Myanmar’s Generals: The Banality of Evil

By Bertil Lintner 13 December 2022

When Adolf Eichmann was placed on trial in Jerusalem in 1961, few may think about that he was answerable for sending hundreds of thousands of Jews to their deaths in Nazi focus camps throughout World Struggle II. As an alternative of a monstruous butcher, Eichmann appeared like a meek civil servant who, as he mentioned, had solely been doing his job — or “not more than a easy pencil pusher” — as somebody within the viewers remarked on the time. However Eichmann was certainly a monster. He was sentenced to dying for a collection of crimes, amongst them crimes towards humanity, and hanged on June 1, 1962.

The virtually surreal scenes that had been performed out within the Israeli court docket in the course of the trial later prompted political thinker, writer and German Jewish refugee Hannah Arendt to coin the time period “the banality of evil.” The identical may very well be mentioned immediately in regards to the prime generals within the Myanmar army. When the nation opened as much as the surface world in 2011, hordes of international peacemakers, interlocutors from conflict-resolution outfits, international buyers and even authorities officers flocked to Myanmar from international locations all over the world for conferences with the generals.

Their hosts in Yangon and Naypyitaw didn’t appear to be monsters however cheap folks that Europeans, Australians, North People and different Westerners may take care of. The international so-called “consultants” had been satisfied that they may “interact” the generals and help them within the “transition to democracy” and bringing a peaceable resolution to the ethnic wars which have been raging because the nation’s independence from Britain in 1948.

Thousands and thousands of {dollars} had been poured into ill-conceived “peace tasks” in Myanmar and international coverage pundits produced a flood of papers with headlines comparable to “Understanding the Democratic Transition in Myanmar”, “Deciphering Myanmar’s Transition” and “What’s Behind the Transition in Myanmar?”. Some had been tainted by outright quasi-academic gobbledygook, amongst them a report on ethnic conflicts in Rakhine State headlined “Ethnogenesis as Schismogenesis”. Certainly these charming army officers couldn’t have been answerable for all of the atrocities that human rights organizations and civil society teams had been documenting for many years?

These of us who questioned this strategy, saying it doesn’t work that manner — tyrants don’t turn out to be cheap patrons of liberal democracy in a single day — had been dismissed as pessimists and even cynics. Then got here the coup in February final yr. Tanks rolled into Myanmar’s capital, Naypyitaw, and its largest metropolis, Yangon, taking up the reins of energy and placing in a junta, the State Administration Council (SAC).

Many outsiders had been stunned by the army violence that the coup unleashed on Myanmar’s individuals and startled by the energy of the resistance, peaceable in addition to violent, that’s persevering with everywhere in the nation. The violence that was directed at initially peaceable protesters surprised those that had believed that the army can be incapable of committing such crimes. The primary to be focused had been younger demonstrators, many of their teenagers, who had been gunned down by snipers in an try the scare the others into submission.

When that didn’t have the specified impact, individuals had been shot indiscriminately. Armed resistance flared up in lots of elements of the nation — and the SAC responded by bombing and obliterating whole villages. 1000’s of activists had been rounded up and tortured and, in July, 4 activists had been even hanged within the first judicial, political execution because the mid-Nineteen Seventies. Thus far, one other 139 dying sentences have been handed right down to opponents of army rule. Scores of different individuals have been killed extrajudicially in cities and villages throughout Myanmar.

Nor did it take lengthy for the army prime brass to disclose their true colours. Former president U Thein Sein, a retired military normal as soon as hailed by some Western media as “Myanmar’s Gorbachev” main the nation to a greater future, first confirmed what he truly stood for when, in January 2020, he endorsed the insurance policies of the army, saying that Myanmar confronted rising threats to “territory, race and faith” and referred to as on the individuals to vote for candidates within the upcoming November normal election who would “shield the nation”.

Since final yr’s coup, Thein Sein has made donations to households of members of the army’s proxy Union and Solidarity Growth Get together (USDP) who’ve been killed or wounded on suspicion of performing as army informants. For sure, he has not donated any cash to the numerous households whose family members have been gunned down by the army and the police for demonstrating peacefully towards the coup.

On Armed Forces Day this yr, March 27, about two dozen retired army officers had been invited to a grand ceremony in Naypyitaw. Coup maker and SAC chief Senior Common Min Aung Hlaing paid the friends of honor his respects, and amongst them was not solely Thein Sein but in addition figures like ex-admiral Soe Thane, as soon as dubbed a “reformer” and, in 2012, an invitee to Norway’s Oslo Discussion board. The next yr, he attended the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Switzerland. However shortly after final yr’s coup, Soe Thane printed a ebook in Burmese through which he praised Min Aung Hlaing’s seizure of energy saying that “our Myanmar’s independence was restored on February 1, 2021.”

By then it ought to have been apparent what sort of energy the generals truly represented, however that didn’t forestall, as an example, Marte Nilsen, a researcher on the Norwegian government-funded Peace Analysis Institute Oslo, from reiterating the parable of a “reform course of.” In an article printed on December 13, 2021 within the Norwegian journal Bistandsaktuelt, she nonetheless said that Thein Sein has been the top of a “reform authorities”.

It’s price noting that three ministers within the cupboard appointed by the SAC after the 2021 coup additionally served in that supposed “reform authorities” headed by Thein Sein: ex-Colonel Wunna Maung Lwin, then and now international minister; ex-Brigadier-Common Khin Yi, immigration and inhabitants minister till August 2022, and ex-Common Maung Ohn, then deputy dwelling minister and now info minister.

In 2007, Khin Yi, then the police chief, led the bloody crackdown on the Saffron Revolution protests towards army rule. Aung Naing Oo, now the SAC’s funding and international financial relations minister, was not a minister underneath Thein Sein however served as his international funding czar. Khin Yi has since left the SAC to turn out to be head of the USDP forward of the junta’s deliberate election subsequent yr.

So what did truly occur in the course of the decade of relative openness, from Thein Sein being sworn in as president in 2011 and the 2021 coup? If it was not a transition, what was it? The reply is apparent: the unprecedented openness that folks got here to get pleasure from when Thein Sein took over led to a change of Myanmar society. A complete technology realized how you can use the web, talk on social media, and to carry workshops and seminars on topics associated to democracy and civil rights. That, in flip, gave delivery to a younger motion which opposed the coup, first by peaceable means after which with armed battle. As one Myanmar observer put it on the time of the coup: “The army has messed with the flawed technology.” It’s unlikely that Thein Sein and the opposite generals anticipated this sort of improvement when modifications had been launched months after the 2010 election.

So why did the army conform to open up the nation? The heavy dependence on China was one very decisive issue. Western sanctions and boycotts over a few years had led to a reliance on China for commerce and diplomatic help and, based on inner Myanmar army paperwork seen by this author, the state of affairs had turn out to be so grave that the generals believed the nation was in peril of shedding its sovereignty. To be able to turn out to be extra acceptable to the broader worldwide group, it could be essential to make sure modifications, which the generals may afford to do as a result of the 2008 structure, which has been carried out after a very fraudulent referendum, safeguarded supreme army energy. And the army has mentioned repeatedly that it’s their obligation to defend that structure. No main modifications can be tolerated.

One more reason was that the previous strongman, Senior Common Than Shwe, who had held supreme energy since 1992, was about to retire. He wished to safe his legacy not as a despot however as somebody who had created a brand new nation, together with, as many rulers elsewhere have carried out, constructing a brand new capital at Naypyitaw. He was additionally, insiders say, nervous that he and his household would possibly ultimately face the identical destiny as that of his predecessors, generals Ne Win and Noticed Maung, who ended their lives in shame and disgrace.

Due to this fact, Than Shwe chosen not one however three successors: Thein Sein, prime minister and Secretary 1 within the junta of the time, the State Peace and Growth Council, can be president; Common Min Aung Hlaing, not a very robust and charismatic officer, can be the army chief and be promoted to Senior Common, and Common Shwe Mann would turn out to be the speaker of the decrease home of parliament and later chairman of the USDP. With energy divided amongst these three, Than Shwe can be secure. Or so he thought.

The primary miscalculation was Shwe Mann, who realized at an early stage which manner the wind was blowing. He started co-operating with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, which led to his downfall. In August 2015, Shwe Mann was eliminated as head of the USDP and, in April 2016, sacked from the occasion altogether. Ultimately, in 2019, he fashioned his personal political occasion, the Union Betterment Get together, which failed, nonetheless, to win a single seat within the November 2020 normal election.

Shwe Mann has been fully silenced because the coup, whereas Thein Sein reportedly spends most of his time in a personal residence in Naypyitaw the place, whereas remaining loyal to the SAC, he devotes his days to his favourite pastime of portray. That leaves Min Aung Hlaing from the unique triumvirate, and he has surrounded himself with different main officers who’re decided to not let what unfolded throughout 2011-2021 occur once more. The army reluctantly agreed to honor the 2015 election and let the Nationwide League for Democracy type a authorities, however that was not acceptable a second time, so a coup was staged and a witch hunt launched towards elected, central and regional representatives.

What has occurred because the coup has not come as a shock to anybody really acquainted with Myanmar historical past. It was removed from the primary time that the army gunned down pro-democracy demonstrators. The primary bloodbath occurred when college students demonstrated at Yangon College 4 months after the preliminary army takeover in March 1962. Formally, 15 had been killed and 27 wounded when the army opened hearth on the scholars. However each impartial observers and college students who had been current say the college appeared like a slaughter home the place not 15 however lots of of potential leaders of society lay sprawled in dying.

Throughout the mid-Nineteen Seventies the army fired on placing staff in Yangon, killing scores of people that had been protesting towards meals shortages, rising costs and unhealthy labor situations. One other bloodbath happened in 1974 when the physique of U Thant, a former United Nations Secretary-Common and an opponent of Ne Win’s brutal, autocratic rule, was flown again to Myanmar for burial. College students and Buddhist monks snatched the coffin and carried it away to the college campus.

The monks and college students wished a correct funeral for U Thant and for him to be buried in a spot of honor, not the place Ne Win had meant it to be. They shouted “Down with the fascist authorities!” and had been then shot at. Individuals who had been there say not less than 300-400 had been killed and not less than 1,000 taken to prisons, the place many had been badly tortured.

In 1988, throughout an enormous nationwide democracy rebellion, machine weapons had been used to silence the individuals as a brand new army regime took energy. Estimates of the variety of deaths are about 3,000 in the course of the first demonstrations in August, and about 1,000 when the army stepped in once more and crushed the protests. Related, student-led demonstrations had been brutally suppressed within the Nineties and once more in 2007, when Buddhist monks marched towards the regime.

By now, the worldwide group ought to have realized from their pre-coup, gross misinterpretations of the political tradition of the Myanmar army. No outsiders can “interact” or affect them; they hear solely to themselves and the one language they perceive when issues don’t end up the way in which they need is violence. However it’s taking place proper now. Western do-gooders are on the transfer once more, hoping to determine some form of rapport with the generals with a view to obtain the unachievable: to show them into respectable philanthropists.

Min Aung Hlaing has promised an election subsequent yr and among the do-gooders appear to consider that whereas it might not be sufficient, it may very well be the chance for a “dialogue” and, as such, a primary step in direction of an finish to the current disaster. However the Western world will, as soon as once more, be charmed and brought for a experience. What Min Aung Hlaing has promised won’t be a normal election, however a generals’ election and never a repetition of the errors from 2015 and 2020, after they truly allowed individuals to vote freely. Like Eichmann, the generals could seem harmless and cheap sufficient. However they’re wolves in sheep’s clothes. Make no mistake about that.