I worked in Myanmar for 5 years 2013-2018, The military was always in control Aun San was only a puppet and anyone saying she didn't do anything to help the Rohingya knows nothing.

30 minutes ago, RT555 said:

The military was always in control Aun San was only a puppet and anyone saying she didn't do anything to help the Rohingya knows nothing.

Is there any info on this (in the public domain)?

Another fledgling democracy snuffed out deeply troubling and saddening 

23 hours ago, PatOngo said:

I don't think they gave her any choice!

I don't think they forced her to go to the International Court of Justice and deny any ethnic cleansing took place.

Following in Thailand's footsteps!

Well, let's see.  Lost the election.  Claimed the election was fraudulent.  Staged a coup.  Right out of the Trump playbook.  

On 2/1/2021 at 4:12 PM, RT555 said:

I worked in Myanmar for 5 years 2013-2018, The military was always in control Aun San was only a puppet and anyone saying she didn't do anything to help the Rohingya knows nothing.

There has always been tensions and resentment between the majority Buddhists and the Moslem Rohingya or Moslems in general. The Burmese have their own N-word for Moslems, though it starts with a K sound. I recall an incident back a decade or so ago when monks led a raid on the home of a Moslem merchant, burning him and his family alive because he had imported some fabric to make women's thameins (the female longyi) that had a pattern that looked like a wheel. The monks argued that the wheel looked like the Great Wheel of their faith, and that by making a garment for women who would wear it in their 'dirty' nether regions, the merchant was committing blasphemy.

 

The purge of the Rohingya was given support by the Sangha. ASSK did nothing and talked down the idea of genocide. She was perhaps not totally in control of the Tatmadaw, but she was no puppet. She could have spoken up. She did not.

 

Many years ago I became drinking buddies with a senior military official, who eventually fell in a palace coup and was sentenced to 225 years in jail for 'corruption'. Way back when he tried to make overtures to ASSK, when she was still under house arrest in her place on University Ave. The general told me, "we know she's just like us and we have nothing to fear from her; she just wants to be like a queen". This general was too early trying to build rapport with her, and the other two leaders, fearful back then of her, put a stop to it all by arresting the entire intelligence wing of the government. Three leaders became two, Gen Than Shwe and head of the army Gen Maung Aye.

 

The person who should be given the credit for Myanmar's move toward democracy is Thein Sein, who took over as PM just after the Saffron Revolution of September 2007, and opened the door for the NLD to begin to govern, albeit under the ever watchful eye of the Tatmadaw. He was honest and practical, knowing the world would come running to invest and build the country if there was a scent of democracy in the air. He never got much credit, nor did he look for it. He was that rare thing one could call a selfless dedicated public servant.

 

Perhaps I 'know nothing', but I've been a regular visitor there since 1995, also living there for a number of years, and I speak, read and write the language. I never bought into ASSK's schtick, instead just seeing entitlement and unbridled Machiavellian ambition. She is, of course, popular with the Baman, but much less popular with the large ethnic groups such as the Kachin and Karen, many of whom face their own discrimination because they are majority Christian.

 

I suspect the future is now not so bright. Ethnic tensions and separatists movements are possible, especially with the Kachin, and China will obviously try to exploit the situation to continue on their path to make Myanmar a vassal state. They already have a gas and an oil pipeline running from the Yakhine coast into Yunan, are building a port that will allow China to ringfence India (with the other bookend at Gwadar in Pakistan), and want to go back building hydroelectric plants on all Myanmar rivers---sending all of the electricity back to China, as well as exploiting Myanmar's natural resources, such as tropical hardwoods and industrial and precious metals in Kachin State, and offshore oil and gas fields off Yakhine State (where the Rohingya live/lived).

So far, as expected, China is siding with the Tatmadaw and supporting the coup. The Tatmadaw is easily bought, and is happy to allow China to extract whatever resources it wants from Myanmar.

 

Anecdote: According to Henry Kissinger, many years ago he visited China and the office of now-jailed CCP senior Bo Xilai. Kissinger said that on the wall of Bo's office was a map of greater China. Not only did it include Taiwan and Tibet, but it also included Myanmar, as if some CCP leadership claims Myanmar is some sort of 'renegade province'.