One year after the coup d’etat of 1er February 2021, on the grounds, never proven, of massive electoral fraud on the part of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, big winner of the November 2020 elections, the results of the new junta is inglorious. The economy is on its knees. The number of “internally displaced” would reach 406,000 since 1er February 2021, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR). Admittedly, the large urban centers no longer experience demonstrations, but plastic attacks against the army are daily.
In the west of the country, in Chin State, and in two central Bamar regions, the main ethnic group, Sagaing and Magway, which had never experienced major conflict, the army is harassed by resistance brigades , and must increasingly resort to deadly air strikes. For the first time, in January, a state capital, Loikaw (Kayah State, with a Karenni and Christian majority), in the East, was bombed.
In these areas, the massacres of civilians perpetrated by the army – crimes against humanity and war crimes, according to the NGO Human Rights Watch – signal more a loss of control of the territory than a recovery in hand. “They burned down our school in Sagaing. The army seems like a wounded beast, forced into a scorched earth policy,” observes a German aid worker met in Mae Sot, who had to suspend his activities in Burma.
“Reset the whole political system”
The hour is dark for Burma, if we consider all that this country has lost, whose political transition initiated in 2011 and ratified by free elections in 2015, after half a century of dictatorship, had given rise to great hopes. But taking into account the gains made by the “Spring Revolution”, the uprising which the actors hope will rid the country of a failed system, there are reasons for optimism.
“We were already under military control: they had the Constitution on their side, designed to protect their interests and their power, and the Buddhist clergy, who felt threatened by Aung San Suu Kyi,” says activist Thinzar Shunlei Yi, 30, from the secret place where she has taken refuge. “This mode of political organization was failing, it was said that we needed a revolution. We got it earlier than expected. Now that we have chosen to fight, this coup provides a unique opportunity to reset the entire political system,” she wants to believe.
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