It is important to realize Burmese rebel leader Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan’s vision of an inclusive nation
Fifteen years ago today — as lovers everywhere enjoyed romantic Valentine’s Day celebrations — the leader of Myanmar’s ethnic Karen people, Padoh Mahn Sha Lah Phan, was brutally assassinated. I received the news a few hours later, as I arrived in Kuala Lumpur from Thailand to visit Chin and Kachin refugees from Myanmar in Malaysia.
I was profoundly shocked. Just three days earlier, I had spent half a day with Padoh Mahn Sha, sitting on the very veranda of his home on the Thailand-Myanmar border where he was then gunned down. His assassins walked through the gates of his house in broad daylight, greeted him in the Karen language, offered him fruit, and then shot him dead.
Padoh Mahn Sha was the general secretary of the Karen National Union (KNU), one of Myanmar’s oldest and largest ethnic armed resistance groups that has been fighting a civil war with Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, for 75 years. I had the privilege of knowing him well and counting him and his family as friends.
Three days before his assassination he had arranged for me to meet some former child soldiers from the Tatmadaw who had escaped and sought refuge among the Karen. He was giving them shelter. For half a day, from 8 a.m. until 1 p.m., I was in his home, interviewing the former child soldiers, then talking with Padoh Mahn Sha. We ended with lunch.
He was at his best — relaxed, speaking softly but firmly about the political and humanitarian crisis in his country, joking about his improved English language ability, and reflecting with pride on how his children living abroad had become such inspirational advocates for their cause in their own right.
Padoh Mahn Sha embodied everything that is good and beautiful about Myanmar — and everything for which Myanmar has suffered for so many decades. He embodied unity in diversity. He was a minority in many ways, offering a hand of friendship to the majority.
“It was not peace, it was not justice and it was not freedom, but it was a relaxation that might have allowed progress toward these goals”
An Animist among a predominantly Buddhist and Christian Karen population, a Karen who worked with Burman democracy activists and other ethnic groups in pursuit of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious federal democracy, he was — in his quiet, humble, understated way — a symbol of what Myanmar could and should be, if only it could put decades of military dictatorship and civil war behind it.
Just over three years after his murder, it appeared to many that Myanmar might be beginning to take its first faltering steps along a better path; one of cautious opening, some form of semi-democratization, some fragile reform and precarious ceasefires. It was not peace, it was not justice and it was not freedom, but it was a relaxation that might have allowed progress toward these goals.
When the then president, former general Thein Sein, and the pro-democracy leader, Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, met after she had spent years under house arrest, some hope appeared on the horizon.
The regime released almost all political prisoners, opened up space for independent media and civil society, allowed the National League for Democracy (NLD) to contest by-elections, and then, finally, allowed Suu Kyi and the NLD to contest and win free and fair elections and form a civilian-led democratic government, albeit with significant military representation under the military-drafted constitution.
Dark clouds soon appeared again with the unleashing of religious nationalist hatred and the genocide of the Rohingyas, and the ceasefires in the ethnic regions did not lead to genuine peace, but nevertheless, the building blocks towards a more open society were being developed.
On Feb. 1, 2021, a decade of reform, relaxation, opening — call it what you will — was ripped up and torn down, when the commander-in-chief of Myanmar’s military, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, launched a coup to depose the democratically elected civilian government led by Suu Kyi, which had won an overwhelming majority in the elections in November 2020 and was poised to begin a second term in office.
Min Aung Hlaing and his illegal, criminal regime seek, as the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, former US Congressman Tom Andrews put it in his most recent paper, to “turn back the clock, close the door on Myanmar’s democratic opening and rip away the modest freedoms and opportunities that Myanmar’s people began to enjoy over the past decade.”
The junta’s vision, Andrews argues, is “a military-controlled political system in which military leaders employ divide-and-rule tactics against the ethnic minorities and other groups and are accountable only to themselves.”
“It is impossible to hold genuine elections when opposition leaders have been arrested, imprisoned, tortured and executed”
Absurdly, Min Aung Hlaing justifies his coup on the grounds of allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 elections. He plans to hold fresh elections. But do not be in any doubt that whatever election this current junta holds will not be free or fair in any meaningful sense of the term. Instead of being a general election, you can be sure it will be an election of generals.
The UN Special Rapporteur’s new paper is incredibly important reading. Published to coincide with the second anniversary of the coup, and titled “Illegal and Illegitimate: Examining the Myanmar military’s claim as the Government of Myanmar and the international response,” it sets out — and demolishes — any idea that Min Aung Hlaing’s regime has any legitimacy or credibility whatsoever. Meticulously researched, compellingly argued and powerfully written, it makes clear that the international community should have no truck whatsoever with the current illegal, criminal junta.
As the UN Special Rapporteur makes clear, the very notion that a credible election could take place while the previously elected head of government, Aung San Suu Kyi, is serving a total of 33 years in jail on trumped-up charges, so many of her colleagues also languish in jail, over 13,000 political prisoners are behind bars, several prominent democrats have been executed, villages are bombed on a daily basis and thousands of protesters are shot dead in the street, is ludicrous.
“It is impossible to hold genuine elections when opposition leaders have been arrested, imprisoned, tortured and executed; nor when it is illegal for journalists to do their job; nor when one can be arrested for criticizing the [regime],” Andrews writes.
The starkest message of the UN Special Rapporteur’s paper is that as a result of the coup, Min Aung Hlaing’s regime has plunged Myanmar into a new human rights nightmare and humanitarian disaster.
Over 1.1 million people have been displaced since the coup. At least 17.6 million people will be in need of humanitarian assistance this year — a third of whom are children. Over 4 million school-aged children — half of Myanmar’s total — are unable to access formal education for two full academic years.
The regime has, Andrews argues, “decimated the economy” — nearly half of Myanmar’s population now lives below the poverty line. Access to life-saving medicines is increasingly restricted.
“The military has killed thousands by shooting protesters dead in the streets, torturing activists to death in interrogation facilities, burning entire villages to the ground, and launching missiles and artillery shells into civilian encampments,” notes Andrews.
The regime currently in Naypyidaw has no legitimacy. That is the overriding observation of the UN Special Rapporteur’s report. Not only because its coup was illegal and unconstitutional, it has no democratic mandate, and it has consigned much of its population to poverty, displacement, or humanitarian crisis — but also because it is not in control of much of the country.
“No election that Min Aung Hlaing announces is anything but a sham and should not be dignified with any credibility whatsoever”
Indeed, the UN Special Rapporteur notes that the junta controls “substantially less than half of Myanmar,” with large parts of the country either in conflict or controlled by the ethnic armed groups of the pro-democracy People’s Defence Forces (PDFs).
This scenario simply makes for more bloodshed, turmoil and suffering. Furthermore, the regime is in flagrant violation of its international obligations. It is a regime that is committing crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide — and should be prosecuted for these atrocity crimes.
The message for the international community is clear: Do not legitimize Min Aung Hlaing’s illegal, illegitimate, criminal regime. Instead, do everything possible to cut the lifeline that keeps it afloat, through targeted sanctions, a global arms embargo, a targeted ban on aviation fuel to Myanmar’s military to impede its air strikes against civilians, and diplomatic isolation. There may be times when it is necessary, and indeed helpful, to communicate with the junta, but let us ensure we do not provide diplomatic recognition.
So far, the majority of the international community has held to these principles, on the ground and at the UN, and we must go on doing so. And we must exert pressure on the few countries that have established full diplomatic relations with Min Aung Hlaing’s thugs, that sell them arms and that fund their crimes, and we must consider secondary sanctions against them for complicity with Naypyidaw’s crimes.
Most significantly, we must ensure that the world knows that as long as his military is bombing Myanmar’s ethnic people and as long as Myanmar’s democrats are shot, arrested, jailed, tortured and executed, no election that Min Aung Hlaing announces is anything but a sham and should not be dignified with any credibility whatsoever.
As we remember the tragic assassination of one of Myanmar’s heroes — Padoh Mahn Sha Hla Phan — today, and we reflect on the turbulent years since his death, with false hopes so cruelly dashed, let us resolve to recover his vision for a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, federal democracy for Myanmar, however difficult it seems.
His children — Zoya Phan, Nant Bwa Bwa Phan, Slone Phan and Say Say Phan — all of whom I know well and count as friends — are fighting for that vision, most especially through their brilliant work in The Phan Foundation, of which I am privileged to be a trustee. In solidarity with them, and with all the peoples of Myanmar, and in honor of Padoh Mahn Sha, let’s pledge to continue that fight for as long as it takes.
*The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News.
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