conducted business as usual, “people will, in my view, not give up” now, she said.
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“If this situation will continue, then I would say we would have a full blown internal armed conflict,” she said. Schraner Burgener said she wouldn’t call the current situation a civil war because that’s not “international legal terminology,” but she said that with violence spreading across Myanmar it is “an internal armed conflict.” In the past, the Tatmadaw would use violence against ethnic armed groups or against the Rohingya but not against the Buddhist Bamar ethnic majority, but that is happening now on a large scale in the central part of the country, she said. She said the conflict must be solved and that “the power must be returned to the people in a democratic way,” but the military did not respond to her proposal for an inclusive national dialogue and appears intent on continuing its operations. Schraner Burgener warned that “the overall situation in Myanmar continues to deteriorate sharply.” The military takeover earlier this year followed November elections, which Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won overwhelmingly and the military contests as fraudulent. As the generals loosened their grip, culminating in Suu Kyi’s rise to leadership in 2015 elections, the international community responded by lifting most sanctions and pouring investment into the country.
Myanmar for five decades had languished under strict military rule that led to international isolation and sanctions. “Clearly, in the absence of international action, violence has been justified as the last resort,” she said. Schraner Burgener said the movement against the military is now “increasingly militarized,” with the so-called National Unity Government formed by supporters of the ousted democratic government led by Aung San Suu Kyi seeking to mobilize a greater number of Peoples Defense Forces and calling for “a people’s defense war.” The Rohingya were first targeted by Myanmar’s security forces in 1997-98 and over 700,000 fled to neighboring Bangladesh after a military crackdown in 2017. She said the situation is reminiscent of the pattern of operations that the military, known as the Tatmadaw, used against Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine state in 1997.
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