 Hello everyone, welcome to another episode of international relations capsule for the Shankar IAS Academy. Today we will discuss the one year after the military coup in Myanmar. Last February 1st, a day before the new parliament was to meet after the election in November 2020, the military declared an emergency for one year, deposed the existing government and sent the entire government into prison. The government was elected by a clear majority and the national lead for democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi should have come to power. Even before the elections, it was not purely democracy because there was a kind of power sharing between the army and the elected representatives and Aung San Suu Kyi was designated a state councillor but not prime minister because according to the constitution anyone who had married a foreigner could not be prime minister. This was also a manipulation by the army. But Aung San Suu Kyi worked closely with the army and in fact even sided with the army on the question of Rohingyas and faced international criticism. This after that she became the leader of the government and was about to be sworn in. The events that followed in the last one year have been really horrific because democracy was completely wiped out. Most leaders were put in jail and several trumped up charges were made against Aung San Suu Kyi herself and her colleagues. There were demonstrations and protests continuously for some time and the army cracked down on them without any mercy. A large number of people were killed, the protesters because of army action and Colonel Min Aung playing the leader, the commander of the army took charge as the sole leader of Myanmar. International community protested but he took no note of it and he has continued his dictatorial ways and he had promised elections in 2023 but there is no certainty about that and he is now talking of further amendments to the constitution so that the new election system will be proportional representation and not regular straightforward democracy. So the charges against her were something like importing communication equipment and violating the COVID-19 protocol and so on. So it was nothing serious but she has been now sentenced to imprisonment for a certain period. About 3,070 people were detained and most NLD leaders were put in jail and three NLD leaders even died at the time of the protests. So the situation in Myanmar is very grim. There is no expectation that there will be any change and the demand from the international community to release Aung San Suu Kyi and to declare elections has not been heated by the commander-in-chief. So Myanmar is in a situation which is not very different from what it was before the first elections. 1988 was the first elections free elections held and the Democrats won but they were not allowed to come to power but before 1988 in fact from 1962 onwards dictatorship had prevailed in Myanmar. This is the unfortunate part of that country. It was a flourishing democracy till 1962 when General Nevin took over power. In fact, the democratic government itself had handed over power to General Nevin for two years before that and he had himself returned power to the democratic elected government after that but then having tasted power for two years he decided to take over the country in 1962. We all know what happened since then. He transformed a democratic prosperous country into a dictatorial and bankrupt nation. His policy was one of total isolationism. He did not want any relations with the outside world for some time. Then he declared a policy that he would not deal with superpowers or neighbors but only what he called the third countries not third world countries. Third countries mean those countries which are not superpowers or neighboring countries. The exception was China because he maintained relations with China throughout and naturally the country became poor. There was nothing to know that it was a rich country in the sense of natural resources that precious metals and plenty of rice and there was general prosperity but that was all lost and the country became almost bankrupt. But after General Nevin died the situation continued and it was under the pressure of poverty and disintegration that in 1988 the army started a new democratic process. So if you look at the situation during Nevin's regime and now there is hardly any difference. I served in Myanmar from 1983 to 1986 when General Nevin was still alive. It was a strange country at that time itself. The diplomats really did not have much to do because it was impossible to deal with the senior officials or ministers who kept away from difference. We were important only in terms of protocol when there's a national day the ambassadors have to line up and there is an annual golf tournament hosted by the army for the diplomats except for these formal protocol functions. There was really no interaction between the diplomats and the senior officials. As far as India is concerned we had a very deep involvement in Burma what it was earlier but with the coup in 1962 we had many outstanding problems because a million Indians were thrown out of Burma at that time soon after the coup. Virtually all Indians were thrown out except for some Indian paddy farmers who were requested to stay back and those paddy farmers are still there eking out their livelihood by growing paddy which is all taken away by the by the government. It's a sad story about those paddy farmers who stayed behind but others came to India or went to other places and got themselves settled but still there is a largeish Indian community even my time and they were in touch with us only for cultural and other activities they would come to film festivals in the embassy music dancing etc but there was no involvement of any kind between us and the Burmese government to improve the situation of the Indian community or to do business with Burma. At one time we tried to buy some rice from Burma because Burma was a big exporter of rice before the coup. We bought the rice we had a commerce secretary of India visiting Burma and the commerce minister came to India but nothing happened after that so we had virtually no business to do with Burma even though we had an embassy and we were engaged basically in following the developments in the country which is not difficult because there were two government newspapers with identical content and so it was very easy to find out what was going on in the country from the government's perspective. Only very few Burmese interacted private people interacted with the embassy possibly with the clearance from the military about 30 families used to come to our parties and spend time with us and have theater groups and various things and golfing was the greatest activity there you could meet people and talk so all of us were compelled in a way to start playing golf I started playing golf there and that was a great boon because there are a lot of time and on the golf course you could talk to the Burmese elite and that seemed to be the only window for us to deal with the community. There were protests of and on but being Buddhists they were very patient and there was no protest led to any change till 1988. So this was the situation that I witnessed and that is the one which continued even after I left and General Nevin died. So if you look at the present situation from what I read it looks like very similar situation that I witnessed before. So if I wrote as I wrote somewhere if General Nevin's ghost is to appear and see look at Burma today he will find everything very familiar his ghost seems to be everywhere a military man in charge as the dictator the opposition in jail no economic activities no friend outside Burma except China and then some humanitarian activities by some countries and the patient people of Burma tolerating all this and of course they used to sell their diamonds and precious metals etc annually to earn some foreign exchange. English language was banned from the country so it's an unfortunate country which has fallen in bad times ever since 1962. It looks as though the world changed so much after 1962 but Burma remained isolated and completely undeveloped. In the situation there are also several insurgent groups within Burma who were running their own affairs and only about 40% of the country was under the central government and that created its own problems like the Rohingya problem was one of that because in that particular state they expelled the Muslim Rohingyas and the they left they went to Bangladesh and those who remained have remained unfortunately in bad situation. So after one year of the military coup we expected that there must there will be some reconciliation between the army and the leadership and particularly since they had worked together before the coup from till the 2020 November elections in which the Democrats won the elections and they were prevented from coming to power day before the parliament was to meet. There were some discussions and consultations and it was expected that probably some kind of democratic structure even with the army dominating it might be established. So after the coup and the situation returned to the pre-1988 situation there were lots of international efforts to bring about some kind of change. There was a proposal for a ceasefire because the military was very very dictatorial and very harsh on the people that did not care about killing people on the streets and so there was considerable concern internationally and being a part of ASEAN that is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations the regional powers that is the ASEAN states tried to intervene. They suggested a kind of formula a five-point consensus formula to re-establish democracy and to bring about peace and reconciliation but the military has not cared to implement them and the military's complaint is that the head of the military the leader the dictator was not invited to the ASEAN conference because though ASEAN was trying to suggest various measures to bring the situation back to normal they were not willing to recognize him as their equal and therefore he was not invited and therefore Mr. Heing was offended and therefore he refused to even cooperate with the ASEAN initiatives and then more recently the head of state of Kabulian Mr. Hun Sen as you know he's a very the senior most leader in the whole of that region. Hun Sen was not in favor of the army he was in fact against Mr. Heing being invited to the ASEAN conference but since Hun Sen has good relations with China maybe China encouraged him to take a personal initiative to do something in India. Mr. Hun Sen was received as they always do when visitors go they receive them politely according to protocol but they just don't accept any of the substance that you offer that is their pattern. So Mr. Hun Sen was received but they did not listen to him and he went back disappointed and then ASEAN suggested that another special involved could be sent to Burma to Myanmar to discuss issues further. So it looks as though that like in the case of Hun Sen the new the envoy may also be received but there is no hope or expectation that any progress will be made and who supports the present day Myanmar the only country who supports it is China and since China and Russia are now getting more and more friendly both of them that is China and Russia has been trying to get the United Nations not to condemn the government very harshly because the rest of the world community is quite willing to impose sanctions or restrictions to make sure that this kind of dictatorship ends but since they have the support of the Chinese and indirectly that of Russia nothing drastic has been done even though the seat of Myanmar in the United Nations is not occupied by the representative of the military government at least that much the UN has done so the power behind Myanmar today is China which virtually has unlimited influence on the military dictatorship and also in the people there are many Chinese who have settled in different parts of Myanmar engaged in agriculture industry trade etc who are benefiting from them and all these groups I mentioned earlier this racial groups in different parts of Myanmar are also enjoying themselves by doing their own trade and using that money for more and more insurgent activities inside Myanmar so the next step is whether the envoy of ASEAN countries will be given a hearing and whether there will be some compromise speech but in any case no elections are likely to be held until 2023 at least and also nobody knows what kind of elections that will be and because there is this tradition of the domination of the army from 1962 it will be very difficult for the situation to change as far as India is concerned as I mentioned to you we really had nothing much to do with Myanmar at that time and when the democratically elected Aung San Suu Kyi was put in jail India initially supported Aung San Suu Kyi because you know she is the daughter of an assassinated prime minister Aung San was also a general and her mother was Burma's ambassador to India and so Aung San Suu Kyi had studied in India and therefore she had very close links and family relationships etc though she was married to a British but his links historically and culturally were all with India and so she legitimately expected that India would support her and we did that for some time then we realized that there would be no change in the military dictatorship and it would be better for us to deal with the army so that our interests are protected what are our interests basically we have a long land border with Myanmar and on that land border there are insurgency groups in India itself like the Nagas and others who create problems inside India and when the army or the police chase them they go into Myanmar and seek that protection for themselves so we have been saying even when I was there we are requesting the Myanmar authorities to allow us to either pursue them into Myanmar and capture them or capture them and return them to us but they were not agreeable to either of these purposes but one time very recently a couple of years ago they allowed or at least close their eyes to Indian army entering Myanmar and bringing these people back but that did not continue obviously but that was something that the military regime did not appreciate then there were some projects etc we were discussing generally a little better than the situation when I was there and some projects were assigned to us and we decided to invest some money but partly because of our own inability to pursue this and partly because the military was not particularly keen most of these projects did not come out there were some high-level visitors and even now in this whole chaotic situation our former secretary Mr. Sringlar made a visit official visit to Myanmar so in kind of recognizing the situation and the reality he even carried with him a lot of vaccines and so on to help the country in humanitarian manner he was of course received by the military leader but his request to meet Omsan's which he was turned out we did not know what was discussed and whether there was any kind of promise in this meeting but it was in our the spirit of our own relationship with the rest of the world we wanted to keep communications open and so there was nothing more than that I was achieved we don't know by the visit of the of the foreign section so in other words we are in touch with the situation we are following it and we have vital interest particularly because of the border there is some border trail between India and Burma but that has been continued traditionally for a long time but otherwise there is nothing by much so we have no influence to change the situation there in fact nobody seems to have any influence through that and when I look at the Myanmar situation I often feel that Nevin's ghost is still haunting that country because the system that he established in 1962 still persists so one of the techniques is used was to turn the entire governing community or the governing structures into army recruitment all government recruitments were to the army a rank would be given to them according to their status and their salaries and their qualifications and then they were assigned to civilian establishments whether you're the manager or a factory or a principal of a school or a college all civilian jobs were actually done by the army you would not know that they would because they were in civilian clothes but every year on an army day if you go to the national reception hosted by the president you will find that all these people whom you saw in civilian clothes were actually military officers with their own uniform and ranks on their soldiers so that exposed that there were no civilian administration at all the army was pretending to be civilian so in the sense that Mr. Nevin converted the whole country into a military garrison everybody was a soldier and therefore military has a western interest which nobody could count and I don't think that any military dictator anywhere in the world has done this conversion they may have ruled for many years but there were civilian officers even some kind of parliamentary structures like in Pakistan today were there in many countries but here there was no pretension till 1988 there was no pretension to any kind of representative government so it's a sad situation the whole world deplores what has happened but the situation is such that nobody is able to help I think China alone can maybe influence them but it does not meet Chinese interests if it becomes a democracy and if China had not vetoed various proposals then there would have been sanctions earlier individual sanctions were there but there was no UN sanctions there is a provision as you know in the UN for humanitarian intervention it's not very well defined but this is perhaps a situation where humanitarian intervention may be necessary but it will not be difficult it will be difficult to get a decision of the Security Council to make any intervention because of the possible Chinese veto even though China is friendly to Russia China is also not very much in favor of either Russia or India gaining influence in that so it has become a kind of a vassal state ruled by a military dictator and the people in poverty and disorder the only parallel to this could be North Korea I don't think any other country can be compared with me I'm not today except that the people are very civilized cultured it is a natural resources are there so there is no starvation as such but there is certainly poverty and lack of comforts of the modern world so after one year of the coup China Myanmar has only gone back and even the names that have changed you know Myanmar was called Burma and and Yangon was called Rangu these were English names and so even though Myanmar and Yangon are new names for us they're actually the old prehistoric names which they have brought back so even the newness of the names are really old wine and new bottle as you can say so we only feel sorry for the country and we hope that things will get better sooner and later but looking at the history of Burma one cannot be very optimistic about the future turn of events in this most unfortunate country thank you